 Hi, welcome to the All Things LGBTQ Interview Show where we interview LGBTQ guests who are making important contributions to our communities. All Things LGBTQ is taped at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which we recognize as being unceded indigenous land. Thanks for joining us and enjoy the show. As part of All Things LGBTQ's commitment to introducing viewers to our out legislators and politicians, I am pleased to welcome to join us today a new representative from the Chittenden 14 district. Please welcome Mary Catherine Stone. So welcome. Thank you for having me. Thank you for accepting our invitation. I know that you're in the second half of the session, so your time is at a premium. So let's start with how does someone from Alabama end up in Vermont? Yeah, I was born and raised in Alabama. I lived there for the first 24 years of my life. I did undergraduate and graduate work in Alabama and then decided to move to Washington, DC to do some postgraduate work at GW, George Washington University. And how did I end up in Vermont from there? I watched a Ben & Jerry's documentary right before I moved to Washington, DC, and they showed footage of the state in the documentary, and I thought I really would love to visit there, but I never had a reason to because my family didn't grow up skiing. We didn't, you know, take vacations up north. But once I moved to DC, I rented a car and took a little vacation to tour the northeast and I came to Vermont and fell in love and I couldn't get it out of my head. So two years after being in DC, I was ready for a change. I packed up my car. I bought a car, packed it with what I could, left what I couldn't and moved up to Vermont and I didn't have a job. I subleased a place in the south end of Burlington, and I just made it work. And it's been seven years and it's the best decision I've made in my life. So we need to thank the lore of Ben & Jerry's Free Samples. Yes, and the Netflix documentary that I watched back in 19, yeah. OK, so I understand that, you know, you had spent some time being a justice of the peace in Burlington. What made you decide that now was the time that you wanted to run for the Vermont legislature? Yeah, I'm still a justice of the peace. I'm actually going to officiate a wedding at City Hall at 4 p.m. today. So yeah, still continuing as justice of the peace. That's really not what sparked me to run for office, though, that position. I work as an occupational therapist when I'm not serving in the legislator and in doing so, I meet people in their most vulnerable moments and therefore I get to see a different side of community and a different side of humanity than most. And it's a great blessing to do that work. But I feel like it puts a great deal of responsibility on me as well. And so I found myself trying to address some of the needs and the gaps that I saw doing that work by spreading myself really thin, doing a lot of volunteer work in the community. I think at one point I was on seven boards and serving as a justice of the peace. And while that work was really meaningful, I really wanted to challenge myself to sit at the table where decisions are made. And so I took a chance and decided to run for office. And here I am. And we're so thankful that you're there. Now, you mentioned that you're an occupational therapy. However, you're sitting on the House committee on education. How did that happen? Yeah, to be completely honest, education was was something that I put down as an interest because it's a huge interest of my constituents, the city of Burlington, just thinking about Burlington High School and PCBs and all of the things that have been in the news regarding education in my district. I also represent Chitton 14, which is goes right up into UBM's campus. So a lot of my constituents are students. So I feel like that's why I'm on the Education Committee. But sitting there the first day, I did I did wonder, I was like, what do I have to offer as an occupational therapist? But OTs work in school systems. So every school district should have an OT on staff, contracted out or in house. So a lot of my education in schooling, you know, to become an OT, I had to look at special education law, the politics of disability. So that's a unique lens that I've been able to bring to the to the House committee on education. Also, you listened to what the people coming to you for services were having to say and got a more complete sense of need. And that would lead into an educational process. Before we move on to talking specifically about some of the bills and the work that's happening in the Education Committee. There was a lot of publicity with representatives Don Lee resigning because of the stress of serving and serving is an out legislator. What does for what has been your experience as a legislator? And are there was there anything unexpected that has occurred since you started serving? Yeah, I knew it would be a challenge. One of the other reasons I ran for office, aside from being inspired by the patients I serve and hearing their stories and wanting to do things to address the needs that I saw. I also heard from numerous people that it would be really hard to to serve in the legislature, especially being someone who's single, someone who doesn't consider themselves independently wealthy, someone who's not retired. Like I didn't really fit the mold and I heard that a lot. And I kind of took it as a dare, like, well, let me just see if that's the case. And if that is what it ends up being, then I'm going to bring light to that. And I found that when I ran for office, I got a lot of support because people are really happy to see someone such as myself, especially with the identities I hold, being a member of the queer community, being an Egyptian American, being a young woman. But, you know, getting into office, it's definitely challenging. And I'm glad that Kate named that. The work-life balance is really hard. It's hard being a single person. It'd be really difficult for me to be able to do this job if I had another mouth to feed because it takes a lot of time and you don't get paid that much. There aren't insurance, you know, you don't have insurance. I have to rely on insurance that I have through the hospital. Luckily, they they offer me insurance during my leave of absence. But it's really challenging to make ends meet. So I was really happy to see Kate name that when she stepped down and just, you know, being really open and honest about that was huge. Something that I have found challenging, especially as of late as bills have started coming through the House chamber and in our votes, our public and, you know, I have experienced very recently, like last week is what's, you know, strongest in my mind right now. Some harassment and bullying through social media. I had a death threat last week that I had to turn into capital. I had to turn into capital police. So and it was all just because of me speaking out about anti-discrimination on certain bills in the Education Committee, making sure that that. That issue was highlighted. Yeah, so it's definitely it's a it's a great, wonderful job. I love it. It's the best job I've ever had in my whole life. Serving the people of Vermont and the legislator and the people I do it with are absolutely incredible. But it does have its challenges for a number of reasons. And you're definitely putting yourself out there. Yeah, we do it. And as we had talked briefly before we started taping, we like to think that Vermont and particularly Burlington is an inclusive community. But we need to recognize that inclusive means everyone. And there's going to be opinion that will not be the same as ours. And for which we will, in fact, be a target. So looking at. The work that's currently being done in the Education Committee and a bit of disclosure that as we are taping this. The news about the school shooting in Nashville is just coming on the air. And I know that there are at least two bills. In the Education Committee being debated, one is about coming up with a model policy for safety regarding violence and truders and one banning deadly weapons on school property. Are either of those bills likely to see action? And what would these bills actually do? Yeah, so complete disclosure. The first part of this session, we have been extremely focused on school construction, school construction, funding, the work that we're doing with our committee bill, which I think we'll speak about later, and then a workforce recruitment and retention bill for educators. So our conversations have been heavily focused around those three topics. And now we can start moving into other things. We have taken a little bit of testimony on Representative Kate McCann's bill, which is the one banning weapons from being on school grounds. But we haven't really been able to dive into any of those topics in depth because of our focus on the previously mentioned ones topics that I brought up. But I do think it's something that we will we will continue to speak about, especially, I mean, like you mentioned, it's it's in the news. It's definitely an issue that impacts our students and all of our communities in Vermont. So I look forward to continuing to hear testimony and learn more and learn more about those bills and how we can address the uptick of violence on school campuses across America. And the bill that you were referencing is one that we have been talking about or the issue is one we've been talking about in all things very much in the last couple of months. And what the committee passed out was 483 about accountability and oversight of those independent schools. And you also had another bill H 258, which was state funding for those four districts that didn't have their own elementary or high school. So that would be the tuition school. Can you tell us a little bit about the conversation, the testimony that you heard and what's in the bill that you passed out? Yeah, so, you know, our conversations come in light of a Supreme Court decision Carson v. Macon. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it was a ruling that requires the state of Maine to fund religious education at private religious schools as part of their tuition assistant program. And in Vermont, we have. We have independent schools who are publicly funded so those are private schools who receive public funds from taxpayers. And then we have our, you know, the traditional public school system. And in light of this case, it really encouraged us to look under the hood of the education system as a whole in the state of Vermont and look at just accountability and oversight, particularly of independent schools. You receive public funding. And I think the other really referring to is one that was put forth by Edie Granting. We did take testimony from her, but we have put forth the committee bill, which will come to the House floor this week, which, you know, after weeks and weeks of testimony, we have done our best to put together pieces to really look at oversight and accountability for those independent schools that are receiving public funding. Well, all things started reporting on the Supreme Court decision, the Supreme Court case when it was first filed saying, this will have an impact on Vermont because Maine and Vermont are predominantly the only two states that engage in this process. I'm wondering what the outcome would be. What's been in the news recently is particularly two schools that are religious faith based submitting a request for tuition dollars, but saying if the tenants of their faith were in conflict with Vermont's non-discrimination statutes, they were going to adhere to the tenants of their faith. Is is there are there provisions in the House bill that would address those issues? Well, you know, we also have in our I'm looking it up right now, so that I'm not speaking out of turn, but this the compelled support clause and the Vermont Constitution really states that taxpayer citizens are not compelled to support religious institution. So that kind of puts an interesting piece at play when you look at what the Supreme Court ruling was and what our own Vermont Constitution says. So in our committee bill, we don't say anything specific outright about religion, but instead, you know, we're looking at overall the the independent schools who receive public funding and just ensuring that there's as much transparency and accountability there as possible. So there's a number of things in the bill. Basically, you know, if you are receiving public funding, then we want to ensure that you are adhering to the rules, including compliance with the Vermont Public Accommodations Act and the Vermont Fair Fair Employment Practices Act. So there are some things in there that are in there intentionally just to make sure that we are protecting folks as much as possible. I appreciate and thank you very much for expanding your answer to include all independent schools, what had been in the news with particularly about the faith base, but it sounds as though the language that your committee crafted more than addresses, you need to follow Vermont's public accommodation rules. So so in our remaining time, I I want to ask you about Rick B. Jane. Yes. And there may be an appearance here. And exactly what is an Aussie doodle? So Rigby Jane is a rescue. She comes from Missouri, so she's a southern southern lady like me, and she is an Australian shepherd poodle mix. So she is hypoallergenic and she just she just got groomed so she doesn't have as much hair as she usually does. But oh, she's adorable. And she comes to Montpelier with me every day. So she's kind of the unofficial mascot of the new class of legislatures. And I wanted to thank you for being part of that new class of legislators. One of the things that was remarkable about this most recent election cycle was the amount of. Younger voices that stepped up were elected and are now starting to have an influence on our legislature. So it's no longer people of privilege who can serve. And the chamber doesn't look quite as great as it used to. Yeah, it's a fun place to be a good group to be with. So with that, thank you for this first visit. It will definitely not be our last. And as the Education Committee continues to do its work, I probably will invite you back to talk about. OK, so what finally was accomplished this session? Yeah, the committee will be on the floor this week. So stay tuned. It should be on the floor Wednesday or Thursday. Yeah, so I'm sure there'll be more to discuss after after that day comes and goes. And we will continue to report on your progress. Yes. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Hi, viewers. I'd like to introduce Erica Reel, who is on our show today, and she has a very impressive resume and is doing for the second year is doing a Berry Pride event in Berry, Vermont. So let me just tell you a little bit about them. And Erica has multiple disabilities and works with Vermont Center and works for another way, which is in Montpelia. She provides training for staff at 211 Main Domestic Violence Network and many other others on disability related topics such as disability etiquette, we'll ask her about that. Fear housing laws, ADA law and community organizing. She is a fair housing advocate who troubles her problems that college encountered, explains fear housing and how to file a complaint, provide support assistance to clients who are working through fear housing issues. She testifies to groups to move the independent living philosophy works with issues involving the Americans with Disabilities Acts, Fear Housing Acts and the Rehabilitation Act of 1970. Three. Her affiliations are the National ADA PT, National People's Action, Berry City ADA Committee and Vermont Human Trafficking Task Force. She's on many boards and committees. She served as chair of a treasurer from 2007 to 2008. And as I said, it is a very impressive resume. So welcome, Erica. Thank you. So I think the first thing we're going to talk about since it's coming up in early June is your work on the Berry Pride event happening. And what are the days for that? So the day is June 10th. It's a Saturday and it's a week after a monthly or pride, which is, I want to say, June 5th. OK, and how is it progressing? Do you need volunteers? Do you need help? We have a great bunch of volunteers, but yes, we could always use more volunteers. It's progressing amazingly. Just the amount of communities that sorry, the communities, the community that's coming out. I have this running joke with one of my volunteers saying, what's going to happen when somebody says no to one of my ass? Because so many people have just said yes to an ass that I've done. You know, we have just the community and community businesses are all just saying, what can we do? How can we help? What can we donate? It's amazing, the the amount of community involvement that's coming out of this this year. And so what kind of activities are you planning? And what time does it start? And are you still planning activities? Probably it starts at nine a.m. and goes to two for the main part, which is our our Baked with Love event. And then we're taking a small break and then festivities start up again at four, where we're going over to Pearl Street Pizza, who is a local business and we're having some door prizes over there all donated by local businesses. And they are running, you know, they're asking for reservations ahead of time. And I apologize for my phone and there's going to be some door prizes. There's going to be a special appetizer. They're concocting and a special cocktail that they're concocting. I have not heard what it's going to be yet, but they're welcoming us with open arms. And from what I've heard, there's going to be some special door prizes and gift certificates and merchandise from local businesses. That's incredible. I know. And like I said, I haven't heard no yet from local businesses. So and there's also for the first time in Barry, there's going to be a drag queen story hour of which I am fully excited about. There is going to be some games going on provided by the rec department and by the library. There are going to be other games, kind of adultish games from what I've been told. You know, it's it's going to be a fun afternoon and we're hoping for another beautiful sunny day like we had last year. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. It is Vermont. I know. But again, so far, I haven't been told no yet. So I'm but if we get told no, oh, well. Yeah, you know, I mean, if you get like 300 yeses, what's one no, right? I know. But, you know, you can live with it. Right. But again, it's just amazing to see how many people in the businesses are just saying yes to this event. OK, well, if there's any volunteers out there who want to help out with this event, you can contact all things held your BTQ or Erica directly. We'll have her email up on the site when the show airs. So you did it last year and it was a success, right? I mean, you consider it a success last year. We considered it a huge success. So just to give you some background, what we do is it's called Baked with Love because we do a community bake sale and all the proceeds from the bake sale go to a charity that, of course, is pride centric. And last year, we did it to the safe space in honor of Fernfeather and we raised a thousand dollars and that's from a bake sale. And we had nonprofit vendors out and it was community came out in droves because we weren't expecting it to be that huge. And, you know, we we guesstimated and, of course, we didn't take numbers, but we guess made about 200 people came out. And again, it was a beautiful sunny day and we had people just saying, you know, I changed my plans to be here. We had vendors saying I had actual real conversations with people and we had vendors I've had vendors calling me and people calling me saying, are we going to do it again this year? So I couldn't disappoint people. And even the last year, I said, I wasn't going to organize it again. I couldn't disappoint. And I said, OK, we're organizing it again. Yeah, I know how that goes. Who are you going to donate to this year? Have you decided yet or it's still kind of up in the air? No, we it was a hard choice, but we found a great organization through Outright Vermont called Camp Outright and they have a scholarship program for LGBT, TQ plus kids. And I don't know about you, but when I was growing up, there was no camp for kids like me. And so they have a scholarship program for and they take kids from all over the country to go to this camp. And we wanted money to go to the scholarship program. They are very excited to get this money. And as we know, kids are the future. I'm getting older and we want kids to have a safe space to be who they are. So that is our our charity this year. And not a lot of people know about this program. And so not only is it a way to reach out to this program, but it's a way to get a word out for this camp for kids. I know they've been doing that quite a few years, I think. And I'm sure they they struggle with getting, you know, this could expand how many people they could they can bring with them. And, you know, it's a great program. And, you know, yes, you're right. When we were young, it wasn't this kind of thing. You kind of just, you know, struggle through. Yeah. And and I want I want a place for for kids to be kids. Yeah. So. I guess what drives you to doing this stuff is your advocacy with the disabilities community. And I imagine that's can feel like an overwhelming task. You know, trying to get people to do the right thing. And I I noticed in Vermont, you know, I found a broken knee and, you know, how many places are not accessible if you, you know, aren't using it or you're not aware of it. You know, it's not not in your head all the time. It's really hard to, you know, like. You know, like fine places, like even the movie theaters, you can't go to because you have to walk upstairs is no ramp. I mean, so I know a lot of the buildings I imagine our grandfather did, as they say, which means they don't have to do anything if they don't do. So how do you deal with that? I mean, you deal with people with, you know, just getting around with disabilities with housing, do you get a lot of pushback? I mean, how is it to be working in this field? There definitely is a lot of pushback, especially being a person with a disability. And I quote unquote, you know, look, you know, you see me walk around. Unfortunately, I'm getting older. I do walk with a limp and sometimes a cane. There is a lot of pushback because Vermont has a lot of old housing stock. We have a lot of old buildings, but I keep telling people, you know, accessibility isn't just for those of us with disabilities. If you make a business more accessible, you're also helping a person pushing a stroller. You're you're gaining more folks who are walking through and saying, oh, I can enter the store with my push cart. But I also say when people with historic buildings, you put electricity in, you did a modification. You know, that's a big modification. But one of the things that I'm able to do with my knowledge base about, you know, accessibility is I can bring it back to pride and I can look at, you know, how can I make this accessible for everybody? You know, one of the things, you know, especially, you know, I look at Barry is I was able to look at where it is City Hall Park. Is it the best location? No, it's visible. We do have sidewalks that are people are able to walk. There are benches where people are able to sit. You know, it's a place where I can put vendors in an area where people can just walk on a flat surface is close quarters. But it's a place where everybody can enjoy the area. So, yes, we talk about other places that are not accessible. Movie theaters even are, you know, just commute going into a store, just going into my, you know, going into a simple office building to get services. No, they're not accessible. But the more places we look at where we can give pushback, you know, you're not making a place accessible just for somebody like me who has a disability. You're making it accessible for everybody. And the reason you might not see, you know, a lot of pushback I get is, well, we don't have people with disabilities come into this place. The reason you're not having people come with disabilities come into this place is because you're not you're not accessible to that person. Right. And and you get a lot of like full calls from people trying to find housing or trying to find accessible housing and I mean, I can imagine in this crowded housing market we have around Barry Montpelier that it was really hard to find housing for people with disabilities. Absolutely. It's extremely hard to find housing for just for people with disabilities. But again, what one thing people don't look at is you make your housing accessible, especially new construction. You make it not only accessible, but you make it universally designed. You make it so everybody can use it. Not only are you upping the market rate for your housing, but you're making it more profitable. More people will be looking at the housing like my partner and I put a ramp on our on our on our house that made it so anybody can use it. Not only that can anybody come into our house, but what's easier to move a couch on a ramp or was stairs? So you think about it in that way. You know, we recently swapped in a new couch. It was easier for my partner to bring the couch up the ramp than it was a flight of stairs. So you think about it in that way as well. Yeah. And do you find that Vermont is pretty good about enforcing the laws that it has? Unfortunately, I want I would love to say yes. But there are no ADA police. There's nobody going bad job. The ADA is a complaint driven law. And unfortunately, it takes a very long time for an ADA complaint to go through. So I would love to say, yeah, we're great at enforcing it. But you really have to be somebody who's again, knowledgeable about the ADA. You have to have people that are knowledgeable about the ADA guidelines and people want like architectures. Architects want to say they're knowledgeable about ADA guidelines, but it's not something that that's sometimes at engineering school. It's not something that's that, you know, it's burned in their brain. Like I can tell you how many inches of water fountain like the spark of the stream of water fountain needs to be. That's something that's ingrained in my brain. I can tell you how many inches a doorway needs to be. You know, that's something that's ingrained in my brain because I have learned the the the guidelines backwards and forwards. But it's not nobody gives you a manual when you're disabled. Nobody gives you a manual to an architect saying you need to know the ramp for this and this and this. So it's very it's a complex thing. And again, it's a complaint driven thing. So unless people start filing grievances, it's not going to be enforced. It's not going to be looked at because that's true. You know, if you have a wheelchair, you need to be able to get through a door. I know all doors are built for people to get through with wheelchairs. So, yeah, you know, it's it's like you must be in this you must be in this different headspace all the time, trying to, you know, navigate this for people. And it's such a worthwhile endeavor. I applaud you for for being out there and doing the work. It's not easy, I'm sure. Well, I have this friend of mine, maybe this great teacher that says I'll never be known as a woman who will shut up. Yeah, which is true because I I haven't talked in my sleep. So yeah. So is there anything else you would like to tell the audience about who to contact about disabilities and where is the best place to start if you have a disability and you want to complain or you want to find information? Well, certainly. So if you have if you have a disability, you know, I want to help people. You're not alone. There are many people have to have disabilities and they don't talk about it. I also have a mental health diagnosis and, you know, it's it's very hard to be out there with a stigma attached to a mental health diagnosis. But again, you contact me and I'm very I'm very out there and open. But there's a Vermont Center for Independent Living, which is located in Montpelier. There is another way, which is where I work in Montpelier. There's disability rights for Mott. One thing I love about Vermont, as I would say, we're a very small city. And all of us in the disability rights field, we all know each other. So and all of us that kind of work in like the LGBTQ plus pride, we all know each other as well. So we try to get, you know, we just try to network with each other. So definitely if you have any questions about resources, please pop my, you know, pop my email up or I'll even be very bold and say you can call me 802-839-9504 or text me if you if you need to. I'm confidential and I'll be happy to point you in the right resources. That's what I'm trained to do, and that's my job. Thank you. Thank you for being there. No problem. I did one more question before we leave and then he is working with police. You know, there was a there's been quite a few deaths around you know, around the country with with cops killing people who would who have disabilities or mental issues or mental illness. And so. Do you work with the Vermont police? Is that something that you're working on maybe? Or so that this doesn't happen here that I mean, it has happened here, I think, actually. But there have been some encounters with police officers and I I actually do work with one player police as well as very police. I feel that I have a good relationship with them. I'm actually heading to Washington and Washington, D.C. in a couple of weeks to talk about what's called ableism in policing at a national conference and ableism is is basically working with people with disabilities and talking about what's wrong in our law enforcement. Not to just law enforcement. I do have a respect for police officers and law enforcement. So there is so we are in one of my roles. My job is liaisoning with police officers and working with mental health people with mental health or in a mental health crisis and trying to be that conduit between people with disabilities and law enforcement and sometimes it is a tightrope block. Working with police and law enforcement. Yeah, I can I can only imagine because, you know, the training is you just have to get into a whole different headspace when you're dealing with people with all kinds of varied issues, whether it's drug addiction, alcohol, you know, any of those that could cause people to seem like they're out of control when really they're having other issues. It is and sometimes it's just acting as that translator for somebody who's in a crisis to the police officer. And sometimes it's just knowing who's in your community and saying hello to somebody who might not have somebody who nobody says hello to and being that liaison. So everybody get out and go to very pride. Yes, it's going to be a hoot. We're going to have a good time and get out there and enjoy the day. Yeah. And and again, it's right downtown. Barry, you really can't miss us. And we do that because we want everybody to know that we are visible and we're out there and Barry. Yes. So thank you. Take care and thanks, Erica, for coming on. I'll see you soon at the next meeting, maybe. Thank you. You too. All right. Bye bye. Thank you for joining us. And until next time, remember, resist.