Pro-Refugee Mayoral Candidate From Vermont Talks Tonight At Pete’s Candy Store

Tonight at Pete’s Candy Store (709 Lorimer Street), James Hook will be hosting a fireside chat with recently defeated Rutland, Vermont mayoral candidate Christopher Louras. Louras is staunchly pro-refugee, and had proposed resettling 100 Syrian refugee families in Rutland. Voters seemingly took issue with that idea—just over 16,000 people live in the town, so adding 100 families would have been kind of a big deal—and Louras lost the election. He was the incumbent, seeking his sixth two-year term.

 

Tuesday, March 14, 7pm, $FREE!
Pete’s Candy Store | 709 Lorimer St., Williamsburg

From James Hook:

“So, Mayor Christopher Louras is Mayor no more! The embattled Mayor of Rutland, Vermont—whose ambitious plan to resettle up to 100 Syrian refugee families thrust him and his town into the national spotlight—have been ousted after 5 terms in office, in a clear repudiation of his policies. It was, according to Louras himself, “A good, old-fashioned drubbing.” He adds, “It’s not every day that a five-term incumbent—in ANY office—gets it taken to them the way I did.” At the heart of Louras’ job-losing predicament was his bold and pioneering plan to welcome refugee families in Rutland. Curiously, Louras—a Republican Gulf War vet—sold his aldermen on this plan not on any humanitarian basis, but on a strict economic argument: Rutland, with its unused urban housing and commercial stock, and an aging population, and several large-scale employers clamoring for more entry-level job seekers, provided a template for successful immigration in the 21st century that hearkens back to an earlier American model from the the mid-19th century.”