Progressive Paradise

Sandy Baird, Esq.

Bernie Sanders, now independent Congressman for Vermont, was elected Mayor of Burlington, Vermont in 1981. A political leader of the growing numbers of disaffected urbanites who emigrated to the state in the 60's and 70's, Sanders was then and is now a Socialist, who had been the candidate for Governor on the radical Liberty Union Party for years.

He won the mayoral election in an unprecedented 10 vote victory over two Democratic opponents. The election was a coup. Staged by an unusually savvy bunch of like minded supporters, they won against a tired Democratic establishment of good old boys who had stayed around too long and had engaged in too many backroom deals. They had the added advantage of a compelling issue: for years, developers had sought to clutter the magnificent lake shore of Lake Champlain in Burlington with the accoutrements of the rich, hotels, high- priced housing and chic shops. Those schemes had been stopped by an enlightened citizenry which strongly opposed the idea of an enclave for the rich on their lake and now Sanders obtained their support by announcing in his campaign that the "waterfront is not for sale."

In 2001 that election is no surprise. In hindsight, Vermont has always been unique. It was the first independent republic probably in the world to include in its first constitution a prohibition against slavery; it gave the world the alternate ice cream makers, Ben and Jerrys, capitalists who donated 10% of their profits to "peace"; the Vermont legislature was the only one of 50 to vote against a resolution to amend the U.S.Bill of Rights to prohibit the free speech of flag burning; the state was one of the first to overthrow laws prohibiting abortion; Vermont in 2000 passed Civil Unions, a marriage like institution for gays and lesbians, the first and only state to do so; the state elected a socialist to Congress, and even the Republicans have a decent and independent tradition which showed itself alive and well in the Jeffords Jump of this spring .

The election of Bernie was astounding and to the new arrivals to the state, elating. But, in a city of middle and working class people just beginning to feel the forces of change which would turn Burlington into the "latte town" described in the best seller, Bobos in Paradise, the victory of a loud mouthed, wild haired radical from Brooklyn was hair raising. Linda Niedweske, Bernie's campaign manager and his first secretary and John Franco his first city attorney recall that the election was greeted by one leading Democrat with the remark, "I oppose Sanders as a woman, a Democrat and a Christian".

Sanders and his circle immediately felt the wrath of the backlash, especially that of the Democrats, whom they were displaced. Without allies on City Council, the Sanderistas were blocked at every turn from the meanest pettiness of refusing him the hire of his secretary, Linda Niedweske, to the larger more important blocks of refusing almost all of his appointments. They challenged him in the citizen commissions where the Donkeys and Elephants still held control. They chided him for his international perspective when he established a sister city in Nicaragua. They called his cabal, "fungi." Reports circulated that non supportive city officials opened his mail. Sanders faced more than his share from the disloyal opposition which did not go quietly into the night of bi or tri partisanship.

Against this hostility, Sanders sought to put forth his agenda: property tax reform; a cable tv deal; the taxation of tax exempt institutions like the University of Vermont and the hospital; the passage of a gross receipts tax. He remained a political independent and to this day he has avoided some of the strings of party attachments.

But during his administration a Progressive Party took shape around him. Capitalizing on his charisma and popularity, they elected representatives to City Council and to the State Legislature. A leftish party with ties to socialist thought and practices, the Progs increasingly dominated politics and thought in Burlington and to some degree the state, becoming the politically correct party, government, and ideology that told radicals the importance of preserving and extending its reach. Alone in the nation in its independence from the two main parties and buttressed by the real battles against the Sanderistas by the Democrats, the Progressives solidified the notion that to oppose their government, their party or their policies was to be a traitor to the political vanguard. Burlington and the Progressives became the City Hall that you could not, indeed, must not fight.

The unique combination of politics as usual of greasing the skids for business and the politics of the unusual of a third party vanguard appeared first in the mid 80's when the Sanders people went back on their campaign promise that the waterfront was not for sale. Again, developers wanted to develop the fabulous waterfront of Lake Champlain. By that time Progressives were on a high. They had a comfortable lead on City Council, where they often had the support of the Republicans who knew, unlike the still pouting Democrats, that the Progs could be had. More important, they were able to circumvent the obstructionist citizen Planning Commission which was still led by the Democrats. In 1984, the Progressives created the Community Economic Development Office, an office now directly responsible for the development of the city and directly responsible to the Mayor alone. Happily for Sanders and his party, the new office was commissionless. Peter Clavelle, the man who had ripped Winooski apart for parking lots as its development officer, the man who succeeded Sanders as Mayor in 1987 and the man who still is the mayor of Burlington was chosen CEDO's head.

Development games began in earnest in 1984. By then the waterfront was again up for grabs. The Alden Corp, a local developer, proposed a deal to the city that it couldn't refuse. In return for a court action which would extinguish railroad rights to the abandoned waterfront, the City would allow the sale of the shore to the corporation which would then be free to clutter the citizens' land with its version of an accessible lake front. The plan contained a high priced hotel, labelled a "lakeside inn" by the CEDO propagandists with an overhang into the lake and high priced condos, labelled "neighborhood housing' by the same public relations types. A traditional socialist of the state socialist/capitalist variety, Sanders was smitten by the idea. Although he had opposed capitalist development under the Democrats, he now got in bed with Alden, believing in his heart of hearts that this development accompanied with the heavy hand of his city and his party was fine, a type of people's development.

Radicals knew better. As Sanders and company glad handed citizens for their support of the benighted project, a group called Citizens for a Better Waterfront formed. Consisting of Democrats, Republicans, Independents and fledgling Greens, they fought the project, pointing out that the plan not only meant the monopolization of the lake by the rich, but also the gentrification of the poor neighborhood of the Old North End which flanked the Alden Plan, driving rents and real estate out of the reach of most Burlingtonians.

Honest liberals and radicals were shaken out of their complacency about the people's republic of Burlington. While many still supported Sanders, especially after he left Burlington to go to Washington where he votes with the best of the Democrats, Citizens for a Better Waterfront called the "gorillas from the trees" by the local press took him on about Alden and successfully beat the project by winning the vote against the bond issue floated by the city to finance it in December, 1985. And perhaps because he was the Mayor and still aided by decent, smart assistants like City Attorney, John Franco, the city took the vote to heart and began to pursue in court the Public Trust Doctrine which eventually established the idea that the land fill shore belonged not to corporations, railroads or any private interests but to the people of the State of Vermont.

That important victory was short lived. With the new Clavelle administration and the younger generation of Progressives, now with a capital "P", the centralization of power in their hands and the economic forces of gentrification intensified. As the revolution proceeded, the Party with its state socialist/capitalist tendencies played out its theories that development by a partnership of state and capital was unobjectionable and a positive good. The economic forces destroying other cities engulfed Burlington. Church Street, once a town Main Street with an A and W Root Beer, a local department store, a Woolworth's, a hardware store, a grocery store, even a gun shop became lined with the chain stores of multi nationals. The administration fought for and secured a Filene's in the face of an organized opposition which pointed out that the socialist city should not give tax breaks and incentives to a company owned by the May Company which was accused by the union UNITE of operating on sweat shop labor. Plant dripping and quiche selling bistros replaced local restaurants. Homeless shelters proliferated. Roads multiplied and widened for traffic jams. Quality of life statutes evicted mainly poor people for being noisy or overcrowding. The city and the waterfront took on the appearance of the ubiquitous theme park, albeit with a small public park, the token of the citizens resistance to Alden. A token now surrounded with the evidence of the rich: townhouses, chic shops and boutiques. Burlington now faces rising crime rates, disaffected youth and a heroin epidemic. Most important, rents and real estate prices have skyrocketed, driving the poor, well, where? In the suburban sprawl that has become Burlington and Chittenden County, in this one of America's most liveable and socialist cities, no one knows or cares.

Burlington's fate in economic terms is not much different than many other communities. In fact the largest city in Vermont is not so bad. We do have a small waterfront park and gated cities do not yet divide us. We do have sister cities even in Palestine. We do have a land trust. But we have the unusual difficulty of being governed by a highly centralized political machine which convinced of its own righteousness expands its power daily and brooks no opposition. Under Sanders, a particularly nasty police chief was appointed from Los Angeles, Chief Burke. When I was shocked by the increased presence in our streets, parks and beaches of baby cops, youths with clubs and walkie talkies patrolling for people with glass bottles or being topless or obscene, my consciousness was raised by a remark of Murray Bookchin, the author of Post Scarcity Anarchism, "What do you expect? This is Moscow."

Later, Clavelle followed the example of the commissionless CEDO and diminished the power of the citizen commissions by obtaining for the first time the power to hire department heads. This spring the mayor won an increase of the mayor's term in office from 2 to 3 years.

In his plans to strengthen the executive at the expense of citizens, he was aided by his party, the Progressives, which during his tenure gained control over the government, the commissions, the mayor's office, and the economic decisions of the city. And they exercise that power in the same manner as the enemy Democrats did and in the same (although now tobacco free) back rooms.

The Progs, though, have new powers. They control most of the non profits which hand out whatever goods and services that citizens obtain from the city. They have a powerful, well funded electoral machine that has convinced what passes for the left that the building of the Party and the electing of its increasingly faceless candidates to public office is the most important political activity that can be undertaken at this point in history. Ultimately, their newest and greatest power lies in the success with which they have peddled the idea, to those who would still wish to explore the truly radical notion that all politics are local, that the Progressive Party and the municipal government it holds is the revolution. To criticize it, to fight it or its policies, even to wish it to be more democratic, just or free, is to those who control Burlington and put forth the Party's stifling ideology, to betray the revolution.

Sandy Baird, Esq. Is a feminist attorney who has lived in Burlington since 1968. She is a political activist who ran as a Green for Mayor of Burlington in 1989 against the red city. She has served in the State Legislature where she was a Democrat and a member of the Judiciary Committee from 1992-1996. Ms. Baird can be reached at mailto:sbaird@vtlawline.org

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