Brazen, Unprovoked Attack On Three Palestinian College Students: What Is Happening in Vermont?

By Jesse Wegman Dec. 1, 2023 The first sign that something was amiss came in the form of three police cruisers idling, unbidden, in the lot behind the Islamic Society of Vermont, the state’s largest mosque, last Saturday night in South Burlington. Usually there would be only one cop, paid for by the mosque during gatherings like the community potluck being held that evening. An asphalt path leading to a parking lot. A footpath in South Burlington, Vt., connects the Islamic Society of Vermont and the Congregation of Temple Sinai.Credit...Jude Domski for the New York Times ----- “We said, ‘Something fishy’s going on,’” Fuad al-Amoody, the vice president of the society’s executive board, told me. Then he started receiving text messages about a shooting in Burlington, about 10 minutes up the road. “We ended up putting two and two together.” The brazen, unprovoked attack on three Palestinian college students, who were walking down a quiet residential street while visiting relatives here over Thanksgiving, shook the area’s tight-knit community of Muslims. On Monday, authorities charged Jason Eaton, a 48-year-old white man who lived on the street, with three counts of attempted murder. He has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail. For many in Vermont, the horror of the shooting was compounded by its violation of the state’s self-image as a uniquely welcoming place. Vermonters pride themselves on their neighbourliness, taking in waves of refugees from across the globe. “This brave little state says no to hate” is a popular if unofficial slogan on yard signs. It’s also one of the safest states in the country, although it has seen increases in crime since the pandemic. “By far, Vermont is the best place to live,” said Mr. al-Amoody, whose day job is as a semiconductor engineer, ticking off the other states he has lived in since he came to the United States from Kenya a quarter-century ago. “It is very peaceful.” A man standing with his head bowed in a large room at the Islamic Society of Vermont. Fuad al-Amoody Credit...Jude Domski for the New York Times ------ It is also very white — nearly 94 percent, according to the 2020 census. My family and I bumped that number a few notches higher when we moved here in 2020. Coming directly from New York City, we were startled as much by the racial uniformity as the farm equipment rumbling by our house at dawn every day. We had somehow missed the “Saturday Night Live” skit from 2018 in which several neo-Confederates rail against America’s racial diversity and debate founding a new homeland — somewhere with “no immigrants, no minorities,” the group’s leader declares. “An agrarian community where everyone lives in harmony, because every single person is white.” “Yeah, I know that place,” one pipes up. “That sounds like Vermont.” The audience laughs, but today the sketch lands chillingly. The students told the police that they were wearing their kaffiyehs and speaking a mix of Arabic and English when they were shot. Vermont’s overwhelming homogeneity is always apparent to people of color here, and it can create a persistent sense of insiders and outsiders, no matter how well intentioned the efforts to push past it. The authorities have not yet added a hate-crime enhancement to the charges against Mr. Eaton, who moved to the neighbourhood a few months ago and has struggled with depression, according to his mother. Still, it’s hard to ignore the current atmosphere of tension and vitriol surrounding the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, which has led to clashes and hate incidents around the country. This week I walked down North Prospect Street, where the shooting occurred. The street runs along the edge of the city’s Old North End, just off the University of Vermont’s main quad. Wide sidewalks pass by rambling old colonial revivals and multiunit houses like the one where Mr. Eaton lived. Within a couple of blocks of the shooting there is a large synagogue and a Quaker meeting house, in front of which a makeshift sign was decorated with a green heart and the words “Neighbors stand against hate.” I went in the chilly early evening, around when the attack took place, and all seemed quiet and calm, as I imagine it had to the young men in the moments before their world exploded. In front of the Islamic centre, a sign reading, "More ISVT parking at Temple Sinai if parking lot full." The mosque and synagogue are next door to each other and share a parking lot. Credit...Jude Domski for The New York Times A white-painted house with a porch. The shooting took place outside of 69 North Prospect Street. Credit...Jude Domski for The New York Times ------ It was this juxtaposition — between the state’s welcoming nature and its monochromatic reputation — that led me to reach out to Mr. al-Amoody. As a white guy who has the luxury of not having to look over my shoulder when I’m walking down the street, I was hoping to get a better sense of what life is like for Muslims and Arab Americans in a state like this, where rural roads are dotted with “Black Lives Matter” signs and gun shops in equal measure. Mr. al-Amoody estimated there are roughly 5,000 Muslims state-wide, the vast majority of whom live in and around Burlington, the largest city in a state with about 650,000 residents. Until recently, those looking for a place to worship outside a private basement or garage had one choice: a corner of a building that was once, among other things, a former cavalry post for the U.S. Army. It was repurposed for Islamic prayer in 1999, but as the community grew, its members needed more space. They found it in a former church in South Burlington, which they bought in 2019 from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Today the mosque counts roughly 350 families as members. It sits next door to a synagogue, which shares its parking lot on Fridays to help accommodate Muslim worshipers on their holy day. (The mosque returns the favour on Saturdays.) There were more examples of generosity, Mr. al-Amoody said. Among the hundreds of emails he received in the days after the shooting were numerous offers of help, including one from a non-Muslim woman in the college town of Middlebury, about an hour south of Burlington, offering lodging and a car to the students, who are from out of state, while they recover. “It has been like this all along,” he told me. I heard versions of that sentiment from others. Farhad Khan has lived in Middlebury for most of his 30 years in the state. When he first arrived, he said, “we were so out of place, we opened the Yellow Pages and looked for names — Abdul, Mohammed — and we’d call those numbers.” Today he sits on the town’s select board and owns and runs a local dollar store with his wife, Amtul. He finds Vermont one of the most inclusive states in the country but said he still faces racism, usually of the subtle type: a customer’s seemingly stray comment about Amtul’s hijab or complimenting him on his English. The number of such incidents has gone up in recent years, he said, especially since Donald Trump’s election. For others, the attack came as no surprise, and not because of Mr. Trump. “Just like the U.S., Vermont likes to think it’s exceptional,” said Mia Schultz, a Black Vermonter and the president of the Rutland-area N.A.A.C.P., who is not Muslim. “Which is why when violence happens like this, people are shocked. But the thing is, people of color are not.” I brought up the state’s enormous white population as a demographic curiosity when she stopped me. “Why do you think that is?” she asked. “I don’t think it’s an accident. There are people who want to live here, but it becomes so incredibly suffocating. You’re met with smiles, this idea of kindness,” she said, and yet behind it there is an isolation, an insidious feeling of not being seen as equal. That’s not counting the more openly racist acts or the encounters with law enforcement and other authorities that serve as a constant reminder of one’s status as a permanent suspect. Vermont’s problem is not in recruiting people of colour, she said, but in retaining them. “I know about people who go back to the South because, they say, ‘At least I know what I’m encountering,’” she said. “I know how to navigate people who are outright hateful.” Ms. Schultz has not left, though she said she has been tempted. Instead, she recently accepted an appointment to Vermont’s new Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which the state established last year to begin dismantling institutional, structural and systemic discrimination in Vermont. “The fact that they want to examine themselves, for me, feels hopeful,” she said. Still, she acknowledged it can be hard to find support in a place as underpopulated and spread out as Vermont. “You come here as a person of color, and you’re, all of a sudden, isolated. You don’t have a community to affirm what you’ve experienced,” Ms. Schultz said. I thought back to something Mr. al-Amoody told me. The first thing he did after learning of the shooting was drive to the hospital, offer assistance to the relatives of the victims and send a message to the mosque’s mailing list — to confirm the facts he knew and dispel rumours that had begun to circulate. It sounds simple, and yet that’s how you take outsiders and make them a community. ------ Jesse Wegman is a member of the editorial board, where he has written about the Supreme Court and national legal affairs since 2013. He is the author of “Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College.” Source: What Is Happening in Vermont? 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