When Rights Become a Death Sentence

A response to Madeline Till’s New York Times essay, “Why Is My Son Being Left to Die on the Streets?” (January 28, 2026)

Madeline Till is a psychotherapist. She adopted a son named Abraham. Bright kid. Star student. Scholarship to the University of Michigan.

Then schizophrenia arrived.

Now Abi drifts between parking garages and homeless shelters. He’s been to emergency rooms more than twenty times in two years. Each time, doctors administer just enough medication to label him “stable.” Then they discharge him back to the streets. Sometimes without shoes. Sometimes without a jacket.

As one psychiatrist told his mother: her son may “die with his rights on.”

The System That Looks Away

Till’s essay in the Times is devastating. Not because it’s unfamiliar. Because it’s so achingly common.

We see it every day in Vermont. Neighbors cycling through emergency rooms. Families desperate for help. Systems that were designed to protect individual autonomy but have become mechanisms of abandonment.

HIPAA rules prevent doctors from talking to families. Courts issue summonses to people who can’t organize their own thoughts. Police shrug. Social workers follow scripts. Hospitals push people out the door with prescriptions they can’t fill and appointments they can’t keep.

This isn’t protection. This is organized neglect.

The Angels With the Least Power

Here’s what struck me most in Till’s piece. When she describes who actually helps her son, it’s not the professionals. It’s not the systems.

It’s immigrant shop owners. People with the least institutional power offering food and clothing. Expressing dismay that America treats mental illness so poorly. Telling her to send Abi back to Ethiopia where he’d get better support.

The irony cuts deep. We adopted this child believing America would keep him safe. Instead, our systems release him into danger.

Those shop owners understand something our mental health system has forgotten. Care is relational. It happens person to person. Face to face. Over time.

What Relational Ministry Looks Like

At Green Mountain Justice, we call this proximity-based ministry. It’s not about programs. It’s about presence.

When we work with neighbors experiencing homelessness or mental health crises, we don’t start with intake forms and diagnostic criteria. We start with a name. A story. A relationship.

Our Neighbor Care Network isn’t a bureaucracy. It’s a web of real connections. People who know each other. Who show up. Who stay.

This doesn’t replace psychiatric care. Nothing replaces appropriate treatment for serious mental illness. But treatment without relationship is just another revolving door.

The Question Till Is Really Asking

Till writes that she wants schizophrenia treated with the same urgency as cancer. She wants physicians empowered to pursue real care. Social workers who engage beyond scripts. Discharge plans that lift people up instead of pushing them out.

She’s asking for something simple and revolutionary: treat my son’s life as though it’s worth saving.

That’s not a policy question. That’s a moral question.

And it’s one we each get to answer. Not with legislation. With our lives.

What We Can Do

If you’re reading this in Addison County, you don’t have to wait for systems to change.

You can learn a neighbor’s name. You can show up at a shelter. You can offer a coat, a meal, a moment of genuine attention.

You can join our Neighbor Care Network. We’ll train you in trauma-responsive practices. We’ll connect you with neighbors who need exactly what you have to offer: your presence.

Because here’s what I’ve learned after years of this work. The opposite of homelessness isn’t housing. The opposite of homelessness is belonging.

And belonging isn’t something systems provide. It’s something communities create. One relationship at a time.

Read Madeline Till’s full essay: Why Is My Son Being Left to Die on the Streets? (New York Times, January 28, 2026)

To learn more about Green Mountain Justice and our Neighbor Care Network, visit greenmountainjustice.org or contact us directly.

Tom Morgan is the Founder and Director of Green Mountain Justice, a Unitarian Universalist community justice ministry serving marginalized neighbors across Vermont. He is one of two statewide shelter administrators for Vermont Interfaith Action’s Extreme Cold Weather Shelter Program.