The Vermont Commons News Cooperative is bringing Democracy School to Waitsfield May 4 and 5. Contact Rob Williams to get the details and sign up.

The Daniel Pennock Democracy School is a stimulating and illuminating course that teaches citizens and activists how to reframe exhausting and often discouraging single issue work (such as opposing GMO's, gun control, militarization, compulsory vaccination, etc.) in a way that we can confront corporate control on a powerful single front: people’s constitutional rights.

...

Burlington- Despite a period of bitterly cold temperatures, Vermonters and other New Englanders are keeping the heat turned up on a variety of issues dealing with human rights and climate justice. Arriving in force at the State Capitol; organizers from the Vermont Workers’ Center continued to apply pressure in Montpelier as Governor Shumlin made his annual budget address to a joint session of the Vermont legislature on Wednesday.

In their counter address that preceded Shumlin’s, the red-shirted...

The gentlemen and ladies of the meme-o-sphere, where collective notions are birthed like sleet from clouds, have decided lately that the USA has entered a full-on broad-based bull market - a condition of general happiness and prosperity as far advanced beyond mere "recovery" as a wedge of triple-cream Saint-Andre cheese is advanced over a Cheez Doodle. It has become the master fantasy of the moment, following the birth of some junior memes such as... we have a hundred years of shale gas and the "housing sector" (i.e. the suburban sprawl-building industry) is "bouncing back." What a sad-...

(This isn’t Sherry’s kitchen. But it is the feel she describes.) 

The kitchen is the heart of my home. It’s the hub of the domestic wheel. Since it’s where the woodstove is, this time of year, it’s where everyone gathers. And, everything of any importance takes place there: meals get prepared, recipes shared, bills paid, horse grains mixed, tinctures made, messages exchanged; kombucha brewed, coffee sipped and books read.

Conservatives have a legitimate gripe about America's excessive "commitments and obligations" to "unfunded liabilities" but their focus on Medicare and social security misses the larger point: our disastrous commitment to the current national lifestyle, in particular suburban sprawl and everything it entails.

Anybody passing along Burlington’s Main St may have noticed a few people gathered at the “Democracy” puzzle statue and holding candles and a sign cryptically reading “IP KILLS” on Tuesday’s chilly night.

Stopping to speak to those gathered across the street from Nectar’s and Mr Mike’s they would’ve realized this small group of people was holding a quiet vigil for Aaron Swartz, the Reddit co-owner, brilliant online architect, and net activist who committed suicide while under investigation by federal prosecutors for Intellectual Property violations.

...

Following continent demonstrations in support of the "Idle No More" movement, Vermont Citizens and activists gathered in Montpelier on Saturday afternoon to pledge their solidarity with the rapidly growing movement of indigenous people in Canada.

Responding to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's move to advance omnibus bill C-45 that many consider an attempt to strip First Nations, Inuit, and Metis of their tribal rights; the Idle No More marks yet another re-invigoration of dissent against Canadian government leaders.

Friday marked the one-...

The Shumlin administration proposed legislation, introduced in the Vermont Senate, that was hardly more than a page long: “A person may remain in school or in the child care facility without a required immunization, if the person, or in the case of a minor, the person’s parent or guardian, states in writing that the person, parent, or guardian has religious beliefs opposed to immunization.” The bill’s purpose was to eliminate the words “or philosophical convictions” from the previous legislation.

This upset Jennifer Stella of Waitsfield. Both of her children had very scary life threatening reactions. For her, the...