Burlington, Vermont, Public Order Crisis: Town Leaders Neglect the Middle Class

It’s a little after 11 a.m. on Sunday. I’m standing outside the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House at the top of Church Street in Burlington, Vt. In many ways, it’s very classic New England. Outside the church, there’s a crowd and a speaker; it’s a little hard to tell what’s actually going on — is it church, or a political rally, or maybe a political rally pretending to be church? The speaker is very clearly talking about Trump without saying his name. Washington, D.C., is more than 500 miles away.

But if you walk around the corner, you quickly get to a blighted, abandoned building. It used to be a very nice L.L. Bean store. The retailer left, in large part due to the public disorder, drugs, and crime in that area. That L.L. Bean, the president of the Burlington Business Association testified in Montpelier, experienced the highest theft rate of any L.L. Bean in the United States. You look down in front of this retail cadaver, and you see trash and needles, the detritus of the drug problem that plagues the city.

GW

About the Author

Gary Winslett

Gary Winslett is an associate professor of political science and the director of the international politics and economics program at Middlebury College. He has lived in the Burlington area with his wife and daughter since 2019.

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It’s a little after 11 a.m. on Sunday. I’m standing outside the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House at the top of Church Street in Burlington, Vt. In many ways, it’s very classic New England. Outside the church, there’s a crowd and a speaker; it’s a little hard to tell what’s actually going on — is it church, or a political rally, or maybe a political rally pretending to be church? The speaker is very clearly talking about Trump without saying his name. Washington, D.C., is more than 500 miles away.

But if you walk around the corner, you quickly get to a blighted, abandoned building. It used to be a very nice L.L. Bean store. The retailer left, in large part due to the public disorder, drugs, and crime in that area. That L.L. Bean, the president of the Burlington Business Association testified in Montpelier, experienced the highest theft rate of any L.L. Bean in the United States. You look down in front of this retail cadaver, and you see trash and needles, the detritus of the drug problem that plagues the city.

GW

About the Author

Gary Winslett

Gary Winslett is an associate professor of political science and the director of the international politics and economics program at Middlebury College. He has lived in the Burlington area with his wife and daughter since 2019.