VSEA Retiree Writes Maine Governor To Tell Him She Won’t Set Foot In State Again Until He Stops Being Anti-Union

VSEA retiree and longtime Bennington activist Carolyn Hickok says she’s been contacted by the Associated Press to respond to a letter she sent the Governor of Maine after he decided to dismantle a mural dedicated to Maine’s labor force.

Longtime VSEA Activist, now retiree, Carolyn Hickok had enough a few months ago after learning that Maine’s Governor was dismantling an 11-panel  mural at the State’s Department of Labor dedicated to celebrating the work of Maine public employees.

So outraged by the action was Hickok that she decided to fire a personal letter off to Maine’s Governor, telling him she and her family would not be setting foot again in Maine until his actions against public employees stopped. She added that she wouldn’t be visiting any states currently trying to balance their budgets on the backs of state employees.

Hickok didn’t think much more about her letter until just recently she received a call out of the blue from an Associated Press reporter asking her about her letter to the Maine Governor. She didn’t know how the reporter ended up with her letter, but "he wanted to confirm that I wrote it, why I wrote it and did I still feel the same way.  I told him yes I did and I also told him how I felt about states attacking labor." 

The reporter then pressed Hickok for reasons she would visit Maine to begin with, trying to negate any possible claims she was not a frequent visitor to Maine. Hickok mentioned visiting Maine in their RV many times and dropped the names of several off-the-beaten-path places that only people familiar with Maine would know. 

Way to go Carolyn! Not only were you proactive about writing the Governor, but once your story hits the AP wires, Maine state employees will know even more how much their Vermont brothers and sisters care about them and their future. That can only help VSEA members down the road, especially if things get as ugly again here in Vermont as they did in the past couple of years. 

We’ll keep our eyes open for the story and post it when it publishes!