When Mia Schultz became president of the Rutland branch of the NAACP in December 2020, she became one of Vermont’s most visible and important racial justice advocates. The NAACP was founded in 1909 and is the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the U.S. with more than 2,200 branches.

Schultz hails from Arizona and moved to Bennington in 2016. She is the first Black woman to chair the Bennington Democratic Party and serves as one of three commissioners on Vermont’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Among the issues that Schultz and the NAACP are tackling is overpolicing.

“Vermont is not exempt from this culture,” she wrote in an op-ed for the Bennington Banner. “Black adults enter Vermont correctional facilities at more than seven times the rate of white adults. Compared to white drivers, Black and Latinx drivers are four times more likely to be pulled over, and nearly three times more likely to be searched. By contrast, they are half as likely to be found with contraband, which means the over-stopping and over-searching is simply because of their skin color.”

"What is happening to really ensure that black lives matter?" Schultz asked. "Are you changing laws and policies that will actually affect black lives when it comes to policing? What are you doing to really affect the lives of marginalized people in our laws and systems and legal avenues to ensure that they're protected?"

Schultz told The Vermont Conversation that she is given hope by the “people who are now out there starting community conversations and their own initiatives in their towns, gathering people, having those difficult conversations.”

“Having an interpersonal relationship with people and being able to move them into action, that means other people are moved. That is the most profound thing,” she said.