 Welcome to Moments with Melinda, my new TV interview show that will focus on sharing with you the stories of interesting Vermonters who have a story to tell. My first guest on my new show is Bernie Lambeck. Hi, Bernie. How are you? Melinda, I'm great. Thank you for inviting me onto this show, especially the first one. I'm honored. Well, I'm so excited to have you with me and I just want to tell our guests that Bernie and I serve on the board of ACLU Vermont together and it's been such a pleasure to serve with you on that board. Now you are a Vermont attorney and you are releasing today your second novel, an intent to commit. So Bernie, let's start by having you tell us a little bit about your early life. My early life, my early life began unfortunately a lot a lot of years ago. So I'm from Montreal, Canadian, although I became a naturalized American citizen in 1980s. My parents were refugees from Hitler's Germany. My father from was from Germany my mother was from Czechoslovakia but both German speaking Jewish families, and they ended up meeting in Montreal, and I'm one of three of their sons. And, and went to Dartmouth College from Montreal that's what brought me to the States and to Vermont, and New Hampshire. I did a few things, including eventually teaching elementary school for a few years then I went to law school. So I lived in the upper valley where Dartmouth is for a few years, ending up in Thetford for several years, and where I was living where I met my wife and was and had two of our kids then we went to New Haven Connecticut where I attended Yale Law School. My third son was born there. And after three years of law school we decided to move to Montpelier in 1988 and we're still here. I'm right now sitting in my office in downtown Montpelier. That's the early part that well that that's and thank you for that. So, I know that you're into social justice and racial justice and you've been involved in that for your entire life. So who in your life had the biggest impact on you and your commitment to fight for those who are disenfranchised and who civil rights are violated. I don't know, it's hard to choose one person and that but when I lived in the upper valley, especially my last year at Dartmouth and and in the two or three years after that I was very active in the peace movement and and social justice movements. So there were a lot of movement activists that influenced me a lot and that I looked up to. And when I got involved in law, you know, my certain professors at Yale Law School were influential and after law school I clerked was a law clerk first for Justice Jim Morse on the Vermont Supreme Court he was new on the court and had me as a new law clerk and he became a lifelong friend as you know he was also on the ACLU board for many years. So I clerked for Jim Morse for two years and I clerked in the federal court in Vermont with Judge Fred Parker, who was an enormous influence on me. I clerked for him when he was a district court judge and then I went back and clerked for him when he was appointed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. And he had chambers in Burlington and so I was in Burlington but we would go to New York regularly for a week at a time to hear arguments. That was 1994 and 1995. Bernie, you went from you went from lawyering to novelist. Tell us about that transition in your life. Yeah well I haven't left lawyering I'm still lawyer you're from your lawyering but you've gone from your lawyering into being also a novelist. Yeah, I just decided. The Civil Liberties. This book here which was published in 2018 I really started work on it a good seven or eight years before it was published so I think it was to 2011 that I began to work on a novel and it was just new for me. I didn't know what I was doing I just decided to give it a try. And I wanted to write about the law both of these novels are very much about the law particularly First Amendment law. And I want and I've always been a reader of mysteries and lover of mystery novels. And so I wanted to create a mystery that was serious about some of these legal issues that I care about. Tell us a little bit about on civil liberties. What's it about. Yeah, on civil liberties is well both of these books take place in Montpelier and the issue in on civil liberties the main issue it has to do with the death of a high school girl who she's found dead at the beginning of the novel and it turns out she was the the the victim or the subject of some homophobic writing on Facebook by a schoolmate of hers a friend of hers, but this friend his name is Ricky and he's the main character in the book is is an evangelical Christian and believes that she is wrong that his friend is wrong to be living a as a lesbian and so he calls her out on it. And then she's found dead and so this is a mystery about what caused her death. So the issues that the legal issues involve free speech in the schools whether students have a right to engage in speech of the type that Ricky engaged in, which of course is called hate speech by some people. The issues legal issues, anti discrimination law principle gets fired, and there's a question of whether she was discriminated against. There's another set of legal issues around town meetings that take place and prayer at town meetings whether it's permissible under the Constitution to hold a Christian prayer at town meetings. So I explore all those legal issues. And that's a quick summary. So now I haven't read on civil liberties, but I do understand that Ricky who by the way is a black man. No, no he's not not. He's not. Aha. I had the impression that he was well that's interesting that sort of changes changes my perspective here but anyway, but Ricky and Sarah are both pulled through through that novel and into your new novel, or at least he is an intent to commit. Yes. Yes. So tell us a little bit about about the second novel that we're going to talk about today and intent to commit. It's a sequel of sorts from the first novel and as you're noting it includes some of the main characters from uncivil liberties particularly Ricky and Sarah are there they're sort of the younger generation of characters and uncivil liberties, and they're as the protagonists in an intent to commit, and some of the other characters from uncivil liberties have less central roles in the second novel. The, the focus is that Sarah Jacobson is an activist becomes an activist organizing in the black lives matter movement in Vermont schools. And there are legal questions about schools ability to fly the black lives matter flag and whether students with a different viewpoint or families with a different viewpoint have a First Amendment right to have their own flag. Yes, the school has chosen to fly the BLM flag. So there's some, there's some court action around that. But then the heart of it gets to some hate mail and opposition against Sarah's organizing and other activists organizing around these issues in the schools and ultimately, it's not a secret. They're kidnapped by some right wing zealots, and the plot focuses on the kidnapping and the resolution of that. And the opposition wanted to be able to, to put up a flag to support was it their gun rights, gun rights, yeah. I find this so interesting that through this whole book. Ricky was a black man for me, and I saw him as that isn't that interesting anyway that is interesting. And he always will be to me. He lives in my brain but Sarah has another as a boyfriend from an earlier period in her life and section kind of looking back on that. And he is, he was a black man. Yes, right. Yes, I mean, yeah. Um, so thank you for setting the stage for your book on an intent to commit. And for my the folks that are just just tuning in I am talking to Bernie lamb back who was a lawyer in Montpelier, who's written a wonderful book called an intent to commit, and it is actually being released tonight. Thursday, November 18 at the Lost Nation Theater. So I'm so glad that I got you before you released your book I feel really honored about that. Now Bernie intent to commit is set here in Montpelier. So how much of your novel is is is true to form is. The settings Montpelier and some of the events are based some of the events in the book are based on real events so the flag flying at Montpelier High School. The BLM flag and the BLM flag flying at you 32 middle high school. Those events happened and I drew quite largely from articles in the press, particularly the Times Argus. Those events and some of the quotes I used are quotes from the students that were participating in the flag flying ceremonies. So that part is based on real things that happened in and around Montpelier. And some of the places that I describe in Montpelier are real places sometimes I change the name sometimes I don't. The kidnapping story is entirely fictional. The main characters are entirely fictional. There was there was not a there was not a challenge to flying the Black Lives Matter flag in Montpelier, but you created that and then you leave that incredible legal story that flows through your book are you Ted Surowski. No. No, I'm not. Ted Surowski is this, as you're mentioning it, he's this the school district's lawyer. Yes. No, I mean, the lawyer Sam Jacobson who's the more or less a protagonist of uncivil liberties and appears only in a few places in an attempt to commit. He was originally based a little bit more on me. Okay. I kind of started out that way, you know, you write about what you know and all that stuff but what I needed to really do as I was writing on civil liberties is to separate the character from myself and create him as his own true fictional being. And so he departed from me, but it was never never Ted Surowski. Okay, never Ted Surowski. Okay, well that's good to know. So I would love to have you read from your book for my viewers and we're going to we're going to focus on. So why don't you set the stage for what you're going to read to us on page 35 of your set the stage of what what our folks are going to hear from you. Right. Very good I'll read that and Sarah Jacobson is featured in this section she at this point in 2017 is still living in Providence. Rhode Island. And she hasn't moved back she's from Vermont but hasn't moved back to Vermont yet with Ricky which she does in the book but, in fact this scene here directly preceded and as part of the reason why she chooses to move back to Vermont. So let me begin on a cool day in October 2017. Almost three years after Tyreen's death. That's Tyreen, who we mentioned a moment ago. Sarah was sitting on a bench in the scrappy park next to her workplace on Manton Avenue in Providence. She wore blue jeans and a red jacket filled with some kind of microfiber zipped up over a scarf. She faced the busy road with her cell phone in her hand, and an egg salad sandwich on a sheet of wax paper in her lap. She walked through the streets by, and the sun that cleared the buildings on the southern side of the street warmed her body. She scrolled through her emails reading some saving a few discarding most in the human rights network newsletter she noticed a posting for a job at an organization called Green Mountain Black Lives Matter. Looking to her right down the street she saw a family with a stroller on the sidewalk at the end of the block heading slowly in her direction. She watched them briefly. She paid attention to the phone. She followed a link in the job posting to a website for Green Mountain BLM. It was a newly formed Vermont organization that was looking to hire a staff person to be its youth organizing coordinator. Sarah knew there were other BLM organizations active in Vermont. This one appeared to be focused on middle and high school students. There was movement in the hills of Vermont. The family on the sidewalk came closer to her. They were Hispanic looking probably Guatemalan she thought, like many of her clients. The mother was pregnant. At this moment, the man crouched down to fix a wheel on the stroller that had gone kinky. Sarah smiled and waved to the toddler in the stroller but she didn't think the girl saw her. On the sidewalk to her left. Sarah noticed three young men with barrel chests. They had a kind of rolling side to side gate that made her think they were proud of their masculinity. Sarah worked for a nonprofit coordinating campaigns to organize local residents in the Latinx community on issues relating to immigration workplace abuses and foreclosures. But internal divisions embroiled the organization. Meetings had become awful yelling experiences. Some who professed a passion for equity and inclusion engaged in the worst personal attacks. Sarah didn't see much light through the tunnel her workplace had become. On top of that she hadn't been paid for three months as expected funds had not materialized from granting agencies and donors. She was ready to jump. The whole thing made her sad. The wind picked up putting her phone down beside her careful to balance the sandwich on her lap. She pulled the scarf up around the back of her head. Her scarf was Guatemalan given to her by a member of her organization. Sarah had grown up in Montpelier Vermont small capital city and she wondered about returning home and whether Ricky would want to make the move. Sarah was the only daughter of Donna and Sam Jacobson parents whom she loved and fought with and had needed space away from Ricky had grown up in Montpelier to Ricky's parents Clara and Carver still well were conservative Baptists a rarity in Montpelier. That was complicated for Ricky. Now there's an understatement she thought smiling. All three young men on the sidewalk to her left or a t shirt that said white motherfucker words that she could read as they approached but embroiled in her own thoughts she couldn't understand their meaning at first. All three men wore baseball type hats they were read. Sarah now saw, they were emblazoned with the MAGA letters make America great again. The Guatemalan man if that is what he was stood up from the his stroller repair, looking at the three white men who were still walking toward the family, about 30 or 40 feet away. Sarah could see him then glance down at the girl in the stroller who is probably his daughter. The street was busy with traffic. The father looked for a break in the traffic. The woman squinted into the sun's glare and watched the little family her egg salad sandwich still on her lap as she clutched her phone. If not for the sandwich on her lap, she would later think she might have gotten up to do something. She didn't know what it was she might have done. An opening appeared in the traffic and the family stepped onto the road. The stroller wheel was still not functioning well and veered to the side so the father picked up the little girl with his right arm and lifted the stroller off the pavement in his left hand, the woman held on to his arm and they tried to cross. It all took too long. By the time they reached the middle of the road cars were coming fast in the opposite lane. Five cars sped close by them as they huddled in the middle of the street horns blaring on all sides. Over the traffic noise, Sarah could hear the toddler, who had begun crying. Sarah felt rooted to the bench watching gasping as a moment later a gap in the traffic appeared in the far lane and the family rushed across to the other side. They were dragging the stroller behind them as he held the girl and the mother's arm. Before they made it clear to the far sidewalk, a delivery truck with its horn peeling slammed the stroller, which flew from the man's hand. The truck didn't stop. The stroller airborne clattered to the gutter on the road's edge. One of the wheels was knocked free and kept rolling down the street. The MAGA had guys had reached the pavement in front of Sarah and she could hear their deep male chuckling across the street, the family on the far sidewalk apparently uninjured, reassembled themselves. Both parties continued on their separate ways as Sarah sat still on the bench and watched the traffic on Manton hummed. Sarah let her breath slow down. She ate her egg salad sandwich carefully so nothing would fall into her lap. She turned back to her phone and finished reading about Green Mountain Black Lives Matter and the new job. She decided she would talk with Ricky that evening. And so she did. And so she did. And she did the Ricky that evening. You have a beautiful style of writing, Bernie. It flows. It's narrative, it's visual. And, and I want to tell you this book I had trouble putting it down. I really enjoyed your style of writing because some of it is very tough to understand I mean the legal part that gets into the minutiae of the law but do you explain it beautifully and you do it with color and you do it. It's very easy so that the so that the reader can understand it. So I want to try very kind. Thank you. Well, and I want to, and I want to recommend to everybody who's watching this show to order an intent to commit by author Bernie Landbeck and Bernie, where can folks get your book. There are bear upon books and Montpelier is carrying it. But it should be available from any independent bookstore and they can order it if it's not on their shelves already. It's at Amazon as well, and can be ordered through Amazon it can be ordered directly from my publisher which is called root stock publishing in Vermont and one can find their website easily enough root stock publishing. Thanks Bernie. So it focuses on the period I under the Trump presidency and it focused the reader on racial injustice and white supremacy. And it's just, it was a really important book to read after all we've gone through and what we're about to face heading into the future so I wanted to ask you and I don't want to give you anything, anything away at the end of the book. I love the end of the book but I do want to know what happens to Sarah and Ricky so I expect that you're going to write a third novel, right, and hopefully you'll carry on these characters because I, I am so intrigued with them and they're such beautiful young, brilliant, kind hearted and loving human beings and I would love to see them in your next novel. And Bernie, how do you see the state of our union. Over the next five years. Where do you think we're going to go with with where we are and where we're going I'd love to get your perspective. Oh my. I was, I was enormously pleased that we had a change of administrations and really hopeful about the Joe Biden presidency and the administration. And I am still hopeful I'm hopefully is going to get the second huge bill passed. But the, the intractability of the Republican Party and the direction they've gone in is to me just so overwhelmingly awful that it's hard to maintain, maintain that hope in the face of that. I don't know where we're going. I wish I could say something more positive about that. Yeah, I hear you, I hear you my friend. I, and, and there's hope there's hope. But I agree with you that it's, and we don't need to get into it because you and I talk about all this stuff in the work that we do. But at the end of the day, your book shines a light on an issue that's really, really important. And that is the first amendment. And where do you stand when you want to fly when a school district wants to fly the black lives matters flag, and then you have another group that wants to put their flag up. Talking about gun rights, and at the end of the day you spell out the legal, the legal, the legal story, and the legal reality and the legal truth of how this, this would play out. And I think you did that beautifully. Do you want to share a little bit about that I know you don't want to give the give up the, you know, the context of the book but share a little bit about how that was resolved and you as a lawyer must have researched it and put out your, your best vision of how that would have been resolved how it happened right. Yeah, yeah, no I'm happy to do that I mean it's interesting to say the legal truth of it. So keep in mind these are contested issues, and I guess we rarely have a legal truth. Until this US Supreme Court spoken on something and even then we don't necessarily have the truth that's lost. I should have said your legal truth. All right, Bernie. I'm not being, I'm not being critical I'm just just trying to thank you when you're a lawyer and thank you for correcting you've corrected me on a couple of things tonight today and I appreciate it. But certainly, I could you share a little bit. Yeah, so that the resolution I and I think it's the correct resolution is that it's the school as a, as an institution of government that is doing the speaking when it flies a flag on a school flagpole. It's a student group that might have urged the board to fly the flag it's really the board, making that decision and once it's government that's doing the speaking then it's not creating an open forum, or a public forum for speech on that flagpole. And so other groups don't have a First Amendment right if it were a public forum, then groups that are want to use that forum do have First Amendment rights to use the forum. Dr. and called public forum analysis that First Amendment lawyers are familiar with. And the question really is is whether the flagpole becomes a public forum in the relevant sense and I don't think it does. But, you know, these are arguments. That's right. And this and have you seen a situation where this has popped up in your in your career or not. Yeah, I mean, it has popped up. So when when the Washington Central School District, which includes you 32 was considering a policy on use of the flagpole. The board emphasized that it was the school board's decision whether to fly a any particular flag onto that policy. I mean, all there's always there's the US flag and there's a Vermont flag and then the question is, can they fly a third flag and they have a policy that says they will accept requests to fly a different flag and it has to specify certain things and certain content is prohibited. But once the request is submitted and the school board considers it and votes on it then it's, it's deemed to be speech by the school district by the school board. So the policy is actually written to to further the argument that I was just making about it being government speech and not a public forum. Right. And I want to say because we're coming to the end of our show here Bernie but I want to also say that this is a mystery, because Sarah gets kidnapped. I also love the relationship between the parents and Sarah, and, and, and the other folks that were in her life that surrounded her in her life and how they came together is this beautiful group of human beings that it sought to find her, because no one knew where she was or whether she was alive. And it was certainly horrifying for her as well and I'm not going to tell the end of the book but it was a mystery as well and you weave that together so beautifully, Bernie, to make it a read that I literally, I, I'm going to just admit it I read this book in like two days. I would get home from work and I would just sit and read this book, your beautiful book and get through it so thank you for writing it I'm going to go back and read your first novel, and I'm going to wait, wait, deliciously for your third. And so to my viewers, and to you Bernie I want to thank you for being here, and for being the first guest on my new show moments with Melinda. And to my viewers out there I want to wish you all well, and wish you a happy Thanksgiving, and I will see you soon. Thank you so much, Melinda I really appreciate it. Thank you Bernie. Thank you.