'The Great Vermont Wall' by Phillip Godenschwager
After days of intensification over the abnormally warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, hurricane Milton made landfall on the west coast of Florida with wind gusts of up to 120 miles per hour. Just two weeks after hurricane Helene, it left millions without power and destroyed countless homes, upending the lives of thousands of communities.
Twelve hundred miles north of Tampa, just as these heavy winds were ripping roofs and water was flooding living rooms and garages, the first snow flurries of the year landed on top of Mount Mansfield in Vermont. At lower elevations, raindrops ruptured the fragile bond that was keeping red maple leaves attached to their branches, provoking their swift and quiet fall to the ground.
The day after the storm, I woke up and turned on the news. On WCAX, the local Vermont news channel, the weather forecast was on. The weatherman, standing in front of a bright pink animation of the hurricane approaching Florida, announced that he could not start his segment without mentioning the damage south of us. After showing a few pictures and explaining what was known he moved on to the local forecast. -A few lingering clouds today and tomorrow but the weekend should be sunny.
I came to Burlington to study its media ecosystem and to try to understand how people navigate it to make sense of the world around them. I want to know what news source they pay attention to; what stories and issues are on their mind. I am particularly interested in how they use (or don’t use) social media to keep track of what is going in on in Burlington, in Vermont and in the rest of the country and the world.
I chose to come here now, in the fall of 2024, in part because I thought that the Presidential election would dominate conversations online and offline. But I can’t help but feel like people are actively avoiding that topic. In a way, experiencing this election cycle from up here in Vermont is similar to hearing about hurricane Helene down in Florida. The Presidential race is a storm that looms far away, with its epicenter in the swing states, a storm that is only felt in ripples here in the Green Mountains.
Now of course people talk about the election. Notifications pop up on screens, yard signs bloom in front yards and ads show up on social media feeds. But for the most part, and considering how frightening Donald Trump is to the liberal Vermont mind, this election is surprisingly quiet. When I mention the election to people, I always get some variation of a sigh followed by ‘I don’t want to think about it’. The stakes are too high and the possible outcome too scary that covering eyes and ears seems like the only way to maintain a reasonable level of sanity. I am sure that this state of apathy is also present in many predominantly blue communities across the country.
Over my many trips to Vermont I have come to realize that Vermonters tend to distinguish themselves from the rest of the country. The Vermont Historical Society in Montpelier has a great collection of drawings of the ‘the Great Vermont Wall’, a virtual barrier protecting the state from billboards, bankers and developers. Gift shops across Vermont sell t-shirts that read: ‘what happens in Vermont stays in Vermont, but nothing ever happens in Vermont’. In this election, the Vermont wall seems higher than usual, and the drawbridge sealed shut.
This narrative of the secluded and preserved Shire is very powerful and has impacted the way local politicians think about Vermont. In 2018, following the tragedies of multiple school shootings across the U.S., Governor Phil Scott signed the first significant gun law reform in Vermont, after police intercepted a high schooler who was planning to bring a gun to school and ‘kill as many as I can’ (see Seven Days article). After signing the bill, Scott said ‘I never felt the need to change our gun laws here in Vermont. I believed, since we were such a small, tight-knit state, that we were different and somewhat insulated from the violence the rest of the world was seeing. But I was wrong.’
Part of the reason why the election is so quiet up here is because there is no doubt that Vermont will vote blue. Back in 2020, 87% of Burlington voters backed the Biden/Harris ticket. It is not a risky bet to say that Burlingtonians will vote for Harris and reelect Bernie Sanders as their Senator. No wonder the noise of rallies and the fierce battle of the swing states seem so distant. Only, that is not entirely true.
What strikes me after spending time here in Burlington is how much the issues that are at the core of the presidential race are also so blatantly visible even here, in the presumably peaceful and uneventful Shire. Scott’s acknowledgment that Vermont is not insulated from outside violence is a hint that the Vermont wall has many cracks, or maybe that it never really existed.
One only has to walk around Burlington, talk to a few residents and pick up the local paper, to realize that Vermont’s largest city does not seem immune to what is happening across the country. Burlingtonians, like so many voters elsewhere will tell you that housing costs are through the roof, that drugs are destroying lives and communities, and that public safety is at an all time low. It is an interesting puzzle to try and understand how people make sense of these daily struggles, especially because these issues, and this narrative of decline, is usually associated with a political camp that is virtually inexistent in Burlington, the right.
At this point in my research, I am under the impression that Burlington is stuck in an awkward position of having to reconcile its idealized, welcoming and inclusive idea it has of itself with the very tangible, global issues that are well-embedded in the daily lives of its residents. My hypothesis is that studying how information travels, in Burlington, in Vermont and beyond the Wall can shed light on how we got here and on how politics unfold in a complex, interconnected and multifaceted media environment.
A few clips from my walks around Burlington. Music is Hover 1 by Andrew Bird.
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