I feel the need to address the blatant ageism in Darryl Benjamin’s column on the heartbreak of moving to Florida.
I am sorry, but not surprised, to read of the hateful experiences he has had from his neighbors and strangers. His theory that the rage-filled conservatism is because of the number of old people in Florida is spurious at best and hateful and harmful at worst.
I am an old person who happens to live in Vermont. Most of my friends are old people. I would like to remind Mr. Benjamin that the liberal state of Vermont is, like Florida, an aging state. We are full of elders, who protested the Vietnam war, who have been crying about climate change since the 1970s, started Earth Day to bring attention to our Mother Earth and the harm we are doing to her, and lobbied for the clean air and clean water acts.
We mourn of the assassinations of both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and stood outside in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter protests. We graciously accept and love the LGBTQ community, which many of us are members of and worshipped with the first openly gay bishop.
We are horrified at the attempts at censorship in our libraries in our schools. We love our free-range, hormone-free egg and our organic milk. We support local farmers. We read The New York Times and The Washington Post, and perhaps even Mother Jones. We not only listen to Vermont Public but we are sustaining members.
It is not only the elderly in Florida that are impacted by “poor diet, lack of exercise, spotty health care at obscene cost, combined with a soupçon of existential grief.” Mr. Benjamin, step back from your horrible experiences and find another theory that does not denigrate and scapegoat the elderly.
Norma Willingham
Brattleboro