Standing up to Tyranny

Here in The Gazette newsroom we spend our days looking for and sharing local news each week. That went pretty smoothly last year. State and national news made its way into our stories when individuals, towns and civic organizations applied for and often received grants to fund various projects of benefit to those in the area.

This year it’s different. We have all of those usual things to cover, and we’re glad to be doing it, but (you know there was a but coming, didn’t you?) there’s now a flood of national news about things that almost immediately get some segment of the population worrying, perhaps change the course of events just by the threat of what might happen and then sometimes are causing real changes in the lives of at least some people.

We learned this week that 4,600 Vermonters work for the Federal government. We are doing our best to filter out what’s best left to state and national news sources and are looking for people in the local area who are affected by Federal actions. For example, with the threat of more firing and layoffs to Vermonters working for the federal government, we’ve been able to track down a database of people that lists their home addresses and we’re reaching out to them for comments that might help us write a story about how our neighbors are being affected.

This week we’ve heard Colorado’s governor being called a radical leftist by the President. Thankfully it wasn’t Vermont, but next week it might be.

In the last week we’ve heard from Montpelier’s Public Assets Institute and Senator Peter Welch that Vermont should be preparing for Federal cuts. State legislators seem to be taking that advice to heart as they consider bills with reduced funding or suggest rejecting new programs entirely, based on that advice.

The list of threats with local implications seems almost endless: Tariff wars with our northern neighbor are causing price increases and a canceled order for Barr Hill spirits, USAID firings, USDA firings and rehirings, threats of shutting down the EPA, FEMA, the Education Department, cancer research grants to universities, special education, Head Start and subsidies to farmers that end up supporting school meals.

Bigger threats loom, to include cuts to Medicare and Social Security that, given our aging population, would likely affect a larger percentage of Vermonters.

Journalists have lost access to White House press conferences, foreign-born students have been detained in ways that appear unconstitutional. Much of it seems designed to quash open conversation and debate, seeming tyrannical.

A piece by State Archivist Tanya Marshall in our opinion section this week talks about sunshine week, an effort to make sure the government conducts its business openly, documenting its actions for posterity. That seems quite at odds with news we’ve heard this week about high-level military discussions happening on a commercial messaging app that set some messages to be automatically deleted.

And here we are at the Hardwick Gazette, with roughly 2,000 people a week looking at some or all of what we choose to cover. If we were drinking from a fire hose last year, we’re in the rising pool under a waterfall this year. So far, we seem small enough to fly under the radar, but that might not last forever. As a result we’ve joined the New England First Amendment Coalition, which offers advice and protection to journalists in dealing with threats to their freedom of expression.

We want to cover it all and hope you’ll help us do that by sharing what funds you can to help us continue our work serving The Gazette’s 11 communities.

Paul Fixx, editor