North Adams Alternate History

North Adams, Massachusetts is a very small city located in the middle of the Berkshire mountain range right on the borders of Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York. It was incorporated in 1895 and over the course of the 20th century became a hub of industrial life when North Adams transformed into a mill town. It was named after Samuel Adams, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. In the early 20th century, mills popped up all over town and a train line was added to make travel and trade with Albany easier. North Adams experienced significant growth during this time (North Adams Historical Society).

Unfortunately, when the industrial revolution declined so did the prosperity of the city. It became overrun with poverty and drug addiction and prospects for the city faded.

Then, in 2016, a miracle happened; President Bernie Sanders was elected. One of the programs provided by the new administration involved an influx of cash and other resources to towns across the country which are homes to Historically Black Colleges or Universities (HBCUs). Since North Adams has long been the home of Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA), North Adams was eligible for the program and it appears to be helping significantly in a number of ways. I focused my research on how the new policies are affecting the population in North Adams.

The first person I interviewed in my research here was a woman named Crysta. She’s the daughter of an immigrant who grew up in North Adams. While asking her about life in North Adams, she mentioned that one of her neighbors was recently arrested with over 300 bags of heroin in his car. This gave me a lead on who to speak to. I did some digging and discovered that her neighbor’s name was Makenzie and he was being held at the jail downtown.

What I learned from Makenzie was that he wasn’t proud to be a drug dealer. He initially started as a way to make money for his infant daughter, and it spiraled from there. “It used to be

easier to find heroin than pot in this town”, Makenzie said. “With all this new government stuff going on there’s still demand but less supply, which gives me a good window of opportunity.”

The ‘new government stuff’ Makenzie was referring to is the passing of President Sanders health care bill last year and the funding given to the city by the federal HBCU package which was used to reopen the hospital. There was also a massive criminal justice overhaul, leading to drugs being legalized and those caught with illicit substances being offered treatment instead of jail. This only goes for users, not for drug dealers like Makenzie. When I asked Makenzie if there was a group of people who use heroin that he knows that I could talk to without being intimidating, he pointed me in the direction of 25 Blackinton St. 25 Blackinton obviously used to be a beautiful house maybe 100 years ago. It’s a classical 3 story Victorian home which has been used and abused by young people addicted to drugs for decades now. To my surprise, I was welcomed into the house by the young woman who opened the door when I mentioned my connection to Makenzie and what I was doing. Ella, as she called herself, was happy to participate. I mostly let Ella and her friends in the house do the talking, taking notes the whole time. They brought up the mobile needle receptacles, which I’d noticed on my way into town days before. These sites are basically wheeled robots who roll around town carrying a place to safely dispose of your needles. Needle exchanges and drop-off sites were very controversial until the most recent decades, and they appear to be working in this case (Maher, Lisa). Not one of the people who lives at 25 Blackinton has HIV/AIDS, a problem I’ve seen in other communities I’ve studied. Ella commented that she believes this is due to the safe needle receptacles.

The issue of the police is another issue that’s important to them. While police no longer arrest drug users and throw them in jail cells, it’s still almost impossible to gain the trust of a

community that has avoided the police for the entirety of its existence. Ella and her friends still stay inside 25 most days because they’re afraid of being stopped by police officers if they’re seen high on their porch or front lawn area. One of the other people who lived at 25, Mike, was caught by the police shooting up behind the gas station around the corner over the summer and was sent to a treatment center. He got clean but once he returned to North Adams he immediately started using again. He said that the police officer who transported him to the treatment center treated him like a prisoner even though he wasn’t. Despite the easing up on drug laws I haven’t found a significant change in the approach to or view of the police from the community’s perspective.

The town of North Adams has a large black population because of the HBCU downtown.

This community was seriously disserviced when in 2013 the hospital which employed more than 50% of the town closed. This had widespread effects, from the decline in quality of life of the town due to economic strain to people not being able to access the medical treatment they so desperately need (which includes people overdosing on drugs). Now, the closest hospital was in Pittsfield, 30-40 minutes away. Those 30-40 minutes can often be detrimental. The infant mortality rate in North Adams was also astronomical after the closing of the hospital; it’s true that black women are more likely to die during childbirth and this is easily seen in this case.

Without the immediate access to care, the women of North Adams were often left by the wayside. When the hospital reopened, the infant mortality rate dropped as well. When people are found overdosing, they’re able to be given NARCAN and monitored in a safe, sterile place and then sent on their way to treatment instead of being left there to die because the person’s friends are potentially afraid of calling the police. There’s a close, safe place, which is more than a lot of communities have.

The HBCU system allows black students to experience a higher education in their own community and a system that’s relatively free of the straits of racism that would be found in a traditional collegiate institution. Research done by Fryer and Greenstone show that students who enter HBCUs receive bachelor degrees at a higher rate and they’re more likely to continue onto grad school than students at other colleges as well (Fryer, Greenstone). The Sanders plan that funnels capital to the cities that have these institutions has given the students at MCLA great new resources. The school is very small with less than 1,500 students and these students are benefitting from the changing atmosphere of the city. Drug crimes and violence are being reduced and the hospital opening has provided hundreds of job offerings. From the research I’ve conducted, the Sanders plan has had a positive impact on this community. The one part that will be the hardest to overcome is the police culture which is still more focused on punitive measures rather than healing measures.

I chose this project because I was deeply impacted by the death of one of my fraternity brothers over the summer. When I learned that we’d be creating a world I immediately wanted to create a world that my brother, Colter, could still be alive in and thrive in. I made some alterations to the world to make it more afro-centric like changing MCLA to a HBCU and discussing the housing project’s proximity to pollution in my interviews. Over the course of the semester I wrote a short letter to Colter regarding my project each week. Most of the time they had to do with the content of the project, but some days I was very emotional and it came out more emotional than academic.

For as long as I’ve known Colter he’s both sold and used cocaine. When I lived in the frat house I never did it but my brothers and some of my sisters were using it frequently on

weekends and special occasions, usually buying it from either Colter or one of my other brothers who sold it. We lived at 25 Blackinton St. and once I literally kicked down a bedroom door with one of my sisters because we overheard a brother preparing to do heroin in the room. The people who we kicked out of that room have all overdosed and died since then, with the exception of my brother who we saved. That brother I used to sit up with until 7 am squeezing his head while he withdrew from heroin and I remember him saying to me “I’m in so much pain and I know that if I just go down the street I can not be in pain anymore”. Not once but twice I saw Colter get stabbed in the stomach on the front lawn of our house over drugs and chase down the man who stabbed him (they’ve both since overdosed and passed away). He seemed invincible to me because of this, I couldn’t believe that he survived two stabbings but the drugs I’ve always known him to use took him. I always knew there was a heroin problem in North Adams but never really saw it until it was directly in my face. It broke my heart because there was so much that I loved about North Adams but it felt like a black hole that sucked smart, good people in and wouldn’t let them out. For years when I was an active member of the sorority I always advocated at meetings for us to attend a NARCAN training and for us to keep NARCAN in the house at all times just in case. It never happened while I was there. This project gave me an opportunity to rewrite not just the town of North Adams’ history but a chance to rewrite my own.

Certainly living there made me tougher and more aware of issues but I wish I didn’t have to and neither did Colter.

I’d like to imagine that in my world Colter is using his sociology degree. Before he passed away he was working as a social worker and really helping others because he was such a kind soul. I never even saw him angry once which is impressive considering the environment we were in. In my world he has a job at the new, reopened hospital counseling kids who have drug

problems in the area. He still would come by the frat house to visit my brothers and sisters on weekends, we’d hold a spot for him at formals. He’d go grocery shopping and do laundry in his home which is changing for the better, a home that’s trying to accommodate its struggling citizens. Maybe if MCLA was a HBCU there would be a totally different community in the city and the drug problems wouldn’t have been as bad or pronounced. I couldn’t help from thinking “what if” all semester. What if those receptacles were real? Would that have changed anything because we didn’t know he was using heroin, only cocaine? Would he have actually tried to seek help if he thought it was available? As an optimist I can only believe that he would have and that he’d still be here with us. His love for Bernie Sanders really inspired me to focus the project around his policies as well. All-in-all I owe my whole project to Colter Suters and his memory.

Bibliography: Fryer, Roland G., and Michael Greenstone. “The Changing Consequences of Attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, vol. 2, no. 1, 2010, pp. 116–148. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25760195.

Maher L, 2002, 'Don`t leave us this way: ethnography and injecting drug use in the age of AIDS', International Journal of Drug Policy, vol. 13, pp. 311 325, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0955-3959(02)00118-4

North Adams Museum of History and Science, http://www.northadamshistory.org