Hannah Sorila is a writer and community organizer who aims to align intention and impact in community safety and public policy.
BRATTLEBORO-If Brattleboro were 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 were seen as a community and not a business, we would understand that the solution to homelessness is housing, and the solution to substance dependency are resources that prevent deaths and provide supportive pathways into community and recovery.
If Brattleboro were seen as a community instead of a business, we would know that 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 were seen as a community instead of a business, the safety of the folks without housing would be a higher priority than the comfort of folks shopping downtown for pleasure.
If Brattleboro were seen as a community and not a business, our elected officials would listen to their constituents - whom they were elected to represent - and make decisions to meet the needs of our entire community, not just the owning class.
If Brattleboro were seen as a community instead of a business, multiple petitions with signatures of more than 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 were seen as a community instead of a business, we would prioritize life instead of commerce.
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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.
Where decisions are based on people with the loudest voices and biggest fears, rather than the practitioners, service providers, and experts doing this work every day 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, become addicted.
Where, instead of calling for more safety nets to catch us all through a robust ecosystem of abundant resources, people 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, and being told what decisions to make, often 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.
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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 Selectboard to reconsider these decisions through emails, one-on-one conversations, meetings, letters to the editor, proposals for alternative solutions, petitions, and 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 that is possible only 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 is 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 toward our community. To look each other in the eyes. To say, "I am scared of that becoming my reality, too," and to work 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.
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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