It’s 2013 and Racism is Alive and Well

by Jeff Olivet

It is 10 a.m. on Sunday morning, September 15th, 2013. I am sitting in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, a million miles from my hometown of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Fifty years ago this morning, at 10:22 a.m., a bomb blast shattered the stained glass windows of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, taking the lives of four young girls—Addie Mae Collins (age 14), Denise McNair (age 11), Carole Robertson (age 14), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14).

This horrific event came just three months after George Wallace’s stand in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama’s Foster Auditorium, four miles from the house where I grew up. The bombing also came fast on the heels of the March on Washington and Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.” A tumultuous summer indeed. A juxtaposition of victory and loss, of exultation, and unimaginable sadness. A signal that social change never comes “nice and easy.” In the words of Tina Turner, it comes “nice and rough.”

Today I find myself reflecting on the progress that has been made toward racial justice and wondering why we haven’t come farther, faster.

On one hand, as a nation we no longer live under the overt, oppressive racism embodied by Jim Crow in the south. Interracial marriage and multiracial children are more common. We have a biracial president. On the other hand, a kind of devious, subversive, hard-to-pin-down, just-below-the-surface racism pervades our society. It rears its head in situations like Trayvon Martin’s tragic murder at the hands of a mindless vigilante who essentially used a police-like practice of racial profiling to determine that Trayvon was guilty of something just because he was black.

The world we inhabit in 2013 is not the world Addie Mae, Denise, Carole, and Cynthia lived in, until their young lives were snuffed out. Yet racism is alive and well. People of color in America are more likely to live in poverty, become homeless, get sick and die at a young age, attend sub-standard schools, experience discrimination in employment and housing, and find themselves subject to a criminal justice system that unfairly targets minorities.

What should we do about it?

Today we should remember four young girls who died for no reason. Tomorrow we should wake up and continue to fight like hell against hatred in the world. We should examine our own prejudices and work to become better human beings. We should find ways in our jobs, families, towns, and faith communities—all the circles in which we run—to challenge racism when we see it. We should lobby politicians for greater racial equality in health care, housing, education, and voting rights.

We should help bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.

“It does not,” as President Obama recently reminded us, “bend on its own.”

A Messy Week in Social Justice

We had our annual staff retreat a week ago in the woods north of Boston. I was energized by our time together and feel reconnected to our social justice mission in the world.

Since we were together, the world has been busy. On Wednesday last week, the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to marriage equality by striking down the Defense of Marriage Act and kicking the California Proposition 8 case back to the lower court. These decisions represent a huge step forward in the fight for equality and human rights for our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender brothers and sisters. It is a victory for us all.

What the Supreme Court giveth with one hand, however, it taketh away with the other. In the case from Shelby County, Alabama, 45 minutes up the road from where I grew up, the Court could have upheld the Voting Rights Act – one of the most important pieces of legislation in the history of our nation. It chose not to. The court decimated the Act, opening the door for states, counties, and cities to discriminate against poor people and people of color, making it harder for them to have a voice at the polls. The ripples of this decision will continue for decades.

While we’re at it, let’s also look at how mean the world can be. In Boston alone last week, we saw the indictment of one of the Marathon bombers, the murder arrest of one of our town’s football stars, and the ongoing trial of a petty, vile mobster who killed at least 19 people while under the protection of a few corrupt FBI agents. Wow. Some week.

And yet, we make progress. Despite these sensational news stories, crime is down in every major city in this country. The unemployment rate is dropping each month – not quickly enough, but it is dropping. We are closer than we have ever been to the ideals of racial and gender equality. And the Red Sox are in first place as we go into July. Great things are indeed possible.

Back to the Supreme Court: the striking down of DOMA and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act demonstrate the power of grass roots activism and the need for more of it. Our work with and on behalf of people who have been marginalized has never been more important. Our work matters. Our work makes a difference.

Slaying the Ego in Homeless Services Delivery by Wayne Centrone

 

At the end of our talk today at the San Diego, California Region IX Health Care for the Homeless Conference, I had an opportunity to speak with a service provider. He told me about his efforts to get organizations to build a coalition in his community. He told me about the six months it took him to schedule the first meeting of the homeless services agencies in his area.

He told me that he had not given up hope that the coalition will pay off with great dividends. I complimented him on his efforts and reassured him that his efforts would indeed pay off. I told him that he may never know the impact of his efforts, but, I told him, if his efforts led to ending the experience of chronic homelessness for one person, then it was worthwhile.

I enjoy speaking at these conferences. They are full of amazing people working in homeless services. I love to reconnect with old friends, inspiring thought leaders, and change agents. The people who work in homeless health clinics, supportive housing programs, mental health and substance use treatment programs around the country are gifted and courageous people.

I spoke at this conference with my colleague Steven Samra. We talked about our work on a new model of outreach we are calling “Housing-Focused Outreach” (HFO). Steven and I, along with the leadership and thoughtful intellect of Ken Kraybill, have been incubating the ideas of HFO for a few years. Our ideas are not unique. They are born from the work of Dr. Sam Tsemberis at Pathways to Housing, and the visionary work of the 100,000 Homes Project. Our ideas are also born from our years of experience in serving people experiencing homelessness and the work we have all been doing over recent years in visiting supportive housing programs around the United States.

The talk was about shifting the paradigm of service delivery. We are considering how to develop and operationalize a new model to impact agency level activities. A summary of our conversation, a work in progress, looks like this: 

(1) In order to truly end chronic homelessness, we [homeless service providers, peers, and advocates] need to lead with housing and build effective bridges to supportive services.

(2) The only way to ensure adequate access to housing and supportive services is to build bridges of collaboration with a number of organizations and resources.

We talk about the fact that most communities around the country have the pieces to put together a really effective model to end chronic homelessness. The issue, however, is that these pieces are fractured and disjointed from one another. Our main predicate for the Housing Focused Outreach model is training service providers to be experts in building partnerships.

When we give this talk, we hear repeatedly how little collaboration actually occurs on the ground. I hear over and over again at talks like this: “Oh, that [collaborating with partner agencies] won’t work . . . we are all fighting for the same pot of money, and we can’t really collaborate or we will lose our agency level effectiveness.”

Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand the “no money, no mission” paradigm. I also know that without collaboration and resource sharing, true, lasting change is not possible. I am not sure how we can get more people invested in the idea that collaboration is one of greatest and most underutilized tools. One thing I do know: it will take some serious ego slaying and a strong commitment to service.

 

What Inspires You? A Conversation with Ken Kraybill, Director of Training

By Wendy Grace Evans

Recently I sat down with my colleague, Ken Kraybill, Director of Training at the Center for Social Innovation and co-director of t3, a training institute dedicated to supporting people working in homeless services to learn more about what inspires him.

“My attention is drawn to where people are hurting, or where things are unjust. This is both a gift and a burden. The gift is that it has allowed me to be attuned to where people are and connect with them on a deeper level,” says Ken Kraybill, Director of Training at the Center for Social Innovation and Co-Director of t3, a training institute dedicated to supporting people working in homeless services.

Ken frequently tells homeless service providers: “Your clients will be your best teachers.” Ken feels that he has been tremendously gifted by the mentorship of people he has served. “I have been there in service, but I truly know in my heart that I have been given back so much and been enriched as well.”

Ken tells me about James, who had spent most of his life in prison and was rough around the edges. James presented a tough persona to protect him from the world. “It was a stretch for me to connect with James and be able to uncover the layers of that exterior shell. But I will never forget the day a probing question touched on James’ inner core, revealing his own sense of hurt and abandonment, and bringing him to tears. He was not a man who cried,” says Ken. James finally felt safe to reveal his own depth of being, connecting Ken and James in a new and deeper way.

When asked what he is most passionate about, Ken shares a vision of all people living in healthy and just relationships with one another and the environment. He seeks to foster restoration when those relationships are broken or unjust – at individual, community and societal levels. Helping to inform and equip care providers in homeless services is a fundamental way Ken seeks to live out this vision.

Ken shares that when he entered the field of homeless services, he came to the field initially with a strong sense of “right” and “wrong.” Eventually, he came to a crossroads and was forced to make a decision. “Either I would keep being judgmental, or I would change,” says Ken.

He chose change and as a result has come to see commonalities between human beings, rather than differences. “Rather than seeing behaviors as bad, even if they were self destructive, I started to see human behavior as adaptive and that shift has been so freeing,” says Ken. He sees that this shift made him more tolerant and gave him access to relationships with more people.

This perspective is deeply connected to his own spiritual practice and his understanding of Motivational Interviewing. Both allow him to embody ways of being with people with the accompanying tools to do that. Ken believes we are all in recovery from something and rather than seeing conditions as static, he prefers to see that people are part of a process that is propelled by the concept of moving toward change and a new direction.

So you want to create a movement? by Wayne Centrone

I have been working in international health for almost twenty years. Our work, my own and the various groups I have had the fortune of working with, has changed a great deal in that time. The initial focus was on directly providing services. Whether it was working with street children in Lima, bringing teams down and partnering with in-country NGOs in outreach, or building water filtration systems in impoverished clinics – the services were delivered to a community in need . . . and the idea of a long term impact was often secondary to the service delivery.

The shift toward sustainability has steadily grown over the past 10 years. The need to build programs and services for the long term is front and center in everyone’s minds. There is, however, something different happening. This “something different” is a shifting of focus – a shift from focusing on the service to focusing on scaling, impact, and alternative perspectives. The new paradigm is about creating movements – social, political and economic – that shift thinking and re-order expectations.

One brave example of this movement mentality is Occupy Wall Street. Over the past couple of months Occupy movements in cities around the world have captured our attention and draw criticisms and praise from a variety of fronts. Regardless of the feelings people have toward the protesters and their methods for drawing media and public attention, one thing is clear: they have initiated an important public conversation.

Over the past few weeks, I have had the pleasure of working on a grass roots movement of my own. The Bridging the Divide campaign is the brainchild of the small non-governmental organization Health Bridges International (HBI). HBI has been working in Peru since 1994. In that time we have seen a tremendous shift in the economy of Peru.

The Peru of 2011 is a very different Peru than the one we first started working in 1994. The Peru of today is a society with a growing middle class and a broad range of economic opportunities. Yet, over 54% of the Peruvian population continues to live in abject poverty – unable to meet their basic needs of food, shelter, education and healthcare.

The goal of the Bridging the Divide event was to draw attention to the opportunities that exist in Peru to build “bridges” of support and collaboration to change the experience of extreme poverty. Through two 50-kilometer runs, one in the city of Lima and the other in Arequipa, we demonstrated the economic, social, and physical distances that exist between wealthy and impoverished communities. Our runs started in peri-urban poor communities, areas know as Pueblos Jovenes (or young towns), and ended in wealthy communities. We circuitously worked our way through neighborhoods and finished on the steps of municipal buildings in the historic districts of the cities.

Throughout the runs we drew attention from on-lookers, support from the various district politicians, and collaboration from many partner organizations. On multiple occasions we were presented with commemorative t-shirts to mark our entry into a new section of the city. It was a festive experience that really helped to draw together the various communities we traversed.

However, the runs were secondary to our goal of drawing more attention to the needs of the poor and the opportunities that we all have to “build bridges” to help close the gap that exists between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ of the world. Our runs were about creating a movement.

Toward the end of our trip in Peru, the Executive Director of one of the organizations we work with came up to me and offered some very sage words of advice.

He told me “So you want to create a movement . . . Well, you have to recognize the great responsibility that comes with that. You can’t just get people excited by running through the streets and creating a ‘circus’ like atmosphere. You have to give people something tangible that they can hold onto. Something concrete that they can do to really source change.”

We know that the Bridging the Divide event is only the beginning. The real challenge will be to take the interest and enthusiasm generated from the events and turn it into actions. Over the coming weeks we will be working with our partners in Peru to build effective programs and projects that allow more Peruvians to volunteer their time, energies, and talents. Over the coming weeks we will be dedicating ourselves to the real work of creating a movement.

Take Shelter: Reflections on Film and Mental Illness by Wendy Grace Evans

This week I went to see the movie Take Shelter, written and directed by Jeff Nichols, starring Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain. I wanted to see how mental illness was portrayed, as it is usually my experience that it is not portrayed with grace or dignity – which leaves me feeling rage, and a deep sorrowful ache of loneliness.

Take Shelter opens with the main character, Curtis, looking to the skies and hearing thunder. This image recurs throughout the film, along with a billowing cloud with an unworldly human face. Rain the color of oil falls onto his hands. Flocks of birds crisscross the sky in swooping migrations, at times hitting Curtis. Only Curtis experiences this. For some time, he is not aware that he is the only person having these experiences. People around him question his behavior.

Curtis has violent dreams in which his dog, a gentle dog, bites his arm. The next day his arm is sore all day. In his dreams his wife, threatens him with a knife and his business partner attacks him. With each dream, Curtis becomes more paranoid of the people who threaten him, but insists that nothing is wrong.

His solution is to build a storm shelter. No one understands what Curtis is doing, including his deaf daughter. There is a storm going on in his mind and he is seeking shelter either from himself or from the storm. Perhaps he is the storm?

Curtis visits his mother, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when he was a child. He asks her when her symptoms appeared and if she had dreams. When she says she did not have dreams, Curtis recedes into denial about his state of mind and continues to build the shelter.

Deep down he knows that all is not well. He sees the family doctor, who refers him to a psychiatrist, but the psychiatrist is located far away – a reality for many who live in rural areas. Instead, he sees a counselor. He explains how his mother just disappeared one day. It reinforces his need to avoid abandoning his own family.

A hulk of a man, his grip on his mind is fragile. Hiding his experiences from his wife in order to protect her only causes more conflict. He is fired from his job, and at a Lions Club meeting, things unravel. He is challenged by his best friend, asked to leave, and loses control of his emotions after being taunted and told he is crazy.

At this point in the film, I felt myself deflate. Here is the scene where the masses assault the misunderstood, a man who is trying to work things out, and do the right thing but is trapped by an illness he cannot escape. How sad, and how trite for the crowd to bully him. But then his wife gently guides him out. As they leave, a storm of immense proportions blows in. The storm could be seen as the metaphor for his life, the real storm that has been building, unmanageable chaos.

He takes his family to the storm shelter and they are safe. It is dark, quiet, and dry. But in the morning Curtis must face the moment of truth. The storm is over. His wife and daughter want to leave, but he insists it is not over. He reluctantly he gives the key to his wife. She refuses to open the door, telling him that he must open the door. Slowly, fearfully, he climbs the stair to open the door.

Outside, the day is clear, offering him passage to something new, with the knowledge that now that this storm is over, they still will face many more challenges with his illness.

The film closes with Curtis and his wife in the psychiatrist’s office. He is given the option of going to a psychiatric hospital. He is dismayed, responding, “You mean away from my family?” This moment is indicative of how important family and social support are for recovery. Yet like in life, the movie shows that treatment requires Curtis leave his primary source of support just as his mother was forced to.

The film ends before we learn what he decides, but the final scene offers insight into the many frustrations that people who live with mental illness face when presented with limited options, or no options at all. There is often little consistent shelter from mental illness.

See? I am intelligent. by Claire Berman

He was sitting in a small enclave in the side of a brick building downtown, hands folded in front of him, with an overflowing plastic bag beside him that crinkled and rustled in the autumn breeze. It was chilly, but at the same time, unseasonably warm for November, and he wasn’t wearing a jacket. People brushed by him, talking on cell phones, talking to each other, texting – but always, their eyes were focused straight ahead. No sideways glances were afforded to him.

So he sat perched, observing a group of twenty-somethings not ten feet from him discussing how to get to a restaurant. His face was stoic, and at first it wasn’t clear that he was listening. But just as they appeared to give up hope of finding the right street, he called out to them.

“The street you’re looking for is perpendicular to the water,” he said, describing it in relation to several other landmarks. They stared. He repeated himself, this time with a hand gesture to demonstrate “perpendicular.”

“Oh, ok – thanks,” one of the men said to him, with a sidelong glance at his friends. And then they took off.

“See?” the man said to the newly vacant sidewalk before him, as if they were still ten feet away. “I am intelligent.”

I watched it all unfold as I was speed walking to get to class. The whole interaction took less than 30 seconds. But when I heard his words, my head snapped in his direction. I slowed and looked more closely. He had refolded his hands neatly in front of him and was looking off to his left with his chin held high – possibly with pride, but maybe not. Maybe it was what he needed to hold up in that moment of dismissal. The late afternoon sunlight slanted into his face and created a dark mirror shadow on the concrete wall behind him.

I felt a strong urge to acknowledge what he said – to let him know that someone had heard him and believed him, even if I didn’t know anything else about him or the situation. I wanted to show him that his words hadn’t disappeared into the abyss of busy downtown commuters. But he never looked back at me. I twisted my head forward again and finished walking the three remaining blocks to campus.

I thought about him all night in class. I thought about how strange I might have seemed for approaching him, how maybe he just wanted to be left alone, and how I could very well have been intruding on his space by approaching him and inserting myself into the situation. He might have asked me to leave him alone.

But then – maybe not. Maybe he just wanted to be acknowledged and seen. And isn’t recognition at the core of what we all want and need, when it really comes down to it? It seems like the most basic of all human rights. No one wants to feel invisible.

And this is what I see as being at the core of what we do at C4. We reject invisibility. So many see only the indistinct shadow against the brick wall, but we see the person casting the shadow. And whether it’s through training providers, writing literature reviews, or producing online learning modules, we see (and help others see) people experiencing homelessness in full color, recognizing the rich experiences that have led them here, and equally importantly, the resilience that can lead them into recovery.

What I Believe by Wayne Centrone

For many years, some believed that homelessness would end on its own. The idea was that the economic and social disruptions that created the crisis of homelessness would eventually equalize. I have heard people say that the economic pressures that led to the experience of homelessness would eventually recalibrate.

Well, it seems like that recalibration that is so desperately needed is not happening anytime soon.

For now, record numbers of people are experiencing homelessness. The economy is sluggishly moving along at a pace that seems almost at a standstill. The roll out of the Affordable Care Act seems at times too amorphous to fully understand or ever truly affect the lives of the uninsured.

So how will we end homelessness?

I believe that ending homelessness requires a skillful and competent workforce. At C4, we believe that by “up skilling” providers working in homelessness services, we can better meet the constantly changing needs of people experiencing homelessness.

Our goal is not just training providers – our goal is preventing and ending homelessness – and we believe that the training and mentoring of a highly skilled homelessness service provider workforce is a means to ending homelessness.

The other day I was at a homeless services program and I overheard two staff talking. “I feel overwhelmed at times,” remarked a young staff member, “I don’t always know what to do or how to help.”

Her co-worker gently reminded her that the work they are doing is all about the relationships they have with the clients they serve. She went on to tell her that the most important thing she can bring to her work is a listening ear and a compassionate smile.

She’s right. In my years of experience providing direct services, I witnessed the power of empathic listening and sincere compassion. I believe that a highly skilled homelessness provider workforce combined with empathy and compassion can be powerful tools in the fight to end homelessness.

Warts Shouldn't Matter When Communities Embrace By Steven Samra

Our company was recently awarded an important 5-year contract from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA) to launch the Bringing Recovery Supports to Scale Technical Assistance Center Strategy. I was invited to attend the kickoff meeting as a key staff member. On the flight to Washington DC, I had time to reflect on the significance of this opportunity for myself and C4.

Fifteen years ago I was living homeless and suffering from a severe drug addiction, fueled in large part by my uncontrolled bipolar disorder, ADHD, and situational depression resulting from my life on the street. My primary focus at the time was ensuring I had enough heroin to stave off the physical illness that accompanies abrupt withdrawal from the drug. Homelessness, unemployment, and the destruction and loss of relationships with family and friends were all consequences of my need to remain “well.” I spent the majority of my time engaging with members of the drug community. I lived the heroin lifestyle. It was where I could find what I needed and it was a community that accepted me, “warts and all.”

It wasn’t until years later, when I was able to abstain from the use of drugs, treat my mental health symptoms, and change my community that I realized what it actually meant to be in “recovery” and how important it is to be part of a community that embraces you.

The idea of community support as a component of recovery isn’t new, but I suspect that the critical importance of “community” in general may be lost on those who have not functioned outside of mainstream society. This facet of recovery goes hand in hand with peer support, both of which SAMHSA has been keenly aware of over the past several years as they have worked to transform behavioral health service delivery from illness-focused to recovery-centered.

The essential need for community inclusion and strong peer involvement for those of us who have become isolated, ostracized, and/or rejected from our parent communities has evolved to become a strong focus for SAMHSA. SAMHSA has been committed to the idea of recovery as a holistic endeavor for years now and has been aggressively pursuing avenues to make this a reality for those of us who continue to battle with addiction, homelessness, and severe and persistent mental illness.

The reality that I – a formerly homeless individual, in recovery from mental illness and a co-occurring substance use condition—was a key member at the table with SAMHSA’s highest leadership is a solid testament to the desire and commitment of SAMHSA to “walk the walk” when it comes to peer involvement and inclusion. Our shared ambitions to transform behavioral health service delivery as we currently know it is not just short of miraculous: it is visionary in scope, breadth, and depth.

This opportunity wouldn’t be possible for me without the influence and support of another community: my colleagues at C4. The C4 community is important because it nurtures, mentors, guides, and encourages us to take the risks of participation in community. For those of us who’ve struggled for so long with seeing ourselves as outsiders whose contributions meant so little that we stopped trying to provide them – this is nothing short of miraculous.

We face a challenging task ahead, but I believe we will succeed beyond the wildest dreams any one of us could individually imagine. While each one of us is committed to the idea that people can, nay, they are expected to recover, as a community we are more than the sum of our parts. It is the strength and support generated through community that provides the courage and fortitude to those in recovery to trust, speak, and do again. With this support in place, all of us are able to take our rightful places as a valuable member of our society with something important to contribute.

When this lived experience compliments the work of other professionals within the recovery community, the results, rewards, and benefits are life changing—for all of us.

A Gentleman and His Home by Sam Catherine Johnston

I’m an avid runner and I run the same route two to three times a week. There’s a subway station on the way, where I’ve seen the same gentleman living. His name is Hank* and he is the only person I’ve seen there. He’s usually on the computer or reading. Once I had a brief conversation with him. I got a bottle of water for him, but he told me, “No, thank you,” and that he hoped it wouldn’t weigh me down.

I realized that I was running through his street home space and that it was important for me to remember that I was just passing through his space. We didn’t have the kind of relationship where I could stop to converse and offer him a bottle of water.

Last week I was shocked to find transit police signs that said “Do Not Cross” by Hank’s home. It had been burned. All I could see were pieces of his shopping cart and burned books. He was gone. I asked the officer if she knew where he was and where he had been sleeping. At night, Hank usually chains himself to his belongings for safety. That night he had not chained himself to his things. He woke from a deep sleep to everything in flames. Someone had lit his home on fire. The officer explained to me that Hank was very upset and had found a new shopping cart. He told her that he was going to a different place in the city, one that is very crowded, where police frequently confront people who are without homes.

I thought about how he had had this peaceful place, where he was part of something. Now, for safety, he has to go somewhere that is chaotic. His peace has been lost. I find it hard to re-tell this story when I don’t actually have all the facts, but I know how it affects me. He was someone who was part of my experience in a really positive way. Now all of his belongings are burned. It feels like it is too easy for this to happen to someone.

The choices he made were taken from him so quickly. In an ideal scenario, he would have housing on his terms, but he has chosen something that was the best alternative for him. Even with the best-laid plans at the federal level, a human being can fall through the cracks in a really profound way. There is nothing logical or rational about it. It makes me ask, how can we account for one individual’s life in the work at C4? How does this experience line up with the piece of the puzzle I am trying to put in place in my professional work? It feels both so connected and so disconnected at the same time.

The system is not approaching people with the level of care and concern that we should be. People like me can feel sad about it, but the way things are, the weight is ultimately on the shoulder of the person who has to start over.

******

Three days later I went for my evening run. It was raining and Hank was back in his street home space setting up some new things. I told him I was glad that he was back. He was as nice as ever with a smile on his face. I guess it shows that what matters most is that he knew it was his place and maybe that he also knew that enough of us really do see him as our neighbor and that spot as his home.

Sam Catherine Johnston, Ed.D is a Senior Associate at The Center for Social Innovation, specializing in curriculum design, distance education, adult learning, and developing communities of practice.

*Not his real name