 Good morning and welcome to Moments with Melinda. My name is Melinda Moulton and I am your host. Today, I am interviewing Greg Gouma. Hey Greg, thanks for being with me today. Well, it's great pleasure. Thanks for having me. I'm so glad. Today we're gonna talk about your new book, Restless Spirits and Popular Movements. But before then, let me tell our viewers a little bit about you. Greg Gouma is a longtime Vermont journalist starting as a Bennington Banner reporter in 1968. He was the editor of the Vanguard Press from 1978 to 1982 and published a syndicated column in the 1980s and 1990s. From the mid-1990s to 2004, Greg edited Toward Freedom, then a print magazine covering global affairs and organized one of the first independent media conferences held in Burlington in 2000. In 2004, he co-founded Vermont Guardian with Shay Totten. Two years later, he became CEO of Pacifica Radio. He writes about media and society on his blog, Maverick Media. And Greg has just published a new book, Restless Spirits and Popular Movements, A Vermont History, which we will be talking about today. Greg, what a career. What a lifetime of work. It's a long time, more than 50 years in Vermont. But look what you've contributed to our community and to our world. By the way, your new book is beautifully written for anyone out there who is interested in Vermont history. This is the go-to book. The way that you write is fascinating and interesting. All of the chapters are stories within themselves and the way that you weave the words to tell the story is beautiful. I was really enamored and moved by this book. So let's talk a little bit about you. Greg, tell us a little bit about your life growing up. Were you... Well, I, sure. Well, I grew up in New York, in the city. My parents were Italian, second generation Americans. My father was a lawyer, became a judge. My mother was a part of the fashion industry through my grandfather, who was the manufacturer. But I wanted to take a different path. And so after going to Syracuse University in the mid-60s, I moved up to Vermont in 1968. And as you say, one of my first jobs was as a newspaper reporter, which allowed me to really get to know Vermont at the ground level, first at the local level in Bennington and eventually meeting people around the state. And in a way, that's my post-graduate education was being a newspaper reporter and then working for Bennington College and various things in Bennington. And then moved up here to the Champlain Valley about 50 years ago. So you were here during the turbulent 60s, right? Oh, late 60s, I got here in the 80s, yeah. Would you consider yourself part... I would assume you would consider yourself part of the 60s movement. Sure, sure. I mean, I described myself in my other book, The People's Republic, which was written about 30-something years ago. I described myself as a hippie. I saw myself as a member of the counterculture, the countercultural wave that arrived in Vermont in the 60s and into the 70s. But the difference, I suppose, between myself and some of the other people was that I often had what you might describe as an establishment job. Newspaper reporter, college administrator, I worked for the government and contracts. And so I was in two worlds a lot of that time, particularly in my younger life, straddling the world of the establishment by day and my own pursuits as a countercultural is a hippie by night. So who in your wife had the greatest influence on you and your work? And my work. Well, you know, writers, of course, I admire a really excellent writing. Gore-Vidal was an influence, Hunter Thompson as a journalist, Tom Wolf. I was a part of the new journalism movement, you might say, and as a historian, Gore-Vidal is a novelist, but he's also a historian and political scientist. And there were others like that. And so they were my models. And then there were also individuals I met as I grew up and who were mentors to me. Dave Dellinger was a mentor to me, one of the Chicago age who lived up here in Vermont, Murray Bookchin, who was an anarchist theoretician, Frank Wilkinson, who was a civil libertarian. These men taught me a lot about life and how to function and to combine my interests with my commitments. So interesting. So let's move into your fabulous new book, Restless Spirits and Popular Movements. It is the detailed and deeply interesting history of Vermont. What inspired you to make this book, to write this book? Well, I started on this book, I think more than 40 years ago, really during the Bicentennial period, 1976 in Vermont, when there was a lot of hoopla about America at that time, very patriotic period. And myself and my friends, I was working, I ran a bookstore at that time in Burlington, The Freight Page. Some people may remember it. I remember it. Yeah, one of the first used bookstores in Burlington, myself and a collective, and we published a magazine out of the bookstore called Public Occurrence. And out of the magazine came a history of Vermont called Vermont's Untold History, a kind of Howard Zinn-like look at Vermont from the standpoint of labor movement and the women's movement. And that really began the process of writing this book. I've been adding to the stories, collecting stories, collecting analysis since that time, really. And about 10 years ago, I started to sort of organize it as one manuscript, almost published it about five or six years ago, and then just decided to wait until I found the right partners and the right time. So it's a long process. But you lived through all of this. A lot of it. No, all of the recent stuff. I mean, a lot of in this book, it was very personal to you. That's true. Although, I mean, I'm hoping that this book is, I could say is my least personal book because I'm trying to write history. And although I do go into the first person about two thirds of the way through, because I think it's important that you can contextualize who's telling you the stories they're telling you. So I felt I needed to introduce myself and my role to some extent. And so, yes, I did interview a lot of these people. I know Howard Dean and Phil Hof was a good friend and Bernie and I have known each other for almost 50 years. And so a lot of the interviews and the episodes that I describe are things that in many cases I observed directly, particularly in Burlington. Well, absolutely. And you can see this throughout your book. I believe that this book should be, that every high school student should have to read your book and I believe that they should bring civics back into the education of our students. And this would be a great civics book for the students. Well, I'll be honest with you, that is what I have in mind. I wrote it, I hope, in a way that can be read by people at the high school level and at the college level. It's academically sound, but it's popularly written and that's my intention is hopefully to make it a kind of an evergreen, at least for the next 10 or 20 years until someone updates it again. So how do we get this into the hands of the students? Because you write in a way that's a very, it's an easy read. It moves from chapter to chapter, almost like short stories. It's beautifully done, Greg. And I think that every high school student should be required to read this book. So how do you make that happen? Well, I think first their parents in a way have to read it. I hope to get it into a lot of bookstores in Vermont, have book reviews and people like yourself. And I think the book industry has changed a lot since I got involved 35 to 40 years ago. And in some ways because of the internet, it's easier to get your book published, but it's in a way harder to get your book distributed in the way that we used to be able to do. So I think it's going to be a process of education, reviews. But I'm hopeful, I mean, I'm going to go around and try to speak in classes if I'm invited. And we'll see, maybe a few years from now, teachers will begin to use it. So all my viewers out there, we're talking to Greg Gouma who's just finished writing the book, Restless Spirits and Popular Movements. And I want you to talk to all of your children's teachers and tell them that your children should be required to read Greg's book. So I want to move on to the Sedition Act because I've been using that word a lot lately. I don't know if you have, but I've been using the word a lot. And I want you to talk a little bit about the Sedition Act. And why is it not being implemented today with all of the sedition that we have seen in the past several years leading up to January 6th? Talk to me about the Sedition Act, explain the story of viewers, what it is. Sure, well, I mean, the answer to the second question of why nothing's being done now is a problem of the breakdown of the political system, a very complicated question. But if you go back, the Sedition Act, as I've described the initiation of it in the late 1800s, the 1890s, 1898 in particular, we had our second president, John Adams and John Adams was embabbled. The country was splitting into factions already, the Jeffersonians and the Adams people, the Federalists and I would call them the Decentralists, which eventually became the Republican and Democratic parties. But at that time, Adams was very concerned about on a practical level, people accusing him of being soft on France, which was making moves in the South in Florida and so forth. And so he and his wife and the approval of a lot of people like Washington had passed by Congress, the Alien and Sedition Act and the Sedition Act made it a crime to say anything negative about the government or about the president in particular. I think Donald Trump probably thinks about this and would like to see that version of the, would have liked to have seen that version of the Sedition Act still in force. And but instead of it being used against foreign enemies or threats, it was used against American citizens, Benjamin Franklin's grandson, and then eventually a very prominent for monitor Matthew Lyon, who I described in the book in the chapter that covers this was put in jail for writing a letter to the editor that criticized President Adams. This is a very dangerous kind of law. These have existed at different times that one could describe it as a law against thought crimes. Although it's not always the charge brought in the case, there's always an undercurrent of an accusation of un-Americanism or threats to America. And it's been mobilized against the variety of groups in red scares at different times after World War I as well. The Sedition Act and also the Espionage Act, these two laws have been used very indiscriminately over time. The ironic part is now that the people who used to be defenders of the constitution are now the Seditionists. It's almost as if history has been flipped on its head now where you have an insurrectionist political party. Indeed, and we'll get into that in a few minutes. Thank you for that. I would love it if you could read from your book. And I chose the section about James Jeffords. And you're gonna start at page 152 and finish up at the bottom of 153 and talk about Jim Jeffords, who was another renegade Republican who left the party and became an independent. And I will never, and I'm sure you were there that day at the Radisson Hotel the day that Jeffords stepped. I mean, that was like a moment in history for me that will live on in my heart forever. So I chose that because I wanted you to read this from your book. Would you be kind enough to do that? I'd be glad to and I'm glad you picked it in a way because people might think because I am perceived as a progressive journalist that I have nothing good to say about Republicans. And so this may correct the record a little bit. Well, you also say good things about George Akin. And I don't know if you ever seen my husband's film about George Akin. I don't know that I have. All right, I will send you his video. Please, please. Beautiful film on George Akin, which is beautiful. I will get that in the mail to you, my friend. All right, so go ahead and start reading. I'm just gonna sit here and listen to you. Okay. James Jeffords was another renegade Republican, an independent thinker in the Akin Gibson mold. His career began conventionally but after a stint as attorney general, his path to the top of state government was blocked by Dean Davis, the National Life Insurance Executive who succeeded Phil Hopp as governor in 1968. Davis preferred Luther Hackett, a fellow insurance man and Jeffords was defeated in the 1972 Republican primary. He regrouped and replaced Richard Mallory in Congress in 1974. From that point on where Jeffords built his congressional career on defying easy classification and frequently bucking his own party's agenda. In the early 1980s, he opposed President Ronald Reagan's tax cuts and in 1993 supported the Clinton healthcare plan. In 1994, despite his defiance of GOP orthodoxy he succeeded mainline Republican, Robert Stafford into the US Senate and continued along a maverick path. One example was his sponsorship of an anti-discrimination bill to prohibit the use of a job application sexual orientation as a basis for hiring, firing, promotion or compensation. Another was the support of the UN, neither pleased many of his Republican colleagues. On October 1997, Jeffords was honored by the UN Association for backing a volunteer system that would give soldiers the right to choose UN peacekeeping. A month later, he received the Freedom of Choice Award from the Vermont chapter of the National Abortion Rights Action Week. Typically, the award went to a grassroots activist. But despite his position, Senator and lifelong Republican, his name sprang to everyone's lips because of work he had done throughout the late term abortion ban debate. Standing up for women's rights to choose was a risky thing to do. And once again, made him unpopular with right-wing groups. But Jeffords was used to being a target from the left and the right. During a debate on FDA modernization, for example, he was accused of reducing the labor wing requirements for irradiated foods by food and water of a Vermont-based environmental group. In offering the legislation charged the group's director, Michael Colby, Jeffords had shown that he was, quote, more concerned with the well-being of big business than with the health and safety of his own constituents. Nevertheless, he remained one of the state's most popular figures, a liberal maverick who called himself a Lincoln Republican. And near the end of his career, frequently reminded his conservative colleagues that he was the radical right of the Vermont congressional delegation. Confounding ideologues at both ends of the political spectrum, he capped his career with defiance of the Bush administration over tax cuts and his subsequent exit from the Republican Party in 2001. Jeffords ended his career as an independent. Wow. Beautiful. I wouldn't call these things a sort of definitive biographies. They're really arduous sketches, anecdotal sketches because there are so many characters I'm trying to bring into the story. So, and that was also based on journalism that I had done over the years, covering the events that you mentioned, for example, his resignation from the party. And so I feel that in this sense, I'm trying to be nonpartisan perhaps and to appreciate the contributions of people across the political and ideological spectrum. You are nonpartisan. Because I believe there are sort of core values in Vermont that overarch all of that. Well, you are nonpartisan. This is not a political book. It's not. Really? Well, you're nonpartisan. I mean, it's restless spirits and popular movements. And there are snapshots. That's right. And you move from one period to the next in the way that you weave it all together. It's beautifully done, Greg. So it's hard to believe in Vermont, that Vermont had a eugenics program, but many of us are coming to terms with this. And you write about this in your book. Can you talk a little bit about that, Greg? Yeah, well, this was in the 20s and it's a double-edged thing. And this was going on around the country. I'm not saying that Vermont was the only place, but it affected Franco-Americans. It affected Native Americans. It was a sterilization program that was initiated on very false assumptions and also as a kind of a hygiene, part of a hygiene movement. It started really in the early 20s, was legislated in the late 20s in Vermont. And quite a few people, hundreds of people, Native Americans and others were sterilized supposedly with consent, but really it was a false consent. They were really not aware of what was being done through it. It was also a part of other movements in Vermont earlier than that. I mentioned it also in the context of the perfectionist movement in the early 19th century that John Humphrey Noyes was involved with the Dionida community. That was sort of a, perhaps you might say, more altruistic version of it, planned births, planned breeding program. But obviously by the 20s and the 30s, this had been embraced by fascists and Nazis. And it's something that Vermont hid for a long time. I think it really was only in the 1980s that we really began hearing it once the law was officially repealed that you began to tell the story. And to some extent, that's what I'm trying to do is unearth some of these stories like the story of the Eugenics movement, the Green Mountain Parkway, the fight against McCarthy by Ralph Flanders, and of course the James Burke's mayoral career in Burlington, which I believe was under reported on at the time and also to some extent repressed by historians subsequent to that. And I think the same could be said for the Eugenics movement until the 1980s. And I think there's a real reckoning right now about the Eugenics movement too. So it's definitely a dark, dark, dark time in our history. Being a railroad aficionado and waiting for Amtrak to return to the back of Union Station this spring after 30 years of looking for rail to return to Burlington. Can you talk a little bit about Central Vermont Railroad? As you write, it is the most significant railroad story. Can you share a little bit with us about that story? Well, you know, this is probably gonna be a little more difficult for me because it's sort of, I haven't memorized the entire book. There were obviously a lot of railroad men who ended up being governors of Vermont. And the railroad system in Vermont developed in a rather piecemeal manner. There were a lot of conflicting lines and jurisdictional issues. And so although railroads came to Vermont, it actually produced a kind of an economic depression when the line stopped being built through Central Vermont. And there was a depression in the 1870s as a result of both overexpansion and corruption to some extent too. The railroads were to some extent subject to the early phases of big business corruption, the credit mobiliar scandal across the United States where a lot of congressmen were aligning their pockets. In Vermont, the industry was much more upright but there were a lot of bankruptcies and there were a lot of railroad men who also managed to parlay their position in the railroads into political careers. And so you have, I think, at least three Republican governors who were also the head of different railroads. Later, it became a jurisdictional issue between Burlington and the Central Vermont Railroad in the time of James Burke when the railroad controlled waterfront land in Burlington and Burlington was looking for a place to build a wharf. And at that point, the mayor of Burlington and Percival Clement, who was the head of the Central Vermont Railroad formed an alliance, although they were still arguing about the control of waterfront land, they were also in a political alliance. And so the railroads, I think, along with the marvel industry are probably the two industries, certainly in the 19th century that had the most profound impact on the state's development. And certainly the people who ran those industries also ran the Republican party. And also the boating industry. But let's know too in your history that the city of Burlington under Bernie Sanders, I believe it was maybe Peter Clavel when he was mayor, did beat the railroad to take back the property that is now Waterfront Park. That's true. And that's not a story that I tell in detail in this book. Although I do tell it in detail in my previous book, The People's Republic. And I just wanna make a note of the fact that initially the Sanders administration was going to go the easy route, but it was defeated at the ballot box in a bond vote and had to return to the public trust doctrine, which are describing as the way in which we were able to gain control of some of the waterfront land. But that was a proposal that was brought to it in a way, if not forced on the administration, the administration was persuaded by necessity of pursuing that strategy as a result of actually some democratic activists and lawyers. Howard Dean was involved in that. Rick Sharp was involved in that. John Franco. John Franco, of course. John Franco was a big guy. John Franco was pursued legally. But what I'm saying is that had it not been for the opposition to the original waterfront plan of the Sanders administration, that might never have happened. And so in a way, it's another example of people speaking truths to power, in this case in Burlington in 1983, 1984 and 1985, it was environmental activists, dissident Democrats and naturalists generally who said, yes, you were right, Bernie, the waterfront is not for sale. Well, I was involved in all that because that was the Alden waterfront. Right, so you know- And I remember that so well. And we lost by, we needed 60, 63% or something. And you got about high 50. We got 56%. And Paul Brune was working with us and everything, but then when it all dissolved because we didn't get the bond, the bond vote didn't pass, we didn't get the party, then everything was reconfigured and we went back and became up with something better. Well, became Main Street Landing and we supported the public trust doctrine because that land for us was only under option. And we were really excited about the park, but we redesigned the entire company then to do slow incremental design and development. So- There are at least two examples in Burlington and its recent history where the first plan was rejected and then what followed was an improvement which really reflected a fuller understanding of public sentiments. The marketplace is the other example of that. The original marketplace plan, much more intensive and much more intrusive. And because that was not accepted, we had to sort of rework it and come up with something that really satisfied public needs much more broadly. No doubt about it. It all was so much better to women with a vision. So it, yeah, it all was so much better. So the public trust doctrine. Anyway, that's so interesting. I want you to talk, let's see how much more time we have. We have about, we don't have a whole lot more time. So I'm gonna focus on this, Greg. I'm talking to Greg Gouma who was the author of Russell's Spirits and Popular Movements. It's a Vermont history and I recommend everyone go out and get Greg's book and read it and have your children read it and give it to their teachers and tell them to make their students read it. If you wanna understand Vermont history, Greg did a terrific job. How do you take this history, Greg and you apply it to what's going on today? Because today, I don't know how your mind is feeling about today, but mind every day feels like it's going to explode with the challenges to our constitution. And you go back in time, you know, a couple hundred years to categorize the history here in Vermont. How do you see the future for our world and for our state in the next five, 10, 15, 20 years? Well, you know, I think Vermont, like a lot of other parts of the country has some choices to make. The American system is over 200 years, almost 250 years old, a very old constitution. The constitution is in need of revision. It's not functioning as it should. And I think Vermont, the role that Vermont has played over the past 15 to 20 years is to some extent, I described it to some friends as the anti-Texas. It's portraying a set of values which in a way are a mirror opposite of what is being put forward by Texas. So I think to some extent we have to continue to present and promote our brand. And our brand includes our vision of what society can be like. And what I'm trying to do in the book is to portray the values that underpin Vermont that have evolved and emerged over the years. And I think the choice from Vermont, to be very frank with you, is a choice between continuing to pursue as Bernie Sanders and Howard and others have this idea of reforming the American system if we can do it, which I'm not positive we can do, or I think that you were going to see a gradual devolution. All empires when America is an empire, ultimately end or devolve over time. And I think to some extent we're either going to come together and find a renewed united purpose around a set of values that we agree upon or we're going to see a sort of for fracturing into more autonomy movements you're going to see. That's why I discuss issues like secession and nullification, which of course I know to liberals right now are really not popular ideas because what's being put forward now is that we have to put our faith in the federal government to somehow make it right. That may occur, but not without major structural change. And I'm not positive that the constitution will permit that. And so Vermont should pursue its own values. It should work for self-sufficiency and then present its vision of a good society as we do through Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy and others, but hold open the prospect that we may have to become more independent. And we may also have to, to some extent at some point nullify certain federal laws. If the US bans abortion through the Supreme Court, I know that Vermont is not going to acquiesce. Well, let me mention that to you right now our reproductive liberty amendment. Prop five is moving through our legislature and it's going to come to a public vote. And that's the reproductive liberty amendment, which we are going to put into our constitution to confirm the right to reproductive liberty. A great example. And I think we need to project those values. I wish the media wasn't so oriented toward conflict. There's a kind of a saying, which I'm sure you know if it bleeds, it leads. That's in journalism. If it's violent, if it's conflict. And I saw this even when I was a reporter in the 1960s. If an accident happened at 10 p.m., they rip out the front page and put the accident on the front page, even if we had another story. That was 50 years ago. Things haven't really changed, but Vermont has the possibility of presenting its values to the country through its representation, even through its, look at the Republican governor of this state who has defied Donald Trump and has made Vermont one of the examples of how to handle the pandemic. So I think we are a potential model for the type of values and the type of approach to community building and grassroots democracy that might hold out some hope for the future. But I think we also need to become more self-sufficient. I agree with you. And I think we're doing that in food and in all sorts of areas in Vermont. Energy, we are trying to become more independent. So we have a couple of seconds here. So what's next? What's next on your agenda, Greg? Well, actually I'm working with Nora Jacobson, the filmmaker right now on an adaptation of a novel I wrote about 15 years ago called Spirits of Desire. And it's also a Vermont story about a family of mediums and chitin' in Vermont and all the amazing people who came to visit them in the 1870s. And we hope to turn it into a movie. We'll see. And it's a true story, a true Vermont story. And so I'm working on that. And I'm also hoping to do in what might be the third volume of this so far two volume set that People's Republic and Restless Spirits which would be a more of a memoir and travel writing. Maverick Tales and Travels which would revisit my personal experiences over the years here and elsewhere. Well, you were such a gift. You were a gift to all of us, Greg Gouma. And I wanna thank you so much for being on my show. And again, Greg Gouma, the author of Restless Spirits and Popular Movements of Vermont History. I encourage everyone to go down to your local bookstore and pick up a copy and read it. So Greg, I'm gonna sign off now. I'm gonna ask you to stay on. But thank you to my viewers and I will see you shortly. And thank you for listening and watching my show, Moments with Melinda.