Lilah Krugman
ACORN

Lilah Krugman is the Programs and Outreach Coordinator for ACORN (Addison County Relocalization Network), a non-profit based in Middlebury committed to revitalizing “the health of our land, our local economy and our local communities so they can provide sustainable sources of food, water, energy, employment and capital while promoting conservation and a healthy environment.” Lilah engaged during the 2024 legislative season in support of the NOFA Food Access Program Funding Budget Request ($478,500). Her supportive testimony, given in March 2024, was her first in an activist role. Lilah professes to have been intimidated by the legislative and policy process leading up to her jump into the statehouse in March 2024 at Small Farm Action Day. However, she left Small Farm Action Day feeling empowered, confident, and surprisingly more familiar and comfortable navigating the committee rooms than she imagined!

To hear more about Lilah’s first-time activist experience in 2024, please listen to the audio clip below:

To read the edited highlights of Lilah’s interview, see below :

Tell us a little bit about yourself!
My name is Lila Lila Krugman. I'm 23 years old. I live in Burlington and I work for the organization, ACORN, that's the Addison County Relocalization Network based in Middlebury and I am their Programs and Outreach Coordinator.

What has led you to become engaged in policy and advocacy, especially in your position as an ACORN employee?
I think my interest in the food system has always followed the line of policy and governmental work. In college, I took Professor Terry Bradshaw's agricultural policy and ethics class and I first learned about the farm bill, and my mind was really blown. This bipartisan, ginormous governing document can have so much impact on the daily lives of people around us, both farmers and folks trying to access food schools. There's so much encompassed under that bill. But I have to say I find the policy world super incomprehensible. I did not do well in civics, nor my 10th grade US government class, or even some of the parts in Terry Rogers agriculture policy. And ethics class. Like legislative words, bill numbers, even how a bill becomes a law - this stuff just does not connect well with me. My work with the food system is based more on person to person connection and farming. I love growing food. So, though I was really drawn to the policy side of things, ultimately I ended up taking this position at ACORN where, through outreach, I am doing more of that personal connection and more on- the-ground work. But I was really, really thrilled when I heard about Small Farm Action Day. And honestly just keeping up with Rural Vermont and NOFA through the newsletters and the Bill Tracker through Rural Vermont has been super helpful to me, because I do still see like the biggest change occurring through those gears. Built from the ground up. You need folks doing that, like boots on the ground or you need folks in the State House. Need folks above the State House in the Big day in Washington DC. So yeah, Small Farm Action Day was kind of my first attempt in my position to do something like that. But I was you know, a lot of my position in an outreach role is just like talking to people and like kind of hyping up our programs and telling people what we do and spreading the word and making connections that you never know where they're gonna go. So it was something that felt familiar to me. Going to a space I've never been before and talking to people I've never talked to before and talking about something that I'm really passionate about, which is for the pharmacy program. And the final connecting piece was that like I mentioned in my testimony, we didn't get funding that we were expecting for our program. And I was just feeling really like down and angry that something that is so important to so many families in Addison County is so like, uncertain it's so on resilient when we don't get that $60,000 in grant money that we were expecting. Okay, now, we don't know if 10 families aren't gonna get it. We don't know. 20 families aren't gonna get it. And just Yeah, I was really feeling down about the fragility of nonprofit work. And it was deeply inspiring to hear that NOFA like, had the tools to go to the legislature and say, Hey, this is fragile. And this is so important, and why don't we do something about it? Why don't we get more money that goes to these programs, so that they don't have to? Just kind of like ride the waves of whether their projects get funded?

Please describe any barriers of entry to the policy realm you experienced and how you overcame these.
The main reduction of barrier to entry was just the friendliness of the Small Farm Action Day. I've worked with NOFA I've never worked with Rural Vermont, but ACORN and Rural Vermont used to work closely together. So that kind of felt like the first step. To me was just like getting myself in that room. And seeing how y'all were doing it.
After I had signed up was when we didn't receive the NOFA grant funding, and that was when I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, yeah, I have something that I'm deeply passionate about that I can talk about, and that needs to be talked about and like I have the right people to kind of guide me’… Maddie was really helpful in helping me prepare my testimony and giving me the exact language that I was supposed to use. I can speak so passionately about the Farmacy program and most of our programs, but I wasn't sure how to, like, ask for that money.
So having two organizations that I trust would not lead me astray was the biggest and the best way to overcome that barrier because I could bring the passion and y'all could bring the verbiage.