by Kathleen Iselin
What is truth? With the reporting help of a fellow witness, I shall expose a sample of the kind of cynical deception the 99% routinely accept as being news.
To aid my expose’, first, in stark contrast to today’s “media”, the following is a true, accurate, honest account of what happened in Lyndon, VT on Sat. June 10, 2023:
We, a group of five Christians, gathered on the sidewalk in front of the Cobleigh Library with signs displaying quotes from the Bible, for traffic to see while passing by. It’s something we usually do anyway on weekends. This time, the only difference was that we chose the library-front sidewalk location to display our Biblical signage, because a 10 AM-12 PM poetry reading, part of “Pride Month”, was taking place in that building. Although having nothing against particular people involved, we do disapprove of Pride Month, because “Pride” forms a portion of the current multiple, multi-faceted attacks upon the traditional family. Yes, family. We consider it to be the basic defining unit of a free, decent society. Already, bizarre, absurd and maiming distortions of that time-honored unit are being used in a vast war on children to rob the young ones eventually away from every parent. That’s why we stood on the sidewalk quietly for two hours, the least we or any Christian could do, occasionally talking in low tones amongst ourselves or with the very sparse passers-by, not raising our voices at any time. We neither attended the reading, entered the library, nor generated the slightest noise or disruption.
Around 11:30 the great event seemed to have ended early, as a couple of people did come out from the library. One of them verbally snapped at us as she passed, while we remained silent the whole time. Then the poet leading the event, Toussaint St Negritude, came out from a side door of the building. I personally know Toussaint, a very fine artist, and have always tried to be protective of him. At this time I was excited at the prospect of offering him a new high-quality King James Bible within which I had placed a copy of the 8-page “left behind” letter I’d written to my family, and a tract or two about how to be saved through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. I approached him, stopping 20 feet away as I noticed he was busy in conversation with a woman there. As the two of them turned back toward the library side door, I was filled with amazing love, beautiful love. I called to Toussaint, offering him the Bible, then gently turned around and walked away, with the same love in my heart. Toussaint had replied, “No thanks”, to the bible.
A few days later, I mailed that bible with its inserted contents to a woman in her 40’s that I had known when she was a child, who long ago had gone into decades of severe drug addiction (during which time I lost track of her), but who is now a devout Christian, and is on fire for the Lord!
I keep entire constellations of fellow human beings in my soul, and one time years ago on the road I had put myself in considerable life-danger by rather ineffectually trying to keep a State Policeman from profiling Toussaint, who is dark-skinned.
But let’s get back to June 10th, 2023. Soon after the library demonstration, I quite coincidentally visited the thrift store, at around the same time Toussaint did. So we encountered each other there, and this was once more at the door of the building. Again, although surprised, I was very friendly, but Toussaint, taking offense at seeing me so soon this time, stringently demanded, repeating twice that I “keep far, far, away” from him. I gently responded, “OK, I’m not going to be pushy.”, and continued into the store.
The shocking thing is that based merely on the above events, by June 16th-17th, the Vermont Digger, and then after that non-local channels around the country, had terrorized internet and radio with a fabricated story evoking images of a mob (rather like the one in Sodom wanting to rape Lot’s friends), screamingly taunting Toussaint to come out of the library so that he could be lynched and shot with a gun.
To compare with the truth, now read, in part, the original infamous article about June 10th which was a spark kindling a firestorm of falseness. (Such firestorms are a phenomenon that has become so typical of our times they are obligatory. Media-mandated.) We quote, here in the following paragraphs, the “spark” June 15 Caledonian Record article which, with others, prompted special statements from Sanders, Welch and Balint denouncing Christians.
6/15 Caledonian Record article (the paper did publish a retraction of below article on June 20, but not before its original false story had spread across the nation):
“PROTESTERS DISRUPT LGBTQ+ EVENT AT LIBRARY” :
“Toussaint St. Negritude has been a poet exploring LGBTQ+ themes for approximately 40 years.
He never felt threatened, he said. Until now.
[The] event led by St. Negritude…halted midway through because a group gathered in front of the library…and called out St. Negritude by name…one of the librarians came upstairs and let us know these people were outside, that it appeared to be threatening, and they were closing the library,” St. Negritude said. Three attendees, who were white, left through the front door without incident while St. Negritude, who is black, was escorted by library staff out a side door.
There, he was confronted by a lone woman.
“They knew me because my name and my face were on the flyer. They were waiting for me,” he said. “The librarians felt it was too dangerous for me to leave through the front door. So they tried to escort me out the side door. …that’s when this protester started running towards me. With some hateful biblical sign.”
The woman shouted his name and had her hand in a bag. He feared it might be a gun… “Which completely freaked me out,” he said. “So the librarian and I ran back into the library. We waited for five or so minutes and went back out. The person was gone, and the librarian drove me to my car.”
Shaken, St. Negritude set off …He stopped in a Lyndon thrift shop… He said he was confronted again by the same lone woman.
“As I’m leaving the store, this same protester … had apparently followed me to the thrift store. Which definitely raised it up a notch,” he said. “I had to scream and yell at her, to get her to step away from me. Then I got in my car and left.”
Having spent most of the last 14 years in the Northeast Kingdom, St. Negritude has experienced discrimination in day-to-day life, most of it race-based.
“This is not something that I’m experiencing in Mississippi or Alabama or Texas. It’s something I’m experiencing here in Vermont,” he said.
St. Negritude, 63, said a community response was necessary to nip the problem in the bud.
“I don’t think these people are going to stop until they are stopped,” he said. “I don’t want to be the next murdered person. It’s absolutely frightening to have to say that.”
“There needs to be very direct, aggressive action,” he said. “Part of that will be holding these people accountable and being very public about ..‘This is it, this will not be tolerated any longer.’”
So there it is: In a fabrication-binge of media extremism, the Caledonian paper singles out and libels us five deeply hateful people for our gigantically quiet riot of insurrection against the wonderful “tolerance” mentioned at the very end of their hit-piece. Out of the five people, it most especially singles out me, Kathleen Iselin.
I have, in the fantasies of the media-demented public, now become a murder-minded racist stalker: a “LONE GUNWOMAN !!”. For, yes: the bible I lovingly offered to the poet Toussaint St Negritude, has been transformed by his real or his feigned fears, with the aid of journalistic tabloid enchantments, into an imagined gun! If only, instead, the glorious light of the gospel might bathe hearts, with many seeking Jesus, finding Him, and being saved.
This event and the lies that have been told about it, are a serious matter, but also an invitation for people to come together, hard as it may seem. To really grapple, in love, with world events while humbling ourselves, working together toward the truth, both/all sides, rather than continuing to worship self in that worst sin, PRIDE. (See the prophetic words of Ezekiel 16:49, 2 Timothy chapter 3 ; also Romans 1:16-32 that, like much in the bible, foresee our times KJV)
One cannot have real love or truth without God/Jesus. The shoe won’t fit.
The author is a longtime resident of the Northeast Kingdom.