Vermont’s First Trans State Representative Is Fighting For Her Community
By Samantha Riedel | Posted: Sep 4, 2020
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Taylor Small is wasting no time in stepping into some pretty big shoes: at just 26 years old, she’s poised to become the first openly transgender woman in the history of Vermont to serve in its state legislature. After an upset in the Democratic State Representative primary on August 11, which saw Small outperform even incumbent Hal Colston by more than 4%, Small is virtually guaranteed to be sworn in, as a rash of canceled Republican state and local primaries in Vermont have left her and Colston running unopposed for their district’s two seats. Assuming all proceeds “normally” in this most bizarre of election years, Small will ride comfortably to Election Day victory on a cloud of enthusiastic endorsements, from retiring Rep. Diana González (who now serves as Small’s campaign treasurer) and Vermont’s first trans gubernatorial candidate Christine Hallquist to Bernie Sanders’s Our Revolution and the Victory Fund — and carry with her the spotlight, and scrutiny, that inevitably accompanies that acclaim.
If she’s intimidated by what’s to come, though, Small certainly doesn’t let it disrupt her unruffled demeanor. Speaking with them. by phone, Small laid out her vision for fixing the state’s pressing environmental concerns, what dealing with employment discrimination taught her about being systemically marginalized, and how being attacked by online hate speech helped her build queer community in rural Vermont.
First and foremost, tell me about your drag persona, Nikki Champagne! What kind of gal is she?
Nikki Champagne came to be back in 2014. Locally we have this wonderful organization, Outright Vermont, which creates and fosters safe and affirming environments for LGBTQ+ youth. One of the programs they do each year is called Vermont Drag Idol, understanding that there are youth performers out there that want to play with gender but that drag is typically limited to bar scenes or age-restricted areas. In 2014 I competed on a whim. I went against twelve competitors and I won, and so Nikki Champagne has existed ever since.
She’s very bubbly, effervescent, and really focused on creating community space. One belief I hold about Vermont is that since it’s such a rural state, it’s difficult for folks outside the urban center, the greater Burlington area, to find safe queer spaces to just celebrate our lives, or to have a space to be in community — especially because surprisingly, Vermont does not have a dedicated queer bar in the entire state. We’ve had a little kerfuffle [over a controversial new LGBTQ+ bar that has since closed] a few years ago, but besides that, it’s been 11 years. So we — being myself and [fellow drag queen] Emoji Nightmare — put on shows in the area for folks to come together, as well as the ever-controversial Drag Queen Story Hour.
What was your reaction to the backlash against Drag Queen Story Hour?
Emoji Nightmare lives out in Cambridge, rural Vermont, and wanted to have the first one at her local library. So the event was posted on an email forum, where we immediately started getting this pushback, the age-old claims accusing us of pedophilia or indoctrination. And my response to that is “all publicity is good publicity,” right? It gets the word out, and if there’s a protest, that means cameras! So at least my look for the day will be appreciated. But Emoji’s reaction was quite different, of course, being in that community and knowing the folks who were saying these things about her. She was really taken aback.
But there was no one pushing back against it in person. It was all online, these folks had all these horrible things to say, but weren’t showing up in person. There was one time we had like five people pray outside. But that is the only “protest” that we have experienced in all the time we’ve been doing this. [We were also] thinking, again, how we can continue to better our community. So each horrible, nasty comment that came in, we would publicize it on social media, raise money for Outright Vermont, and say “please donate in this person’s name.” And we raised over $1200 just signal boosting horrible things people said about us.
Did that contribute in any major way to you deciding to get into politics?
In deciding to run, it was actually [Vermont State Representative] Diana Gonzalez — she was the one who called and said “I really think you should run.” I was humbled because I’d always expected as a trans person, as a queer person, that my political involvement would always be in the form of activism and grassroots organizing. I didn’t necessarily see myself serving in the statehouse. So to hear someone else say “you should step into this role,” and especially saying “you with marginalized identities should step into this role and lift your voice and the voice of your community up,” was really validating and the ultimate reason I started to run.
You’ve spoken before about experiencing employment discrimination before starting at the Pride Center of Vermont as a volunteer and eventually becoming their Director of Health & Wellness. What was it like going from that hostile situation to working on specifically LGBTQIA health issues?
It was a really difficult time, and I ultimately left my position prior because of the lack of respect for pronouns and for having my identity invalidated by the team I was working in. It was a constant struggle in understanding that in doing mental health work, my emphasis was on the clients I was working with and my identity wasn’t important in those meetings, but where my identity is and will always be important is in those interactions with the team and working together with others. So not having myself fully seen in that space meant that I didn’t feel safe staying there.
Once I left, when I presented as my authentic self [in job applications]... every single time the interviews would come up, we’d get through the full process, and at the end I would be denied the position. I’m one to ask for feedback, see how I can do better — and they would say “your resume is phenomenal, you did a great interview, we just found someone who is a better fit.” Consistently in queer communities we hear this coded language, which in those moments I hear “we’re not set up to support a trans employee, or we’re not willing to put that work in now.”
I don’t see my experience of unemployment as a detriment or a regret in my life, but rather this piece that really illuminated for me what it’s like to be a trans person here in the state of Vermont. Beyond just personal interactions and being harassed in public and having horrible things said — just in the sense of accessing a medical provider, and employment, and how difficult those hurdles are. There’s so much work that still needs to be done, which is really what fuels my education work, which is a piece of my directorship — working with the same or similar organizations that had rejected me earlier on, and providing that training on how to actually hire someone like myself. Like, “hey, if you’d hired me three years ago, I could also be in a leadership position in your organization. But you missed out.”
One of the biggest planks of your platform is addressing climate change and transitioning Vermont to clean energy sources. What’s the biggest roadblock to accomplishing that right now, and what’s your plan to get past it?
Vermont itself is a leader in the area when it comes to renewable energy and moving in the right direction, but it’s very much focused on this stepwise program and not understanding the greater impacts of the environmental injustices that are happening. So I think one [action to take] is really signing onto a Green New Deal and moving in that direction, understanding the intersections that come up there. And the way that we do that, and the biggest barrier I think, is the funding piece. How do we move in that direction? And where I think our legislature is starting to move to, and needs to continue [toward], is green money. I talk about green money in the sense of marijuana sales. We have marijuana legalization for recreational use, but we have not legalized the sale of marijuana and are currently working on releasing incarcerated folks who have misdemeanor or low-level marijuana [charges]. Once we’re able to sell and tax marijuana we have an abundance of money that will be coming in, and that not only helps with the bill that COVID has created, but also in updating our infrastructure to support all Vermonters.
What do you say to ecofascists who claim we need population control to fight climate change?
It is wild to think that folks believe that people in our community should die because of lack of care or access to care. That just bewilders me because the base of my platform is truly making sure everyone in the community is supported and heard. So often folks blame it on “populations” that are causing these drastic changes, yet I would say it’s not the individuals but the larger corporations and the focus on funding non-renewable resources like coal and oil that are having these drastic impacts in our climate. These corporations know they are polluting our water and land and are continuing to do so, and then turning around and blaming it on, say, a teenager who litters.
Even thinking locally, we have a beautiful Lake Champlain here in Vermont in the Burlington area, and we have a septic system currently set up that is dumping raw sewage overflow into our lakes. We need to re-envision [our environmental policies], because truly, we are polluting our water, we know that we’re doing it, and simply just don’t care.
You’ve corresponded with and received support from Danica Roem and former VT gubernatorial candidate Christine Hallquist, and have generally continued their strategy of downplaying your gender on the campaign trail in favor of talking about other issues like climate change and public health. Has it personally been a challenge for you to thread that needle, in making a broader appeal to voters while also establishing yourself as someone who will actively fight for queer rights?
[T]he number one identifier that comes out is “Taylor Small, Director of Health & Wellness program, Pride Center of Vermont” — it’s very clear that I’m going to be supporting and uplifting my community and seeing the inequities that are already present for LGBTQ Vermonters. But a piece I like to highlight in my campaign is that it’s not just focused on LGBTQ Vermonters. I’m talking about all marginalized people here in the state. Those most impacted by the bills and laws we’re creating in the statehouse that are consistently going unheard or unseen, and [who] need voices like myself: young, working class, faced employment discrimination, faced issues in transportation and not being able to access medical care, and knowing the true experience of Vermonters and bringing that into legislation.
[I know] we have so much more to do, especially when I think of the lack of women or people of color in general who are running this year in the state, and recognizing that it wasn’t too long ago we had a candidate — a woman of color — running for office and she wasn’t able to take her position because she was receiving death threats purely because of her identity, even though she was elected by the people in her community. [Editor’s note: Small is referring to former Representative Kiah Morris, who did serve but resigned during her reelection campaign due to white supremacist threats against her and her family.] So yes, this is a historic run, and I see this as a way of creating a pathway for others who don’t see themselves reflected in the legislature to also step up and serve in the future.
