Go South

As a longtime reader and occasional contributor of donations and letters, I really appreciate the role that Seven Days plays in keeping us informed about and entertained by our state. That said, I must join a fellow reader and Wallingford resident, whose letter in the February 18 issue challenged the idea that your paper provides coverage for all of Vermont [Feedback: “Southern Exposure?”]. While there have been many excellent articles on the southern part of the state, the vast majority of your coverage is focused on the northern half — in particular, the Burlington and Montpelier areas.

As I read the editor’s note that responded to the letter, I was reminded of a quote from Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” The editor’s response itself was significantly longer than the original letter and touted the diverse locations for stories, events and letters covered by the paper, naming 16 different towns. However, if you divide a map of Vermont in half, from east to west, only three of those 16 towns are in the southern half of the state! In order to be “Vermont’s Independent Voice” you need to cover what is happening in this half of the state, as well.

In conclusion, I thank you again for an excellent paper and hope you will continue providing it for all of us here in Vermont.

Rural Responsibility?

Seven Days should have a warning before printing things that can make readers spray their tea out across the room, like “Republicans blasted the idea that any new environmental regulations were needed at all. They argued that rural residents were already good stewards of the land” [“After Protest, Vermont Senate Postpones Some Act 250 Reforms,” March 27, online].

Ah, yes, there are countless examples of rural residents stewarding Abenaki lands: the giant garbage dump piles sloping into rivers and streams, making it unsafe to fish anywhere in the state; the beer cans, plastic and Styrofoam littering the sides of dirt roads; the over-logged forests, with logging truck roads going right into riparian areas; the giant pickup trucks that get 10 mpg; the leaded ammo that’s still somehow legal; the piles of tires; the general stores that dump fryer grease right into the river; the dead chickens someone keeps throwing above my watershed.

We can see clearly that conservative rural residents are all about protecting the environment that our food, water and air come from — yes indeed.

Full Life

Thanks for the inspirational story of a well-lived and multifaceted life [Life Story: “Robert Fuller Was ‘the Godfather of Chef-Restaurant Owners,’” March 25]. I never knew Robert Fuller, but I did know and frequent his restaurants many times over the years.

Attention, Tenants!

The Vermont legislature is moving a bill, H.772, that strips tenants of due process rights and hands more power to property owners — a class of people who already hold most of the cards.

In a state where rental vacancy rates are among the lowest in the country, landlords don’t need more leverage. They have it. When one in four Vermont renter households pays more than half its income in rent, and median rents have risen 35 percent while incomes lag far behind, the market already works against tenants. H.772 makes it worse.

Seven Days has covered this power imbalance before. In 2019, your newsroom built a database of legislators’ financial disclosures and found that nearly half of all state senators were landlords [“House of Landlords: Property-Owning Senators Mull Tenant Protections,” March 28, 2019]. Last month’s article on Burlington’s city council race [“Contentious Burlington Election Season Signals Deepening Divide,” March 11] showed what happens when voters find out a candidate is backed by landlord money and power: They push back. But most Vermont tenants have no idea H.772 exists.

Vermont has over 75,000 renter households — about a quarter of the state. Half are cost-burdened. These are working people, families, retirees, service workers. They should be advocating against this bill, but they don’t know about it. 

Seven Days should tell them. This is exactly the kind of story — about who holds power, who makes the rules and who pays the price — that your readers rely on you to cover.

Policing Movements Undermines Us

It’s no surprise if supporters of Israel object to Palestinian flags [Feedback: “‘Deceptive’ Tactics,” February 18]. They represent the 100-year struggle for liberation of the country of Palestine from U.S.-backed Zionist colonization, apartheid and now genocide. 

But what about the claim that our struggle against authoritarianism and fascism is not a movement that includes Palestine? 

The actual relation is incredibly strong: Apartheid Israel and President Donald Trump’s Christian nationalist agenda are both violent ethno-nationalist ambitions; Israel trains U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who abduct and murder on U.S. streets; and Palestine supporters were the first targets for detention because of their speech. 

But what else might some participants object to at “No Kings” protests? Black lives matter? Trans rights? Abortion rights? Workers’ rights and a general strike to stop the Trump regime? An end to U.S. imperial aggression (Venezuela, Iran)? Ending fossil fuel extraction? Abolishing ICE?

Policing our movement to exclude Palestine and logically other supposedly “unrelated” social struggles removes the lifeblood of our fight against authoritarianism. It also denies the alternative to the dismal status quo of inequality and injustice that delivered us where we are now. 

We best follow the insights we hear on the streets: “An Injury to One Is an Injury to All” and “The People United Will Never Be Defeated.” 

Judging the Judges

Great article on the legislature’s joint Judicial Retention Committee, telling us that the committee has, since 1993, voted to keep every judge — and that some judges hire lobbyists to get retained [“Bench Press: Judges Seeking Reappointment Turn to Lobbyists,” March 24].

At a 2025 hearing, my ethics-focused nonprofit Return to Law had been asked to submit documents ahead of time regarding the retention of a judge before whom we’d appeared. We submitted documents showing he was unfit not just because of gross delays but also documented ethics violations harming a disabled child. Still, the committee chair said, with a straight face, that the purpose of the hearing was merely to “hear” (and even then, only two to three minutes of testimony) and not to ask questions, even on the documents they’d requested to be sent weeks ahead of time.

The committee’s rubber-stamping, even in the face of child-harming ethics violations, is part of a larger problem: The Judicial Retention Committee, Judicial Conduct Board and Professional Responsibility Board have all literally never — not once — enforced Vermont’s most important legal ethics rule (8.3) and only once even arguably enforced the second-most important (3.1). These failures persist despite the fact that the Vermont Bar Association’s own 2023 survey data show 3.1 alone is violated more than 1,000 times per year, hurting all Vermonters.

In Memoriam

[“Remembering Matthew Stephen Perry: My Best Friend,” March 24]: Thanks for writing this, Chris Farnsworth. Sorry for your loss.

Corrections

Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak’s status on the Board of Finance was misstated in last week’s “Burlington’s Budget Blues,” as was the amount of severance given to laid-off employees last June. She is the chair of the board and one of two Progressive members, and employees were given 60 days of pay.

Due to a layout mistake, last week’s art story “Yes! We Have No Bananas: What Should Art Cost, and Why Is Pricing It So Hard?” omitted several lines of text. The story also misspelled Mark Waskow’s art collection, the Waskomium, and misreported the year Northern New England Museum of Contemporary Art was founded; the correct date is 2018.

A March 18 story titled “Food Plight” contained two errors: Feeding Champlain Valley served 12,000 people last year. Also, the organization was previously known as Feeding Chittenden.

This article appears in April 8 • 2026.

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