There are no events scheduled at this time… but we’re working on it so please stay tuned.
Past Events
Monday, August 17, 2020 — Zoom Meeting — Climate Radical Schools
Last June Brattleboro Common Sense (BCS) promoted a climate crisis resolution which formed the Climate Crisis committee. The school district has a budget three times as large as Brattleboro’s and thousands of young students. It is a large political entity. The committee invited me (Kurt Daims of BCS) to propose “radical” climate policy recommendations for discussion. Honestly, I didn’t hold back, and I was dumbfounded that the committee was — no kidding — receptive. Written proposals were requested for submission to the main board. (I missed the deadline, and I apologize to everyone.) But we have allies — people who want to hear you, and serious climate thinking happening on this school board, and I am officially charged with inviting you. There is a chance for something new on climate issues IF people bring passion and radical ideas to the board meeting next Wednesday. Climate policy will be on the agenda. To prepare for that meeting and expand the radical climate agenda attend the Zoom meeting Monday, Aug 17, 2020 at 4. To register contact us at: [email protected]
— Kurt
4 PM Monday, August 17, 2020
location: online via Zoom
Thursday, July 02, 2020 — Dinner/discussion — Where do we go from here?
After talking with selectpersons Ian Goodnow, Brandie Starr and others in town government I am convinced we will be able to cooperate fruitfully. We will not submit any petitions. More on this later. See: Safe Policing Project
This will be a sit-down dinner and face-to-face discussion. BYOM (mask)
– advocacy methods beyond protests and free speech
– civics under social distancing
– specific policy proposals
Register by email [email protected] and choose your dinner: omnivore, vegetarian or vegan.
No charge to attend.
6 PM Thursday, July 2, 2020
location: Brattleboro TBA
Saturday, January 25, 2020 — Breaking Trump’s Chain of Command
— not a protest demonstration
– establishing a town office of Justice Coordinator
– legal defense fund for military heroes and whistle-blowers who resist orders for illegal war
(Ordinance named for U.S. Army Major Hugh Thompson, who stopped the My Lai Massacre)
If soldiers refuse illegal orders, as many heroes and whistle-blowers have done, then Trump’s illegal war will be stopped. Create a Justice Coordinator to administer a legal defense fund to encourage soldiers of conscience to RESIST illegal orders (especially from Trump). This ordinance is not a resolution or a protest demonstration; it engages directly the soldiers who control the weapons of war.
1:00 PM Saturday, January 25, 2020
Brattleboro Common Sense
16 Washington Street, Brattleboro
802 490 9363 — [email protected]
Saturday, January 25, 2020 — Climate Crisis and Community
Cellphone-monitored ride-sharing for community and reducing automotive carbon emissions.
Initial meeting and brainstorming session.
3:00 PM Saturday, January 25, 2020
Brattleboro Common Sense
16 Washington Street, Brattleboro
802 490 9363 — [email protected]
Tuesday, January 7, 2020 — EMERGENCY breaking the chain of command for war
A proposal was announced this past Thursday for a way to interrupt the chain of command for illegal orders to start a war against Iran. It was widely predicted that Trump would start a new war in order to distract people from his impeachment trial. Now two days later he has started the war by assassinating a general in Iran. This is a flagrant act of war and a violation of international law and U.S. law. Though not in peril of our lives like so many Iranians and dark-skinned people around the world, the American people are hostage to a maniac. But we cannot simply wait for his impeachment trial to remove him. Instead we must address this new emergency with forceful action to interrupt the chain of command through which Trump acts.
Trump doesn’t perpetrate all his — his crimes himself. Whether he’s putting immigrant children in cages or blasting innocent confused people to bits, he does it by giving orders. If people refuse his orders, as many heroes and whistle-blowers have done, then Trump himself will not put those children in cages. He will not himself bomb those innocent crowds. So, we need to remind U.S. military officers that their oath is to the Constitution of the United States, and not to the president. We must remind them that their duty under the Nuremberg Principles is to refuse illegal orders. And we need to honor them and start a legal defense fund for them, and we need to do this NOW.
Wars are more than ugly enough, with civilians who know nothing about the conflicts that envelop them, and have no idea why fiery death falls on them from the sky, why they suffer for the conflicts between leaders of governments they don’t support, just as we don’t support this one. For such horrors conscience drives soldiers to insanity. Let’s help our officers act on conscience now.
Let us see our selectboard ASAP — Tuesday the seventh, 6:15 at Municipal Center — about emergency measures to boost our military officers, set up a defense fund, and establish an office of Justice Coordinator to supervise this effort. Actually BCS prepared petitions for this during the late Bush administration; how sad that such things don’t go out of date. Meanwhile contact the soldiers you know, so that they are not dishonored by unlawful orders from Trump. Tell them that they must resist such illegal orders, and that we have their back, for such a hero will deserve the thanks of the nation and the world.
Lawful_Orders_Ordinance_Petition_IP 
Military_Oath.
Update: Lawful Orders Ordinance / Thompson Ordinance
BCS volunteer Bruce Clauson proposed the ordinance to the Brattleboro selectboard yesterday evening (January 8, 2020). After outlining the proposal Clauson suggested it be named for U.S. Major Hugh Thompson, who placed himself in the line of fire to end the massacre in the Vietnamese village of My Lai in 1968. Selectboard Chair Brandie Starr suggested Clauson submit a proposal to the town manager’s office for inclusion in the agenda. BCS is seeking colleagues to promote similar proposals across the U.S. before issuing a general press release or investing heavily in the ordinance. We believe the orientation of the new name is excellent and the project, with it’s moral support of military officers, simple enforceable mechanism and direct connection to the primary actor, is BCS most potent initiative to date.
6:15 PM Tuesday, January 7, 2020
Meet selectboard for public participation
request emergency action
230 Main Street, Brattleboro
802 490 9363 — [email protected]
Thursday, January 2, 2020 — Strategy and Planning session — Trump is a cornered snake now, and more likely than ever to start a new war. Let’s start a way to prevent it. First line of defense that we can use is the military itself. We must:
• remind U.S. military officers that their oath is to the Constitution, not the president,
• establish an emergency legal defense fund, to encourage honorable officers to invoke the Nuremberg Principles and refuse unlawful orders,
• create a local Justice Coordinator to administer this effort, promote the indictment of Donald Trump, and serve other social justice causes,
Strategy and Planning session
6:30 Thursday, January 2, 2020
16 Washington Street or by teleconference (ask for details)
802 490 9363 — [email protected]
Friday, January 3, 2020 — Legalize safe hitch-hiking / CLIMATE RESCUE planning session — Safe licensed hitchhiking has been done in Europe, and we can do it here to SERIOUSLY reduce carbon emissions from automobiles, and provide a real community-based climate rescue measure. Now it can be safe in the U.S. with simple use of cellphones to record identities and locations.
Drivers and Riders can photo each other for security and send photos to police or friends.
People have another way to share resources and get to know each other. Share a ride; make a friend.
Strategy and Planning session
6:30 Friday, January 3, 2020
16 Washington Street or by teleconference (ask for details)
802 490 9363 — [email protected]
Wednesday, October 16, 2019 — Stop pollution on school athletic field — The school directors will consider covering the football field with plastic astroturf synthetic grass. This is no time to spend a million dollars covering the earth with glorified plastic pollution. It’s a horrible thing to do, and it destroys the soil ecosystem. LET the EARTH BREATHE ! Come to the school board meeting:
• vote to withdraw the RFP for the gross and unnecessary expense — ON PRINCIPLE — not just because of cost.
• Remind the directors that they are AUTHORIZED, not obligated to expend the school budget allotment, and vote to remove the astroturf pollution from the budget.
• Other cheaper SAFER sports do as much for education as football does.
• Act 46 is the painful cost of this kind of wasteful spending.
• Ask athletic supporters, “Of course you love your sporty kids, but please stop this selfish spending.”.
BCS tried to clarify that the directors should have climate crisis on their own agenda, because it should be on the minds of officials at the highest levels of government, and that it does not conform to the approved resolution if they only have a committee.
6:00 PM
School Directors Meeting
Dummerston Elementary School
52 Schoolhouse Road, East Dummerston
802 490 9363 — [email protected]
Tuesday, September 17, 2019 — CLIMATE EMERGENCY DECLARATION MEETING EVERYONE — this is a global issue and not just about Brattleboro telling the selectboard to get real and declare a climate emergency.
6:15 PM
230 Main Street
Brattleboro, Vermont
802 490 9363 — [email protected]
Monday, September 16, 2019 — DINNER PARTY AND PHONE BANK
5:00 PM
16 Washington Street, 5:00 Monday 9/16
802 490 9363 — [email protected]
Wednesday, September 11, 2019 — WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Sustainability and the Climate Emergency Declaration
Brattleboro has given sustainability many forms and names. It was advanced in the town plan by Tim Stevenson and by his group Post Oil in 2009, restarted as the Peak Oil Task Force in 2011, as Spoon Agave’s “Futures Committee”, and as an energy committee. BCS petitioned for the position at March rep town meeting, and Spoon Agave, who is a director of BCS, amended the budget for it. The position is not yet defined and may be hard to fill. Brattleboro’s stand on the broader issue is clearer as shown in resolutions by Brattleboro Common Sense on nuclear power, climate change and clean energy and in one by the selectboard and one by 350. Now the coordinator is integrated in the aspirational BCS Declaration of Climate Emergency, which is not yet enacted. Where do we go from here? Learn and speak about the sustainability coordinator and the Declaration of Climate Emergency.
6:00 PM
118 Elliot Street, Brattleboro
Contact Brattleboro Common Sense
802 490 9363 — [email protected]
Wednesday August 28, 2019 — Discussion of the new version of the declaration of climate emergency without the declaration of war
118 Elliot Street probably around 6:00 PM
Call for update: 802 490 9363
(The selectboard will vote on this at their meeting — September 3, 2019 6:15 PM at 230 Main Street Brattleboro)
Wednesday, June 19, 2019 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM — Brattleboro Common Sense and 118 Elliot are showing a new documentary, Ice on Fire, by Leonardo DiCaprio. An eye-opening documentary, this film focuses on many never-before-seen solutions designed to slow down our escalating environmental crisis. The film goes beyond the current climate change narrative and offers hope that we can actually stave off the worst effects of global warming.
Different from the typical movie-discussion model, the evening will begin with a short Silent Reflection for people to silently connect with climate change as an emotional experience personally as well as in relation to the effects to generations of humans, animals, nature, and the planet. Then the film, Ice on Fire, will untangle and present some common sense and innovative ways that humans are dealing with climate change. After the film, in a Silent Storm, the group will silently write down individual and community solutions, and bring them together in theme-based groups. The themes to be explored are: declaring climate emergency; conservation and sacrifice; inventions and innovations; stewardship and indigenous wisdom, local political action. The evening is the first in a series of events by Brattleboro Common Sense to explore emotional and philosophical approaches to the climate crisis.
Saturday, June 8, 2019 — Come see us at the Slow Living Expo and Strolling of the Heifers Weekend
Volunteers welcome for the Parade and the Expo area.
10:00 AM, up Main Street.
The Strolling of the Heifers Parade Brattleboro, VT
The theme will be farmers as heroes, and the BCS contingent will be doing theater to emphasize the climate crisis’ destruction of farmers’ crops and lives. Look for the wheelbarrows.
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Slow Living Expo
Brattleboro Common and Linden Street.
Stop by the BCS area to sit comfortably and discuss re-sourcing, conservation sacrifices, our campaigns for local democracy and economic justice, or your feelings and thoughts about being trapped in the climate crisis. Look for the big parchment with a Climate Emergency Declaration on it.
Saturday, March 23, 2019 — IMPORTANT TOWN MEETING DEBATE on CLIMATE CRISIS at Brattleboro Representative Town Meeting. — The town meeting members will consider the budgetary articles and a Climate Crisis Resolution preliminary to an ordinance. Debate on the resolution is likely to start in the late afternoon, but is not specifically scheduled. Local youth may propose their own climate crisis resolution to be moved by proxy member of the meeting. The public is invited to participate as at selectboard meetings.
3:00 PM (approximate time)
BUHS gymnasium
Friday. March 15, 2019 — Youth Climate Protest — Across the world, youth are gathering to focus the attention of local, state and national legislators on protecting our resources and environment. Join young people of southern Vermont to demand that lawmakers do what they can to steer us from climate disaster, and protect our frontline communities who are already suffering the consequences of it.
7:40 AM- 8:45 AM
Brattleboro Union High School
Noon – 1:00 PM
Pliny Park
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Pliny Park
Tuesday, March 12 AND Thursday March 14, 2019 — Organize for serious climate rescue legislation at Representative Town Meeting — meet to organize around presenting authentic stories and concerns about climate crisis and offer your plans to begin climate rescue at the RTM. We will strategize about advocating enforceable new measures (other than recycling) and preventing obstructionist and denial from diverting real climate rescue discussion. The resolution on the agenda is designed for us to rewrite. The particular measures, if any are approved, don’t matter. What matters is that we admit our fear and harness its power, and that we try together to raise the issue to the next level.
6:30 PM
At Hyde Park Soapbox
16 Washington Street
Brattleboro
Wednesday, March 13, 2019 — Brattleboro Town Informational Meeting — no voting — learn about the Common Sense Conservation initiative and budgetary and other matters on the RTM agenda that will be considered on March 23.
7:00 PM
At Academy School
860 Western Ave
Tuesday, March 5, 2019 — Town-wide voting — Youth Vote town charter amendment WON BY 69%!
Thursday, February 14, 2019 — Local Government & Energy Conservation Revolution: Come hear about how BCS is addressing the global climate crisis by trying to enact local change in Brattleboro. Learn about our grassroots initiative and why we urgently need to reduce our emissions and energy consumption.
12:00 PM
At the River Garden
157 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT
Thursday, January 17, 2019 — deadline for submission of Energy Conservation Petition to Selectboard
Friday, January 4, 2019 — Get the Word Out Non-Profit Showcase
5:30 PM – 8:30 PM
At the River Garden
157 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT
Tuesday, October 2nd & Tuesday, October 9th, 2018 — Public Hearings on the Youth Vote Ballot Initiative
6:15 PM
Selectboard Room in the Brattleboro Municipal Center
230 Main St., Second Floor, Suite 212
The Brattleboro Youth Vote ballot initiative has gotten the needed amount of public support, and Selectboard approval, to be put on the March 2019 town ballot!!! These hearings are the required fora for public information and debate on ballot initiatives that alter the Town Charter. Please come with your questions, and definitely with your support! To speak to the Youth Vote Coordinator, click here to email Rio.
Sunday, September 9, 2018 — Huddle up w/ Lt. Gov. Zuckerman and Youth Vote
1:30 PM – 3:30 PM
Putney Public Library
55 Main St., Putney, VT 05346
The Putney Huddle is pleased that the Lt. Governor Zuckerman and Youth Vote are able to join us for September’s meeting.
All our welcome, but must subscribe to our norms.
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1:15 – “Early Bird” Local Love Brigade Post Card Action
1:30- Meeting called to order – Mission and norms
1:35- Introductions
1:40- Huddle Announcements –
1:45- Flipping Windham 1 – Team Sara
1:55- Lt. Gov David Zuckerman
2:40- Youth Vote with Rio Daims and James Shanti-Strother
3:10- Group Announcements
3:20- Closing Statements
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Wednesday. September 22, 2018 — Democracy Forum on the Youth Vote
Noon -1:00 PM
at the River Garden in Brattleboro
Cost: free