Susan Clark Shares Voice and Perspective in Statewide Democracy, Community, and Culture Conversations

Susan Clark, an associate with The Creative Discourse Group Associate is lending her voice and perspective to statewide conversations about democracy, community, and cultural divisions around class.

In November 2022, Susan was a guest on Vermont Edition along with Anne Sosin, a public health researcher at Dartmouth College to share a conversation with host Connor Cyrus called What Class Are You? How Vermonters think about class and overcoming its divisions. The episode delved into topics raised by listeners and the recent series, What Class Are You? produced by Vermont Public reporter, Erica Heilman.  

Susan’s concluding words in the episode provide much wisdom for how Vermot can approach ways to address divisions in values and decision making: “Let’s bring [class and place based identity] into the conversations so that we can not make some of the same mistakes we’ve made in the past in terms of policy making and in terms of neighbor making…I really would echo what Anne said about rehumanizing this and in particular in our policy discussions when we talk about…whether it’s environmental regulations or school consolidations we have seen that we have tripped up ourselves in our policy making sometimes by assuming that the people in the room are the ones with the best answers. So often what we need to be doing is expanding the discussion and inviting folks in who might not necessarily choose to be policy makers but who are living the reality of Vermont.”

Throughout 2022 Susan also collaborated with a team of cartoonists, educators, illustrators, and designers to create Freedom and Unity: A Graphic Guide to Civics and Democracy in Vermont. The Vermont Secretary of State office and Vermont Humanities nonprofit organization called upon the Center for Cartoon Studies to present information about the “past, present, and promise of democracy and civics” in a way that can offer education about civic engagement in an accessible storytelling format.

20,000 copies of Freedom and Unity are being distributed across the state and single copies can be ordered directly from the Norwich Bookstore. Copies can also be downloaded or printed on the Center for Cartoon Studies website. 

Seven Days featured a story about creating the graphic guide in November 2022.

Susan is an educator, town moderator in Middlesex, and co-author of Slow Democracy: Rediscovering Community, Bringing Decision Making Back Home. She is also the recipient of the Vermont Secretary of State’s Enduring Democracy Award. 

As an associate with The Creative Discourse Group, Susan has been active in work with various projects including The Working Communities Challenge Grant.