Putney Free Press

01/10/2026

What Happens When “Get Out” Is Treated as a Threat

When authority mistakes human behavior for threat

The My Lai Massacre (March 16, 1968, Vietnam War) was driven in part by a flawed assumption: U.S. forces believed that civilians loyal to South Vietnam would leave the village when ordered, and that anyone who remained would be North Vietnamese fighters. In reality, it wasn’t that clean or logical. Many villagers didn’t understand the orders, couldn’t leave, or were afraid to abandon their homes. Ordinary human hesitation was misread as enemy intent — with catastrophic consequences. The tragedy wasn’t only about war; it was about authority making assumptions about compliance that didn’t match human behavior.

We see echoes of that reasoning today.

In Minneapolis, Renee Good (January 7, 2026) was ordered by federal agents to get out of her car during a large, armed operation. Video shows confusion, divided attention, and an officer with his gun already drawn. She was driving away when she was shot. Officials say she “weaponized her vehicle,” but the footage does not clearly show intent to harm. Just before the shooting, she is heard saying: “That’s fine, dude — I’m not mad at you.”

In Putney, Vermont, Scott Garvey (July 7, 2025) did not come out of his apartment when police ordered him to do so. Vermont State Police entered the apartment under a warrant, forced his bedroom door open, and shot him inside the room. No weapon was found. According to family statements, police did not allow his sister to speak with him, despite her being present and willing to help de-escalate.

These events are not the same in scale or context — but they share a dangerous logic:

Authority issues a command.
Assumptions are made about how people “should” respond.
Non-compliance or confusion is treated as proof of threat.
Lethal force follows.

People often ask whether someone would have been “better off” complying — not running, not staying, not hesitating. But that question assumes people make calm, strategic choices in moments of fear. In reality, some people freeze, some stay put, some try to appease, and some try to create distance. Those are not moral decisions; they are nervous-system responses. What looks like resistance from the outside can feel like self-preservation from the inside. Treating those human reactions as intent is where things go wrong.

From 1968 to 2026 — have we learned anything?

Real safety requires understanding people, not just enforcing compliance.

01/08/2026

Lessons from Act 46 as Vermont Weighs Act 73 for Schools and Taxpayers

Act 46 was presented to Vermont towns as a way to ease staffing challenges by consolidating districts and sharing resources, with the promise of broader hiring pools and greater flexibility. Financial pressure was applied through incentives and penalties, making participation formally voluntary but practically difficult to refuse.

In practice, the law centralized hiring authority without changing the underlying overhead pressures facing small rural schools, including declining enrollment, long travel distances, and a limited labor pool. While some shared staffing occurred, many schools lost the ability to respond quickly to local shortages. The result was not a solution to staffing challenges, but a shift in who controls the response, leaving communities with fewer tools even as costs continued to rise.

Given Windham County’s experience under Act 46, would residents prefer to continue moving toward more centralized decision-making under Act 73, or would there be interest in restoring some local school board authority so towns have a stronger voice in staffing, budgeting, and priorities?

I’m genuinely interested in hearing how others have experienced these changes and what balance between local voice and statewide coordination they think works best.

11/29/2025

Vermont considers shifting Act 250 appeals from court system - https://www.wcax.com/2025/11/28/vermont-considers-shifting-act-250-appeals-court-system/

11/03/2025

How the media works.

If someone is quick to believe a lie about you without ever giving you a chance to speak your side of the story, they were never truly a friend. They were simply looking for a reason to be against you, and the lie just gave them permission.

09/15/2025

When Violence Speaks in Memes: Tyler Robinson’s case reveals a deeper pattern of immaturity and alienation beyond partisan blame.

Tyler Robinson at 22 years old, still carried the voice of a teenager. His bullet casings were scratched not with hardened slogans, but with internet jokes: “OwO what’s this?”, arrow combos from a video game, and taunts like “If you read this you are gay LMAO.” Even as he carried out a deadly act, he spoke in the language of memes and gaming, less a manifesto than a grotesque performance for an imagined online audience.

Robinson’s story is unsettling, not because it points cleanly to one ideology, but because it doesn’t. Family members say he thought Charlie Kirk was “spreading hate,” yet his online life was filled with furry memes and Discord jokes. What emerges is not a hardened partisan soldier but a young man suspended between adolescence and adulthood, whose online world blurred irony, trolling, and conviction.

He is not the first young man whose violence reflects this prolonged adolescence. From Christchurch to Buffalo to Uvalde, the same archetype keeps surfacing: young men, often isolated, immersed in digital spaces where violence and irony intermingle. They stage their crimes like content — a manifesto laced with memes, a livestream styled like a first-person shooter, a casing scratched with a joke. Their politics are inconsistent, borrowed from the left, the right, or simply from internet culture. What unites them is not party loyalty but immaturity and alienation, transformed into spectacle.

Adults reach for the easiest explanation after every tragedy: blame the other side. In Robinson’s case, Trump immediately pointed to “radical left lunatics,” while others suggested ties to far-right circles. Citizens, commentators, and social media voices followed suit, hurling partisan insults at one another. The truth — that these acts grow out of immaturity, isolation, and online culture — is harder to face than the comfort of a ready-made narrative.

Gaming and meme spaces don’t cause shootings, but they do provide the grammar. Violence is normalized, performance is rewarded, irony masks intention. For a vulnerable young man, that language can become the only one he knows. Robinson’s “OwO” casing was not an original thought; it was a recycled meme, deployed in the most chilling of ways.

The tragedy is not just his act, but our reaction. Adults who should know better collapse grief into partisan arguments, trading blame across party lines. It may feel easier to assign the story to left or right, but doing so misses the real warning: that a generation of young men are confusing performance with purpose, and that our own immaturity in responding ensures the cycle continues.

DL

09/01/2025

08/28/2025

08/21/2025

… and Brattleboro

07/22/2025

The family of a man shot and killed by state police in Putney is speaking out as they search for answers. Our Adam Sullivan reports.