I spent Friday night in a pitiful emotional coil of grief. The world we make for ourselves is unbelievably cruel and inhumane and I had been holding on to my tether of professionalism through a 10-hour work day at the end of a slow and lonesome week. We were watching The Archies in the basement theater to unwind. It was so colorful, happily nostalgic, perfectly sweet and innocent. It was too much. It overturned my precise balance of control — all my feelings about downtown business recovery, fundraising stress, homelessness in winter, the decimation of Palestine, unfulfilled, well-meaning promises, and the prospect of another weekend in flood alert. I cried so much I awoke dehydrated.
I haven't read a book or written a post in a month, and my mental health has suffered because of it. I need this newsletter just as much as you do. Thanks for being a reader. By opening this email, you are keeping at least one person sane. 🙋🏻♀️Thank you. 💖 Here’s some of what is pinned to my sleeve.
The inequities of emergency support
By now, you’ve probably read Auditi Guha’s report on KSherpa’s attempts to access federal and state funding that was available for flood-damaged businesses and homes. “Available” is relative, we find out. It turns out that obvious flood damage is not enough to qualify one for help. It turns out that despite professional assistance from legal and business support orgs, the forms are too complex. It turns out that an applicant could be denied if not deemed American enough.
Yet. The fundraising continues. The #VermontStrong license plates are apparently not sold out–there’s a big digital push for the gift giving season, even though the Vermont Community Foundation raised over $12M for flood relief, and some millions more were raised by other efforts. Yet. Somehow these independent funding activities haven’t filled all the gaps that federal and state programs have created—at least not in KSherpa’s case.
As if to paint the humiliation of inadequacy more fully, ACCD, the state agency responsible for administering the BEGAP program, happily announced the $1.3M they have distributed to downtown Montpelier businesses but can’t (or won’t) support any businesses run by people of color (I asked in a comment on LinkedIn—no reply yet). I’m going to surmise that they did not care enough to assist KSherpa. Discrimination enacted in policy is what is meant by the term “systemic racism”.
OK so perhaps the affinity group VT Professionals of Color would be more interested in helping KSherpa? But it doesn't appear so. They have so much money left over, they are begging folks to come and take it. If they have provided assistance to KSherpa, it’s not meaningful enough to get them back open when most of the businesses around them—white-owned businesses—are operational.1 How embarrassing that even the group that is supposed to help you won’t (or can’t I don’t know).
I know these matters are not as simple as I make them out to be. But honestly, how hard is it to write a check? For the time being, I’m getting used to the new normal that is bereft of lamb vindaloo and veggie pakora. 😿
Political amnesty and personal freedom
Someone I know only a little was granted political amnesty this week, and I am overcome. That any person has to spend years proving that their life is worth protecting is mind-boggling to me, but this is what colonization, geo-politics and the after-effects of war require.
While I am not privy to their specific details, the news brought about tears of complicated joy. My own family’s story did not require an application for amnesty, but it did require eight years of petitioning–first for my father to naturalize, then for him to sponsor his own son to come join us in America. I was a teenager when my older brother and uncle were permitted to join us. So naturally, I was a self-centered brat who tried to teach them English while also wanting to be left very much alone. Only now that I’m grown do I understand what an ordeal reunification is.
This was brought home so profoundly a couple years ago when I watched, then rewatched on repeat, Disney’s Raya. I had wanted to write about it then, but I didn’t have this newsletter and I didn’t have the words. I watched the movie enough to numb myself to the visceral reminders of war, migration, separation, loneliness, and desperation so deeply embedded in the Southeast Asian diasporic experience. At the end of the movie (spoiler: happy ending ahead), everyone gets reunited with their loved ones. This reunification, the first time I watched it, broke me.
This was the ideal ending that we all deserve, that we all had hoped for. But some of us get lost in our travels. Some of us become other people. Some of us die before learning the rest of us are alive. Some of us have no graves and exist in memory only. While my family is one of the lucky ones—our family was reunited—we will never fully heal.
I’m thankful that with this recent news, another family will get to be together again. They will get to have a bank account, with a legit job, and own property and all the things. There will be more love and happiness in this world.
Overwintering humans
I’m still traumatized by the movie The Snowpiercer. I streamed on Netflix several years ago, but I still can’t seem to shake it. The story brilliantly captures how I think about systemic inequities: the lowest classes are kept at the “tail” end of the train while the most privileged and elite are up towards the front of the train. Everything in between is designed to maintain the status quo, which includes perpetrating atrocities in the name of the benevolent provider. It’s pretty sick.
What’s also pretty sick is that this weekend’s projected snowfall (1” per hour Sunday into Monday) presents another life risk for folks who are without shelter. Humans are not designed to survive in this weather without protection. And yet. Here we are not protecting them. Except of course for the one person who will spend another winter trying.
Yesterday I learned of a person living on a fire escape downtown who is known to neighbors and law enforcement. This person has substance use disorder and is not prioritizing housing, which makes it difficult to help them. And on an individual level, it’s hard to simply go out and offer someone a room or a meal, given the randomness of what might transpire.
I have no solutions though I have dallied with the fantasy of placing tiny homes on the statehouse lawn—one of the most accessible public greens out there. We could probably fit a tiny village there. Expanding on that, more tiny homes, trailers or what have you, on the state parking lots that have been empty because of remote work. This would be similar to what is being installed at the former Elks Club in Montpelier.
PTSD and the psychological effects of climate change
The National Weather Service’s Burlington, VT office issued a statewide flood watch for this weekend. It’s been changed to heavy snow as of late Saturday, but the psychological burden of this notification has already been felt. Many of Montpelier’s businesses have survived the 2008 recession, the 2011 flood, the three-year drought of the COVID-19 pandemic, and this July’s floods. It’s a lot to maintain on top of the perpetual threat of big box stores, online retailers and rampant inflation. Being a small business owner in central Vermont has many challenges.
It’s been a lot. If you’re shopping locally this holiday season (and yes, you should, even if it’s online), practice extreme kindness, please.
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KSherpa here is used as the example, since it had been profiled in the news. We have to assume that their story is representative of others in Vermont. Namaste, another Indian food establishment on Main Street, also has yet to open. Some Montpelier businesses that are owned by people of color are operational.