Everyone is aware and saddened by the recent murder on Elliot St. It was after this incident that
the Brattleboro Police Department began "the crackdown". It appears as though the police's answer to the problems which caused the murder is to ticket loiterers, skateboarders, and those playing music on the streets. It is my understanding in being threatened with a ticket costing me $100 is that I am allowed to sit and talk with my friends in areas I would like to refer to as relocation camps. These relocation camps are segregated to Pliny Park and the other public parks of Brattleboro. It baffles me that the police as well as the community supporting their efforts of "cleaning the streets" think that they can rid themselves of problems by putting them somewhere else.

The murder on Elliot Street was because of deals made involving cocaine, not sitting down on the streets, and certainly not playing music or skateboarding. What does this massive relocation of the various cultures of the street community actually do to improve the safety of Brattleboro? I imagine Pliny Park stuffed with musicians, drug dealers, skateboarders, travelers, homeless people, and people getting off work or on their day off just wanting to sit and talk. I also wonder then how the Thai Bamboo Restaurant located practically on top of Pliny would like this new addition?

On Friday morning the 3rd of July, a scarecrow resembling that of the various stoop dwellers was placed on a stoop on Elliot St. The scarecrow held a sign reading "keep your dollars, I want change". This stoop kid puppet, being considered trash, will probably have been thrown away by the end of the day. Is that what we plan on doing to the kids and adults who "litter" their own communities' streets in our attempts to create a safe environment?

A few nights ago I was out on Elliot Street talking with friends as usual when a fight broke out on the street. Cops were there immediately breaking it up by telling everyone they couldn't be there. I went to the park to escape the bad vibes and found that the fight had been forced to
relocate to the park as well.

I left and headed back to Elliot where a young man who I recognized as someone I had seen hanging out at Harmony Lot approached us carrying a long bamboo stick he had found earlier. The completely intoxicated young man excited by our interest in his stick began to apply his imagination to playing with his stick. He waived it in a phallic manner, then pretended we were trying to steal it from him while yelling at us "Try and steal my f$%#ing stick and I’ll kill you". All of this said with the truest jest. We played along. My friends and I applied our imagination to the stick and found various games that impressed the young man very much and drew the attention of some of his friends. We all laughed and for a moment we were allowed an escape from the trouble that still hung in the air of the street. When we were done playing the young man and his friends, though stumbling to the ground drunk, chased off in different directions, a few on a mission to find some more drugs, and one yelling at a man passing went off in a chase.

Obviously a moment of peace was made when we all had a fun activity to do together. I offer as a possibility to the Brattleboro community a solution that bans us together as opposed to letting the law come in and separate us. This strategy of tossing the "street trash" away doesn't do anything but aggravate and displace the problem. These are our neighbors, our friends, the very structure of what makes our community. This coming Tuesday July 7th at 6.15pm there will be a special sort of Selectboard meeting. Everyone is given 5 minutes to have there say about what
they want to talk about. I think it wise that the community of Brattleboro attends this meeting.
We can either have laws forced upon us, or we can collectively come up with a way of understanding the problems we face and find our own solutions.