Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Armed White Extremists are Taking Over Vermont!

OMG...read this USA Today editorial...🤣

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opin...-embolden-extremists-vermont/5402817001/


VOICES
White extremism is winning in my Vermont town. I'm selling my animal sanctuary and moving.
The assault-weaponed bullies are winning on my road, and I refuse to weaponize myself to fight back. My town is unsafe if you're non-white or unarmed.
Michael ShankOpinion contributor


There’s a movement metastasizing across America. It’s well armed, it’s extreme, and it’s led largely by white men. They’re enraged, they’re feeling entitled, and they’re taking ground wherever it’s given. And while the movement clearly got new wind in its sails under the Trump administration, it’s now self-sustaining. The Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill was just the tip of this seething iceberg, as last week’s anguished police testimony to Congress made clear. This movement isn’t going away anytime soon.


It’s everywhere. It’s even in Vermont, where I live, which some people mistakenly consider a progressive haven. It’s bullied countless people of color in Vermont – who had to flee their communities because it became increasingly hostile and unsafe for them – and now it’s pushing me out, too. I’m selling my farm this summer, in fact, because the assault-weaponed bullies are winning on my road, and I refuse to stoop to their level and weaponize myself to fight back.


The Wild West of the Northeast
In states like Vermont, it’s easy to be an armed white extremist. It’s why NBC’s "Saturday Night Live" did a sketch with actor Adam Driver suggesting that Vermont was a neo-Confederate paradise. It is. There’s little to keep you accountable or keep you in check here. The Brady Campaign once called Vermont’s gun laws the worst in the nation. The Giffords Center gives its gun laws a C minus. As one local official told me, this is the Wild West of the Northeast. And as I pack up my farm and move out, this is becoming all too clear to me.

"White Lives Matter More" and AB (Aryan Brotherhood) painting at neighbor's home in southern Vermont.
Armed militias do well here. Not only does Vermont’s Department of Public Safety fail to crack down on armed white extremists, due in part to lax local laws, the State Police discriminate against the people of color running from those very extremists. I’m not making this up. There are countless stories like this. In fact, if you’re a person of color here in Vermont,the bias and discrimination shown by Vermont State Police are pervasive and persistent. This state is not a safe place if you are non-white, unarmed or both.

All of this sends a strong message to armed white extremists that there’s nothing standing in their way and that they are free to rule the roost here.

Connie Schultz:On Jan. 6, I feared for my country, my colleagues, my husband. I had no idea how bad it really was.

And that’s why I’m moving. After attempts to institute a simple noise ordinance to contain the hours-long recreational and erratic assault weapons use on my road in Brandon, not only did my town’s leaders refuse to recognize the problem, they also emboldened the armed white extremists on my road by gaslighting my concerns.

This, then, inspired retaliatory gunfire at all hours of the day, imperiling my legal property rights to quiet enjoyment, and my farm – a 76-acre animal sanctuary that is home to some two dozen horses, cows, pigs, sheep, goats, ducks and dogs, all of them rescued from abuse, neglect or slaughter. And it just keeps escalating. Since I received death threats over the July 4th weekend, it’s been shocking to see how limited local police are in disarming these active threats.

Throughout this process, Vermont friends have advised me to weaponize and fight back, to not let the armed bullies win this one. As someone who grew up in a peace church – from a long line of Amish and Mennonite pastors and preachers – and as someone who has studied and promoted peacebuilding and conflict resolution work globally, the last thing I’m going to do is weaponize to “win.”

That’s what laws are for, that’s what government is for, that’s what democratic governance is for. But these systems are failing us fast. The Vermont legislature has been lackluster in this regard, which is why the armed extremists keep winning. And while I’m moving north – like many of my friends of color have already done – and away from this part of Vermont where armed white extremism appears to run rampant, I’m concerned that this will happen again.

This is how nations become war zones
I’m on a short leash with this state and give it a few more years to restrain its armed white extremists or I’m gone. This isn’t worth life and limb. Others have already left for similar reasons, which portends poorly for a state already in population decline.

What’s most frustrating, beyond losing the farm, is how normalized this armed bully behavior is becoming in Vermont and across America. This is a dangerous slippery slope, as other war zones can testify. We’re patterning their destabilizing trends to a tee. I’ve been involved in disarmament, demobilization and reintegration processes overseas and it’s clear that’s needed here, now.


America’s armed extremists are that armed, they’re that mobilized, and they’re in need of rehabilitation and reintegration back into society. Many of them have nothing to lose – including my neighbors – and until states like Vermont take this threat seriously, they will continue to seize ground and bully further. This is war, and we are refugees fleeing violent, extreme and often racist non-state actors. It’s time we take this fight seriously and draw the line because they are winning.

Awwww, the neighbors are exercising their 2nd Amendment rights on their own property, and the whiny little pus bag is crying about it. TFB.

Did Ben and Jerry make another anti Jew ice cream flavor?

good bet that his neighbors have been there longer than this pussy

USA today is a communist newspaper. So would you prefer that the chinks come to your animal sanctuary and cook all the animals alive

"countless people of color in Vermont"

LMAO

Come visit ENC, I'll show him some people of color.

That was pretty damn vague. They mentioned death threats, but no specifics. Any death threats should be taken very seriously. They mentioned acts of racism, but gave no examples. Gunfire, well, that's part and parcel of country life in some places. Just like the sound of cattle, chickens, donkeys, goats and geese.

Sounds like somebody ran out of Midol this month.

Vermont is a very liberal state due to an influx of people from the NYC SMSA that started back in the 1960's.

I-91 made it too easy for people from the NYC metro area to access VT, starting in the south and creeping north toward the Canadian border.

The first thing that a lot of those migrants did was post their property against hunting, fishing, trapping, and trespassing. The second thing that a lot those same people did was complain about the deer eating their shrubs and the bears tearing down their bird feeders. I can see those people complaining about neighbors discharging guns, but can't imaginge that there are enough white extreists in VT sufficient to take over the entire state. Of couse, you could go for weeks without seeing a person of color outside of Burlington, as the AA population of VT is less than 2%, about 9,000.

Demographicly speaking, VT is 92% White, non-Hispanic, so any person of color might feel out of place.

I read that a couple days ago.
Couldn’t figure out if USA Today and the dude writing it were actually serious or if it was meant to be entertainment for people who are actually from “out in the country”. It did rate a couple of snickers outta me.....

Trouble with editorial opinion pieces are you only get one opinion.

Needs a hug from mommy. STFU.

This would not exist if the communist left America alone. But no they want to change America to a communist country. They brought the problems on themselves. Communist are stupid morons.

I guess the militant armed black men killing and maiming hundreds each week in the big cities aren’t a problem. If there is ever another civil war(God forbid) in the USA it will be rural vs. urban. Those metrosexuals don’t realize that guns are as much as a tool in the country as a chainsaw or a hatchet .

Bye...any place will be better off when he leaves.

Probably has potpourri in his pink-painted interior decorator-designed bathroom, the poor dear.

Ah yes. Another Vermont transplanted little whining libtard crying fresh squeezed liberal tears.

No mention of how long ago they bought their animal rescue property?

Any bets it wasn't too long ago? And that the folks doing the shooting have been there for awhile too?

Reminds me of folks moving into "open range" and complaining the cows ate their petunias.

Is that what that was? LOL

AAs killing other AAs isn't newsworthy, it is the equivalent to dog bites man, while a white person killing an AA is equivalent to man bites dog, the rare exception to the norm, so it is news worthy.