A year ago, I was getting ready to let go of all of this—you know, spend my short remaining time on earth doing something other than wondering if Matthew’s wife was ever going to get her ass in gear.

And then I read POVERTY, BY AMERICA, by Matthew Desmond back in April, and believed that the reaction I felt to it was an innate call to action, an assignment for this weird in-between time in life, a good deed.

This place I found myself in suited me for several reasons. Here was my chance to share an idea that was as much a critique of the exploitative industry of cannabis as it was an anti-capitalistic rejection of systematic poverty.

I would try my best to write clearly and perhaps convince a few like-minded people to join me.

In suggesting to use 100% of the profits from dirty cannabis to help the suffering poor, I was shining a light on two extremes—and, by localizing it, I could try to shock others into action, make poverty abolitionists of us all, and help our neighbors.

If Littleton worked to abolish poverty within its zip code, our town (I deeply hoped) might serve as an example to other communities with their own select boards eager to hand out these “licenses to print money.”

I stood before our Select Board on April 24, 2023, and at the 37:54 mark, asked the Select Board to open a window for applications in the event the special permit lapses.

Gary wasn’t there. He was not the chair at the time; Matthew was.

On August 14th, at the 2:07:05 mark, I spoke before our Select Board about ending poverty in Littleton.

Gary was there, seated in the chair’s chair.

On August 23rd, I had a brief conversation with Gary, who, as I started to go into detail about my plan to end poverty by going after Matthew’s wife’s unused license and began to offer him one-line summations of each of the first three “dispatches” I’d written thus far for POT TWIST, Gary sounded, to me, already well apprised of my plan.

Which is why I was truly stunned on Monday evening, after a troubling six-second pause, to hear, in response to my question, “Do I have your support?” at the 58:11 mark—Gary say this:

“I’m not going to comment on your business. I don’t know anything about your business. I haven’t seen a presentation.”

Let’s take a look at these three statements. First:

1. I’m not going to comment on your business.

Ah, why the hell not?

Who does it hurt for a leader of our town to “comment”?

Gary didn’t even offer an empty platitude. Instead, he moved quickly into this claim:

2. I don’t know anything about your business.

If this is true, this means that Gary, aka, the chair of the Select Board, has no knowledge of a citizen in town who wants to end poverty and no recollection of seeing that same citizen appear before his board at the meeting that he chaired on August 14th nor any memory of our phone call on the 23rd.

We all better hope Gary’s statement isn’t true because we all should want the chair of the Select Board to be paying enough attention to know something about my business since my “business” is ending poverty for Littletonians.

To be fair though, I’ll concede that Gary’s third statement might have been made in furtherance of that hard-to-swallow I-know-nothing claim:

3. I haven’t seen a presentation.

Well, I guess that all depends on one’s idea of what counts as a presentation.

To me, it really feels like what I’ve been doing publicly for the last many, many months—and daily for the last 34 days—is a very comprehensive presentation.

I feel like I’ve been super clear: Get the license, open the shop, give the money away to impoverished Littletonians.

The rest is bureaucratic red tape and paperwork.

It’s easy to say yes.

I know it, and our town leadership knows it too.

What’s the end game?

Abolish poverty in 01460.

As for the rest of it, I’m just as curious as you all are to see how this turns out.

With love,

Jenna