Second in a series.

Vermonters love to talk about supporting local businesses. We love to talk about how we are leaders in human services, and we read about all the good providers are doing in articles complete with pictures of smiling faces and people holding large checks.

Reality for the people providers serve differs greatly from what we allow ourselves to see. As a young human services worker, I often equate it to being asleep. We dream of an ideal, less painful world we’d rather be living in, lying to ourselves about how tough things can get.

I have stood among crowds of angry people, a gas mask at my side, a first aid kit on my belt. I have placed myself beside those of us who have suffered enough, who have been awake too long. And yet, not a single day has gone by that I wish I could close my eyes to the reality we find among the unhoused under bridges, in the cries of single mothers struggling to find their way, in the angry and uncertain voices of my fellow queer and trans Americans.

It is true that Vermont has a plethora of nonprofits, many with beautiful mission statements. Too often, they get hijacked by a system of expectations set by grant providers. Funders whose bureaucrats demand cold, hard data about “cases” to prove their money is well spent. These people never set foot in the places where those funds really need to go to. People are not “cases.” We are not numbers. Aggregated data will not tell you the story of a life in crises or a life that’s being transformed.

I have seen both sides of the human services field, and can confidently say that when the work of these organizations is reduced to scrambling to quantify the number of interactions and other data required for grants, the people paid in those organizations lose sight of the needs of the people they’re supposed to serve. They focus more on the system than our neighbors, and that system is at least as broken as some of the people it’s supposed to serve. Broken human service systems will almost always either cover up its fragility or lash out from that fragility to defend itself. The system and its conspirators keep telling the marginalized to keep climbing that ladder out that’s supposed to get them out of hell, even though that ladder is on fire. And while it isn’t fair to us, it is our responsibility to go down and lift those people out.

While this may seem like a bleak banner to fight beneath, I find more hope in the trenches with the disenfranchised than anywhere else. In a way, they are the least fragile. People who are resilient and care about the others suffering around them, the members of their community. They use whatever strength, skills, and resources to help others, not because some grant requires them to or it pays a salary, but because it’s the right thing to do. These people are wide awake, and focused on the needs of the marginalized.

Why don’t we do that? Let’s all unify and focus on helping neighbors who are slipping through the cracks of this broken system. The multiple marginalized communities of Vermont fight every day just to survive. After you march and demonstrate with other privileged folks, go connect and create relationships with the marginalized. Demonstrate that you care. They will recognize authentic generosity and selflessness when they see it, and that might get us back on track to “freedom and unity.”

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This week’s writer is Fable Hawthorne, the facilitator of Queerly Beloved, an LGBTQIA2S+ support group, and a Midd Pride member.