Windsor Diaries Chapter 1

(This was the first version of my blog, talking myself through whether or not I can change this town.

I've since given up, and I'm leaving the first chance I get.)

Biography

To be honest, I really didn't have much of a choice in moving here.

Basically I moved to Windsor, Colorado in Spring 2021 because it was the best option for me. I'd come out as trans around 2020, which put my parents on the verge of disowning me, which they eventually did.

Anyway, the awkward part was that I didn't have much money to leave my family. Plus I had no ability to work because I needed time to process the past.

But then I met a person online, who I had never met or talked to before, and he offered to let me stay in his house for a very low price: cooking in exchange for rent. One zoom call later, I bought a ticket from Los Angeles. A month later, I landed in Denver, got picked up, and headed to Windsor for a chance at some peace and quiet.

Hopefully, I'll be able to get a software engineering job soon. If my math is right, I'll no longer be in debt by the end of 2024. After my bottom surgery at the end of 2025, I won't have as much daily physical pain. By the end of 2026, I'll have enough money to actually choose where I want to live.

At the time of writing, I'm still not sure if I'll end up choosing to stay or deciding to go. Really, it all depends on what I can do here.

Can I get this town to welcome the poor, can I get this town to welcome minorities?

Fortunate Son

So, like - have you ever been at a party or something and someone says something that's kind of messed up, but nobody else decides to point it out?

Sometimes, that's what being a minority is like on NextDoor for Windsor, Colorado. I can say something pretty tame like "Hey uh, this local law can be traced back to segregation and Jim Crow, we should probably do something about that" And one of the responses will be like, "Blah blah blah how would you like it if I moved to Asia and told everyone there how to live?"

In the business, we call that a microaggression. On NextDoor, it gets 13 heart reacts from other locals.

I could tell them that I was actually born in America. But I'm pretty sure they wouldn't care.

A Random Walk Down Ohio

So one time I accidentally ended up in Ohio and decided to spend a day or two in Columbus. I think I was checking out the statues in front of a state government building when I saw a plaque on a bronze soldier.

The plaque said something like, "we honor the Ohio veterans of the Philippine insurrection."

The uh, the fucking Philippine Insurrection?

America was very clearly the bad guy in that whole thing! This wasn't like Kosovo. We literally threw Filipinos into concentration camps just because they were fighting for independence from… us! There was attempted genocide!

Anyway, I'm pretty sure if I went on NextDoor for Columbus, Ohio and made a post about how we should probably fix that statue, I'd get the same ol' "blah blah blah if you don't like our town so much, just move" spiel that I get on Windsor.

Skeletons In The Closet

So Windsor, Colorado isn't like Columbus, Ohio. I'm ninety percent sure that there's no statue of any war criminals in this town. But, you know, we do have a little thing called exclusionary zoning.

Some people really like single-family homes. They don't like seeing homes near them that are different from that.

In fact, they'll go so far as to ban apartments in half this town! [todo: add link to zoning map from city]

So we call this exclusionary zoning, and a lot of locals really, really like it. I'm sure it sucks to find out that that whole thing has its roots in ethnic segregation.

Like, imagine finding out that mint chocolate chip ice cream was racist. You'd be like, "oh man, but i really like mint chocolate chip ice cream!"

Still, accidentally supporting a bad thing doesn't make you a bad person. But getting both those points across is tricky.

Here's a book that goes more into this called The Color of Law. If the Clearview Library doesn't have it, the Amazon link is here!

Seriously, It's Modern Segregation

To be a good resident and a good citizen, it's good to learn about the good and the bad of our history.

And we can start with a simple question: What happened to racial segregation when racial segregation was banned?

We know that the reason it existed in the first place was because some people wanted racial segregation. And we know that if someone really believes in something, they're not going to give it up so easily even when it's banned.

Sure, the Supreme Court made it illegal to ban Blacks from neighborhoods. They basically said, "you can't make a law that says Blacks can't live here".

And of course, there were people who still wanted to keep them out. They found a way to do that without breaking the law: through class segregation.

"It's not racist if they're poor!" was the sentiment of this: if a town or a neighborhood could make it hard for poor people to live there, then by extension it would be harder for racial minorities to live there.

And so, some neighborhoods got to work. They banned apartments. They banned townhomes. They banned duplexes. They required huge lots for building single-family homes. They made single-family homes the only legal type of housing there.

So there's a good reason why single-family zoning is called exclusionary zoning! Because it excludes anyone who can't afford a single-family home!

It's Not Your Fault

Dear reader, we were all born into a society, molded and crafted by imperfect men. I wouldn't blame anyone for taking however long they needed to process that fact.

We can't and shouldn't force ourselves to digest a book, no matter how good it is. It'll associate the ideas in that book with trauma and pain, when really it could be associated with the pleasantness and joy you get from discovering a better path in life.

This is why I write this blog - because you can walk away from it whenever you want. This isn't a typical K-12 school, where you get in trouble for tuning out or leaving the classroom.

There are no truancy laws for my blog, and there is no punishment for never reading my blog again.

If you find my content painful - that's okay. You can stay away from my blog for as long as you'd like, even if it's forever.

Do You Hear The People Sing?

Famine

One, two, three - I have at least fifteen friends who are poor. Struggling to pay rent, strugging to climb the ladder to the American dream.

How can they invest in educating themselves when they have to spend so much time surviving?

Affluence

And I'm here, having grown up privileged in many ways - in a wealthy neighborhood to a family who bought me all the books I wanted, to a father who paid for my golf and ballroom lessons, to a mother who gave me and my siblings a credit card when we turned 18.

And when it was time for me to find stable housing, I was so fluent in whitespeak from my first-class teachers, so educated from the books I had access to, that someone I had never met before had noticed my potential and offered me an amazing deal for stable housing.

So instead of focusing on survival, I could focus on building my career.

I was born into privilege, already mostly up the ladder to the American dream, and when I get there -

Morality

-when I get to the top of that ladder, I won't try to kick it. Instead of trying to stop other people from climbing up, I'll either stand aside or help them up myself.

We have an opportunity here in Windsor, to build more ladders instead of kicking them down.