The Decentralist Way: Questioning Authority and the Power of Elites

By Greg Guma

"Centralization in our social, economic, and political systems has given rise to a deep sense of powerlessness among the people, a growing alienation throughout society, the depersonalization of vital services, excessive reliance on the techniques of management and control, and a loss of great traditions." 

In the late 1970s, an alliance of the political left and right, led by both Democrats and Republicans, created a “third way” called the Decentralist League of Vermont. It was convened by Robert O’Brien, a state senator who had just lost the Democratic primary for governor, and John McClaughry, a Republican critical of his Party’s leadership. Each invited some allies for a series of meetings to forge a new political vision. 
     "We oppose political and economic systems which demand obedience to the dictates of elite groups, while ignoring abuses by those who operate the controls," its founding statement announced. The goal was to “speak out for the interests of persons not protected by rigged deals.” Today its principles and proposals resonate anew in a global atmosphere of resurgent authoritarianism.

     Vermont had been fertile ground for “outside the box” thinking before. To start, it didn’t immediately join the new United States after the War of Independence, remaining an independent republic until 1791. Almost half a century later it was the first US state to elect an Anti-Mason governor, during a period when opposition to elites and secret societies was growing.
     The Anti-Mason movement — which also elected a Pennsylvania governor and ran a candidate for president in 1832– lasted only a decade. Most of its political leaders eventually joined either the short—lived Whip Party or the more durable Republicans. Along the way, however, it exposed the dangers of special interest groups and secret oaths, and on a practical level, initiated changes in the way political parties operated — notably nominating conventions and the adoption of party platforms, reforms soon embraced by other parties.

     Early in its history, Vermont also had direct experience with another type of challenge to centralized power— nullification. The general idea is that since states created the federal government they also have the right to judge the constitutionality of federal laws — and potentially refuse to enforce them. It happened when American colonists nullified laws imposed by the British. Since then states have occasionally used nullification to limit federal actions, from the Fugitive Slave Act to unpopular tariffs

     In November 1850 the Vermont legislature joined the club, approving a so-called Habeas Corpus Law that required officials to assist slaves who made it to the state. The controverial law rendered the Fugitive Slave Act effectively unenforceable, a clear case of nullification. Poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier praised Vermont's defiance, but President Millard Fillmore threatened to impose federal law through military action, if necessary. It never came to that.
     Even a short-lived political movement can produce new thinking and unexpected change. In 1912, for example, the new Progressive Party inspired by Theodore Roosevelt when he lost the Republican nomination to William Howard Taft led to the election of Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt left the Party, but its work continued under Robert La Follette. Although La Follette’s run for president in 1924 netted only 17 percent, he won Wisconsin, his home state, and successful reforms were implemented there.
     In recent times, Vermont has been a testing ground for political, economic and environmental thinking that challenges conventional wisdom. But the ex-urbanite professionals and members of the counterculture who arrived to help make that possible built on a solid foundation. Questioning of illegitimate, centralized power began before the American Revolution, as early settlers in the Green Mountains organized to declare themselves free of British rule and exploitation by land speculators. It continued with the jailhouse congressional re-election of Matthew Lyon in defiance of President Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts, resistance to an embargo of Britain and the War of 1812, rejection of slavery and Masonic secrecy, and Town Meeting defeat of the Green Mountain Parkway during the New Deal. The pattern reflects a libertarian streak that has resisted the excesses of both liberal and conservative leadership.
     One key reason is localism, a long cherished Vermont value. Even when Gov. Deane Davis, a conservative Republican, backed a state land use law in the late 1960s, he chose to call it “creative localism.” Town Meeting exerts a powerful enduring influence, both practical and symbolic. A form and reminder of direct democracy, it holds out hope that self-government remains possible in the age of powerful administrative states. The stakes may be overstated at time, but the use of this forum – in some cases the only one available – can be a form of self-reliance and self-determination reminiscent of the early Jeffersonian impulse.

Re-orienting the Spectrum

     In a similar spirit, the group of Vermonters who launched an alliance in 1976 aimed at decentralizing political and economic power. Invited by Bob O’Brien, I acted as secretary and helped to craft its Statement of Principles.
     That Fall, Bernie Sanders made his second run for Governor as a Liberty Union candidate and called for the break up of big banks. The winner was Republican businessman Richard Snelling, who defeated Employment Commissioner Stella Hackel after a fractious primary season. But Jimmy Carter became President and soon appointed Hackel as Director of the US Mint. According to a March 28, 1977 article by UPI, the Decentralist League was officially launched in Montpelier with a press conference and had 12 initial public signatories. The plan was not to become another political party, the press coverage said, but to "speak out for the interests of persons not protected by rigged deals."
     Charter members included McClaughry of Kirby; Sen. O'Brien of Orange County; Sen. Melvin Mandigo, a Republican representing Essex-Orleans; Rep. William Hunter, a Democrat from Weathersfield; John Welch of Rutland, who sought the 1976 GOP nomination for U.S. Senate; and Frank Bryan, a UVM professor. Also on the eclectic list, I was identified as a magazine editor and activist from Burlington, joining former Democratic party vice-chairman Margaret Lucenti from Barre; James Perkins of Sheffield, co-chair of the Vermont Caucus for the Family; William Staats of Newfane, founder of the Green Mountain Boys; Martin Harris of Sudbury, leader of the National Farmers Organization; and John Schnebley Jr. of Townshend, who ran in the 1976 Democratic primary for the U.S. House.
     As I had written in Decentralism & Liberation in the Workplace, a July 1976 essay published in response to the US Bicentennial celebrations, Decentralism involves participatory democracy and worker ownership, home rule and neighborhood assemblies, regional self-sufficiency in food and energy, and voluntary inter-community alliances. Through efforts at both the industrial and local political levels, it can move us toward a social libertarian culture that respects the traditions of freedom and independence in America's past, and that adds to this heritage a more positive vision of human nature, ethical and ecological tools, and an internationalist perspective.
     The basic purpose of the League, McClaughry argued at the time, was to "re-orient the political spectrum so that people begin to see issues in terms of power widely dispersed -- close to them in communities, and power centralized -- in large institutions over which they have no control."
     Bryan and McClaughry continued to explore the concept and Vermonters' attraction to decentralism in The Vermont Papers: Recreating Democracy on a Human Scale. “God-given liberties, hostility to the central power, whatever it may be," they wrote in 1990, "their attachment to their towns and schools and local communities, their dedication to common enterprise for the common good – all these have been among the most cherished Vermont traits, the subject of countless eulogies of Vermont tradition over the years."
     Although the League lasted only a few years -- a casualty of Reagan-era polarization -- it did identify a set of core beliefs, priorities and policies that could unite those who find the current national and global order unsustainable and dangerous. In Burlington, one concrete legacy was the creation of Neighborhood Planning Assemblies. Taking aim at centralized power and wealth, the League asserted that decentralizing both, where and whenever possible, is the best way to preserve diversity, increase self-sufficiency, and satisfy human needs.

     The League’s founding principles, released in March 1977, resonate anew in the current global atmosphere of resurgent authoritarianism.

Decentralist League of Vermont
Statement of Principles

In a free and just society all men and women will have the fullest opportunity to enjoy liberty, achieve self-reliance, and participate effectively in the political and economic decisions affecting their lives. Wealth and power will be widely distributed. Basic human rights will be protected. The principle of equal rights for all, special privileges for none, will prevail.
     When economic and political power is centralized in the hands of a few, self-government is replaced by rigid and remote bureaucracies, the independence of each citizen is threatened, and the processes of freedom and justice are subverted. Centralized power is the enemy of individual liberty, self-reliance, and voluntary cooperation. It tends to corrupt those who wield it and to debase its victims.
     The trend toward centralization in our social, economic, and political systems has given rise to a deep sense of powerlessness among the people, a growing alienation throughout society, the depersonalization of vital services, excessive reliance on the techniques of management and control, and a loss of great traditions.
     Decentralists share with “conservatives” repugnance for unwarranted governmental interference in private life and community affairs. We share with “liberals” an aversion to the exploitation of human beings. We deplore, however, conventional “liberal” and “conservative” policies which have concentrated power, ignored the importance of the human scale, and removed decision making from those most directly affected.
     Decentralists thus favor a reversal of the trend toward all forms of centralized power, privileged status, and arbitrary barriers to individual growth and community self-determination. We oppose political and economic systems which demand obedience to the dictates of elite groups, while ignoring abuses by those who operate the controls. We believe that only by decentralization will we preserve that diversity in society which provides the best guarantee that among the available choices, each individual will find those conditions which satisfy his or her human needs.
     Decentralists believe in the progressive dismantling of bureaucratic structures which stifle creativity and spontaneity, and of economic and political institutions which diminish individual and community power.
     We support a strengthening of family, neighborhood and community life, and favor new forms of association to meet social and economic needs.

We propose and support:

-- Removal of governmental barriers which discourage initiative and cooperative self-help

-- Growth of local citizen alliances which strengthen self-government and broaden participation in economic and political decisions

-- Widespread ownership of productive industry by Vermonters and employees

-- Protection of the right to acquire, possess and enjoy private property, where the owner is personally responsible for its use and when this use does not invade the equal rights of others

-- Rebuilding a viable and diverse agricultural base for the Vermont economy, with emphasis on homesteading

-- A decent level of income for all, through their productive effort whenever possible, or through compassionate help which enhances their dignity and self-respect

-- Reshaping of education to promote self-reliance, creativity, and a unity of learning and work

-- A revival of craftsmanship in surroundings where workers can obtain personal satisfaction from their efforts

-- The use of technologies appropriate to local enterprise, and which increase our energy self-sufficiency

-- Mediation of disputes rather than reliance on regulations and adversary proceedings

     This decentralist program implies a de-emphasis of status, luxury, and pretense, and a new emphasis on justice, virtue, equality, spiritual values, and peace of mind.

       Decentralism will mean a rebirth of diversity and mutual aid, a new era of voluntary action, a full appreciation of our heritage, an affirmation of meaningful liberty, and a critical awareness of Vermont’s relationship to the rest of the nation and to the world.
   
Greg Guma is the Vermont-based author of Dons of Time, Uneasy Empire, Spirits of Desire, Big Lies, and The People’s Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution. He helped to write the Decentralist League's Statement of Principles and led a successful campaign for neighborhood assemblies in Burlington. 

Waving the Flag in a Culture War

Half a century ago a Vermont high school play 

sparked censorship, backlash and misunderstanding,
a harbinger of deep polarization during the Nixon era. This summer it inspired an exhibit at the Bennington Museum.
FIELDS OF CHANGE: 1960s VERMONT

Fragile Paradise — Part Five: Impossible Dreams

Being a reporter in a small New England community at the end of the sixties reminded me at times of playing a witness in Inherit the Wind, the classic dramatic reworking of the Scopes Monkey Trial. But Bennington seemed to have no Clarence Darrow (or Spencer Tracy) to defend it against an assault on reason.

The first public flashpoint I saw there surrounded a musical production at the high school, an experimental adaptation of Brecht on Brecht, George Tabori’s innovative sampler of the German artist’s plays, essays, poems, aphorisms and struggles. Students and teachers were attempting to challenge the limits of what high school drama could be, just as Brecht had once challenged Broadway’s theatrical conventions. They were on the defensive before the curtain went up.

The spark was a clever poster idea — a swastika over sections of a US flag against a plain black background. At a school board meeting, the art department coordinator explained innocently that the intention was to represent “America’s victory over Nazism, with the American flag shining through the swastika.” Not everybody saw it that way, however, and the design was certainly open to interpretation. To some it suggested police state tactics disguised as patriotism at home. To others it felt insulting and un-American.  

As the posters went up around town over the weekend before the first performance, complaints came in to the Vermont State Police barracks in Shaftsbury. Mt. Anthony Union High School Principal Charles Keir soon got a call. The cops “were invoking the Uniform Flag Code, which says its illegal to use the flag or any part of it for advertising,” Keir told me. “We didn’t want to make an issue about it, so on that basis we removed them.”

In fact, he had already sent students around town to retrieve posters from dozens of walls and store windows, then locked them all up at the high school. The new superintendent agreed with his decision. “It didn’t strike me as offensive at all,” Catherine Corcoran acknowledged. But the graphic image could be misinterpreted, “and for that reason we felt we should take them down.”

Using the so-called “Uniform Flag Code” as a pretext was somewhere between a wild overreach and a red herring. Prior to the original Flag Day back in 1923 there were no federal or state regulations governing the display of the US Flag. After that the Army and Navy developed their own procedures, and in 1941, Congress stepped in with a law on use and display of the US flag for official purposes. Taken together, this collection of laws and procedures was called a code. But there were no penalties for misuse, no federal agency had the power to issue “official” rules on private use, and each state was free to pass (or not) its own flag law — within constitutional limits.  

In 1941, Vermont passed such a law banning - among other actions - publicly mutilating, defacing or defiling any flag, ensign or shield. But the US Supreme Court later ruled that even burning a flag is protected free speech, and the state’s existing law was basically unenforceable.

Uncertain whether to endorse the administration’s move, the School Board told Keir to confer with their attorney. But before he could do that the next morning, an officer at the Shaftsbury barracks was on the phone, asking him to turn over the posters. “I told them I wouldn’t do that,” Keir said, “and when I talked with Clark (the lawyer) he told me not to let the posters go until he could investigate whether there was actually a violation of the law.”

James Rigg, the art department coordinator who had defended the poster, insisted that this wasn’t about the law. “The state police received complaints and then looked for a statute that would cover the situation,” he charged. 

Corcoran and Keir tried to downplay suggestions of censorship and look at the bright side. If the school’s attorney established that the posters did not violate any law, Keir promised, “we’ll put them back up again.” Corcoran was less definitive. “It will probably take quite a while to prove whether it was legal or not,” she hedged, quickly following up with consolation. No more publicity was really needed, you see, since “we should do quite well after all that talk.” 

My Feb. 1, 1969 story on the dispute ran under the upbeat headline, “Uproar Over School Poster Also Publicizes ‘Brecht’.” But it led with the point that the image of a swastika superimposed over Old Glory had almost overnight “become the center of a controversy involving the US flag, Nazism, advertising and censorship.”  

No surprise, the posters never went back up, and not all of those that went out were ever recovered. Word of mouth had made them instant local collector’s items. But the publicity did not translate into ticket sales. On opening night the house was only half-filled. It almost felt like a boycott. 

As the drama unfolded on stage, a nervousness born out of misunderstanding spread through the auditorium. The director had constructed a polished example of what he described as “non-involvement” theater. Although employing multi-media effects and dramatic blackouts, the main objective was to “make the audience listen to Brecht.”

The production may have been “doomed before the house lights went down,” I wrote in a review. After covered the controversy I was still hoping for the best a week later. But many people in the audience seemed confused, unaware that this would be no conventional drama or popular entertainment, the type of “escapism” that Brecht found disgusting.

Production notes might have helped. The narrator, called “the Playwright” in the cast list, might also have asked everyone to read them before the performance began. But to be honest, there was probably no real fix.

Brecht didn’t want his audiences to feel obvious emotions and leave the theater refreshed. He wanted them to think. To that end, his approach was to destroy the illusion of reality and instead produce alienation, separation, even estrangement from the action. He described the theater of illusion as a “branch of the bourgeois drug traffic.” He wanted to create “epic” historical theater that reminded the audience they were not witnessing life itself.  

That said, attending such theater can be an uncomfortable experience. The form is almost an indictment of its audience. During Brecht on Brecht at Mt. Anthony High School, when actors decried a society that resembled modern America, nervous laughter spread through the room. At other times the silence, when applause might well have been expected, was cold and deadly.

Although comparisons between Hitler’s Germany and Nixon’s America were never intended by the playwright nor underlined by the production, they were implicit. And at one point, during a sequence involving soldiers who were too smart to fight because they think for themselves, a suitcase was marked “To Canada.” 

Not only the audience had trouble adjusting to the demands of Brecht’s approach. Much of the production consisted of short scenes, stiff monologues and political songs, and the actors often spoke as if they were disembodied, constantly telegraphing “I am not real.” Right, we get it, I thought.

At its best Brechtian theater isn’t an exercise in detachment, but instead promotes epiphanies by luring the audience in, then suddenly, at a crucial moment, destroying that reality. The playwright understood he couldn’t just preach. But this production emphasized Brecht’s more didactic tendencies, radical politics, horror of war, and disgust with bureaucracy.

And the sparse design didn’t always help; three levels on a bare stage, a large screen that flashed projections, frequent blackouts that became monotonous, and actors dressed so similarly it was hard to tell them apart. It was a lot to ask of high school performers, no matter how talented. Every flaw in pacing, emphasis and delivery was placed on full display. On the other hand, the screen projections — scenes of destruction, rebellion and Hitler’s rise — were excellent and effective.  

It was encouraging to see such a courageous production and students responding to changes in art, society and culture. Brecht on Brecht was a difficult play, but both the performers and the faculty had taken a giant step. Considering the time and place, they were heroes and pioneers. In the review, I noted that “Students are concerned about the state of the world. They make it an integral part of their daily conversations.” Suggesting that their theater should also be a forum for such discussions, I finished with some encouragement — “no matter what protest is lodged against the students or the school, it was an experience worth watching.” 

Nonetheless, it was also all too clear; the opening shots of a “moral majority” culture war had been fired. Not long after Brecht, two English teachers made the mistake of teaching a lesson about language with examples that included some sexual phrases. The outcry was immediate, irate and overwhelming, further deepening the community’s emerging cultural divide. 

This time “concerned citizens” packed the high school cafeteria, heckled the school board and demanded action, namely removal of the offending teachers. At one point, a parent sincerely argued that “Broadway plays” just shouldn’t be performed in small towns. 

Ironically enough, Brecht would agree. 

Concerned citizens fill the cafeteria for a showdown at MAUHS (1970), 
one of the photos included in the Fields of Change exhibit. 

Greg with one of the few remaining Brecht posters, a gift from
David Wasco after the Bennington exhibit opened.
His father Lon Wasco created it. 

For more, go to Fragile Paradise: Sixties Bennington 

Nukes, Pot and Grassroots Battles: Vermont Vanguard Press - April 1979

Nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island, Vermont legislation to decriminalize pot, and new alliances rising across the state. In early April 1979, as flaks and officials said evacuation in Pennsyvania was “unneeded at this time,” 200,000 people were leaving their homes. As everyone was told a meltdown could be avoided, it was already underway...

Doorknob to Hell 

The Vermont legislature came close to decriminalizing pot in 1979 with a bill to reduce the possession penalty to $100. But it stalled after State Police spokesmen warned of all manner of calamity — fires, car accidents, weed-fueled homicide! “...its very nature requires that it burn in order to be used,” noted Major James Ryan at an April public hearing. 

Claiming pot was “involved” in fatal fires and deadly auto mayhem, Ryan urged lawmakers to take his word that reduced penalties would be “taking away the only deterrent we have.” A year earlier decriminalization had passed in the Vermont House. But Sen. Chester Scott derailed that push with a floor speech about weed as the “doorknob to hell.” 

Things got even worse after that.

Meltdown Time

The Vermont Vanguard Press had just started running a weekly national news column when the Three Mile Island nuclear plant went critical. John Dillon and I produced stories for page 2, but we also covered the issue in Nation — and the entertainment section. Even today, the list of worst “incidents” is startling. 

Along with covering the activist angle, a second item noted that Vermont’s US House Rep. James Jeffords had introduced a bill calling for “a moratorium on construction and licensing of new plants until a review of all ‘significant health and safety questions’ has been completed.” 

In Listings, the TV Highlights column reported, “Staying better than 24 hours behind what was happening, the networks preferred to let the fallout spread throughout the U.S. via charts, graphs, and experts’ opinions on radiation destruction instead of responsible reporting on evacuation procedures that were being carried out on Sunday and Monday, and not reported by the TV press.” Only ABC handled the disaster with some perspective, mainly because anchor Frank Reynolds showed a “true sense of concern for the people he reports on.”

“The System Doesn’t Work”  

One version of the Three Mile Island meltdown was that a valve became stuck, coolant tank discs ruptured, and staff tried to manually stop water replacement. But, as I reported less than a week after, pumping in cold emergency feedwater pushed a toxic gas bubble into the reactor core. And the core’s exposure led to damaged fuel rods and melting uranium. Ultimately, after pump seals also failed, the gas was released. 

It was a major disaster. But another one was the early government response. Only few thousand people were advised to evacuate at first, then more and more. Was there actually a meltdown? “Part of the reason that things appeared to improve was that less was being told to the public.”

As J.D.’s story revealed, Vermont companies that made valves and pumps for nuke plants were quick to deny responsibility. Velan Valve was making 90 percent of the valves, yet the company’s president was sure it wasn’t one of theirs. The NRC wasn’t so certain: “We don’t have a scenario on that yet,” a spokesman said.

Hayward Tyler Pump Co, making 50 percent of the pumps used by the nuclear industry at the time, was just as sure about its innocence. But manager Dave Woodcock was not so enthusiastic about the future of nuclear power. Hayward Tyler was already diversifying — to pumps for other industries and water desalinization in Saudi Arabia and Africa. “Nuclear power is not going away,” he predicted, but it’s also “the riskiest means of generating electricity.” Thanks for the warning. 

The Week That Was  

Selecting events for the Vanguard’s weekly calendar spread could be tough, given the space limits of the design. But it looked cool! My favorite listing from 40 years ago this week is “Money and You,” an all-day workshop with “new age millionaire Marshall Thurber,” who had recently established an institute in Vermont to monetize the human potential movement. He’s still at it.

The editorial column, which ran on page 3, focused on marijuana decriminalization in Vermont and nuclear issues surrounding the Three Mile Island meltdown. On pot, we concluded that “it is high time for a change.” In reality, it took almost 40 years. 

On nuclear power we discussed technical dependence and media complicity in “news management.” Our proposals included “developing local expertise” to handle future emergencies, seriously discussing decommissioning Vermont Yankee, and suspending future plant construction nationally “until the questions surrounding this risky route to energy ‘self-sufficiency’ are resolved. We will probably find, just as the anti-nukers have been saying for years, that this so-called peaceful atom represents an unacceptable risk.” 

That took over three decades. But Vermont ultimately did decide to close its plant. Now the nuclear questions surround F-35s in Burlington.

And finally, some good news ... 
Small Battles, Big Victories

The Vermont Alliance changed direction in 1975, becoming a multi-issue, direct action community organizing effort. Its first focus was Barre — during a utility municipalization drive. By early 1979, when my cover story appeared, Vermont’s new “voice for the voiceless” had also established grassroots chapters in Hartford, Winooski, Bristol, Vergennes and Brattleboro. An early sign of progressive things to come.

Fragile Paradise: Sixties Bennington

Part One

The newsroom was a large, open bullpen filled with manual typewriters and competing conversations. At one end a picture window loomed over a picaresque main drag in the heart of the village. At the other, this side of the swinging door to production, Editor-in-Chief Tyler Resch worked over our copy. In a corner, the teletype cranked AP reports onto a long roll of yellow paper that spooled down to the floor.

During my first week on the job at the Bennington Banner, in early December 1968, Richard Nixon was back in Washington selecting his cabinet. Vietnam peace talks were stalling in Paris and the Defense Department called up another 33,000 young men to fight the war. That brought the total to half a million troops. My beats in southern Vermont were less momentous – district court, local schools and the village trustees.

 

Video Preview: A Fragile Paradise

A few days on the job, I met Resch at a school board meeting. He drew a crude diagram identifying the people around the table — and then left. It would be sink or swim. But as luck would have it, a political storm was brewing. A new high school had been built in the blush of a progressive educational era. It was also at the hub of Bennington’s pain. Its alma mater, “The Impossible Dream,” turned out to be prophecy. An idealistic plan for local education was about to be derailed by a repressive backlash.

After the school superintendent resigned a dispute had developed over who would replace him as acting chief. The elementary school board wanted Assistant Superintendent George Sleeman. The supervisory union, which included representatives of both the elementary and high school boards, wasn’t as sure.

On the surface it looked like a minor bureaucratic fracas, a question of who could sign checks and make decisions until a permanent chief was selected. But it was actually part of a long-running cultural clash over the fundamental direction of education and community life.

Apart from a two-week “wilderness” experience before college, my life in Vermont had begun six months earlier with the American Film Academy, which brought several of us to the area — and indirectly led to my marriage to a young woman from Shaftsbury. 

I was 21 at the time, just graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in Mass Communications. Things flowed from there through local education, politics and the counterculture, and took me on an intense personal journey, from living an “alternative” life, at least at night, while daily witnessing a slow-moving culture war, then a doomed revolt at the college, before taking up public service as a counselor and job developer. 

In the end, conflict with the same school board conservatives I had covered for the newspaper two years earlier led to my departure — and a promotion that opened up new opportunities. 

Part Two

A Light Show at the Paradise

A few months after arriving in June 1968 with other recruits to the American Film Academy, an independent media company, three of us were asked by three young Republicans — John Williams, Harvey Carter and Marshall Witten —  to produce a multi-media light show for a state GOP meeting at the Paradise motel in Bennington. 

It was a strange project and the reaction was less than enthusiastic. But afterward, Liz Dwyer wrote such a scathing article for the Bennington Banner that David Kelso and I felt honor bound to reply — in a long letter to the editor printed in early October. Although we viewed ourselves as creative entrepreneurs — in my case, that included producing ads for 1968 Republican candidates — others saw us as evidence of an unwelcome hippie invasion.

“As AFA employees, we are upset most about the glib manner in which our organization is maligned by people who do not understand our work and are afraid to inquire about it,” we wrote in response. “We are teacher, students, and artists. We work with over 50 high schools and colleges in running film courses and societies. We are incorporated and work in harmony with the major film companies. We do not circulate underground or low-life films, but general release work. In fact, we are now supplying the films for the YMCA film program.”

By then, David and I had also been hired temporarily by The Prospect School. But I opted to leave when the credentialed teachers expected from England finally got their visas. Less than two months later, however, I was hired by the Banner and found myself working with Liz, the editorial page editor who had panned our Paradise light show. We became great friends. Considering our letter to the editor, I’m still amazed by their openness. 

My new job included beats like local education, Village government and the courts, as well as running the darkroom. I also wrote and designed many weekend features, and in Fall 1969, had a weekly editorial page column called “Polarities in Our Time.” 

Part Three 

  
Talking Black Power

Early in my time at the Banner, Rev. Edward Geyer, the black rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, addressed the annual interfaith dinner at Mt Anthony Country Club. That February 1969 talk raised some eyebrows in the room. Geyer began with a reading of satirical Tom Lehrer lyrics about hypocrisy, and then dove into black power, student revolt, and the rocky path to brotherhood. 

“The development of a new mind-set among our youngsters has led them to expose the myths of American life,” he said as the establishment audience nervously nibbled desert. “All men are not treated equally. All men are not given comparable access to higher education.”

About the challenges facing Black youth, he explained, “they want peace at home and peace abroad. They shudder at the thought of inheriting a world subject to instantaneous nuclear annihilation. They are dismayed by the hypocrisy which pervades our culture... From this cultural milieu has come the anguished cry for ‘black power.’ The term ‘black power’ has rung like the peal of church bells from one end of America to the other.”

Educational Inspirations

My first Saturday feature for the Banner presented The Prospect School, where I had worked briefly the previous year with David Kelso. Another looked at a Title III program that combined eye-hand-mind activities with the regular curriculum, and led to a grant to produce a film. 

Still another innovative program I followed closely — influenced by State Education Commissioner Harvey Scribner and his Vermont Design for Education — was DUO, a service learning initiative launched by Peter Smith, who soon founded CCV and later became a Republican Lt. Governor and Congressman. At Bennington College, I saw a related higher-education approach - the non-resident term. 

These programs inspired my own efforts, while working for Bennington-Rutland Opportunity Council and statewide for Champlain Valley Work & Training, to develop experience-based education and credentialing for para-professionals. 

But other forces were also at work in public education. Prominent among them was Assistant School Superintendent George Sleeman, who had a brother named Richard. He was a leading local conservative, chaired the elementary school board, held an administrative job at a local college, and supervised the local property assessments. The family, which owned more rental property than anyone else in the area, had strong support among the local working class. 

On the other hand, the village was literally surrounded by another legal entity, the Town of Bennington, a growing suburbia populated by more liberal professionals. I was witnessing a struggle for power between two factions – working class traditionalists and middle-class modernists.

Beyond resentment of Bennington College, the traditionalists disliked the “modernists” because of the progressive agenda they had imposed in the construction and curriculum of the new high school. Still, their deepest antipathy was reserved for the state’s bureaucratic establishment, particularly the commissioner of education, Harvey Scribner.

A no-nonsense teacher from Maine, Scribner had come to Vermont after presiding over the integration of black children into white schools as Teaneck, New Jersey’s school superintendent. In the 1970s, he went on to become chancellor of New York City’s school system during its turbulent shift toward local control. But to Vermont conservatives in the late 1960s, Scribner represented the heavy hand of the state. 

During my second week on the job, he made a fateful decision that turned the traditionalists’ simmering hatred into an open feud with bitter long-term consequences. To break the stalemate, Scribner — usually a proponent of local control – exercised his authority to merge Bennington’s Supervisory Union with an adjacent board and appoint its superintendent as head of a new “super district.” 

George Sleeman could keep his job, but his promotion had been blocked by a state dictate. His allies were stunned and his brother was hopping mad.

Welcome to Carrigan Lane

My first investigative expose, on Memorial Day weekend in 1969, was titled “Welcome to Carrigan Lane.” Published as a Saturday “broadside” feature page — a counterpoint to that day’s front page parade photo spread — it revealed one of Bennington’s hidden pockets of extreme poverty and featured pictures of grotesque living conditions – broken pipes, lack of running water, roofs with gaping holes, un-insulated walls, and all manner of hazards that endangered children.

The article let the poor tenants speak for themselves. It also pointed to why such conditions had been allowed to fester for so long: Bennington had no housing codes.

The response was public outrage and sufficient pressure to force village officials to act. A study committee was formed, and decided that minimum standards and effective enforcement were essential solutions. Its most influential member became David Putter, a friend from Syracuse — and part of the American Film Academy group — who had become a legal aid clerk.

It would take a few years for the practical impacts to be felt.  But public exposure and persistent followup had sparked a local reform movement with the potential to improve local living conditions.

Phil Hoff’s Struggles

That fall, I met the former governor, Phil Hoff, while covering a local anti-Vietnam war demonstration headlined by Harvey Carter, then a young Republican legislator. A year before, Hoff had leapt into the national spotlight as the first Democratic governor to break with President Johnson over the Vietnam War. In June, after Robert Kennedy was assassinated, he had delivered a moving speech to the Vermont General Assembly.

When the Democrats gathered in Chicago in 1968, Hoff’s name circulated as a “protest” candidate for vice president. But after three terms as governor in a tumultuous period, he was worn down by political struggles and did not pursue it.

That summer, when someone fired into the home of Reverend David Johnson, a black minister who had come to the rural town of Irasburg from California, the police had focused on the victim and charged him with adultery. Johnson’s alleged crime, apparently, was sharing a couch with a white woman.

Hoff called for an investigation and discovered that the state police knew the identity of the shooter — but didn’t go after him. He also realized that when the Public Safety Commissioner refused to discipline his staff, there was nothing he could do about it.

In 1970, Hoff returned to the political arena, but lost a run for the U.S. Senate to incumbent Republican Winston Prouty. The main reason, he confided years later, was his civil rights activism, particularly sponsorship of the Vermont-New York Youth Project, which brought Black teenagers up from New York to work and play with White Vermonters.

“It was enormously successful for the participants,” he insisted. “But it wasn’t well understood, and all the latent racism began to emerge. There’s no question it defeated me in the Senate race.”

Capturing the Campus Mood 

Quadrille, the Bennington College magazine, had been edited for several years by Laurence Hyman, son of writer Shirley Jackson and literature professor Stanley Edgar Hyman. But Hyman wanted to make films and resigned in 1970.

Succeeding him as Publications Director, I edited just one issue, but it proved to be unique in format and and scope, and combined both student and alumni news. Assembled in early fall it includes feature articles, lecture excerpts, recent artwork, conversations on the draft and women’s liberation, and expert reports on the emerging environmental crisis and organic gardening.

In the opening for the feature section, I offered some observations, including a quote from Kurt Vonnegut, who was Bennington’s commencement speaker in 1970. His address that warm June day appeared soon afterward in his essay collection, Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons. I remember well skimming various drafts of the speech before his visit, not to mention my own encounter with the author of some of my favorite books. 

The previous Spring had seen the first Earth Day activities in Vermont and elsewhere, an event I had covered for the Banner. But Quadrille reflected a more urgent mood on campus — except for its exclusion of The Plan.

A radical proposal for change by students and faculty, The Plan was being suppressed by the administration. This was not surprising, since it argued that school’s growth should end, called for the end of the Development Office and election of the president, and envisioned an organic community in which teacher-students and student-teachers worked together as equals.

By the time Quadrille appeared, I was in the middle of the fight.

To be continued...

For more on Bennington’s educational struggle, read Waving the Flag in a Culture War

Thinking Globally and Acting Locally

An Interview with Greg Guma

Published on July 13, 2017 by the Peace Economy Project

Greg Guma has worked for the twin causes of peace and justice through journalism, essays, politics and civic activism over the past several decades. A resident of Burlington, Vermont for more than 40 years, he edited the Vermont Vanguard Press from 1978 to 1982.  He also published a syndicated column in the 1980s and 90s and from the mid-90s to 2004 edited Toward Freedom, which was then a print magazine covering global affairs. Guma organized one of the first independent media conferences and served as CEO of Pacifica Radio.

In 2003, he published Uneasy Empire: Repression, Globalization, And What We Can Do. Even though the book was released 14 years ago, Guma feels the trends and dynamics he dissected then remain relevant today.

Question: In “Uneasy Empire” you talked about the growth of an American Empire and the dominance of organizations like the North American Free Trade Agreement, the World Trade Organization and huge corporations in that empire. You see corporate globalization as crushing the power of the individual and placing it in the hands of transnational corporations and governing bodies that work on their behalf. Are you saying something about scale in our economy?

“Scale is an issue on a number of levels,” Guma said. “The world government we see around us seems to be in a period of realignment, and some of the old architecture is being taken down. Uneasy Empire is a globalist perspective. There are many problems that transcend national solutions. A global governance regime to handle this would be very big, but the real issues are access and accountability. Donald Trump is currently trying to establish an alliance of rogue states. He’s also continuing a long-term centralization of power, even though it’s based on ad-hoc relationships among power groups.

“Some of Trump’s paranoia about China is sincere. There are problems posed by China’s rise, but the models that dominated in the past have been threatened by corporate globalization. This scares many people.  There was a challenge about 15-years ago to all of this (beginning with the Seattle WTO protests). It reached a high water mark before 9/11. Since then there has been a populist upheaval in response to the forces that control our lives and this in turn has led to a resurgence in authoritarianism. It often seems like the United Nations is irrelevant in all of this. But there is a chance for a democratic globalist solution if we reform those institutions. The authoritarian model is destined to fail.”

Guma feels President Donald Trump’s nationalist-populist style of politics and the left leaning crowd behind Senator Bernie Sanders are both reacting against the type of globalism that only benefits corporate America. However, Guma also thinks Trump’s administration is accelerating this trend.

“Trump’s regime is radical,” Guma said. “He’s letting many positions go unfilled and putting people in charge of agencies who want to destroy them. There has been an increase in smaller wars in the past 30 years. This helps companies associated with the defense industry and defense contractors. Going forward, I think we’ll see more small wars, environmental refugees and competition for resources. We know we need to establish bonds in our communities and build a different future, but right now we are stuck psychologically.”

Question: I’ll bet you feel the military-industrial complex is very much a part of the trends you are talking about in “Uneasy Empire: Repression, Globalization and What We Can Do?”

“The U.S. as a declining hegemon,” Guma said, “and will become more of a mercenary state. We have matured as a global power. We once used soft power solutions like the Marshall Plan, aide and trade, but now we’re moving more and more toward military solutions. The US was considered a good partner in the past and there was more mutual respect. But Trump is accelerating a trend that would have happened anyway: He’s making us untrustworthy.

“Nation building is not something we do anymore. The American empire advanced through diplomacy and trade. Now we have a small arms race going on. We see the transfer of weapons to other countries and more arms proliferation. When you deconstruct a regime and you don’t have anything to put in its place you create a lot of chaos. This is a phenomena of growth and decay. We’re seeing it now in the decay of the corporate global system. Something will need to be built in its wake.”

Question: Now that we’ve heard the bad part, what do you recommend to combat the trends you’ve dissected?

“It’s going to happen at the local level,” he said. “It’s good to have an eye on the big picture, but where we should spend our effort is where we live and where we can see change occur. This was a lesson I lived in Burlington, Vermont. In doing the peace work we did, we thought we would improve our lives. We were able to change the local culture and also have a ripple effect that changed the state.”

Since the late 1960s, Vermont citizens have created an economy with a strong local flavor. There are a number of consumer cooperatives, community based agriculture projects, local businesses, alternative media outlets and social action oriented non-profits in the state. People worked on the local level for a new type of economy and Guma feels it created something better.

“We had an influx of new people in the 60’s and 70’s,” said Guma. “Then you see this proliferation of activity around the environmental movement and the peace movement. We pushed agendas at town meetings. Vermont has a strong tradition when it comes to Town Meeting, and we used it to put peace proposals onto the ballot. This gave people a model to look at and led to a more tolerant, open culture. You can create something local that will spread.”

Question: I’ve heard people talk about thinking globally and acting locally. Can this work for those trying to create a more peaceful world?

“We did it here in Vermont,” Guma said. “What we did was to use local initiatives to create something like our own foreign policy. We brought forward a series of initiatives to define what we wanted in a foreign policy. Local governments can have a big impact. We look stances on many issues. For example, we took an anti-interventionist stance on Latin America, opposed apartheid, and formed groups to educate citizens on these issues. We also had Sister City programs to promote tolerance and understanding. If you do this over a period of years it starts to change consciousness.”

In addition to working in journalism, Guma also owned a bookstore that was often used as a hub of social activism and spearheaded the establishment of a peace and justice center in Burlington. He later worked as a coordinator of that center. Guma remembers the effectiveness of the 80’s nuclear freeze movement. City councils in Vermont, and later around the country, passed resolutions promoting a freeze in the number of nuclear weapons in the United States’ nuclear arsenal. Guma said a similar effort would be effective in the movement to ban nuclear weapons.

“The circumstances are totally different now due to the freeze movement of the 80’s,” he said. “People’s ideas on nuclear arms changed. Even Ronald Reagan changed his mind. This was a real victory for the peace movement.”