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This was Cheryl Hanna’s keynote address at the Second Annual Laura’s March, in remembrance of Laura Kate Winterbottom and a fundraiser for the Women’s Rape Crisis Center, on September 6 at Oakledge Park in Burlington. Seven Days is publishing her remarks to underscore the ongoing effort to eradicate violence toward women. Hanna is a professor at Vermont Law School and a constitutional scholar. Laura Winterbottom was raped and murdered in Burlington three years ago. For more info or to donate, contact Kristine Bickford at the WRCC at 864-0555 ext. 12.

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Since graduating from the University of Vermont in May, Sam Maron has run afoul of the law on two continents for his political activism.... Read more

On August 24, Jeff Kaufman rolled out of bed and noticed the letters “PH” had been scrawled into one of his window air-conditioning units. After photographing six similarly damaged units in his Old North End neighborhood, he posted a comment to the online newsletter, “Front Porch Forum.”

Total damage to the ACs was $1000, Kaufman wrote. “Does this rise to the level of a felony?” he wondered.... Read more

City Councilor Paul Decelles has lived in Burlington’s New North End since he was a kid. As a youngster, he used to play wherever he pleased. But two years ago, after learning that a convicted sex offender lived down the block from his family’s home, Decelles started keeping closer tabs on his young daughter.... Read more

In December 2004, as fellow inmates listened helplessly, a 19-year-old prison inmate at the Upstate Correctional Facility in Malone, N.Y., suffered repeated seizures on the floor of his cell for two days and two nights without receiving medical attention.

A state medical board later concluded that the inmate, a Mexican national named Christopher Campos, died because one of the prison’s infirmary staff didn’t understand his diagnosis and then denied him his prescribed medication.... Read more

The number of sex-crime victims and their supporters who sought help at the Women’s Rape Crisis Center increased 25 percent last fiscal year, according to figures released Monday by the center.

Between July 2007 and June 2008, the center received an average of six calls a day from sexual-violence victims and their family and friends. That’s a 20 percent increase in the past five years, said Cathleen Wilson, the center’s executive director.... Read more

June 2008, somewhere in central Vermont

Bob answers his cellphone in the backseat. My wife, he mouths. “Yep, we’re going to jail,” he tells her, then snickers.

I run a furtive sign of the cross over my face and chest.... Read more

Yves Bradley, a Burlington business owner who recently retired as a police commissioner, subscribes to the “broken window” theory: The longer a window remains broken in a neighborhood, the more likely that area will be perceived as conducive to crime.

As crime increases, so does the seriousness of the offenses, until the neighborhood truly becomes a much more dangerous place than it used to be.... Read more

It’s been more than five years since Dr. Sami Al-Arian, a professor at the University of South Florida, was arrested and jailed on terrorism and conspiracy charges cobbled together under the USA PATRIOT Act.

Al-Arian, a longtime Palestinian activist, spent more than two and a half years in solitary confinement, until December 2005, when a jury acquitted him of the most serious of the charges. His family claims he signed a plea agreement — admitting to a minor charge — just to put an end to the nightmarish ordeal in hopes of being reunited with his family.... Read more

Vermont is a small, out-of-the-way place, and if recent discussions about its future are any indication, its residents often wonder if their way of life is compatible with the rest of the country’s. No other state proudly trumpets the fact that a sitting president refuses to visit; none has argued so passionately for secession — a movement that surely embodies collective concern about whether the United States of America can live up to its good name. ... Read more