BRATTLEBORO-I feel unsafe when I see a white man with a gun.
I do not lobby for gun control. I don't want to take away my neighbors' guns, no matter their gender or race. I do not pester the Selectboard to ban guns in town. I think that would be pretty rude of me.
But I do feel unsafe when I see a white man with a gun! The sight scares me. My heart rate goes up, and I have a bad day. Worse still if they're wearing camo. Can't help it. I just have too many bad memories of wannabe cowboys in my hometown who'd rather run over antiwar protesters in their pickup trucks, or brandish a gun at a kid on their lawn, than actually talk to anybody.
I also feel pretty unsafe when I see a person in a police uniform. Can't help it. They also activate my stresses from an older time, when I was a young person in the big city and some of the NYPD had nothing better to do than hurt my friends for being gay and angry.
You will not see me lobbying to fire all the police in our town, either.
It sucks to feel unsafe! It's horrible to have to go into Brown & Roberts and buy a can of mace to get a sliver of your autonomy back. It's awful to be saving up for shooting lessons just so you can regain a little comfort around guns and get used to them when they're not pointed at you. Budgeting for therapy isn't easy either. It is damn hard work to live with feeling unsafe.
So what do we do? Do we pass a finger-wagging Acceptable Conduct Ordinance and increase everybody's taxes by 22% to fund police expansion so they can arrest as many people as possible? I expect that'll make a lot more people homeless, which will run them afoul of the ordinance.
So for many, it's even odds whether you're spending all your money on property taxes and feeling safe but broke, or you're out on the street and unsafe for a whole new mess of reasons.
Here's a question for everybody feeling unsafe: is there anything that connects you with people and makes you feel safer? I'm seeing evening events at the library and 118 Elliot, yoga classes at the Heart Rose Club, activities at the Boys and Girls Club. What can we do to get people to these and get them back home?
I feel safer with more people around, more eyes on the street, more bystanders to clock a confrontation. I think most people do. Can we organize a town ride-share, more frequent bus lines, any amount of carpooling? Get more people on the MicroMOO? Start building group escorts into event organizing?
I'm going to make a habit of asking, "Want a walk to your car?" and "Wanna go together?" a lot more. I know Vermonters are pretty used to going it alone, but we can all use a little backup sometimes.
Eli Coughlin-Galbraith
Brattleboro
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