A little less than a year ago, a friend sent me a video of a fight happening in City Hall Park. It was an Instagram video from user @burlington_looks_like_shxt.
Going through the account’s feed was definitely a shock. I saw videos of people actively shooting up heroin or defecating on the sidewalks of downtown Burlington, and countless photos documenting the homelessness and drug crisis in our city.
At the time, the page only had a few thousand followers. It now has over 35,000, with a link to purchase account merchandise.
Of course, it also has its infamous bio, “not here to make a difference,” which begs a two-part question: is this a necessary evil to expose the issues in our community? Or is it just a platform to dox a marginal population on the internet and make fun of them?
I follow the account myself, not to engage, but to observe the online discourse and mainstream attitudes toward marginal populations in Burlington.
I think the account shows a lot of what people don’t normally think of when they think of Burlington, Vermont—it shows the brutal reality of the situation.
Recently, Gov. Phil Scott vetoed a bill, H.72, introduced in 2023, that sought to create overdose prevention centers in order to reduce the amount of overdose-related deaths, according to the Vermont General Assembly.
The governor attached a statement with his veto, claiming that the bill would misallocate funds that should be for “other communities” according to a May 30 press release.
The language used by the @burlington_looks_like_shxt account owner, who remains anonymous, in the captions of these posts blatantly lacks humanity.
“Wish they all jumped in a dumpster and would let us take them to the dump. #worthlesshelplesshumans #canthelpiftheydontwanthelp” stated the user in the caption of a Sept. 29, 2023 post.
Listen, I think it is important for people to know what is actively going on in the community and how it affects everyday life: people get mugged, stalked, robbed and the sidewalks are littered with needles.
It does not take a hard look to notice these things.
However, this account has become a platform for hate. The account owner states they are “not here to make a difference;” however, they have actually increased the difficulty for people to agree on how to handle the growing problems in our city.
An Apr. 21, 2021 Vermont Legal Aid Bill placed moratoriums on evictions in the wake of COVID-19, limiting homelessness during the pandemic.
On June 15, 2021, the Governor lifted all state-mandated COVID-19 restrictions, including the moratoriums, according to a June 14, 2021 Vermont Landlord Association Memo.
The lifting of moratoriums led to many people being evicted by landlords from previously protected housing. The moratoriums, coupled with the higher unemployment rates during the pandemic, contributed to a rise in homelessness, according to a June 15 VTDigger article.
Make no mistake, I work on Church Street myself and I, too, have seen the rise in crime firsthand. However, many of these people have fallen victim to the cycle of drug use and genuinely need help from the city.
The Burlington Police Department was defunded in June 2020, according to a Feb. 24, 2023 Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy article. Despite this, the police are still the ones called for overdoses in the area. Once they were called for 11 overdoses in just 24 hours, according to a Sept. 8, 2023 NBC article.
Not only this, but homicide and gunfire rates have increased exponentially since its defunding, according to the same JLPP article.
Many police officers resigned after the resolution passed. There was a feeling of a lack of political support, according to a Dec. 19, 2021 NBC article.
The 2020 resolution, endorsed by the Burlington City Council, was meant to decrease the size of the police force slowly over the course of several years. However, the high political tensions between the police and the city’s infamous liberal politics led to a stark change in a very short period of time.
In the absence of law enforcement, there has been some effort regarding the rehabilitation of drug offenders.
Sarah George, the Chittenden County state attorney, created a plan called “Incentives for Success” in order to rehabilitate former and current drug offenders, according to a Jan. 24 Seven Days article.
This program concerns “low-level property crimes.” Participants in the program, who have been convicted of these crimes, will work with a case manager to solve personal problems that may be provoking the criminal behavior, according to the same Jan. 24 article.
With all this said, there is still ample work to be done. It would be irresponsible to ignore the very apparent drug and homelessness crisis in the city.
It is hard to see these issues, especially while we are masked from it on the hill of UVM. Many students are sold on the shiny image projected of Burlington. However, it only takes one journey down the hill to see the truth.
There is a lot of hesitancy toward how to deal with what we are seeing as part of a culture of being “politically correct” in an extremely liberal area such as Burlington.
At the end of the day though, I can’t agree that actively engaging with accounts like this is necessary, even if we do need to push past the fear of not being “politically correct.”
The @burlington_looks_like_shxt Instagram account is only a symptom of a systemic issue that has been going on for years. It reflects community frustrations of the homeless and drug crisis.
The account has invigorated tensions between communities and documented unconsenting subjects for videos that are posted for the purpose of inciting anger throughout the greater Burlington community.
The account encourages viewers to gawk and make fun of real people who are in active addiction and struggling. You should not follow suit.
It produces hateful rhetoric and riles up the community for the wrong reasons. If you agree with the account’s approach to local problems, remember you are not making a difference either.
