Knowles Wentworth came to Brattleboro 18 years ago to study peace building at the School for International Training and never left. He works as a police liaison with Brattleboro Police Department and lives in the community with his wife and two kids. His views here are his own "and do not represent the views of my employer or any affiliated organization," he writes.
BRATTLEBORO-I feel compelled to speak to this growing trend of both highlighting victimhood and underscoring a perceived us-versus-them. I see both of these as corrosive contributors to community and cultural divisiveness. But more importantly, it doesn't support and serve anyone.
This headline - "In Brattleboro, a clean-up trashes belongings of unhoused people" - certainly got my attention. Perhaps that was the intent. It certainly paints a picture of a careless cleanup operation that disregards the belongings of the unhoused population in Brattleboro.
As someone embedded in the social service scene in Brattleboro, I'd like to emphasize other angles on this situation instead of pitting the Town of Brattleboro against the folks who live in the encampments in our community.
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I can't possibly list all the agencies doing the work that supports our community and its members, but we do it together.
Groundworks, Interaction, the Women's Freedom Center, HCRS (Health Care and Rehabilitation Services), Pathways, Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, the Brattleboro Retreat, the Brattleboro Police Department, and the Fire Department with its EMS: these are just a few of the agencies working and collaborating on very complex issues that may lead folks to become unhoused. (Contrary to popular belief, it's not just a housing shortage. Many folks on the streets today could not sustain most housing options if they were given to them tomorrow).
Although our agencies have different missions, philosophies, practices, and the like, we are all guided by a desire/motivation to support and/or serve others.
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What do Brattleboro's social service providers know about the people we support and serve in the encampments and on the streets of Brattleboro? We know that many of these folks who sleep outside, or have enduring addictions, and/or live in severe poverty often have one common denominator: trauma.
Our understanding of trauma and its ubiquity today has come much more into focus in the last 20 years. What we know now about trauma is that it isn't an event or circumstance per se. It's what happens in the body when an experience overwhelms our capacity to cope with, respond to, or integrate that experience.
Along with trauma is shame, a very complex underlying emotion that is a powerful driver for the folks we interface with. Shame is one of those very painful and deep beliefs about ourselves that we can go to profound lengths to avoid feeling.
People on the front lines in Brattleboro take up the social service torch to support others with these very complex and deep issues - issues that are not "fixed," "solved," or easily understood. It is a massive undertaking.
Denigrating the Town of Brattleboro, its Department of Public Works, and the Fire Department while highlighting the victimization of the people they serve doesn't serve anyone. There is no victim and there is no perpetrator here. There are only folks trying their best and, within their current capacities, to do very challenging work.
This goes for both the people in the encampments and on the street and those offering support to them.
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If we are not victims, where does the onus of responsibility for our healing and recovery lie? With each one of us.
Each of us, with all our trauma, all the tragedies we've faced, the depression, the loneliness, the grief, the lack of connections and village mindedness, the kids taken into the custody of the Department for Children and Families (DCF), the suicides of our friends and family, the overdoses, the yearning to belong, the great challenges of living in the world today. It's all there and it's no easy path for anyone to travel.
While navigating our own busy lives, which very often includes our own trauma, our social service providers in Brattleboro live each day to accompany those out on these bleak frontiers; to support those who face the whole catastrophe each day.
We are here to accompany, bear witness, support, and serve. But we can't do the work for anyone.
As Assistant Chief Charles Keir III said, "[I don't know] what the solution is to local homelessness." But I can tell you one thing with unequivocal certainty: that, despite all the challenges, barriers, and obstacles to recovery, healing, and housing, the path and journey can be travelled only by those who take the steps. Folks need support, and that's why we do this work - to be there for others taking these steps, or those who wish or long to.
But ultimately, despite all the support in the world, the path out of the woods has to be on our own two feet! Blaming others for our situation, be it the town, DCF, our parents, or the "system" keeps us squarely in an identity as a victim, which puts the focus on "them" without eliciting the necessary curiosity to look inward.
Incidentally, this is where trauma and, in particular, shame come in. It is far easier, and a natural defense of ours, to see ourselves as the victim of something or someone than it is to look at the very powerful and painful experience of shame.
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No one should be judged or criticized for this completely understandable adaptation to protect ourselves from this deep pain. And, at the same time, if victimhood is highlighted, encouraged, and given sustenance, we are likely to remain stuck in this pattern, forever circling and rationalizing our plight.
I've seen this tragic and poignant cycle repeatedly over the years. Many folks never surrender this stance, and they take it to their graves.
And, perhaps needless to say, who am I to comment on how one should live their life? At the same time, it can still be heartbreaking to watch folks deeply struggle to turn inward - where in my opinion, real freedom lives.
Let us continue to seek out injustice. It is out there. Take a close look at us as social service providers. We are human, and we make the same mistakes we all make; some are egregious for sure, and we should be held accountable.
In these divisive times however, let's ask whether or not our journalism serves the people. Does a piece of writing bring us together or divide us as a community? Does it contribute to our tendency to see "us versus them"? Does it make our victimhood more robust and therefore more intractable to both address and face?
I know journalism, at least in part, is also a means to serve others - by way of loyalty to its citizens. I support this journalistic endeavor to serve our community. It is a worthy pursuit.
Our work on the front lines as social service folks, both supporting and serving others, has deepened us, sustained us, broken us open, challenged us, and helped us learn to love our community and its members for many years.
This Voices Response was submitted to The Commons.
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