Rebecca ParsonKonto zweryfikowane

The Quinault Treaty asserts the right of people who have lived here for centuries to fish on the land of their ancestors, rooted in a belief that mutual thriving only happens when resources and land are available to all of us.

As a priest and as a Christian, the Bible tells me of a God who feeds the hungry with manna from heaven, who delivers the command that we love one another. I serve a God who walked this earth freely healing and feeding poor and desperate people,

no matter who they were and no matter their status in the community. Jesus asserts our right to abundant life.

Perhaps the most controversial issue in this community is how we should deal with our prevalence of addiction. Grays Harbor County has one of the highest opioid overdose death rates in Washington State and the highest methamphetamine consumption in the country.

This, of course, is not particularly a homeless issue— it is the intergenerational reality of a former timber community and affects housed and unhoused people alike. Drugs became a source of income for many struggling people when the timber industry left this region,

as well as a form of self-medication for physical and emotional pain. Somehow, the city council and other community members seem to believe that asserting every person’s right to life is enabling addiction. I would encourage those who ascribe to this mindset

to do some serious investigation into the abundance of scientific research on healing from addiction and trauma. Isolating people and leaving them to die of exposure is a cruel response to addiction, one that is not supported by the Constitution, or the Bible, or science. [...]

research shows overwhelmingly that people can only heal when they have the care and support necessary to do so in their communities. Addiction is borne of hopelessness and despair— pain and survival.

For a community so preoccupied with the surface-level symptoms of addiction, I would point out that we currently have no detox facilities, very limited treatment options, and wait lists a mile long.

I could tell you literally hundreds of stories of men and women coming to me, desperate for help and healing, who were met with red tape and waiting lists. I could show you names on my arm of people who died while waiting for the treatment they so critically needed. [...]

We can choose to become an object lesson for future generations on how a small town can turn on its own and, in so doing, isolate and destroy itself with petty self-interest.

Or we can become a beacon of hope and healing by choosing to invest in the things that will raise us all up — meaningful employment, treatment, housing. We can choose to be a model to the world on how to heal and survive in post-industrial America.

We can love and protect each other or we can destroy each other. It is our choice."

-Excerpts from a statement by the Rev. Sarah Monroe of Chaplains on the Harbor https://www.facebook.com/ChaplainsontheHarbor/posts/2136184516496794 …

I've thought about this again and again since reading this statement and visiting Aberdeen again a couple weekends ago.

There are 16,000 people in Aberdeen. 1,000 of them are homeless.

There's a men's shelter and a women's shelter in Aberdeen. Boys over the age of 10 aren't allowed to stay with their mothers at the women's shelter. But there's no youth shelter.

When I was driving out of Aberdeen, a man was sitting crosslegged on a manhole cover in the middle of a busy intersection. Cars drove around him. Sweat poured down his face. He was silent.

Despair.