Vermont Public Docs

“My daughters will be raised in America, so their lives will be different from mine.”

Some Afghan women in Brattleboro left their country because their husbands had jobs connected to the Afghan military or to the U.S. government evacuation in 2021, which put them in danger. Coming from traditional families, these women focus on the same things in Brattleboro as they did at home: raising their children, practicing their faith, and pr...

“Many of us who are here in Brattleboro ... we had a good life in Afghanistan.”

Afghan women in their 40s and 50s grew up surrounded by war. They went to school off and on, depending on how much violence was happening in their neighborhoods. They raised children. Many built careers. But those careers put them in danger when the Taliban returned in 2021. Today these women face the double burden of supporting themselves and their fami...

“I grew up with all these stories, all this history. How can I accept in one night, everything is changed?”

Many young women who came of age during Afghanistan’s 20 years of democracy went to high school and university and were charting their futures when the Taliban took power. Their lives were in danger so they fled. In Afghanistan, they had been academic powerhouses, artists, educators, rising business managers. In Brattleboro, t...

“Is any place in the United States of America called Vermont?”

As Afghan women left their country and embarked on a journey halfway around the world, they mourned their losses: family, homes, careers, comfort. They mourned their loss of Afghanistan. They landed in Vermont, a place they’d never heard of before. A brand new resettlement agency and a cadre of volunteers were waiting for them.

The Afghan Women of Brattleboro was produced...

“The day the Taliban took control of our country, how much we cried no one can imagine.”

When the fundamentalist Taliban seized power in 2021, Afghan citizens were shocked and terrified. They fled the country for different reasons: their education, jobs, or activism put them in danger; they were connected to the Afghan military or a western government; or all of the above. The U.S. evacuated close to 80,000 Afghans. Some were destin...

Dr. Bob Primeau is the only primary care doctor for miles. He has spent his entire career taking care of patients from the day they’re born until the day they die. But his field is changing, and Primeau is nearing retirement age.

"At the end of the summer, I'm leaving the primary care practice," Primeau says. "I'll have more time to devote to our local trail network, to play music, maybe even do some work overseas or teach at the hi...

A downtown apartment building stitched Plainfield together. On July 10, floods washed it away.

The Heartbreak Hotel was the kind of place where neighbors saw each other every day, where generations of people, from all walks of life, found belonging and someone to wave to in the morning.

Twelve people were living there at the time, and they all survived. Most of their beloved cats did not.

In the days after the flood, repor...

Two Abenaki First Nations are continuing to call for Vermont institutions not to work with state-recognized tribes, and to reconsider the process that led to the state recognizing those groups as Abenaki tribes.

Those nations — Odanak and Wôlinak — are receiving a mixed response.

2024-04-02: This story has been updated to more accurately reflect the response of Vermont's state-recognized tribes to scrutiny of the state recogn...

Ashley Messier is the co-chair of the Corrections Monitoring Committee in the Vermont Legislature, and she’s the reentry services program manager for Vermont Works for Women. She grew up in Essex with an abusive father and with little money, and she found herself repeating the cycle in early adulthood. This is a story about multigenerational poverty and abuse, and the temporary relief of opiates.

"What class are you?" is an occa...

Many people don’t want to talk about class, because class differences are the source of cultural division and tension. In this story, Erica talks with old friend Susan Randall, a private investigator based in Vergennes, about the luxuries of growing up upper middle class.

"What class are you?" is an occasional series from Vermont Public reporter Erica Heilman. In it, she talks with people from all sorts of backgrounds about mone...

In 2023, around 70% of the total wealth in this country was owned by the top 10% of earners. The lowest 50% of earners only owned 2.5% of the total wealth. In this story, Vermont writer and poet Garrett Keizer, who has written extensively on the history of labor unions, talks about what happens when we address gender and race equity, but we ignore income inequality. Here's Garret Keizer.

"What class are you?" is an occasional se...

Stephanie Robtoy works as an account manager at Working Fields, a staffing agency that helps people with barriers gain and maintain a job. She grew up in St. Albans in a huge family of Robtoys, some of whom are pretty notorious in town for criminal activity. In this story, Stephanie talks about what it was like to grow up poor, with a last name that was hard to escape.

"What class are you?" is an occasional series from Vermont P...

Irfan Sehic and his family fled the war in Bosnia and arrived in Barre when Irfan was 17. He worked a number of jobs, went to college and started his own insurance agency, which he still runs out of his house. And for the last few years, he's been a club soccer coach. Irfan lives with his wife and son in Milton, and in this story, he describes the American class system as he sees it, starting with the middle class.

"What class a...

Who gets to decide who is Abenaki? Vermont’s four state-recognized tribes — and the state recognition law — have different definitions and criteria for what it means to be Indigenous than many Indigenous Nations. In this episode, we look at this disconnect, and lay out what’s at stake, including power, money and authority.

This is Chapter Three of “Recognized,” a special series from Brave Little State. Chapters One...

After the original group of self-proclaimed Vermont Abenaki failed to gain federal recognition, Vermont lawmakers created a state recognition process of their own. One theory in particular informed the state’s consideration: that Abenaki peoples hid in Vermont to avoid persecution, including statewide eugenics policies. In this episode, we look at recent evidence, as well as older reports, that cast doubt on this narrative.