To the editor: When community care is hard work

The situation surrounding Windsor County sheriff candidate Joshua Lake has left me angry, disappointed and deeply conflicted.

I was an enthusiastic and vocal supporter of Lake’s candidacy. I believed in the vision he presented: a sheriff’s department that would not participate in civil immigration enforcement for ICE, that would approach substance use and mental-health crises with compassion, and would place community care, transparency, ethics, and accountability at the center of policing.

Those were not minor campaign promises to me. I believed Lake understood that public trust must be earned, particularly by those entrusted with extraordinary authority over other people’s lives.

That is why the recent information has been so difficult to absorb.

I am deeply saddened and if I’m being honest, angered by the conflicting accounts attributed to Lake and by the apparent gap between the standards he promoted publicly and the circumstances he is now asking voters to accept. When a candidate builds a campaign around transparency and integrity, voters should not have to piece together incompatible explanations or wonder which version of events is true.

I feel misled. I feel frustrated that many people invested hope, credibility, labor, and public support in a campaign whose central message now appears compromised. I cannot continue supporting Lake as a candidate for sheriff. The responsibilities of that office and the power that comes with them require a degree of credibility, judgment, and accountability that cannot simply be set aside because I agree with a candidate’s politics and desperately desire systemic change.

At the same time, I have also been disturbed but not surprised I suppose, how quickly legitimate scrutiny turned into something far uglier.

Politics of today encourage us to treat another person’s downfall as entertainment. Within hours, people were choosing teams, circulating personal details, making jokes, assigning motives, and eagerly searching for new ways to humiliate Lake and his family. Some seemed less interested in accountability than in finally having permission to take their shot.

We should be capable of asking serious questions without becoming a mob.

There is also a legitimate public conversation to be had about the reported age difference in Lake’s relationship. Being 18 means a person is legally able to consent. That legal fact does not automatically resolve ethical concerns. Differences in age, authority, experience, independence, and stage of life can create significant and dangerous power imbalances. It is reasonable and in my opinion critical to community care, for people to examine and critically think about these imbalances. To openly interrogate our bias and voice our concerns ethically.

But that concern does not justify unleashing another public pitchfork campaign against a woman because people want to destroy her male partner. We have seen this pattern repeatedly: a woman’s history, body, choices, relationships, and private pain become acceptable collateral damage in a political fight centered on a man. Lake’s wife is a person in her own right. Not evidence, ammunition, or a proxy through which to punish her husband.

I continue to support Joshua Lake’s partner’s right to have her allegations and experiences involving Sheriff Ryan Palmer investigated seriously, independently, and fairly. Withdrawing my political support from Joshua Lake does not require me to dismiss her, abandon her, or conclude that every claim against Palmer must therefore be false. Multiple things can be true at once. Lake can be unfit for the office he seeks, and his wife can have experienced mistreatment and harassment deserving accountability and community care and concern.

That distinction matters.

Restorative justice, within the system of community care, asks more of us than punishment. It requires truth-telling, acknowledgment of harm, accountability, repair, and an opportunity for people and communities to move forward. It does not mean avoiding consequences. It means refusing to confuse consequences with humiliation, vengeance, or permanent dehumanization.

The values that drew many people to Lake’s campaign must not be discarded because the messenger has lost credibility. Windsor County still needs transparent and ethical policing. We still need law enforcement that treats people experiencing addiction with dignity and with supports directly from evidence-based harm reduction. We still desperately need meaningful limits on cooperation with ICE and resistance to the use of local public-safety resources to terrorize immigrant communities. We still need accountability for misconduct, protection for whistleblowers, and independent oversight of those who hold police power.

In fact, that work is now more urgent.

This situation will be used as an attempt to end our activism and advocacy . It will be used to suggest that anti-ICE advocacy, harm reduction, restorative justice, and police accountability are unreasonable or illegitimate. Those of us who believe in these principles must respond by holding ourselves to an even higher standard—not by abandoning the work, circling the wagons, or pretending that integrity only matters when it is politically convenient. We must demand a complete and transparent accounting. We must insist on ethics and consistency. We must acknowledge harm without manufacturing more of it. We must defend people from dehumanization even when we can no longer defend their candidacy.

This is a moment to call upon our better selves.

Tell the truth. Demand transparency. Apply our principles consistently. Protect women from becoming collateral damage. Continue the work of transforming harmful systems of power. Stand against ICE collaboration and for humane responses to substance use and crisis. Reject both political denial and political bloodlust.

Accountability matters. So does humanity. We should be strong enough to insist upon both.

Anne Kelley Henshaw
Chester