Hi, I’m Allen Gilbert, author of Equal Is Equal, Fair Is Fair.
An interest in notions of accountability, justice, and fairness has animated my work over forty years as a journalist, a teacher, and a civil liberties advocate. I started the research for Equal Is Equal, Fair Is Fair after retiring as executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, a job I had begun in 2004. Twelve years later, I felt a need to untangle a lifetime of questions about the concept of equity — the notion that we’re all created equal — and about government’s role in ensuring we’re treated fairly.
Vermonters have grappled with issues of fairness and equity throughout the state’s history. In Equal Is Equal, Fair Is Fair, I focus specifically on three topics, rooted in these issues, that have dominated Vermont’s politics during the last twenty-five years: school funding, same-sex marriage, and health care. Vermont has made landmark advances in two of the three while gaining impressive, though less than satisfying, results in the third. The inability to revamp health care has been disappointing. The reality is that there is often a wide gulf between believing in equity and acting to make the belief real.
Click here to link to David Goodman’s interview of me for his Vermont Conversation series on VTDigger.org
Click the Book Overview link below if you’d like to explore what’s inside my book.