With Gratitude for Your Trust, My Final Legislative Post

Friends and Neighbors,

Thank you so much for the opportunity you have collectively provided me to serve as your representative for the past four years. I want to express specific gratitude to Selene Colburn, who reached out to me at the close of her final term and asked me to run. I would not have run had she not asked. I mention that deliberately as an encouragement to all of us to invite one another in and to make the ask. So many times, that’s what we’re waiting for. To be asked.

I also want to state, emphatically, that these four years have provided some of the most meaningful moments and relationships of my life. Those relationships span the political spectrum that defines our immediate community, as well as those I was fortunate enough to serve with in Montpelier. That building and our neighborhood thrive on the relationships we build, especially across differences.

Thank you. It has truly been a gift.

And if you will indulge me one last time (I remain your representative for two more months), I want to discuss the most difficult part of leaving this position. I am convinced that nobody finishes their time of service having accomplished all they set out to do. I want to name what I am most sad to leave unfinished, with the hope that we can find one another and continue the work. There are two policy areas I have been unable to convince enough people, including my fellow legislators, to address with the urgency they require.

1. Vermont’s continued support of the for-profit prison industry.

The state of Vermont is no different from national trends in our complicity in resourcing this industry. We pay, on average, 45 cents per hour for incarcerated Vermonters to provide labor that would otherwise require state employees or contracted workers. We then subject those Vermonters and their families to charges from for-profit telecommunications providers as they try to maintain contact with one another. Those relationships are essential to successful reentry. We also contract with for-profit medical providers to deliver care within our correctional facilities.

And our relationship with CoreCivic deserves specific mention. CoreCivic is one of the largest private prison operators in the United States and operates immigration detention facilities for ICE. We maintain a contract with CoreCivic to house as many as 300 Vermonters at its facility in Mississippi. We currently house approximately 150 Vermonters there. We risk increasing that number as we continue down the road of creating new felonies and using incarceration as the quick fix to the discomfort that accompanies what we see resulting from the homelessness and addiction crises.

2. Vermont’s continued erasure of the Abenaki First Nations at Odanak and Wôlinak.

The state of Vermont, under the direction of a severely misguided and overwhelmingly white legislature operating within the structures of a settler-colonial government, continues to erase these sovereign nations from public understanding of their ancestral homelands, including the places we now call Burlington and Vermont.

The process by which the state conferred recognition on self-identified groups, without adequately establishing the historical, genealogical, and political continuity underlying their claims to Abenaki identity, was deeply flawed. In my view, the exclusion of Odanak and Wôlinak was deliberate, and the resulting policy continues to sever these nations from decisions about their own identity and heritage. Our actions remain at odds with the rights and standards articulated in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Self-Indigenization is a glaring and alarming practice across the globe. Vermont is not immune to the practice. Anyone claiming to be doing anti-racist and anti-colonialist work has a clear obligation to examine the flaws in our state’s recognition process and listen directly to the sovereign nations whose identity and heritage are at stake.

Again, I mention these as my most significant policy priorities that remain unfinished. Just as Amanda Janoo articulates that we are all the economy, we are also all the government. While I will soon lose the platform you have afforded me through your votes over the past four years, I fully intend to continue moving these policy areas through our governance processes. This is my invitation to anyone who wishes to join that work with me.

With that, I encourage you to hold our newly elected representatives accountable for how they exercise the authority you have entrusted to them. Returning representatives owe us an accounting of the power they have already exercised, alongside their promises about what comes next. That includes a willingness to answer difficult questions about their own decisions.

You can follow committee activity and voting records through the legislative website. Ask what your representatives initiate, what they help accomplish, and whether their actions support their stated commitments. Reach out at any time if you’d like assistance becoming more politically engaged beyond the voting booth.

With gratitude for the journey you’ve provided me,

Troy Headrick
TroyHeadrickVT@gmail.com