This commentary is by Morgan W. Brown, a resident of Montpelier.
Although I do not know why or what might have triggered it exactly, either yesterday or the day before while wide awake (not asleep, nor dreaming, whatsoever), my imagination seemed to get the better of me for some unknown reason and out of the blue began visually imagining that I was walking on the recreation path along the Winooski River between the transit center and confluence park in Montpelier at night, when out of nowhere, two young males — either in their late teens or early 20s — violently assaulted me, dousing me with a flammable liquid and igniting it, setting me on fire.
While engaged in doing this, obviously assuming I was someone living unhoused (aka homeless), among other things and including using various expletives, they kept calling me a useless and lazy bum and the like.
There was more, including being hospitalized as well as an investigation by police and so on as well.
This kept up for a while within my mind, sometimes continually looping or otherwise changing certain scenarios here and there, until I finally managed to focus on other things instead, yet the memory of it stuck within my mind.
Am I only sharing about this because these sort of horrible and tragic events have happened elsewhere and have been in the news from time to time, including somewhat recently?
This manifestation within my imagination might also be the result of a growing concern of mine over certain members of the public demonizing people living unhoused in the area, including particular posts having been posted on Front Porch Forum at times, as well as an email sent to city officials that had been published in excerpted form in the local community newspaper; which gives cause for one to dread that, potentially, such expressed opinions could lead some within our community to take it upon themselves to do more than merely verbally attack those living unhoused in the area and do so physically in one form or another.
Although one hopes not, neither does one assume something along these lines or other worst-case scenarios could not happen here either.
It is ironic that certain folks have such an unreasonable fear and even an outright hatred of people living unhoused, whether they know them or not; yet people living unhoused or on the margins have much more to fear and the reality of it plays out all too often, sometimes going unnoticed and even unreported or underreported — however, not when someone living unhoused is accused of having done something, even if seemingly minor in nature. End of rant.
