This commentary is by Jasper Brown. He is a member of Food Not Cops — a Burlington-based project that provides daily lunch, camping gear and basic necessities to the community members of the city, regardless of whether or not they are housed, using drugs or are in trouble with the law.
History repeats itself if we don’t learn from our own mistakes and the mistakes of others. We see it now, with folks tipping their hats towards fascism, not even 100 years after we fought to end the tyranny of such political “leaders.”
It is also present in how Montpelier has derived no lessons from other cities in its handling of encampments. As someone who was active in responding to the cruelty and sheer lack of humanity the so-called “progressive” members of Burlington had towards their unhoused neighbors a mere three years ago, all I can do is sigh and shake my head.
As one friend so eloquently put it: “How can we expect to solve issues like homelessness when care is not involved?”
Indeed, what kind of solution are we as a society peddling with these decisions, apart from sentencing fellow human beings to die where we cannot see them?
Just because they aren’t exhaling their last breaths in the doorways of downtown Montpelier doesn’t mean we aren’t complicit in their deaths. Or that our own mortality is not tied up in theirs.
I once read that everyone who’s less than a millionaire is only six degrees away from being out on the street … like the very people cities are trying to drive from the steps of their “thriving” businesses and “family-oriented” neighborhoods.
I dare you to look in the mirror and say that you aren’t scared of what your neighbors would do if you succumbed to addiction due to sheer despair. I dare you to say that, in the glassy, under-slept eyes of an unhoused community member, you don’t see yourself staring back.
Perhaps you avert your gaze, send thoughts and prayers. It’s what we’ve been taught to do: munch like complacent cows on the grass in front of us, told not to worry when the grass is gone.
Or, perhaps, given platitudes when the butcher comes to do their job, ushering us one-by-one into the wooden contraption that eventually leads to our slaughter.
We have the chance to do better, to do more to recognize the interconnected quality of the bonds we share with those around us — human, bovine, whatever. I’m afraid that the citizens of Montpelier, like the citizens of Burlington and other cities driven by the fears of the affluent, have missed their chance to exercise care and compassion.
It possibly has cost their ability to extend such a loving hand in the long run, leading to only more “problems” that “plague” the places we want to hold so dear in our hearts.
I dare you, away from your mirror this time, to shake the hand of someone you wouldn’t normally talk to. Perhaps, if your funds allow it, to buy them lunch. Honor the aliveness that flows through us all, not the hard kernels of hate that cause us to retreat and cast out those who remind us of what we fear most.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Jasper Brown: A recent history lesson.