[Applause]
there is nothing we cannot accomplish we
will make Vermont a free territory
we will govern ourselves inter-communal
according to the principles of
collectivity and self-determination
people of our age at that time were so
thirsty for something new and different
we were just looking for a more
connected way to live many people there
thought the revolution was coming
tomorrow we were involved with those
kinds of focuses of life you know they
wanted to change their own lives and
they ended up changing the world I moved
to Mount Philo collective in the summer
of 69 I was 23 it was a single mother
working full-time I didn't fit into
conventional society I was definitely
looking for a change and I jumped in
with both feet
[Music]
it was an exhilarating experience I felt
like growth was really possible there
and and it was it turned out to be
exactly that I think everybody who's
here moved in because of personal some
personal feeling like there was no other
place to go everybody was looking for
something that would their lives
together you know we were questioning
the the mores of the 50s and early 60s
and and looking for a different way to
live we came together as people
interested in an experimental lifestyle
but at Mount Philo we weren't as
committed and intentional as some of the
other back-to-the-land communes were but
back to the land movement refers to a
big demographic shift that happened
starting in the late 1960s hundreds of
thousands possibly a million young
people from the city white well educated
middle class activists minded
environmentally minded interested in
self-sufficiency left urban areas and
moved to rural areas all across the
country and Vermont is one of the places
where the impact of that demographic
movement was the highest people who
arrived in Vermont in the late 60s and
early 70s were really worried about sort
of sounds a little bit strange to us now
maybe but they were really worried about
system collapse
[Applause]
at that particular time an overarching
concern is the Vietnam War the Vietnam
War it was against the war we were
thinking what in the world is going on
over there certainly the assassination
of Martin Luther King will get nice
worse those were such drastic times so
clearly we wanted to end militarism in
the United States back to the Landers
and and people living in communist many
of them were activists the Vietnam War
protests had turned violent and that it
had become actually dangerous to be
involved in street protests in the
cities and so moving to Vermont and
saying like okay I'm gonna I'm not gonna
yell in the street I'm not gonna protest
in the street I'm actually just gonna
change my whole life and live out every
single day this sort of like protest to
the system a couple of other things were
important bringing people in the
counterculture to Vermont land was
available and it was one of the places
where people could find farmland in the
Northeast
I came to Vermont in 1970 we were
transplants for California and we
started looking for land in northern
Vermont and found the place in Franklin
when we moved on to it there were
probably ten people five couples I came
to Vermont in 1969 with my husband and
my two children
I was 26 years old I say often that I
was sort of an accidental hippie because
before that I had been a housewife
basically in Madison Wisconsin I got
married early and we were very in strong
the whole concept of being an extended
family together we thought we were doing
this for the rest of our lives we were
making a commitment we were going to
communal eyes all of our money all of
our possessions all of our children
everything and we were going to embark
on living on a farm off the grid
counting communes is a very difficult
job the best numbers that people can
find probably around 50 in 1970 and then
at least one scholar counted 200 all
around the state just a few years later
there was a fear in the summer of 1970
that 50,000 people were going to arrive
into Vermont there is a fear of the
hippie influx it pokes so real to
Vermonters both in the counterculture
and locals that Governor Dean Davis felt
the need to issue a press release saying
that you know even if 50,000 hippies
we're going to arrive all of a sudden in
Vermont you know that the state of
Vermont was committed to making sure
that they followed the law but it was a
real fear that that was going to happen
it was a huge movement in Vermont if I
look at it from the point of view of the
people who lived here before it could
really feel like an invasion of
strangers but some of the old-timers
loved us we work with horses there was a
person that loved horses and help us
learn that skill there were people that
loved to sugar and they helped us were
into sugar so we had real real wonderful
connections in the town we were
collective - we weren't a commune
because those were hippies and drug you
know not man we were no we were serious
we were the political collective not the
colony or hippie commune most people's
conceptions of communes people think of
communists hippies but I can't really
say that I had spent much time with with
hippies most of the people that I knew
what the communes were were political
activists little did we know of course
the FBI had people visiting us in
undercover coming back from May Day
demonstrations the bus would stop by
Howard Johnson's turn around down in
Brattleboro I got out and there was FBI
welcomed me home and they say want a
ride and they drove me home we were
tight with the Panthers and the Weather
Underground and that was the real reason
the FBI raids so much so that whether
that don't go to Vermont
they're just looking for you there the
FBI did come here but we were not afraid
of them our phones were tapped we had
FBI agents and undercover people yeah in
our houses in our meetings I think we
all had FBI files on us 300 pages
probably of Douglas scene in Madrid
Spain at a major demonstration I was
never there anything revolutionary
that's what they were looking for didn't
activist the political activists the
revolutionaries the people who lived on
communes people who were active in the
women's liberation movement the Black
Panthers the white campus I mean it was
on and on and on it it was extraordinary
degree to which we were looked after a
lot yeah
[Music]
which ends to the future and we will all
be free the anti-war movement at the
time included an underground railroad
and in that we were so close to the
Canadian border Franklin even closer we
became part of it I took a young man who
had exhausted all of his options to
Canada and it was a I don't remember
this as being momentous but it it now
looking back it certainly was
we drove him across the border into
Canada let him out and he went on
hitchhiking and then we came back
through another border cross
[Music]
so that's how that worked also we helped
people develop other identities who
wanted to stay in this country we went
to town halls city halls to find birth
certificates of people who were no
longer alive basically who died when
they were babies or infants and using
those identities for people to take on
there was so much happening then it's
hard out of context to I think to
appreciate the changes that were going
on then the sexual revolution a peace
movement there was a whole healthcare
movement the women's movement you could
not live on an economy and collective
without being a part of that the women's
movement contributed mightily to the
establishment of free clinics around the
country we started with a group of
people from various communes but also
political activists in the Burlington
area we started the free clinic and we
got doctors to donate their time and so
we would have two or three nice a week
that we had free care we were convinced
that we could change the way health care
was delivered at least in the old North
End of Burlington and it survives today
it's a community health center and
certainly is an institution and that all
started from our idea of making health
care right in the beginning my first
intersection with communes was really
around the issue of
reproductive rights for women in 1972
that was a time when abortion was
illegal everywhere that I know of in the
United States in Vermont at the time the
legal situation was that women could get
abortions but doctors couldn't perform
them which led to the situation of
unsafe abortions everywhere the Vermont
Supreme Court said that the law was too
contradictory and that it had to be
stricken from the books so there was a
period of time that the prohibition
against doctors doing abortions was kind
of overturned and there was a vacuum
produced it wasn't illegal then in
Vermont so between like four or five
months we quickly got it together with
money and a doctor to form what was
called the Vermont Women's Health Center
which was open prior to Rovi wake and
that Women's Health Center was as far as
I knew the first clinic in the United
States that performed abortions thank
you and the other thing was food you
know we really wanted a good food and
access to good food and so we started by
doing these buying groups and you would
put together your order and people would
put them together at the farmers markets
and you know wholesale places and bring
them up and distribute them to the
communist and ultimately the buying
groups became the onion River co-op but
is now incarnated into the city market
[Music]
I can't believe that the whole thing you
know lasted about two and a half year is
fucked for me anyway at Franklin it just
seemed like a lifetime we didn't know
anything we just thought we could just
do it which we did it was amazing that
way however the group living communes of
in collective living whatever you call
it is extremely taxing with the draft
ending in 72 and the war winding down I
think there was a lot of the impetus
wasn't there anymore but I think most of
us stayed very true to our roots as far
as the roots that we established once we
lived communally that the Communists
brought incredible change in values in
Vermont we were very well aware that it
was a small state and that we had a very
good chance of influencing life in
Vermont and that was I think one of the
reasons that drew a lot of people here
in the county and those men people who
lived on the Conn you came into the
cities and help build politics and I
became more community oriented I became
an organizer and I would say that that
organizing part of me was noticed by
Bernie and Bernie asked me if I would
run for the City Council so he helped me
I won by ten votes same as me add a lot
of the people that I knew that were part
of that movement mostly the women stayed
and I think we have them to thank for
the kind of culture that we have here in
the state of Vermont welcome to total
loss Farms famous formless flaky
together greet you with open arms
screen door smashes into the weather set
down your roots and roam there's no
place like
I'm the one who stayed because of the
magnetism of this place I feel that
there's something generous and
compelling about this particular piece
of land
this is where the clothesline was this
is where we hello and there remember
that acutely because we must have spent
a tire i'm sentimentally attached to
what happened here and what happened to
whom you here
was my first room what happened I think
to everyone who lived here what we went
through and how we learned how we grew
and how we grew to care for each other
and all these things communists will
always be my family I always know that
they have my back and that I have their
God many people brought their desire to
change and to change the world into this
state which has absorbed those people
those people many of whom are of amazing
stature in this state came out of that
back to the land movement of the 60s and
70s for that pinkish haze across the
orchard ten thousand blossoms on a
widow's peak
we forsook the revolution and bought the
farm it was a different world it was a
different world and I think what's
really surprising is how long we go
without talking about it I still want to
change the world you really do
[Music]
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