 Hello, and welcome to Live at 525 with Vermont Interfaith Action. I am Debbie Ingram. I'm the Executive Director of the IA. And we are very happy to be back and in the studio and after the little hiatus with the pandemic, we're happy to be producing these shows again. And tonight we have a very interesting subject for you because one of our big campaigns is on Proposition 2, getting that passed. And that would abolish slavery without any exceptions in the Vermont Constitution. So the IA, just to tell you a little bit about us, if you've forgotten, since we've been on a break for a while, is a faith-based community organizing federation of over 70 member and affiliated congregations throughout the state. And we work on issues of social justice. We try to affect systemic change around issues like affordable housing and homelessness, corrections reform, immigration reform, and racial justice. And so that's why Prop 2 fits in very well with our issue portfolio this year. And tonight I am very pleased to have with me two guests, Josh Simon, who's president of our board, and Mark Hughes, who is the executive director of the partner organization of the IA, Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. So welcome to both of you tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for being here. I didn't know you were president. Yeah, I love that. He's really important, isn't he? I like to fly underneath the radar. Flyin' low. That's right. So as I mentioned, we all have the opportunity this year, Vermonters do, to vote on an amendment to the Constitution. And that doesn't happen very often. It's a process, it's a very lengthy process, right? And Mark, you were actually involved in helping to write to that amendment. And we worked together when I was in the Senate. And you want to give us a little background about why this was important to you and what you were thinking when you asked us that fateful question during a debate. What was that in 2015, I think? Yeah, it seems like it's so recent, but I guess it was a while ago. I think it was 2016. Here, there was a, you called it a debate. I don't even think we debate in Vermont anymore. I think it's a, what is it, a forum. We call them forums now. But it was amazing. I think there must have been at least eight, maybe even 10 candidates for a Senate in Chittenden County then. I won't name them all. So it was awesome. What we were doing was just getting the word out. We did the same thing in Washington County. We said, hey, what about racial justice? At that time it was on our radar that issues regarding racial equity and justice would be prominent and extremely important in the presidential election now. You call me Nostradamus, but this was the 2016 election. I think we all know what happened after that. One of the things that we were very interested in is just getting an understanding on the candidate's positions obviously, but we also wanted to slide that question in is, did you know, in the question was, did you know that our constitution, it does currently prohibit and has, I'm sorry, it does allow and has allowed slavery since it was written in 1777. And it was amazing to see all of the responses. But there was one response that stood out and that was yours because you said I'm going to do something about it and you did because after you were elected, we brought that, we did bring that proposal and who would have thunk it that here we are four years later through the Senate twice, through the House twice, two public hearings passed through the legislature now in the Secretary of State's office and we're getting ready for the first time in 245 years to finally, once and for all, state in our constitution that slavery and indentured servitude are prohibited under all circumstances. So here we are. Here we are. Yeah. That's right. It's taken a while, but it's great. It's been great to work with you all this time on this. Absolutely. Yeah. And also it's been really important to, you know, I, even when I was in the Senate and I was wearing the hat of being the executive director of Vermont Interfaith Action and, you know, I've been working with clergy folks like, like Josh who are very passionate about justice in their own right. So Josh, can you say a little bit about why this is important to you personally and why you think it's important to our organization? Well, to me personally as a gay person, I think it's always important to stand with any group on any issue that is experiencing, that is connected to social and economic justice. I am a huge opponent of that, you know, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, as MLK said. And I just, part of my call to ministry is to help articulate to people of faith and Christian folks in particular that God does care about human liberation and that we are called to be active participants in it. It's not just that God calls us, but we're all, and it wants us to work for human liberation, is that God is working alongside us and in this work and efforts. And then for us as an organization, I think it's important that there are not many ballot measures that Vermont has and so this is a unique opportunity for us to have a campaign that is about measure to go to the citizens of this state directly, to urge them to pass Prop 2 to fully and clearly ban slavery in our state's constitution. And so I'm also excited to see how this work then contributes to our other work in the near future because of course once Prop 2 passes then there's a lot more work then to ensure that the subsequent policies and things are put into place and then there's other things as well that we've been working on that are connected to this issue of racial justice as well. So those are things personally and why I think we as an organization really need to be in this campaign at this time. Yeah, thank you so much. And I realize actually as you're talking that we've got three clergy people up here, don't we? And we're not so bad. I mean, I know a lot of people think that's bad, but I think we're all pretty decent people. Pretty good folks here. Great. So you mentioned Mark that when you asked that question of the people who were actually running for office, did we realize that our constitution does not already completely ban slavery because that's something that Vermonters have been taught, right? And that's one of the things that's associated with our state is that, oh yeah, we were the first state to prohibit slavery. But as you said, that's not really true. And so I wanted to share with the folks at home a graphic that we have of what the constitution actually says now. Yeah, how about that? So if we take a look at what it said in this language, there have been a few amendments to the language, but this is the way it is now, and it's by and large the way it has been for 245 years. So this is the very first article in our Vermont Constitution. And it says that all persons are born equally free and independent and have certain natural, inherent and unalienable rights amongst which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. Therefore, no person born in this country or brought from overseas ought to be holden by law to serve any person as a servant, slave or apprentice after arriving to the age of 21 years unless bound by the person's own consent after arriving to such age or bound by law for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like. And that's quite a mouthful, isn't it? That's quite a lot. So there are a couple of things that we are concerned about with this, right? First of all, the language is, you know, it's quite archaic and it's a little bit difficult to understand to, you know, just the regular 21st century person. But we've highlighted there in yellow and in green, there are really basically three exceptions and Mark, you were the one to first kind of bring this to our attention. So you want to talk about what's, they're two kind of embedded in the yellow part and then there's a different one in the green part. Would you talk about those? Yeah, absolutely. And again, I think what's really important to understand here is as you were reading, I was counting on my fingers and just put them under the table. Got to about 25 seconds by the time you came to these exception clauses. 25 seconds it took. This is our constitution, our state constitution and it only takes 25 seconds to come to a point in our constitution where we come to three exception clauses that permit slavery. Think about that. This has been in place for 245 years and most legislators who take an oath to this constitution, most statewide elected officials don't have a clue that it even exists. Who take an oath? Now of course this is the litmus test for all of our existing legislative actions and it's the litmus test for all of our emerging judiciary challenges. So at the end of the day this is kind of important. Three exception clauses, one would be the age of 21. You mentioned that this constitution has rarely been amended. It's been amended about maybe 27 times. One time in 1924 they actually amended the age of women because originally the language was women under the age of 18 could be slaves and men under the age of 21 could be slaves. So they were gracious enough to raise the age of women to 21 so now that it's all under the age of 21, go figure. I guess Wilson was in office at the time but I guess at that time they were also showing birth of the nation in the Oval Office so there's that. So the other one would be a person's own will and sometimes I just wonder what that is. You know, hey, you know, sign me up or I don't know, maybe it could translate into the psychiatric services across the state as well. Youth, you know, I've translated to, I've often thought whether or not DCF and the forerunners of DCF may have had something to do with that. And then finally the last one is for debts and fines and this is, you know, akin to pillage, the constitutionalization of the punishment of crimes or the punishment of poverty. So these are pretty, you know, and this kind of overlays into our current, you know, connection to our 13th amendment. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, and we have that on the slide. So yeah, sorry to interrupt you, but yeah, I did particularly want to highlight the fact that this idea of people being enslaved as, you know, kind of as punishment for, this is for, you know, for debt and damages, but our United States Constitution, a lot of people don't realize this, but the U.S. Constitution also has the 13th amendment which was supposed to have, it was signed into the Constitution in 1865 and it was supposed to have, at the end of the Civil War, abolished slavery. You know, the Emancipation Proclamation was issued during the war. That was like an executive order. And then this was supposed to be enshrined in the Constitution. But here we've, you know, we've highlighted the language and just as you were saying, Mark, that slavery is still allowed and this is still the law of the land right now in 2022 that slavery is allowed as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. So, you know, and talk about the, yeah, there are all kinds of ramifications because of that, right? Interesting about that is what we've discovered is some of the research from our national partners, the Abolished Slavery National Network, is did you know that there's only about 22% of all United States citizens who realize that the Thirteenth Amendment has an exception clause. And I'll just say that in another way, is this 78% of everybody have no clue that the United States Constitution, the Thirteenth Amendment, which has been in place for 157 years has an exception clause that permits slavery. So to think about that and contextualize kind of where we are as a state, it's also important to understand and just to back up a little bit the origins of our work had everything to do with dismantling systemic racism. And when you start to look at the statutes, it's very important to consider the rules and the institutions but also to back into the Constitution to see what's supporting this and where some of this language should have come from, the mapping of the Constitution to our state statutes. Chapter 42 in the state Constitution equals title 17 of our state statutes, for example, which is all about voting, which is kind of important. So there are a number of reasons why this work is important and I think that as we look through the ramifications as you just suggested, what we come to understand is is there are linkages within our statutes, some that we see and many we suspect we don't see and maybe won't see for a while as we continue to work through this. Some ask, well, what are the ramifications of the abolishment of slavery and what that question is kind of loaded in a way because folks, the suggestion is, well, if you can convince us why or what will occur once we figure out this whole thing about slavery, then we'll make a decision as to whether or not we as a state should have slaves. So, yeah, it's a hard conversation to have because, you know, I think a lot of folks are saying, well, what about the prisons or what about the kids or what about and I think the thing is, is that yes, it is connected to systemic racism. Yes, it is connected to the 13th Amendment, but I think there's something that's more overarching that we've got to take into consideration here when we do this work is that what we've come to discover is Vermont was actually the very first state in the Union to constitutionalize slavery in any manner whatsoever. So some people would say, well, does that mean it's largely symbolic? Well, the best way to bring down a structure is from its foundation. So it would be, yes, symbolic, but I think it'd be amazing if we as a state could stand up and say, we realize the repercussions of the decision that we made and that many states followed suit with exception clauses and even the United States Constitution ten years later did have language that suggested the three-fifths language, that suggested slavery and we also know that, you know, two dozen states went on in this to implement language surrounding this business of exception clauses and all of this was the linchpin to convict leasing all coming back to Vermont. So really, really important work. I commend Vermont Interfaith Action for jumping on this and I think that I agree with you, Josh. I think that the work that we have in front of us is going to be really important. It's going to be really crucial. Yeah, absolutely. Can I add? I think the exception clause in our state's constitution and in the U.S. Constitution incentivizes the mass incarceration system that we have because today prisoners can work for little to no pay. Sometimes they provide services for the state government but oftentimes they're actually providing services for private corporations. So private corporations then are incentivized to support this criminal justice system that we have which really isn't, there's no justice in the system at this point. So we need to get this language out. We need to be clear about removing slavery in all forms so that way we can help incentivize this mass incarceration system that's taking place. Absolutely, absolutely. Michelle Alexander called the new Jim Crow is imprisoning so many black men, especially in our country. So I just want to kind of bring the circle around here for folks at home to make sure that you know what you're going to be voting on in November. So we'll go to our last graphic which is about what you'll see on your ballot for Prop 2 and what Prop 2 actually does. So the idea is that all of that exception language that has got a little hard to understand, a little complex is actually just stricken from Article 1 and that clause ends with, therefore, slavery and indentured servitude in any form are prohibited. So that is much more explicit, much less ambiguous, just very straightforward and it's something that we're hoping that all Vermonters can affirm and can see the need for doing also. We've already heard from people that, oh, why do we have to do this? Actually, I think some of the legislators, there were a handful legislators that voted against this and part of their objection was, we don't need to do this. It was done in the Federal Constitution, it was done in the Vermont Constitution, I hope that people understand now after our conversation that no, it wasn't done, there are exceptions and we need to be with something as morally reprehensible and as impactful historically in such a negative way as the institution of slavery. We have to be completely unequivocal and ambiguous about abolishing it, about saying that we are against it. So let's talk a little bit then about the campaign that we're running because we're doing this together with the two organizations and we're trying to get the word out and we're also trying to get people mobilized to vote. So Josh, you want to talk a little bit about what the BIA has been doing? Yeah, one of the things we've been working on or leading is presentations, educational presentations about what is in the state's constitution, how it's related to the 13th Amendment and other issues and will we encourage congregations or other groups of people who are interested in learning more about this to contact us. We're also in the initial stages of training volunteers to help organize throughout this state a movement to pass Prop 2. We're not taking anything the chances, we want to make sure we can vote counts so we can talk to every voter in this state to educate them of Prop 2 and make sure that this thing passes. So those are some of the things we're doing at this stage. Great, thank you. The training is to set people up to do other activities and we'll talk a little bit about that but we want to make sure that people know that if you get involved in the campaign it's one of those perfect community organizing campaigns. It's not going to go on for years and years and years, it's going to be six months. And you can pick and choose. Yeah, it's in and out, you can pick and choose the activities that you particularly want to be involved in and they suit your own skills. So yeah, we'd be very happy for anybody to contact us and get involved. And Mark, Vermont Racial Justice Alliance has been doing a lot of good stuff. Can you tell us more about what's going on with your organization? Let's also have some fun too here. Yes, there's a lot of work going on to dismantle systemic racism. Yes, you've seen the racism health, you know, racism of public health emergency, all those initiatives, you've seen the health equity bill. We put an economic equity bill in that didn't really get anywhere. There's a lot of other work that's been going on and even historically we've been doing that work. So this is all connected but as we're leaning into this and working with y'all, and we're so happy to have Vermont and Faith Action and I don't, you know me, I'm not one much for blowing smoke, but it's a good time. We're getting to know each other better, we're also having a good time together and learning, teaching one another and also just having a blast, just getting together and having some fun. We also have a Thursday meeting as you know and y'all come on every now and then and we bring in the abolished slavery national network folks and there's music and there's conversation and there's spoken word and there's just all kind of stuff, you know, that's going to be a little bit more, you know, it pivots on our culture and there's just some things that are just fun that we're doing. When we come up here as we're entering into the Juneteenth season, if you will, you know, of course we're going to be, you know, we're going to have the cook out, it's going to be June 17th. I just want to invite folks out for that. I think it's from one to three if I'm not mistaken. Oh, Trish is going to kill me. Oh gosh. Can we say 11 to two? 11 to two I think is, well we don't know when it is, but you can find out. No, you're right. So we'll do that. June 17th, which is Friday. June 17th. Thank you. And then of course, you know, we'll be in the park on the 19th from 11 to 7, I think it is. And there'll be some other activities and we'll be getting those out. Go to via.org, go to vtracialjusticealliance.org and we'll leave some breadcrumbs to the emerging website, which is long overdue. So yeah, just a lot of good stuff coming out of this work. And I think the main takeaway of the community is there's this huge upside for being able to learn more about our true history, our true national history and who we really are. It doesn't mean we're not good here in Vermont. It doesn't mean that we haven't done good stuff. But there's a legacy of slavery that haunts us and we're seeing that play out. We're seeing it play out in places like Buffalo, other places across the United States and a lot of this stuff. And so this is really important work. And at the end of the day, it does matter because it is our Constitution. Absolutely, absolutely. And I really appreciate you're bringing up how important it is. And I did just want to say as a white person and Vermont is mostly white, I think it's really important for us to realize that by being a part of any kind of system of oppression, our faith traditions teach us that it systems of oppression dehumanize others, but they also dehumanize the oppressors. I know there's white people who are on different stages of a journey of really understanding what white supremacy is of understanding how systemic racism is. But I'm really hoping that people of good will, white people of good will in this state will come to see that this kind of morally abhorrent institution, the slavery that existed has carried through for the hatred and the violence and the dehumanization that we see that exists in our society today. And I think it's really important for us to put an end to it and to start to set the slate clean and to give our children our next generations a new future. Preach, preacher. There you go, that's what happens when you get us all together. It's true. So, Josh, you want to say anything more about how we can get folks involved in our campaign? It needs to do so. Really, it starts first off with your friends and talk to your neighbors. Your friends, your family and your neighbors just have a conversation with them. Other ways you'll be able to get involved is phone banking, door-to-door, text banking. And largely important, hugely important is we have opportunities to sit down with other folks to write letters to editors to write opinion pieces for your local newspaper. It's also a great way to figure out how to post on Facebook, how to convince others as well, because a lot of people, as we know, don't use newspapers these days, but use Facebook as their main source of information. Kind of scary, but we have an opportunity to use Facebook in a positive way to get this message out. So those are some of the things that we're doing and that you can do if you contact us and you can do on your own as well. And, Mark, we're not the only state that's doing this, right? We mentioned a couple times the Abolished Slavery National Network. There's some other states that are in this too. It's so much going on, Debbie. I mean, it just blew my mind when I started to understand that Senator Merkley from Oregon was proposing a 28th Amendment to, like, remove the 13th Amendment and replace it. So we had an amendment that abolished slavery that doesn't provide a certain clause because, as you know, you just can't amend constitutional amendments. But, yeah, we've Colorado, you've got Oregon, there's Utah, there's in play right now, Tennessee, Ohio, California. The list goes on and on. I think there'll be seven states on the ballot this year. I mean, look, the thing is, is that with the United Nations told us in that report that Human Rights Commission report back in Slavery, you know, it's a crime against humanity, that the United States has never apologized for and that we've never corrected, rather. One of the things that's really important for us to understand is we embrace this as we move forward. It's because this can change the tone, this can change the tone and the tenor and reset the trajectory that we're taking as a nation. Right now, what we've seen is is we try as we may. We can never rise ourselves out of this mess because time after time after every single incident, whether it's the reconstruction, whether it's the civil rights movement, and even now, where we are, the pendulum has swung again, and we're seeing it's right in our face again that this whole legacy of slavery is killing us. It is killing us. So it's time for us to do something and this is something folks can do and they ought to be able to embrace and it's meaningful. Yourself. We're really excited about this, as you said, working together, our two organizations. We'd love for you to be involved, so check us out on our respective websites and we're going to have another combined website soon for the campaign and let's join together and let's do something really meaningful. There's a lot of hatred, there's a lot of hurt in our society and we need to do what we can to heal that and this is a very important step towards that kind of healing and recognition of the wrongs that have been done in the past. So thanks very much for watching and we'll see you we hope on the campaign trail.