This commentary is by Hannah Sorila of Brattleboro, a writer and community organizer who aims to align intention and impact in community safety and public policy.
If Brattleboro was seen as a community and not a business, the emergency would be that we have neighbors living outside, on our streets, because they do not have access to a safe and stable roof over their heads.
If Brattleboro was seen as a community and not a business, we would understand that the solution to homelessness is housing, the opposite of addiction is connection, and that accountability does not look like punishment, threats or harm, but rather responsibility, repair and support.
If Brattleboro were seen as a community and not a business, everyone in our community would be considered when we talk about safety, especially those who are the least safe. Even those who have caused harm deserve safety, too.
If Brattleboro was seen as a community instead of a business, multiple petitions with signatures of over 450 community members would influence the decisions at hand, and the alternatives offered would be taken seriously as ways to alleviate suffering and create a safer community for us all.
If Brattleboro was seen as a community instead of a business, we would prioritize life instead of commerce.
But, Brattleboro is just a business where shoppers downtown are entitled to feel no level of discomfort while seeing the suffering of their neighbors — in fact, let’s hire more police to tell them to suffer elsewhere … Brattleboro isn’t a good place for them to suffer out loud … Please find another business to disrupt, because Brattleboro is just a business with a community problem.
A business where elected officials, business owners, landlords and people who conflate comfort with (perceived) safety determine the everyday reality of some of the most genuine, kind-hearted individuals I’ve met in this town.
A business where decisions are based on people with the loudest voices and biggest fears, rather than the practitioners, service providers and experts doing this work everyday without a badge, uniform or bulletproof vest to keep them safe.
Where people speaking from a place of fear refuse to see that they, too, can lose their home and stability and become addicted. And instead of calling for more safety nets to catch us all through a robust ecosystem of abundant resources, they are calling to punish the most vulnerable among us. Instead, they are saying to the folks who are surviving unimaginable circumstances, “They can’t do that here.”
Where the most privileged get to call on their foot soldiers to tell people to behave better, to be more docile and to hide the pain in our community … so that they can shop without the discomfort of having to witness someone suffering because our tax dollars provide security guards of capital rather than homes and a soft place to land.
Where the people making the decisions are often told what decisions to make, they tend to limit their imaginations through either/or thinking. Either you feel unsafe downtown, or you feel safe. Either you want the police to bring safety, or you don’t want anything to change at all. Either we invest in the thing that has proven not to work and has been confirmed to cause tremendous harm to folks interacting with the police, or we have no other options.
(We have offered elected officials and town staff many creative options, they just have to open their minds and hearts to listen beyond their fear).
We have invited the Brattleboro Selectboard to reconsider these decisions through emails, 1:1 conversations, selectboard meetings, letters to the editor, creating proposals for alternative solutions, petitions, forcing a vote at Representative Town Meeting — and each time they turn away, comforting themselves on their thrones while funneling tax dollars into systemic and structural violence and harm that will one day hurt them, too.
Do better. Consider that if we prioritize housing people and increasing access to services, you will be safer, too. Safety is not a finite resource. It is an abundant, collective experience only possible when everyone’s needs are met.
We are NOT fighting against a safer community. We are aiming to align the intention of a safer community with the impact we all desire. We want us all to have a safety net to fall back on when our businesses close, our checks bounce, our homes burn down, our jobs lay us off, our cars crash, our bodies become disabled by long Covid and can no longer work, our basements flood, our lives change in an instant, and all of a sudden, we understand why the most effective solution to a homelessness and substance dependency problem are housing and connection.
How fortunate we are to not have to consider the experience of losing everything and needing our community to wrap us in a hug of support.
Brattleboro, I invite us to turn towards our community. To look each other in the eyes. To say, “I am scared of that becoming my reality, too,” and working together to ensure that living on the streets does not have to be the fate of any of our beloved community members and neighbors. There are a multitude of possibilities if we are courageous enough to dream.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Hannah Sorila: Brattleboro is a community, not a business.