Neighbor Matters: How We (un)Learn to Care
*Published on October 8, 2026 as part of Green Mountain Justice’s “Neighbor Matters” series in partnership with the Addison Independent. Each month a different neighbor writes about what we owe each other, and what happens when we pay it. This month’s writer is Dr. Margaret Miles.*
I spend a significant amount of time during my daily life thinking about two distinct classrooms: my son’s preschool classroom and my social work classroom where I teach undergraduates. Interestingly, both classrooms spend a considerable amount of time discussing the idea of caring.
Social work students learn about caring constantly. How we care for our most marginalized, vulnerable, and oppressed members of society is at the core of the profession. Last semester, one of my brilliant students, Pajua Gamba, said something in class that has stuck with me ever since: “Part of the professionalization of social work is about how social workers are *allowed* to care.” Pajua’s emphasis on the word *allowed* stopped me in my tracks. Is caring something we need permission to do?
My son and his preschool classmates would unabashedly say, “No.” Spend five minutes in a preschool classroom and you will see flagrant caring in action. If a classmate is absent from school that day, my son and his friends sing “We Wish You Well.” In sweet harmony the amazing teachers direct the children to think about that classmate while singing: “We wish you well, we wish you well, all through the day today, we wish you well!” The sick student is not ignored; their challenge is acknowledged and their absence is felt. Often my son comes home from school with a laundry list of things that happened to him or his friends and how they were cared for. So-and-so got a papercut, but a teacher gave them a band-aid. Two friends were arguing about a toy, but they figured out a system to share. My son often has a difficult time saying good-bye to me when I drop him off in the mornings. Countless times various friends have come up to him, offering him support and words of encouragement. My son and his friends are proximate to one another: for their triumphs, but their hardships too. The challenges they experience are acknowledged outright and the caring response is swift.
I wish I could say the same for our community at large. Instead, a great amount of time, effort, and money is being spent in our communities to not care. Vermont in particular is actively making itself a harder and more inhospitable place to be unhoused or live in poverty. In my childhood hometown of Montpelier, the Scott administration recently installed loud bird noise devices at the Pavilion Building to discourage people experiencing homelessness from sleeping on the porches, despite there being only 18 year-round shelter beds for the 61 people counted living outdoors in the city. The installation of these hostile devices is a troubling example of criminalizing and invisibilizing homelessness rather than addressing its structural causes. Using an intentionally unpleasant environment to push vulnerable people elsewhere while offering them few realistic alternatives is horrifying. I can’t help but think that if there were a preschool song about the situation it would go, “We don’t wish you well, we don’t wish you well, please find another place to exist so we can pretend we’re doing well!”
In my current home in Middlebury, the landscape is no better. Over the summer, large boulders were strategically placed in an encampment area under the Cross Street bridge, making it unhospitable to tents or people. The boulders send a clear message: “Your suffering cannot take up residence here. Find somewhere else to feel pain.” I shudder to think how much our town spent on this “landscaping.” Surely those funds could have gone towards an actual solution embedded in caring. And I should clarify: caring about all our neighbors, not our town’s image or sense of comfort.
These sorts of actions infuriate me. And when I feel this acute anger, I turn to caring. How can I care wholeheartedly without seeking permission? To me, that sort of caring means being present with neighbors. Not thinking of homelessness and poverty as strictly policy issues, but as realities impacting my neighbors. And I turn to my son and his friends and their innate sense of what it means to care for one another. We are born caring. We are socialized not to care. And so, I invite you to tap into your inner child and care without permission. The next time you drive or walk by a neighbor who is clearly struggling, look them in the eye. Maybe even stop and wish them well. Because care and connection are at the core of our collective liberation.
*Margaret is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Vermont State University, a proud mother of a caring preschooler, and a neighbor in the Green Mountain Justice ecosystem.*
**Margaret’s words are an invitation: care without permission. One way to answer it is to help a neighbor who is struggling right now. Gifts to our [Neighbors Matter campaign](https://donate.mazloweb.com/donate/V1xDcV1Zm5XsTaz7XDD9zV) go directly to neighbors facing homelessness and poverty in Addison County, for groceries, gas, a night of shelter, or a step toward housing. Any amount helps. A monthly gift helps most.*
*[Give to Neighbors Matter](https://donate.mazloweb.com/donate/V1xDcV1Zm5XsTaz7XDD9zV)*
*Green Mountain Justice is a registered 501(c)(3) Vermont nonprofit (EIN 39-4582526). Donations are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.*
*Care. Connect. Collaborate.*
