In Continued Support of Tyeastia Green

I’m saddened by the fact that we are still needing to broadcast the continued mistreatment of Tyeastia Green, former Director of Burlington’s Office of Racial Equity, Inclusion & Belonging. I first attempted to draw attention to this mistreatment in August, 2023 with a blog post in support for Tyeastia’s ally and my dear friend Ferene Paris.

Below is my open letter to the Mayor and City Councilors urging them to commit to finding resolution to Ms. Green’s valid request for restitution. I hope you will engage in your own methods for encouraging our city to repair the harm we’ve caused.

 

In Continued Support of Tyeastia Green
October 12, 2024

Dear Mayor Mulvaney-Stanak and Burlington City Councilors,

I write today to join the recent collection of voices urging you to re-engage in good faith with Tyeastia Green, former Director of Burlington’s Office of Racial Equity, Inclusion & Belonging, and to acknowledge her response to the City’s initiation and invitation to negotiations of a potential settlement. I’m of the clear belief that when we initiate negotiations, to include potential monetary reparations, we are then obligated to remain engaged with those negotiations.

As someone who has been trained and certified in and long committed to engaging with conflict mediation from a commitment to restorative practices, I worry that the administration’s use of that term, at least in this instance, is falling into common traps that actually misuse the concept. In my roles as a student affairs professional at the University of Vermont as well as that of a state legislator, I consistently encounter processes in which a stated commitment to restorative practices is used, at best, superficially or trivially and, at worst, from a weaponized intention. I’ll assume best intentions with my engagement of this conflict.

To state it succinctly, restitution and reparations are restorative. While my understanding of the administration’s intent is limited to how it has been described by the recent Seven Days article, I fear that we have fallen into the trap in which restorative processes and resolutions are conceived of and defined as separate from or, possibly, incongruent to conversations that include monetary restitution. This preconceives the process for any sort of restorative engagement. To be clear, the core tenets of any restorative process ask, essentially, three questions: what were we thinking to arrive at this moment, what have we thought about since the conflict, and what needs to happen that will allow us to begin to repair the harm we have caused? Often times, monetary compensation to repair the harm caused to a person’s professional reputation will and should be named as a valid component of any resolution.

Our national conversation on reparations for the impact on generations of Americans that were formerly enslaved is a reasonable and analogous example for consideration. When we build a country and an economy through the enslavement of an entire race of people, when we build foundational wealth through the exploitation of that free and enslaved labor, and when that wealth then compounds exponentially before the descendants of that enslaved labor force are even allowed fair payment for their work, we must commit ourselves to engaging in the reasonable request for closing the resulting wealth gap. It is undeniable that our nation was built upon these systems of white supremacy. The resulting legacies of power and privilege will continue to seek and find ways to preserve themselves. The longer we allow that to happen by not engaging in the resulting conversations that stipulate reparations, we will continue to watch that wealth gap grow in obvious and exponentially inequitable ways.

The ways in which former Director Green’s professional reputation has been scapegoated and damaged by decisions and statements made by this city’s former administration, in clear violation of an existing non-disparagement clause, are well documented and easily verified. The hypocrisy by which a Black woman in a Director’s role has been overly scrutinized, especially when compared to the administrative negligence of white men in similar roles, has also been well documented and already cited into the public discourse surrounding this matter. The former administration’s actions have caused professional and lasting harm to Tyeastia Green and it remains a valid argument to state that this harm is sourced in the foundations of white supremacy and racism that pervade our structures of municipal governance. 

We can refer to countless examples by which the City of Burlington has responded to comparable harm with monetary reimbursement. Very recent monetary settlements, totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars, for inappropriate use of force incidents initiated by city employees, are easily found. Very recently, a severance package totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars accompanied this city’s decision to terminate its professional contract with at least one city employee. Clear evidence exists for how the City of Burlington is able to acknowledge harm caused and to then repair that harm with monetary restitution. Clear evidence simultaneously exists for how the City of Burlington ends an employment contract with severance pay.

We’re becoming more and more aware of instances in which the previous administration was not forthcoming about the fiscal mismanagement left for the new administration. I am saddened to learn that the former Mayor’s treatment of one of his Directors now continues to burden this administration’s budget. Regardless, the request for restitution is so clearly valid and reparations are so clearly warranted. Mayor and Councilors, I urge you to 1) acknowledge the harm caused to Tyeastia Green’s professional reputation by the City of Burlington, 2) provide fair monetary reimbursement to accommodate the resulting impact, and 3) reimburse Ms. Green for any and all costs and legal fees associated with her response to the neglectful inaction of the City of Burlington to date.

Respectfully,
Troy Headrick