Hello neighbors, friends and family,
I’m reaching out to you as my trusted community.
This Tuesday March 3rd, 2026, is Vermont’s Annual Town Meeting Day. Many towns will be voting on an Apartheid Free Community (AFC) pledge. Their end goal is to have Vermont codify a statewide Boycott Divest and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, a boycott movement that has been recognized as discriminatory and racist and 38 of our 50 states have enacted laws, resolutions and executive orders in to discourage or penalize BDS.
As a result of last year's 2025 Town Meetings, Vermont became the nation's first state where five towns adopted the AFC pledge, at the expense of town resources such as time, and unity.
On a local level, these pledges and campaigns are divisive, alienate Jewish communities and businesses, are misleading, non-binding and divisive.
The boycotts directly harm Jews, especially Jewish-owned businesses. I'm an American Israeli and a local business owner.
Yalla, an Israeli restaurant in Brattleboro, produces the hummus many of us purchase at farmers markets and coops and is being actively targeted with a boycott, simply because the owner is a Jewish-Israeli.
Countless Jewish owned businesses in these small towns may or may not have a real or perceived connection to Israel.
The increased hostility and division in our local community’s has attracted some national and international attention, including from The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) who recently ran an investigative piece on the issue:
This is not the kind of attention we want Vermont to attract, and if we do not reject these pledges, we are at risk of not only losing our reputation for progressive inclusivity, but at risk of not being progressive and inclusive. Unfortunately, local Vermont media has largely ignored the threats that Jewish congregations, communities and businesses are experiencing. Swastika graffiti and vandalism or bomb threats made to six Jewish houses of worship last year on our high holidays may have hit newspapers, but the story you are more likely to have encountered is from the group, Jewish Voice for Peace, or JVP. JVP tokenizes the few Jews that are involved, claims to falsely represent a majority of Jews and does not promote peace or coexistence.
This divide and isolationism is fostered in K-12 equity circles. Some educators and school board members have signed the AFC pledge. The language of the campaign and the division that is inevitable create a hostile environment for Jewish students and staff, regardless of their perceived or real connection to Israel. Just a couple of weeks ago, Jewish students in Vermont gave authentic and painful testimony about their experiences in K-12 schools to the Vermont Senate Committee on Education.
These testimonies in Vermont and across the nation emphasize the alarming rate that Jew-hatred is risting. In Vermont, the very organizations in K-12 schools designed to uplift equity and inclusion for everyone, such as Education Justice Coalition, Outright VT and Jewish Voice for Peace, have also signed the AFC pledge and actively partnered with Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation. These partnership presents itself in schools and youth-led activities as a vehicle for spreading antizionist language and biased curriculum that erase Jewish history and peoplehood through a biased and binary oppressed and oppressor lens.
To better understand how the language of AFC is misleading and harmful, please reference this fact sheet:
Personal Impact:
More recently in public spaces I've been surrounded by human walls, called various names, and felt unsafe for speaking these very same words I type here, and at times left feeling unsafe and shaken. People I once considered to be close in our communities have become emboldened to casually say things like "Rape is resistance," or "I don't talk to Zionists," or "Oh, your work is about antisemitism in Vermont; what about the genocide?," or "I'm sorry if you feel harmed by antizionism, but it's just a difference of opinion,” or "You are a product of the British colonial empire and are a privileged white settler," or "Well, all my Jewish friends think that way," or "You're not a Zionist, right?"
Community Impact:
This divisive impact is felt by our entire Vermont community as increased hostility in towns and schools are depleting our energy and diverting our attention away from local issues.
Town Meeting Day should address the matters that we have an ability to affect: affordable housing, reasonable property taxes, homelessness, drug abuse and trafficking, the steep decline in Vermont's student academic achievements, yet the per-pupil cost is one of the greatest increases in the nation.
Let's keep it local, kind and inclusive.
With respect, adoration and hope during challenging times,
Corinna Dodson
Towns that WILL vote on AFC at Town Meeting:
Underhill, Richmond, Montpelier, Hartford, Weybridge
Towns that COULD still add AFC at Town Meeting during “other business”:
Woodstock, Bethel, Tunbridge, Sharon, Fairlee, Chelsea, Corinth, Colchester, Middlebury, Middlesex, Bennington, Bristol, Calais, Craftsbury, E. Montpelier, Hardwick, Greensboro, Manchester, Williston