Very Special Episode

"Gloria's Boyfriend" is an episode from the fourth season of All in the Family (2/2/74 is when it first  aired).   Just stumbled onto it a little bit ago on cable, and then rewatched the episode on You-Tube (here).  I spend a lot of my time trying to figure out how to help job seekers with developmental disabilities access good jobs in the community, and "Gloria's Boyfriend" is all about that very topic, albeit a little dated.  And yet the way the subject matter is handled and worked through reminds me of how much things really haven't changed too much.  Possibly the language has been overhauled (the "R" word is used both pedantically and insultingly in the episode), but the actual tropes and metaphors and fears still kind of linger when you approach the idea of someone labeled as developmentally disabled being able to be a part of the workforce, a contributor to the way we all get things done everyday.

 "Gloria's Boyfriend" tells the story of George the Box Boy at Ferguson's Grocery, and the one day he brings the groceries home as a favor to Gloria.  It's obvious he has a crush on her, and for a minute or two you get the feeling that's the creepy direction the story is going.  But the actual narrative gets focused around a subplot, in which Archie and Michael are using an adjustable bench-plane to help refit the upstairs bathroom door that isn't shutting properly.  That door becomes both a metaphor and a plot device, as does the faulty tool Archie is using:  the bench-plane's blade is not yielding any wood shavings as Archie glides it across the door. 

In the episode, George is given to us as a big, sweet guy who is a little slow, but capable of expressing himself as well as having the ability to understand when he's mistreated  and when he's welcome.   The conversation about him among the Bunker clan is a survey of the ways people with developmental disabilities have been represented and seen over the course of the 20th (and now 21st) Centuries:  menace, innocent, deviant, oversexed, simpleminded, and so on.  The pendulum from "how sweet" to "how dangerous" is quick and steady, especially when Archie talks.  In fact, Archie in the episode is a sort of stand-in for the way many people understand what "developmental disabilities" are.  He's constantly warning his daughter to watch out for George's advances ("Stop getting him all excited -- people like him have a one-track mind," he says), while when speaking directly to George he's condescendingly kind and didactic (he tells George to take a break, sit and watch as Archie and Michael try to whittle down the door so it'll fit, using the tool that does not work). 

The crisis moment comes when Archie again speaks to Gloria about the possible dangers of her friendship with George, and George overhears.  Archie feels the need to spell what he considers is George's main diagnosis and prognosis:  "You gotta be careful around a d-u-m-m-y."

It turns out George can spell, and he tells everyone that in fact he's not a dummy, and he's going to show them all he's not.  He runs out the backdoor.  This instigates a conversation among all of the family about how George from Edith's perspective is a "nice gentle boy," and Archie counters with examples of "his kind" from movies like Of Mice and Men and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, while Gloria and Michael defend George as "special" and "retarded," but able to work and live in the world just like anybody else. 

Later in the day, Gloria goes back to Ferguson's to get ice cream, returns to tell everyone that George has been fired.  They all hope it wasn't because they asked him to stay a while earlier, and also because of what Archie had said.  Then a knock at the door, and George's dad comes to find out where George is, as he had heard from Mr. Ferguson about the firing, as well as the fact that George's last delivery was here at the Bunker's.  Another history and

Work History

When I was thirteen, all I wanted was a job as soon as possible.  I wanted this job to separate me from my life and family somehow, maybe even from myself.  A job seemed almost romantic to me in that way:  weekly earned income, a place to go besides school, friends at work instead of the many a-holes I had to contend with at school, cigarette breaks, free pop, a uniform, saving up for a car.  I was not popular at school.  I hid from most everyone in either the school newspaper office or the art-room.  I was always trying to figure out how to get away from peers and cheers and everything having to do with "school" and "spirit."  At work you have to show up, clock in, do your job, go home; at school you have to go to class but there's all kinds of mandatory extracurricular crap, social events and activities and odd run-ins, PRESSURES that make life a lot more complicated, and basically at least from my purview miserable.

My family was working-class and poor, so maybe this hunger for employment and solidarity came from my not knowing any other way except escape through work.  But I knew that school wasn't really my thing, so I kind of understood instinctively that work would have to be.

And it was.

I got my first job at thirteen at a greasy spoon called The Irish Point.  The old couple who ran the place, Pauleen and Irving, paid me and some other kids out of the drawer at the end of the night, so it was a dream come true.  I didn't even have to wait for a weekly check.  Pauleen and Irving had an apartment above the restaurant where they lived, and at the end of the night, I would carry up the night's cash and receipts, and Pauleen would give me the wages for me and the rest of the crew -- usually just two other people, a cook and a server.  I was a car-hop and dishwasher at the start and worked my way up to grill-cook by the time I was 15.

The Irish Point was all roughed-up linoleum and fake-wood-paneling, frayed vinyl booths and a juke-box that seemed to always either be playing "The Year of the Cat" by Al Stewart or "Life's Been Good" by Joe Walsh.  I worked my ass off there, and found friends my own age who went to the same high school, but who would not even look at me in the hallways at school.  At the Point somehow we were equals, sharing shifts, duties, rushes, jokes.  One time, Pauleen and Irving had a health inspector come through and a shitload of citations were dispensed.  A bunch of us volunteered to come in and do deep cleaning on a Saturday to help them pass the inspection.  I remember I had a really bad earache, but I still showed up and cleaned out the tarry grease filters above the fryers and grill, because I knew everyone was counting on me.  All of us swept and mopped and painted and did all we could to make sure the place was as clean as possible.  Nobody got paid.

Irving and Pauleen were pretty old.  There were still a bunch of Bennie Goodman records on the jukebox from their glory days.  They were heavy smokers, and basically I think they were just running on fumes, trying to get by, their small apartment above the Point so overcrowded with furniture from the house they used to live in it was almost like a miniature Egyptian tomb.  That Saturday, though, we all cleaned that place like it was the House of God, and by the end of the day, my ear hurting so bad I wanted to cry, I felt a part of some weird, sad family, focused on our short-lived future together.

What I do now for work is try to help people with developmental disabilities get jobs in the real world with livable wages.  Many times this is a hard thing to do, because a lot of the people I'm trying to help and work with often aren't on the same wavelength I am.  I guess the "wavelength" I'm referring is the one I just wrote about above:  that need to have a job in order to know who I am, what I'm capable of, and to be a part of something where I'm equal to everybody else.   Also, to escape through that process of constantly showing up, doing what's expected of you, and feeling as if what I'm doing is if not important at least getting me closer to what is.  And yes that crappy job at Irish Point was a stepping stone to more crappy dish-room-smelly jobs at Kentucky Fried Chicken and Rax Roast Beef and Bonanza Steakhouse and TGIFriday's and so on so forth, but at least I kept busy, in a zone, and I made friends, and I found a way to find meaning in what I was doing, even if no one else could, or even wanted to try.

This isn't an Horatio Alger gig by any means:  I didn't pull myself up by my bootstraps.  I just worked, because I had to, and besides that I felt an almost primal urge to enter the workforce in order to leave behind stuff I found meaningless and annoying.  That excitement, even in the face of mop-water buckets and overloaded bus-tubs and the smell of fryer grease in my clothes, got me through because I knew I was doing something about my situation, even though it was not a dream come true by any means. In fact, often times it was a nightmare (alone, in a dishroom with a thousand bus-tubs stacked on the shelves and floor by the dish-machine, people yelling they are out of forks and drinking glasses upfront -- just try that one on for size).  No matter what, though, working that hard without a lot of payoff is, and really has to be, a nasty-smelling, super-exhausted version of hope. Not something you look forward to doing, God knows, but something you have to tolerate in order to create the momentum to go on to do something else, hopefully better.

Of course one of the biggest issues for job-seekers with disabilities is they often get stuck in that zone of "menial work," always at the bottom of the totem-pole, often in the dishroom or bussing tables or some other entry-level pigeonhole.  Ironically, though, if you don't start somewhere, then you don't have a platform to show what you can do.  And that desire even to start out menially sometimes gets squelched, ambition lost because there's no way up or out.

Trying to get beyond the issue of businesses and employers assuming that everyone we're trying to support is only dish-room-valuable is just the beginning though.  A lot of social-work-types and caregivers and teachers and others many times want to help the people they support by asking them about dreams and wishes, etc.  "What do you want to do?"  Instead of:  "What do you need to do?"   Dreaming is great and necessary, but I guess I also want to include in the conversation: what are you willing to do to make that dream come true? That's just as important, right?

The choices you have to make sometimes wear you out.  You have to make your own moves, piecing each phase together in order to make sense as you get there, improvising, pushing, trying, failing, trying, failing..., Hopefully laughing, getting through, with co-workers, family, friends.  And you'll need a lot of help.   But it's you at the end of the day who has to do most of the work, and most of the dreaming. You can't confuse the two though:  "dreams" are fuel for getting through what you have to do to take care of yourself, to be responsible enough to better yourself and contribute.

We have a huge amount of work to do in order to support employers and businesses to get over the prejudice of perceiving people with disabilities as only capable of certain kinds of work.  That systemic pigeonholing and scapegoating will only finally go away, though, when all people with disabilities who want to are given a chance to show they can do the work, put in the hours, have the ambition and grit to push through.  That Catch-22 is the core problem:  people with disabilities not given a chance to ascend, but also not wanting to try because they're not given that chance.  That self-fulfilling prophecy on both sides has sadly often become the status-quo.

Just to be clear, many people with disabilities in this area are getting good jobs, with and without anybody's help.  I don't want to end this on any sour notes.  I could tell you success stories till the sun goes down, but I want to focus on the many other folks who are floundering, trying to connect but a lot of the times giving up.  It's vitally important to remember what it takes for anyone to get somewhere:  ambition, sometimes foolish, sometimes tempered by reality, but always that ambition is an engine that allows you to push past frustration in order to see you're going to be okay, this is worth it, don't worry.  No amount of support and outreach to businesses and to people with disabilities works without confronting the fact that you have to want to work hard to get anywhere, and you have to have the opportunity to prove it, and for that proof to matter.  That last statement might be axiomatic for everyone entering the labor market, but it's truly profound for people with disabilities looking for work.

Which brings me back to the Irish Point, that Saturday when a bunch of us gathered together, no pay, to help out the old couple who owned the place.  I can still feel that ear-ache.  But despite that I also felt obligated not just to Irving and Pauleen, and the kids I worked with there, but also to that sense of myself as a part of something, contributing to something, connected to a purpose beyond myself and even a pay-check:  it was a sort of duty, I guess, informed by my ambition to grow up.  Get on with it. Make something out of nothing.

Get with the Program



 

 

It's been a week.  The highlight was last night, when Antonio Adams was part of a big gig downtown Cincinnati at the Weston Gallery.  He created a huge assortment of sculptures for "GIMMIE GIMMIE GIMMIE," a show curated by artist Todd Plavisko.  He created the pieces for about ten months in the Thunder-Sky, Inc. basement -- lots of hard work, inventiveness, Antonio's usual.  And he came to the opening last night in full seersucker-and-face-mask regalia.  Look at those shoes too.  The sculptures, kind of like enlarged Christmas toy soldiers, lined the windows of the place, on guard and protecting whatever needs protecting.  Antonio's mom and family came, and lost of friends, supporters... 

 

A couple days before, I was in Columbus at a conference about people with developmental disabilities getting employed in real jobs.  The main speaker, a soft-spoken bureaucrat with blank-cut hair and a sweet face, said something that has stuck in my head.  She said she has to keep correcting herself from using the word "program."  She said that she's trying to rid her vocabulary of that word, in order to replace it with "supports."  "Program" is no longer the go-to bureaucratic word when talking about services for people with disabilities. 

 

Semantics is often a way for bureaucracies to skirt the issue, and to move the emphasis from actually doing something to talking about doing something, and I'm sure that's a strategy at play here in Ohio, where all kinds of changes and forces are in place now to desegregate people and reinvent "programs" that are "supporting" people with developmental disabilities to become a part of the "community."  I put air-quotes around "programs, supporting and community," because I want to figure some stuff out, to detangle the language from the practice maybe. Those three words are the holy trinity of the way we all B.S. about how to help people with developmental disaiblities, as well as how tax-payer money gets spent on doing it, so those words become freighted with meanings and non-meanings that we all take for granted.  The speaker at the conference Wednesday, when she said she was intentionally eradicating "program" from her bureau-speak, seems to be making a pretty smart move, keeping in mind it's still just a move in an ongoing dance of course.

 

What does "program" actually mean.  Straight from the dictionary:  a plan of things that are done in order to achieve a specific result.  So in trying to rid the world of that moniker, I guess, the bureaucrats who oversee policy and funding are trying to get at the way we organize our activities in the helping-people-out biz around plans and results.  What have we wanted to accomplish all these years?  (I've been doing this stuff for close to 23 years now, trying to help people with developmental disabilities be a part of the "community,"etc.) 

 

What results have actually happened?  We've had great intentions but hardly any results that actually do anything beyond setting up "programs that support people to be in the community."  Air-quotes again.  We set up programs in order to set up programs that are done in order to achieve the sustaining of programs.  I know all of this by heart.  I help set up a program called Visionaries + Voices that did not start out as a program.  It started out totally grass-roots without a plan and then got a series of plans that morphed into "programs."  The plan at the beginning was to create a studio where any artist who needed support of any kind -- artists with or without disabilities -- could get it.  But then we started to realize that the majority of the artists who were becoming a part of V+V had disabilities, and from that realization came another realization:  V+V needs to become a program because programs get grants and government funding.  We pursued program funding then; we became a program so we could be a program.  That tautology ruled for the majority of my tenure, and we snowballed into segregation pretty smoothly, starting out in a building with a bunch of other artists and eventually realizing we needed to leave and have our own place, and then another place, and then we went from 10 artists to 100 in what seemed like overnight. 

 

A program is born.

 

Results for that program were judged by programmatic measures:  numbers of people served, how many staff hired...  Columns of grant-proposal spreadsheets dictated behavior.  And so on.

 

I left V+V in 2009, and so did Bill, my partner who helped set it up along with other great people who got hypnotized, I think, by the notion that we were onto something here; our telescope hit on a target.  We didn't just have a ragtag group of artists helping each other out.  We had us a great program.  All we needed to do was perfect it.

 

The soft-spoken bureaucrat on Wednesday was letting me know (unintentionally -- she wouldn't know me from Adam) that we should have never pursued ProgramLand.  But you can't put that genie back into the spreadsheet column.  All you can do is move on.  And that's what we all have done.  V+V is a program that's doing great work, albeit in the form of yup programming. 

 

But the original intent of the whole she-bang wasn't programmatic.  It was supportive.  That binary is useful.  You don't have to have a program to offer someone some help.  Antonio's picture above is proof of that.  He left V+V about the same time we did.  All three of us were integral in making the thing happen, and yet we decided we couldn't be a part of it any more and came up with Thunder-Sky, Inc., in Raymond Thunder-Sky's name, the artist whose bravery and spirit started the whole stinking journey.  And since 2009 we've been "not a program," but a collective of artists supporting each other.  Not 100 artists by any means, not even 25, but we do OK.  Nothing to brag about.  But why would we need to brag anyway? 

 

Now, besides Thunder-Sky, Inc., I focus solely on helping people with developmental disabilities get employed.  Going through all that ProgramLand turmoil is the main reason I think I've gone down this path.  It's a hell of a lot harder to help someone figure out where they fit in in the actual world than where their place is inside ProgramLand.  You have to know them really well, what they can do, what they can't, what they're interested in and how that interest fits into the actual world around them.  How do you help someone become a part of the community?  That's community without air-quotes.  First they need some kind of economic self-sufficiency:  they need a job.  A lot easier said than done, and a program that focuses on that result really isn't a program in the conventional sense any more because the "results" of the "plan" are to support folks enough so they no longer need the program -- to help them get to the point where a program is no longer necessary.  

 

It's a beautiful conundrum.  One I keep trying to figure out.

 

Maybe Antonio already has though.  He works part-time bussing tables, spends a lot of his time making art, perfecting his opening-night outfits, and being a part of -- you guessed it -- the community.  On his own terms.   

 





Raiders of the Lost Art

Kevin White

It was one of those "now and then" kinds of things.  Odd enough to inspire a blog-post I guess, even though the older I get the more I try not to pay attention to the "now and then" and just keep in the now.  Things feel saner that way, less philosophical, less like you are imposing "sense" on something that just doesn't make it.  But this one hit me right in the face. 

In 2001 or so, right when Bill and I were feeling the first excitement of helping a few really great artists with developmental disabilities get some supplies and attention.  Right when we were in the thick of inspiration, we helped 3 of those artists (Kevin White, Mary Flinker and Antonio Adams) do an installed mural consisting of paintings and assemblages at Bobbie Fairfax School (a school for kids with developmental disabilities) in Cincinnati.  So last Friday I had to go to Bobbie Fairfax School because Star 64, a local TV station, had donated some air-time to my "now" obsession:  employing people with developmental disabilities.  For segments during a movie marathon, Star 64 emcee Storm (I guess it's his real name) interviewed Chase Montgomery, a guy who works full-time in a dining hall at Miami University.  He doesn't communicate verbally that well, but he and his mom and dad programmed his communication device with some great answers to questions about what it means to make a living on his own.  I was there to give Chase a little support:

 

 

So anyway after the interview (which Chase totally rocked) I was walking out to my car when I stumbled onto all those paintings and assemblages we did in the Bobbie Fairfax School cafeteria in 2001 with Kevin, Mary and Antonio, and it was just one of those weird feelings that happen when you aren't really ready for it.  I wasn't moved to tears or anything, but I was a little stunned because it brought 2 issues together in a sloppy but somehow meaningful way. 

 

Back then, I was majorly focused on ensuring that Kevin and Mary and Antonio (the list grew to over 100 through the 2000s) had access to cultural/artistic possibilities, with the hope that someday they would be seen as contemporaries of other contemporary working artists.  And even though we were able to establish a non-profit arts organization (Visionaries + Voices) and a small, no-nonsense art gallery (Thunder-Sky, Inc.) on that quest for equality, I'm truly not sure if this ever happened.  It sure was fun and exhausting trying to make it happen though. 

 

And then that idea of doing a lot of work but not getting it all the way right, not reaching that sense of Utopia or true equality, spills over into trying to help people with developmental disabilities access good-paying jobs, which is now my total focus, my new attempt at, for lack of a better word, Utopia.  It takes even more tenacity to do this because it's not just about culture, it's also about economics, a real-world self-sufficiency, and a dialog with HR managers and business owners that isn't about charity or good feeling, as much as trying to make sure the people I'm championing this time can actually do the job, side by side, with some help, but also with the expectation that they can succeed eventually on their own.  I know deep down they can.  It's just finding that right combination of circumstance, personalities, and wills.

 

Chase can.  He's proven that.  And many, many others a lot of people (including me) are supporting to get and keep meaningful work in the community are too.  But it's a never-ending endeavor, full of complications, failures, successes, and so on. 

 

What is "true equality" anyway?  All the way through the 2000s, and even into the 2010s, I guess I thought I knew, but the older I get the more I know I don't and possibly never will.  "Knowing" is a luxury, I've discovered.  "Knowing" anything.  So now I try to figure out things, instead of knowing them.  And I wish I would have "known" this differentiation back in the day when we were figuring out how to do V + V.  Because back then I thought a program could create "true equality."  That sounds really naïve.  Possibly stupid, but all through those years of setting up shows and writing grant proposals and worrying and being stressed and inspired interchangeably, the through-line for me was that narrative of "once we get this up and running, these artists will be taken seriously." 

 

So I put everything I had into establishing a program and all that entails, when maybe I should have been paying attention to what programs actually do and mean.  I'm still figuring that one out.  Because what happened is that by helping to build a thriving program for artists with developmental disabilities I helped establish an institution that needs to be ran and financed, and that means the most important administrative aspect of it all was (and still is) making sure you have enough staff and enough money to pay staff, and in that struggle to sustain it all you kind of lose perspective, even though you gain programmatic accomplishments.  

 

Conversely, now, as I work toward figuring this stuff out, I'm not as invested in creating programs as much as job opportunities, and in that process of course I have to assist people to access employment-support programs that supply job coaches etc., but I don't have to feed those programs anything other than job seekers and possible job leads, incentivizing (one of those wonky words every system likes to use) actual accomplishments specific to a person's life (working and getting paid is central to a majority of people's lives, no matter who you are), as opposed to a program's life.

 

I hope all that makes sense.  Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but it keeps reeling through my mind.

 

And so that day as I walked out after the Star 64 interview with Chase and Storm, and I see those paintings and assemblages in the Bobbie Fairfax School cafeteria, it all kind of came together in a crystallized way that made me feel exhausted but also kind of okay.  Look at that stuff we all did, I thought.  Look at those good intentions.  Look at that art, still there, in that empty cafeteria.      

Antonio Adams

Kevin White and Antonio Adams

Kevin White

Mary Flinker and Bill Ross

A castle with flowers flowing out of it.  Talk about Utopia, right?  Everything is about belief, I'm finding out, so you better be conscious of what you believe in no matter what quest you are on.  And the quest I'm on at least right now is trying to figure out how to support people normally shut out of "the world" gain access to it in a way that's not about programmatic concerns.  Using good programs to make authentic relationships and real-world results happen.  What "real-world" means to any specific situation, I guess, is completely organic, but I'm thinking "real-world" in most cases is making a living wage.  Which is a pretty unnerving, lofty and necessary goal for people.

Antonio Adams and Kevin White

Antonio Adams and Kevin White

Antonio Adams

Or maybe it's just about being a "regular person," a trope Antonio Adams uses regularly in his works.  He's a great case in point:  he's still plugging away, making all kinds of great art.  Here's a picture of him today at Thunder-Sky, Inc., in the basement, working on some sculptures for an upcoming show:

 

 

He's basically a workaholic, a great example of a "working artist."  And like the majority of his contemporaries, he has a day job at Frisch's.  He's kept that gig, as a busboy, for over 13 years, and when I asked him yesterday why, he said because he likes it and he needs to keep it because of the people there, plus he has to pay his bills.  

 

There you go. 

 

Living Wages

 

 

A lot of times in trainings and meetings people use Clip-art configurations in their Power-point presentations just to gussy things up, or to prove a point without having to prove a point, almost like instant branding.  Clip-art allows anyone a catalog of pictographs and overarching almost blank logos to "explain" things without really accounting for the explanation.  Clip-art provides a shortcut that leads back to the fact something can't be codified, can't be illustrated:  everything is complicated and yet easily simplified.  In my case I go to a lot of trainings and meetings about employment for people with developmental disabilities, and somehow the Clip-art responses to that grouping of abstractions ("people," "disabilities," "employment") come off so inept as to be ironic, even absurd, not because the people in the Clip-art depictions aren't depicted in wheelchairs for diversity's sake, or whatever.  It's not the visuals.  The simplicity of the "Clip-arting" process is the main problem:  hugely complicated topics can't be easily abstracted especially while you're living through them.  There's no ap for that.

 

Helping/supporting people with disabilities to get actual jobs with living wages is about trying to do a lot of activities people on all sides of the table aren't used to.  It's about decreasing the importance of programs and increasing the importance of expectations both on the people we're trying to help get real jobs, and on the employers.  These expectations vary of course.  On the part of the people with disabilities, we are counting on them to have the skills and desires and competencies needed to work; on the part of the employers, we are counting on them to think beyond stereotypes and to make hiring decisions based on a person's skills and desires and competencies, not on charity or pity.  The equation sounds simple, but it is so complex as to become confusing, even depressing.  The contemporary history of vocational ambitions for people with developmental disabilities is pretty dismal:  consigned to sheltered workshop making sub-minimum wage.  In the 1980s a service set called "supported employment" caught on for many folks, but still those segregated work spaces held on, so that a small percentage of "job-ready" people were referred for employment in the real world, but a vast majority were still told they "belong" in a sheltered work environment, always being told they weren't ready yet. 

 

In 2012 Employment First, a national initiative, came to Ohio, signed as an executive order by Governor Kasich.  It stipulates that all the service-systems statewide here in Ohio presume people are employable.  Are "ready."

 

"Ready" is a loaded word and concept, and as I keep trying to figure out how to help make employment happen for people (in tandem with a bunch of other folks, including social workers, counselors, family member, and employers, etc.) I always try to understand that not everyone we're trying to help "break through" will make it, and some may not even want to.  But my presumption is that all of us want to be contributors to the world, using whatever talents we have to make it a better place.  My presumption is everyone deserves a chance.  Lots of chances actually.

 

Good old Tennessee Williams, in A Streetcar Named Desire, had Blanche Dubois whisper, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."  With all this employment stuff, we are depending on the kindness, and open-mindedness of people with developmental disabilities, their family members, services providers, supervisors, CEOs, coworkers, and so on.  "Kindness," in this case, seems to be a process of seeing beyond what's right in front of you, and what's in the historical record, maybe even in the subconscious.  People who are not consigned to Sheltered-Workshop-Land often have images in their heads of groups of people with developmental disabilities in school on the little yellow bus, in backroom classrooms, on the playground in clusters.  They have images from TV and movies and literature that dictate these folks are helpless and in need of all kinds of "special" support.  People with developmental disabilities, and their service providers, advocates and families, often have a lot of fear about connecting with the "real world," about leaving behind the intended safety and comfort of programs designed to protect them and to perpetually "prepare" them for eventual "inclusion."  "Kindness" may be the only way for people on all sides of the equation to see, without blinders, a world in which many people often considered not "ready" are actually capable of contributing and ascending even.

 

So employment is maybe one of the only ways to put social change into practice, to test the boundaries of "kindness," not charity or pity, but a kindness that is predicated on the Golden Rule that essentially states: You should treat others as you would like others to treat you. 

 

Pretty simple.  Bet there's no Clip-art for that though.  

 

In summation, here's a picture:

 

 

 

This happened last week -- a team of temporary employees with developmental disabilities became full-time employees of ThyssenKrupp Bilstein, a company in Southwest Ohio that makes auto-parts.  They had to work really hard to prove themselves, not just because it's a hard job, but because they don't have the luxury of not being labeled.  That labeling is an obstacle everyone involved has to overcome.  The employer had to figure out how to accommodate for a few things, but also expect great things; the employees had to figure out how to word hard and push forward and even maybe surprise themselves with how strong they are; the job coaches, families, supporters, and supported employment people had to figure out how to make all of this work without interrupting efficiency and the workplace.  It goes on and on.  Complications arise, but the will to incorporate those complications (not really solve them, but contend with and work with it all) becomes a version of "kindness," and eventually a little bit of triumph,  Right beside the big ThyssenKrupp Bilstein sign stands the CEO Fabian Schmahl, who gave a great speech and then handed each new employee their uniforms.    

 

Without employment, this process on all sides would have never happened.  It was not a Utopian moment, as much as a simply joyous one.  Which is probably a lot better, at least from my point of view.

 

The Believers, Part 1

A group of us met Tuesday night at Thunder-Sky, Inc. to brainstorm, kvetch, swap stories, and strategize about how to make things happen for people we're all trying to help, especially around the concept of "employment."  I jotted down some notes.  Still thinking about all of it and very happy we're doing this.

• Networks versus jobs
• Investment in people for the long haul
• Having a vision for both the person and the business
• Wealth creation -- not food, filth and flowers
• Discovery as the primary way of doing business
• I FIGURE IT OUT AFTER I DO IT
• Thinking long-term instead of "closure"
• Congregation prevents imagination
• How do we figure out how to increase the likelihood of being able to help people get careers and not just jobs?

We got into a really great discussion about how hard it is to break away from "old-school" notions like "enclaves," because an opportunity is an opportunity...  You don't want to pass up possibilities, even though they seem like the old way of doing business, and even though you kind of know that people would benefit from just having some money, even if it's not long-term.  It's really a fine line, a sort of dance that we'll have to do, even while we try to keep our eyes on the prize.

We told stories about people who have found unconventional ways of getting employed and staying employed, using Customized Employment as a mode of operation, and not thinking of JOB, as much as what businesses need and what the people we're supporting are interested in and have to offer. 

One of the main themes that kept coming up:  Entrepreneurial versus Social-Work.  Thinking about how to make money, not just how to get a job.  Venture capitalism as opposed to Bussing Tables.

How do we incentivize hiring people with disabilities?

One story that kind of sticks out in my head:  a guy in Canada who sponsors/curates community sing-alongs at local bars, 5 bucks a person -- if you do the math, that simple, creative idea might yield 40,000.00 a year.

On Friday, Tamie and I met with a local business-owner/CEO at Starbucks.  He was more than helpful.  And Tamie and I went at it in that "informational interview" format we've discussed.  Not asking for help, but how can we partner?  He seemed almost like he had been waiting for us to ask.  He offered up all kinds of insight and assistance in a fifteen minute meeting that was way more productive than any 7-hour in-service could be.  What came out of it:  a job possibility for one of the folks I'm trying to help, access to a skills matrix he uses in his business (that we can appropriate and use in order to develop a resume/skills listing of people who want employment), an introduction to the West Chester Chamber of Commerce, and access as well to an ongoing conversation with him, and other local business leaders he knows who might be interested in being a part of this.

Next Believers meeting:  September 17, 2013, 6:30 pm, at Thunder-Sky, Inc.

Please feel free to add/comment on these notes...  I know I've missed some of the great stuff that was said...

Thanks to everyone who showed up...

Now Hiring





 

 

Raymond wanted a job more than anything else in the world.  Bill and I talk about that sometimes.  What does "having a job" mean anyway?  What did it mean to him?  Here was a guy who couldn't really speak that well, who seemed a little bit, well, weird, to people, and who had a passion for life that seems freakishly beautiful now.  Here was a guy who created a persona and lifestyle out of what he wanted and expected from life, and that persona and lifestyle became an iconic spirit that haunted this little city we live in.  At the core of that self-made identity is "construction worker."  (The clown stuff is decoration; the foundation for his identity, the outfit Raymond festooned with a clown collar, was overalls.) 

 

When you go through the stuff he left behind, you find the accoutrements of the working class.  Tool boxes, fluorescent mesh vests, hard hats, gloves, overalls.  You find the wardrobe and tool-chest of someone who spent his life working.  But because of his disability, and the obstacles that caused, he was often shut out of opportunities.  Raymond had a dishwashing job at a hotel downtown when he was young.  He had a job for a time at M. E. Heuck, a manufacturer here in town of household products.  Toward the end of his life he worked in the sheltered workshop at Goodwill in Woodlawn.  But Raymond's true calling was construction work -- probably influenced by his father.  Raymond craved, to the day before he died, getting a job at a construction joint.  Bill can tell you the story about Raymond calling him that day before he passed away, wanting to fill out an application.  The killer for Raymond's dream was that no construction company or utility company would hire him because he didn't have a driver's license.  Plus maybe because of his disability.

 

I wonder if Raymond were around today if we might be able to help him get that job he wanted.

 

God knows we helped him have art shows.  He loved that.  But I always had the suspicion, so does Bill, that he resorted to the drawing because he couldn't be a part of the action he was inspired by.  He invented a position for himself:  documentarian, recorder of demolition sites, utility digs, street work.  He set up his equipment along side those sites not only to draw, but to be a part of what he was drawing.  And a lot of the construction and utility workers we've spoken to concerning Raymond remark on this.  Raymond became a part of their team, but not on payroll.  A lot of the items in his archive (the tool boxes, the hard hats) were gifts to him from "co-workers," people who wanted him to be a part of the action, even though they didn't know any other way how besides giving him assorted props.

 

What if Raymond would have had a job he loved?

 

I think he would have still made art.  I think his work would have informed what he did artistically.  He would have been happier maybe.  Maybe he would have lived longer?  Who knows?

 

So as I look toward the future I'm thinking one thing we might be doing is looking into creating an organization that somehow helps people like Raymond -- creative, energetic, focused people -- get real jobs.

 

Maybe this is the next move to make?  We have created a day program with a mural commemorating him on it.  We have created a gallery in his name.  What about an organization that is focused on the most important issue of his life:  getting hired.  Making a living.  Actually being a part of something, and getting a paycheck for it.

 

Stay tuned.

 

Below are items from Raymond's archive that touch on his love of work.  The notes are notes to himself to inquire about employment, probably jotted down while he was on his way to a demolition site to draw.