Incredible writing from Shaun Hill of Hill Farmstead Brewery. I have yet to find a written word from someone literally in my neck of the woods on this movement we’re experiencing. The problem with where I live, closer to Canada than Boston and in Shaun’s case, closer to Montreal than Boston is we are in an area that is almost 100% white with a lot of open land, spaces to explore and get-away from everything. While we still have class-warfare here in the form of severe poverty and abuse of police force it is always inflicted on someone who is white. However, like me Shaun has lived and experienced different parts of the world, different view points and experiences and with literally a degree in literature and writing is well qualified to write this post. Not signing it and placing it on the website of the #1 brewery in the world many years in a row is possible not only because Shaun is sole owner & operator but because this post represents the views of everyone working there. Hill Farmstead is not just Shaun anymore but the staff at this brewery are all aligned on the words written.
Also like Shaun, he and I are both testaments to the ‘American dream’ but it is more akin to the white American dream. There are outliers to this from people of color who did succeed but it was despite even greater hurdles than Shaun and I had to experience to get where we are today. We both came from poor families, I received no financial assistance as soon as I turned 18 and he and I both built a life for ourselves where we are considered successful but what advantages (baked into laws and into the human psyche) did we receive in our journeys to make our current situations a reality? Could we have achieved this if we were black or latino? I don’t think so. It may be some semblance of this but it wouldn’t be exactly this.
I am going through my own process here and I do not get political on this blog because these days, my views are incredibly fringe (dead-center) and people are being vilified for not picking sides and writing things down but in my personal life, off this blog I’m not living a life of inaction and that should be good enough for the 2-3 of you who read this blog.
Anyway, go read Shaun’s post. It’s amazing – https://hillfarmstead.com/news/question-act-evolve/
PS, I don’t feel like I have to copy the text in full in this case because link-rot is not a huge concern of mine. Shaun’s blog posts from 10 years ago are still up which is a pretty goo indication this blog will live as long as the brewery does which is to say, my entire lifetime.