Hundreds protested Gov. Peter Shumlin’s third inauguration Thursday afternoon, demanding a public debate over his recently discarded single-payer health care plan.
The protest, which began with singing and chanting in the halls of the Statehouse, escalated over the course of the two-hour ceremony. After one activist burst onto the balcony of the House chamber, Barre Mayor Thom Lauzon grabbed and attempted to forcibly remove him.
The mass disruption culminated with a sit-in staged in the well of the House.
Roughly three dozen people affiliated with the Vermont Workers’ Center refused to leave the chamber for more than five hours, demanding that House Speaker Shap Smith (D-Morristown) schedule public hearings to debate Shumlin’s single-payer plan.
Between 8 and 9 p.m., the Vermont State Police removed the protesters one by one, arresting 29 and charging them with unlawful trespass. Of those, at least seven were also charged with resisting arrest, according to VSP Lt. Garry Scott.
State troopers lifted up several protesters who refused to comply with their instructions to leave the Statehouse, dragging them down the center aisle of the House and out of the chamber. One of them, Sheila Linton of Brattleboro, cried out in apparent pain as two troopers pulled her arms behind her back.
“Ma’am, please stand up,” one of the troopers said. “Ma’am, please stand up. I’m not strong enough to pick you up, so please stand up. Ma’am, please stand up.”
“You’re hurting me,” Linton said, refusing to move. “You are hurting me. You are hurting me.”
“I am going to ask you one more time and then I will use more pain compliance,” the trooper said. “Please stand up. If we stop hurting you, will you stand up? Ma’am, will you stand up?”
The troopers appeared to pull Linton’s arms further behind her back, prompting her to shriek. They then lifted her to her feet and escorted her from the chamber. According to protest organizers, Linton was subsequently taken to the hospital.
The arrests marked the end of a highly unusual day at the Vermont Statehouse, during which Shumlin was elected to a third term by a secret vote of the legislature.
An hour before his inauguration was set to begin, at least 250 activists lined the halls of the Statehouse and assembled near the entrances to the House chamber. They sang and held up yellow pieces of paper that read, “The time is now,” as Shumlin and his fellow dignitaries walked to the House floor. Even after the formal ceremony began, their voices could be heard from the gallery, occasionally interrupting the proceedings.
As Shumlin prepared to take the oath of office, two activists unfurled a large banner under the House balcony that read, “Put People First,” in English and Spanish. Another entered the chamber from the right of the dais, loudly declaring her support for single-payer.
Shumlin stood passively, his hands folded in front of him.
After the he delivered his inaugural remarks, protesters hoisted a second banner that read, “The Time is NOW,” featuring a Vermont Workers’ Center logo. Others streamed into the chamber and sat down in the center aisle, blocking Shumlin’s path and that of his fellow lawmakers.
In a round of call-and-response, they chanted that they would not move until Smith scheduled a public hearing by January 29 on how to finance single-payer health care.
Lt. Gov. Phil Scott attempted to restore order and introduced Rev. Robert Potter to deliver the closing benediction.
“When I think of what other countries do to silence the differences, aren’t you glad you’re in America?” Potter asked the crowd, prompting an extended, standing ovation. “As long as they’re quiet when I pray.”
As Potter spoke, Ki Walker of Royalton burst onto the balcony, drowning out the benediction as he sang along with the crowd outside.
“Strange things have happened here, no stranger would it be,” Walker and his fellow protesters sang to the tune of “The Hanging Tree,” a song featured in The Hunger Games trilogy. “Health care is a human right, a right for you and me.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got the mic. I can out-shout them,” Potter joked to the crowd.
Lauzon, who was seated nearby, rose from his seat, put his arms around Walker and unsuccessfully attempted to push him out of the House chamber. Rutland Mayor Chris Louras then stood up and joined the Barre mayor in the entranceway, blocking other protesters from entering.
“You and me, we’ll take care of it,” Louras told Lauzon.
In a subsequent interview, the Barre mayor at first denied that he had pushed Walker, saying, “I was just standing,” but later conceded the point.
“You’ll have to get the film,” Lauzon said.
His fellow enforcer, Mayor Louras, denied his own role in the incident.
“I was leaning against a doorway,” he said. “And it just so happened protesters were behind me. I was next to Lauzon, but I was simply leaning against a doorway.”
Walker remembered it differently, saying Lauzon “had his hands all over me.”
“Our tone was, like, nice or whatever,” Walker said. “We were singing. We were singing songs … Folks were trying to come in and [the mayors] were forcibly, like, blocking them, and I was already in there and they tried to grab me and forcibly remove me.”
As the disruption continued, Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn approached the protesters seated in the aisle, but they declined to move. So instead of processing through the front of the House when the ceremony concluded, Shumlin ducked out of the chamber through a rear exit.
State police troopers then cordoned off half of the second floor of the Statehouse. One trooper refused to allow Chief of Health Care Reform Lawrence Miller to enter the governor’s ceremonial office until Miller exasperatedly explained that he was a senior adviser to Shumlin.
The governor’s spokesman, Scott Coriell, said his boss had returned to his office in the Pavilion State Office Building and would not make himself available for comment.
Vermont Workers’ Center executive director James Haslam said he was pleased with the way most of the protest unfolded.
“I don’t think everything went down as some sort of completely organized process, but the goal was not to be anything but peaceful and civil, but to make their voices heard,” he said.
Some legislators, however, took issue with their tactics.
Sen. Jeanette White (D-Windham) said she thought Walker had crossed a line.
“It was disruptive to a person who has probably spent more years working on the issues that they’re interested in and pursuing than they are old,” she said, referring to Shumlin. “Here’s a person who has spent his lifetime devoted to those issues in one way or another. To show that kind of disrespect, I think, was not right.”
Others, including Sen. Claire Ayer (D-Addison), said the protesters had failed to do their due diligence before disrupting the inauguration. She said the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, which she chairs, had already scheduled hearings on single-payer financing.
“I would say that, unfortunately, they were misinformed,” Ayer said. “They went there thinking they had been shut down and denied something, but for some reason they never asked. James Haslam never called me about it.”
Smith, who has ruled out passing a single-payer financing plan this session, echoed Ayer’s point.
“I know that the committees of jurisdiction are planning on taking testimony soon about the report that was put forth by the administration, and I expect them to do that in the next couple weeks, and I expected them to do that before the protests happened today,” the speaker said.
Referring to the Workers’ Center as “pretty militant,” he said House leaders had “always shown ourselves to be receptive to having input from the public, and I do think that it didn’t need a protest for input to happen.”
At the end of the night, after all 29 arrestees had been booked and processed, the health care protesters gathered outside the Statehouse’s east entrance to celebrate, debrief and arrange rides home. At least four of them were smoking.
“Does anyone have a cigarette?” another asked upon joining the crowd.
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How a purportedly liberal governor of an ostensibly liberal state could be as unpopular as Shumlin beggars belief.
I believe it’s inappropriate to end this article with a reference to the activists smoking cigarettes- it seems intended to erode their integrity, or suggest that there’s some kind of irony in people who choose both to smoke, and to participate in the democratic process.
This is an issue that matters to many Vermonters, and the reporting on it needs to be respectful.
Of course all the elected officials decry the protest in their “sanctified” Statehouse. All that symbolism and bogus officialdom that each & every legislator stands behind helps them control the message. They hate it when actual democracy happens. Our “liberal” legislature is a joke. It’s an environment controlled by professional politicians and lobbyists. And they get away with it because, really, they’re elected by maybe 10-15% of eligible voters. and most of those vote for them because there’s no choice… or a choice between Corporatist A and Corporatist B. I’m most ashamed of the so-called “Progressives”.
Jen, I do think it’s relevant to mention the smoking. These protesters are fighting for health care. They are fighting for HEALTH. Yet they smoke, which is one of the most detrimental, preventable, causes of poor health and death. It’s a bit bizarre.
I’m disappointed by the actions of the Vermont Workers’ Center in sponsoring these disruptive protests. While I’m sympathetic to their cause, actions like this do a disservice to progressive issues and frankly, to the state of Vermont.
In turn, lawmakers be advised: Just because regular people are not knocking on your door or filling your pockets with campaign cash doesn’t mean they don’t matter. Get out there and give people a voice.
Way to side with the powerful there, Seven Days!
I was one of the citizens singing in the capital building yesterday. First it is important to remember that this building belongs to all Vermont Citizens not just the legislature. I commend the capital police as they were
very respectful as I felt we the protestors were. I feel that Governor Shumlin has failed in his assignment to
provide a viable plan to implement single payer health care. He has had four years and then said we just
can’t do it. This is not acceptable. If he had the courage to disclose this information before the election he would not be governor today in my opinion.
I also disagree with the several prayer presentations as part of the process. I believe in the separation of church and state and think the prayers belong in the legislators’ churches, not in the state capital.
Anyway the good news to me is that we are talking about the Health Care today which did not happen during the ceremonies, so showing we care about this issue did stimulate a discussion.
At least four of them were smoking.
“Does anyone have a cigarette?” another asked upon joining the crowd.
Oh the irony. Can I get ya a Coke and a Twinkie to go with your cig?
A good and thorough article…until you ruined it with the last 2 sentences.
What does the fact anyone smoked have to do with the protest? The only answer I can come up with is a.) the reporter wanted to be “cute” and/or incite their readers, crossing the line of objective reporting; or b.) the reporter (or his bosses) wanted to make a biased statement suggesting something other than just reporting the facts.
Why stop at smoking? Why not tell us if any protesters had a broken arm? a skin rash? were overweight?
In the credibility and “smarts department”, Seven Days went down a notch today.
The smoking is absolutely germane to the article. If we are going to successfully implement universal healthcare, we each need to take responsibility for doing what we can to maintain and improve our health. Keeping the cost of a publicly-financed health system in check will be impossible if we throw personal responsibility to the wind, and have everyone figure that he can do as he pleases because the taxpayer will pick up the tab. The social contract is a two-way street.
Ya know, if you weigh 400 lbs,, you’re sucking on a cigarette, eating a Twinkie, gulping a Coke, and you want me to pay for your health care with my tax dollars I would be more than happy to kick you square in your useless ass.
Cathy, if you think it’s appropriate to note a couple of the protesters smoke then you must think it would be relevant if any of the protesters were overweight/obese, right? Obesity kills more people than smoking.
So…if the article said “And this reporter saw many overweight people in the protesting group” or “And this reporter heard an overweight protester ask where can we get dinner?” that would have been appropriate too, right?
Your “argument” makes no sense. Convince me I’m wrong.