I moved to Greenfield in 2004. I came from suburban Boston, as a hard-working black female physician with a troubled teen who needed time away from the city’s drugs and violence, and racism. I had attended Mount Holyoke College in the late 1970s, and always planned to retire, to Somewhere in the Happy Valley.
What I have witnessed – as homeless individuals confront Greenfield on its lack of true community connections – has broken my heart.
We were once a community where someone would stop for a woman slowly moving across the street on a walker. Now we are one where an angry white man slashing at homeless tents and people is tolerated. We were once a community discussing whether or not a nativity scene is appropriate on a public green. Now we are treating people on the Common with less care that we treat the excrement found there (dog NOT human, by the way; despite rumors to the contrary)!
Greenfield, the closest thing I could find to Pleasantville USA 15 years ago, has fallen from grace. Now we are a very accurate reflection at the local level of our national and international disease of white privilege/male privilege/and class privilege.
My personal attempts to speak openly about what is going on here in Franklin County – the poorest county in a state with almost twice the number of homeless folks as the national average – has too often been met with a change of subject, a glazed look about the eyes, or a dismissive “tut tut SOMEONE should do SOMETHING.”
Truth be told: it took me less than five minutes on line to find the 2014 report done on homelessness in Franklin County and what we need to do about it.
The intellectual work has already been done. Now, the heart needs to be engaged, to follow through with the financial resources needed.
I feel sad to be living among such frozen people, when it comes to true empathy with other human beings.
Those homeless families may now be out of our sight. But they are still among us.
Opeyemi Parham, M.D.
moving to Northfield for the winter