Fric Spruyt comes from a long line of people involved in public health, sustainability, agriculture, and support of local democracy. He has been involved with voter registration, neighborhood organizing, Town Meeting, and is a member of the Brattleboro Energy Committee.
BRATTLEBORO-For those of us who engage with our democratic process (and therefore can freely complain), competing concerns are everywhere. We have the luxury of being able to focus our attention on one or two pet peeves.
Not so for those who stepped up and successfully ran for public office, if they take the role seriously. They have the challenge of negotiating often valid, but seemingly incompatible demands on government, in public. It doesn’t look like fun.
Watching several successive Selectboards (and Town Meetings) at work has inspired a great appreciation for our system of governance, up to this point.
A recent meeting I attended was a master class in the different approaches to difficult issues that face us. There were those who had spent a lot of time looking at the issue from one or another perspective. Some would want to find a compromise between sometimes completely incompatible proposals. And at least one was truly trying to understand what we are up against, not just one or more of the symptoms.
In this case, the agenda item was the motel voucher program — in effect, the intersection of housing, mental illness, drug addiction, and likely other issues.
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These are real problems, with real impacts on both individuals and the community. That’s the elephant in the room (apologies for the metaphorical salad). That room is Brattleboro, a small place with many precious and delicate things that could be damaged, as in the proverbial china shop.
Whether we listen to the three blind men, each with a valid perspective and premature conclusion, or try to understand what we are really dealing with, satisfactory solutions are hard to come by.
We can do something that satisfies one constituency or another, regardless of whether it helps.
Not doing anything because the problem is beyond our capacity to solve seems tempting but clearly doesn’t satisfy anyone, regardless of its merits.
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Attempts at harm reduction, often on a one-to-one basis, is what we can do in the moment.
When I look at where we are and how we got here, I see a long list of choices that we made nationally that left us an unfortunate legacy.
Our impulses to sabotage ourselves as a nation didn’t start just a decade ago. We have just gotten much better at it.
Our “special military operation” in Vietnam was the crown jewel on our quixotic military response to the cultural competition with Russia. In the end, it was the inspiring principles of our founding — and the prosperity that resulted from a relatively functional democracy — that inspired many around the world to look to us as a role model, ultimately bringing down the Soviet Union.
What we did get out of our very expensive “excursion” into southeast Asia was a new and thriving “pharmaceutical” business, with supply chains that reached around the globe. We then were able to replace the fading Cold War with the war on drugs.
Then came the “War on (of?) Terror,” and now the war on comedians.
Each of these “wars” has left scars on our society and has taken away the resources that might otherwise have been used to help heal those suffering from the trauma of the past wars.
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Until we can wrestle our national government out of the hands of special interests, whether financial or ideological, we will be dealing with the fallout of this insanity.
It is in their interest that we squabble among ourselves over how to deal with the fallout, rather than look to the real source of the problem.
I expect we are going to be facing far-worse problems soon, at the rate things are going. The hard choices likely coming our way will make our current challenges with budgets and behavior look like a picnic.
The “good” news is that we have the option to come together now to make our community more resilient and prepared for whatever challenges come our way.
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These same impulses for self-induced injury are coming for our national (and by extension, global) food supply.
With deportation of some of our most productive workers and the effects of climate change, combined with the direct and indirect impact of conflicts around the world, farmers are facing huge challenges.
Without labor, fuel, or fertilizer, many farmers will go out of business.
We have the opportunity to support our local farmers, understanding that it’s not going to be easy. We need to resist the urge to blame them for the inevitable increase in food prices.
As with the local repercussions of our nationally self-inflicted drug addiction epidemic and our lack of mental healthcare, the challenges we face will not be solved easily.
If we cooperate, we will do much better than we might otherwise. Despite our best efforts, “better” still may not look all that great.
It is possible that we can avoid a collapse of our food system, but that’s going to take a miraculous turn around in several areas.
In the meantime, we might do well to plant gardens and build stronger communities.
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