Thankful
As we anticipate Thanksgiving this week, we are thankful for our many blessings, including local efforts to make sure everyone in our community can enjoy a Thanksgiving meal. What a gift it is that so many work so hard to provide for all.
We are also thankful for the tireless work of Brenda Seigel, of End Homelessness Vermont, for her unrelenting efforts to draw attention to the inhumane cruelty of Vermont’s current policies on unsheltered folks. The state’s lack of a coherent policy on the voucher program coupled with impetuous, unthought-out, illogical plans for temporary shelters has left many vulnerable Vermonters out in the cold – literally.
Where is our humanity and our empathy? And why is it okay for two temporary shelters (to be open for a limited amount of time), including one at the Waterbury Armory, to cost more per day than the voucher program?
Why subject people already facing the most significant challenges of all to the vagaries of such an incoherent state policy? Did COVID and months of secure housing via the voucher program not show us (and our policymakers and legislators) that stable housing goes a long way in terms of helping people with the issues that lead to homelessness?
We are very thankful for the courage of ATF-Vermont members for standing up to the state’s health care behemoth, the University of Vermont Medical Center, and challenging the health care giant’s cavalier plans to close rural health care centers, dialysis clinics, our local clinics and mental health units.
And we are especially thankful and grateful for our local health care workers and the care they provide us. How painful and humbling it was to see them advocating for us, standing outside in the cold November rain last week for a honk and wave event, gathering support and fellow protesters, as passersby honked their horns.
Our health care providers shouldn’t have to do that. They should have been inside eating lunch and preparing for their next patients. Thank you to these folks (and community members who joined them in the rain on Thursday) for caring so much.
Happy Thanksgiving and think snow!
