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Service & Solidarity Spotlight: Vermont’s Unions Respond to Flooding

First responders work on flood recovery in Vermont

Working people across the United States have stepped up to help out our friends, neighbors and communities during these trying times. In our Service & Solidarity Spotlight series, we'll showcase one of these stories every day. Here’s today’s story.

Vermont residents are again facing the reality of destruction on a massive scale. Roads are gone, cities and towns are flooded, and many residents remain cut off from the outside world. There are still serious dangers regarding the integrity of dams, and soon residents will face the problem of dwindling basic supplies like food and fuel. Vermonters have prevailed over such challenges before and will do so again.

Brave and heroic union members on the Department of Public Works and Agency of Transportation crews, utility workers, power plant workers, first responders, and hospital staff are working around the clock to make sure basic life-sustaining services continue to function, lives are saved, the power is kept on and roads are rebuilt.

But it will not just be by the hands of public servants that make recovery come to fruition. It will also be through the willful and collective action of other union members, other Vermonters, who are not regularly tasked with road work or other essential services during a crisis.

You can help today by making credit card contributions to the Union Community Fund at
go.aflcio.org/relief or by mail:
Union Community Fund
Note in the memo line: "Vermont Relief Efforts"
815 Black Lives Matter Plaza NW, Washington, DC 20006.