Op-ed: AG Clark stands strong to safeguard our democracy and Constitution

By Nick Boke

It’s been quite a while since many of us have felt so positive. We — the very active members of the Chester Town Democratic Committee  and others — have been busy ever since Donald Trump took office. Trump’s inauguration got the half-dozen stalwarts who showed up for monthly CTDC meetings to jump to 25 virtually overnight.

In January, we created committees that dug into everything from educational reform to legislative activities to “In case of fire,” which met with regional nonprofits in case of floods, or if Trump’s activities made Vermont less safe.

CTDC organized and publicized demonstrations: Hands Off! then May Day Strong and this weekend, there’ll be No Kings. Hundreds of people showed up to the first two, and we’re hoping for the same for the next.

But nothing has had quite the impact as Monday night’s hour-and-a-half presentation by Vermont’s Attorney General Charity Clark. When her mother, who lives in Chester, suggested that the AG might be willing to speak here, the Speakers’ Series committee got in touch with Clark’s people, reserved the Town Hall, told the police chief what was planned and spread the word.

The plan was that Clark would explain at some length what she’d been doing, then take the questions people had written and given to the moderator.

Some hoped that MAGA folks would come, while others feared they might disrupt things. A dozen or so waited in the park outside Town Hall amid signs that read AG Clark—Lawless and Reckless and AG Clark Defiles Her Oath of Office. I asked if any were going to come hear what she had to say. “Some of us will,” I was told.

Charity Clark really knew what she was doing, and nobody tried to disrupt anything. After being introduced by Select Board member Arne Jonynas, she spoke to the 70 or so people for 20 minutes, then opened for questions. By my count, there were 25 questions. Some focused on details of the 14 lawsuits that she and the 24 Democratic AGs of other states had set in motion, such as random firings by DOGE, eliminating funding for AmeriCorps volunteers, and changes in voting processes.

She answered questions about the nature of due process, what ICE could demand of local law enforcement members, and what Trump’s sending the National Guard into the Los Angeles demonstrations might mean.

By my count, six questions came from people who were trying to unsettle her. There was one about how many “illegals” there were in Vermont — Clark said she preferred the term “people” and that she didn’t know, because it wasn’t within her bailiwick.

Several asked how much the lawsuits were costing. “Nothing,” she said each time, explaining that protecting the people of Vermont was her and her staff’s job, the lawsuits being designed to do just that. What about drugs and crime in Vermont? She responded that her office had sued large drug sellers and manufacturers, but didn’t take on the local problems. And so on.

When she didn’t have an answer, she said so. She periodically reminded the audience that the midterm elections were coming up, that protests and letters-to-the-editor matter, that although Trump always pushes back, he eventually complies with court orders.

I’ve been following Charity Clark’s activities — and those of the other Democratic attorneys general, along with groups like  Common Cause and the ACLU — closely over the months. Such people seem to be all that stands between our fragile, flawed democracy and a burgeoning oligarchy of the rich, an autocracy that would ignore the millions of people at the other end of the economic spectrum, to say nothing of protecting those desperate to escape an oligarchy elsewhere. To say nothing of protecting moderately “safe” folks like myself.

Mostly though, this brave woman who is on the firing line of what some are already calling a constitutional crisis is working hard to make sure the country does not slide fully into chaos and/or dictatorship.

Donald Trump, she began the evening by saying, “has an utter contempt for the rule of law.” But, she went on, “This is America. No man is king.” Her job, she explained, “is to protect Vermont and protect the Constitution.” She believes, she told WCAX last week, that “President Trump … is testing the boundary of his power as president, and it’s up to the courts to lay the boundaries and say, ‘here’s what the Constitution says you can do.’ ”

I and lots of others left the Chester Town Hall comforted, more hopeful than we’ve been for a long time because this courageous woman is hard at work.

Nick Boke is a Chester resident.