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.

 

Groundbreaking

Earlier this week, I was at a conference organized around the idea that people with disabilities can have better lives if they get jobs with real wages.  This seems like a truly simple and true assertion, but also like anything that seems simple and true the idea is fraught with complications because, well, it's people.  You just can't make assertions like that without considering history, perceptions, experiences...  And you can't really assert anything for sure when talking about "people with disabilities" anyway.  That's a category, not actual people, when you get down to it.  Actual "people with disabilities" are individuals with all kinds of different needs, talents, interests, brilliances, predilections, shortcomings, etc.  In short it's hard to make something concrete out of something so abstract.

But maybe you have to.

The conference gathered together all kinds of folks, from people with disabilities (all kinds of disabilities, developmental, physical, and so on) to their families, from social workers to business people.  There was an energy in the air; maybe I'm making that up, but still...  It felt electric somehow, and serious, and everyone was paying attention to what's currently going on.  Supported Employment for people with disabilities is not a new idea of course, but this time we don't have the luxury of maintaining the status quo while pontificating and talking about "change."  We have to make it happen.  Medicaid rules are changing, and Medicaid funds the majority of supports for people with disabilities.  The changes are about prioritizing toward helping people have as much independence and equality as possible.  The rules changes come from all kinds of places within the federal government, not just Medicaid (Department of Justice and Department of Labor are in on it too, which makes sense, because the issue isn't really about social programs as much as civil rights and labor rights:  95% of people who don't make minimum wage on their jobs are actually people who go to sheltered workshops), so it's really hard to ignore. 

This time it's top down in ways it's never been.  And on the ground are large programs/buildings/workshops that have been doing  business for decades in ways that the Feds are now calling unfair and possibly illegal. 

What does this mean?

It means maybe we who have jobs supporting people with disabilities, especially those with developmental disabilities, have been looking at the situation through the wrong set of eyes.  We often see issues for the people we support as programmatic.  How can we alter programs to help people?  But actually we should be looking at not the programs, but the results (the "outcomes" in government-speak) of those programs.  And the results just aren't that great; in fact they have kept a lot of people in situations they could possibly break away from, if only the programs they are in were in question.  In other words, the question should be, "What is happening in this person's life?  Is he/she getting what he/she needs to be successful?"  As opposed to the question we usually ask, "What program does he/she need to be referred to?"

Ronald Reagan (I know a lot of people will probably not like me quoting the Gipper, but what the hell?) once said, "The best social program is a real job."  And even though it's hyper-complicated to make results/outcomes happen, that's basically what we are talking about here:  how do we help people make a living wage?  How do we help people secure success (without the program getting in the way)?  How do we support people to be the best people they can be?

  

For better or for worse, this process of being the best you can be often has its foundation in what people do for a living.  And if you take that possibility out of the picture, you often are grasping at straws.  I've met a majority of my friends through work.  A majority of my identity as a person is informed solely by my job.  I've spent 36 of my 49 years working in restaurants, libraries, group-homes, etc. Yup.  I started at 13, riding my jankety moped to the Irish Point Restaurant in Pendleton, Indiana so I could be a car-hop and grill-cook.  After that I moved on to Kentucky Fried Chicken, Rax Roast Beef, Ponderosa Steakhouse, and so on.  I developed a work ethic through the process.  I think I may have learned more real lessons at all those jobs than anything I ever learned in school and college because it's all about putting yourself in the middle of things, being "in" the moment, and understanding you are a part of the world that is needed, that you have responsibilities and you are counted on.

By blocking entrance into this sense of responsibility, through programs, through good intentions, we who are trying to help people with disabilities are just plain hindering them.  We've been doing this for, well, since we figured out we needed to be helping.  We've constructed large programs and facilities that are about "training" people, but the training has gone on for decades without any results.  We're good at wanting to help.  Not so good at actually doing it.

So now there's a shift.  And I'm hoping it's for real.  I have a feeling it is.  Because at the end of the day the reason I chose this line of work is to not be a part of a program, but a part of a movement.  That sounds lofty as all get out, reminiscent of hippie BS, but it's true.  I don't have a lot of school spirit, never have, what pushes me forward is making stuff happen:  results.  I think that's true of a lot of social-worker-types, and we just get so caught up in the programs we make, funding them, going through certifications and audits for them, that we forget sometimes what they are there for. 

Anyway, that conference earlier this week truly made me feel like we're on our way toward something, as opposed to on our way to protecting what's already been done.  There may be people with disabilities who can't have real jobs, or maybe who don't want to have them, and that's okay.  What is exciting is that from now on, I think, I hope, the assumption is people can work and have lives and pay taxes and have beers with their buddies after work.  They can be"equal" in one of the truest ways to be equal:  as necessary contributors in getting things done.

Which brings me to Raymond Thunder-Sky. 

That's one of his drawings up there.   (Many more can be seen at www.raymondthundersky.org.)   Having a real job was Raymond's obsession, and he had a few (and also worked for a long time in sheltered workshops), did well at everything he tried, but the job that he truly craved, being a part of a construction crew, eluded him because he couldn't get a driver's license (that's one of the major prerequisites to being on a crew).  So he created a job for himself:  he began drawing sites, setting up shop on the periphery of demolition and construction sites with a toolbox filled with markers and paper. He became a ghost-worker in many ways, sublimating his desire for an actual gig with what he could actually do.  I'm thinking, in the climate of today, he may have been able, somewhere along the line, to get a license with some help.  With some persistence from both himself and his supporters he may have been able to at least try to have that career.  Maybe he would be both a participant in the real world, and an artist commenting and documenting his participation in it.

Anyway you look at it, this is an ongoing saga...  I hope, I truly hope, this time there are actual results.

  

      

Workaholics Anonymous

 

 

The other night I was driving to the Thunder-Sky Gallery because we were going to have a meeting about how to best help people with disabilities access real employment, with actual living wages and a chance to move forward.  I had pulled together this informal group of likeminded people who actually do that, so we could talk shop and figure out how to negotiate all the systems and other forms of bull-shit that can impede the simplest and yet most arduous of tasks:  finding meaningful work. 

 

On the way there I got a call from a woman named Beverly, out of the blue.  She said she'd heard about Thunder-Sky, Inc. via an article online, and she was floored.  She was Raymond's job coach when he worked at M. E. Heuck, a company that makes kitchen utensils.  Raymond worked there for quite a while.  Beverly said that he had the strongest work ethic of anyone she'd ever seen.  "He was a true gentleman," she said.  "He was so focused on his work it was amazing to watch."  One time he came in off the bus looking roughed-up with a bruise on his eye.  Although he didn't talk too much, Beverly said she could tell that he had been mistreated probably by some teenaged boys.  "That kind of stuff happened a lot to him," she said.  Raymond, that day, just went right to work.  It was as if he was trying to work all the hurt out by staying in the routine. 

 

Everyone who really knew Raymond knew he was a workaholic.  All he really ever wanted was a good job, which often means also having a good life. 

 

Beverly said, "He really didn't need a job coach.  He could do the job.  But it was my pleasure to be able to visit him on the job when I did, just so I could talk with him and be in his presence." 

 

I got kind of choked up talking to her because it was one of those moments when things seem to coalesce, and those kinds of moments catch you so off-guard you almost want to hide from them.  We're always trying to think of the best way to continue Raymond's legacy.  The art gallery, and archiving all his drawings, is one way, but another way might be to figure out the best ways to help people like him get real jobs, and to put those best ways into practice all across the area.

 

So that night the group (we're calling ourselves The Believers and we're keeping it kind of on the down-low) met at his namesake gallery, and it was great.  People totally focused on the same issue talking about struggles and successes and also stumbling onto a sort of collective point of view:  the best way to help people is to get them working through connecting them with businesses and employers who need really good workers.  That sounds really simple, but in the over-complicated world of "helpful" bureaucracies that surround the lives of people with disabilities like creepy force-fields, this simplicity is often drained out so that every good idea gets stretched into a process that eventually yields nothing.  I know that sounds cynical, but that's it in a nut-shell.

 

How then do you decrease the bull-shit and increase the possibilities of real stuff happening?

 

Do it without making a big deal out of it.  Concentrate on one person at a time.  Concentrate on one or two businesses at a time.  Get to know both.  Find out what the person needs and wants.  Find out what businesses need and want.  Make the connections matter without a lot of fuss or process.  Just do it.  And then keep doing it. 

 

At the end of the discussion, we figured one of the best ways to make things happen is to keep doing what we're doing, and to meet regularly to compare notes and get new ideas from one another.  We also decided that each of us should invite one other likeminded person to come to the next get-together in January.  Grow slowly, keep each other focused, celebrate and learn from each connection we make.  Keep moving forward.  Don't let the need for bureaucracy and funding overrule the need for sanity and real accomplishments.  We figured that we use the system the way the system is supposed to be used by actually helping to make things happen, without enslaving ourselves to process and procedures.

 

I'll be inviting Beverly to the next one.

 

  

 

 

 



Discovery

Raymond Thunder-Sky volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, back in the day..

I'm always trying to figure out what I am supposed to do.  That sounds point-blank, but it isn't.  There is a huge difference between doing what you are supposed to do and figuring out what that is.  Without figuring it out and understanding reasons and consequences, what you do often becomes null and void or even worse it makes things crappier.  Case in point:  in my day-job activities I try to help people with developmental disabilities get real jobs.  It is one of the hardest things to do on Earth, but also, I think, one of the only ways people who are often shut out of life's opportunities have access to go beyond the clichés and isolations we place on them as a culture.  You make a life out of all kinds of experiences and chances, and having a job with a decent wage is one of the primary ways you acquire both cultural capital and a sense of worth, not to mention friends. 

I work within a variety of systems to make this job thing happen, and most of the time the work is a great example of this quote often attributed to Einstein:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

We keep providing the same kinds of services, expecting "outcomes" that matter, and when those "outcomes" don't happen we tend not to blame the system, but the situation, and kind of implicitly the people we're trying to help.  The systems for helping people with developmental disabilities are usually based on "job-readiness" models, meaning we use a lot of resources getting people "ready" for the work-world, assessments and trainings, etc. that sometimes go on for years and make up the bulk of the "logic" involved in "Employment Services."  When it comes to getting jobs, we' aren't so good.  We don't really do a lot of networking with businesses, and we don't really try to simply act as placement services, as opposed to assessment/training services.  In short, we basically prepare people to wait.  And then the waiting turns into a sort of service itself.

So what I'm trying to figure out, with the help of some really great and smart people, is how to make things happen in a straight-forward and no-BS fashion, unwinding the "same thing over and over again" into results that matter:  people employed.  Period.  

We met a month ago or so and did a sort of loose but meaningful PATH plan on how to approach changing things.  We're calling ourselves a "secret society" because we don't want it to be about us or a system or any of that.  We want it to be about what it's supposed to be about, whatever that turns out to be.  Below  is what we came up with... 

We're meeting this Tuesday at Thunder-Sky, Inc. to figure out more stuff... 



Raymond casting himself as the "Costumed Ironworker" in one of his thousands of construction site drawings.  Below:  a note Raymond jotted down to himself during one of his many job-hunts around the city.


Which brings me to:  Raymond.  He was someone with a developmental disability who craved meaningful employment.  After all is said and done about him, that was his main goal in life, and he never really achieved it.  His art-making came from that main desire, and he accrued a lot of construction-worker accouterments on his way to trying to get a construction job.  He even created his own job (a sort of on-site construction-worker/conceptual artist) by bringing markers, paper and a makeshift drawing table to demolition and construction sites all across Cincinnati, all so he could be a part of the work even though he was mostly excluded from it.  Raymond worked at several places, including Goodwill (he even volunteered for Habitat for Humanity), but he never got a chance at his dream-job.  So I think it's totally appropriate that we use his space to try to figure some of the stuff out.  And when you get right down to it, helping people get employed is a sort of art of its own, kind of like curating an exhibit:  you have to be keen and alert and thoughtful.  You have to set up situations that yield more than one result. 

Trying to Make Employment Work
PATH Plan June 24, 2013

Our Dream for Ways Things Will Be, Our "North Star"

Discovery (hanging out with intent, figuring out what works and what doesn't without using the same old assessment models)
No assessment-heavy supports
People have money and economic self sufficiency
They know how to maintain (and/or get rid of) benefits while increasing income
Businesses are open and seeking employees with different backgrounds, and we have a way to communicate with them that is reciprocal, natural, and benefits everyone
Citizen Connectors:  connections that go beyond what programs often can do, and intend
Working means "career," not just a job
Helping people, not programs
Practitioners (service systems) get "along"
Citizen Connectors that help with all aspects of being a part of the world -- introductions, informational interviews, forming viable networks
The only measure of success is employment
People are connected -- and one of the huge aspects of that connection is "happily employed" at a job that challenges and stimulates them
Families, coworkers, friends, etc. participate in the process and help to change it

Positive/Possible June 2014

30 informational interviews with business.  No agenda, just interviews.
20 more people wanting to work -- getting jobs in a better way -- organizing into Community Action Teams.
The "Secret Society: has helped 5 people get employed -- a group from varying backgrounds -- like-minded, beyond the radar.
More people in connector roles.
Interest group assisting with 3 local businesses.
Transition meetings:  "What kind of work do you want to do?  How do you want to live your life?"

Right Now

Employment First (an Ohio government initiative) is "topdown" and "same old same old" but it starting some new conversations.
A disconnect still exists between TALK and PRACTICE.
People unemployed and underemployed.
Providers of Service operate in old models.
Everybody has to be someplace during the day.

Staying Strong

Regular gatherings (monthly or semimonthly).
Facebook group.
Keeping it real and fun.
Grow the group.
Keep our focus on employment.

Don't Quit Your Day Job

 

Bill, Antonio and I had lunch at Dusmesh today, this little Indian restaurant near Cincinnati State in Clifton.  The buffet is amazing.  I wanted to touch base with both of them about the idea of supporting creative, hard-working, unconventional people (like Raymond) to get jobs, using Thunder-Sky, Inc. as the platform.  So I asked Antonio what he thought, and one of the first things he said:  "Don't quit your day job." 

 

He also said, "You can be an artist but you can't sacrifice yourself."  I asked him what he meant by "sacrifice," and he said, "You have to make yourself a living.  You have to have a roof over your head."

 

We talked about employment for people with disabilities and how Raymond was a prime example, and how Antonio is a living example.  Antonio went through his mental Rolodex and out came all the jobs he's had since high school:  a lumberyard, a Blockbuster video, Goodwill, and since 2002 where he is working now, Frisch's Big Boy Restaurant.  He said he has been there at Frisch's so long that he now trains in bussers, showing them how to do tables right, how to unload tubs, and where the trash goes.

 

Bill and I also talked about how Raymond used to go to Goodwill over in Woodlawn, and Antonio said that he and Raymond sometimes used to work side by side there, before Antonio got his job at Blockbuster.  What a beautiful image that is:  two great artists and people working very hard during the day, and individually making works of art whenever they could.  Evenings, weekends, afternoons after work.  If made me think about how working a job sometimes helps people produce better art because it gets rid of the BS and the procrastination inherent in being a fulltime anything.  You only have a certain precious amount of time to create, because you're either going to collapse from exhaustion or you have to go in early to cover somebody's shift.  That creative time to make something gets prioritized and you truly know what you are making has to exist, not because someone is paying you for it but because you have sliced out this moment of your life to do it and it has to get done.  The pressure applied is your own, and that beautiful pressure can be seen in Raymond and Antonio's art:  there's no excess to their drawings, paintings and sculptures.  They seem preordained somehow, because I bet you they were thought about while doing the work they had have to do to get a bonafide paycheck. 

 

Joseph Cornell, one of the best known self-taught artists, had day jobs.  A whole lot of them.  He worked throughout his life as a wholesale fabric salesman, a door-to-door appliance salesman, a worker in a plant nursery, and a defense plant janitor. He also, when not working for a living, helped take care of his brother who had cerebral palsy.  Somewhere in there he made his shadow-boxes and dossiers and photographs and movies.  He was reclusive, creative, a little strange, and yet he lived his life like most of us do, earning a paycheck, taking care of his family, and making art.  Probably in that order.  And yet he was able to produce a body of work that boggles the brain.  The point isn't that all of us are versions of Joseph Cornell.  Most of us aren't that talented and inscrutable.  The actual point is that most artists have to do what Cornell did, piecing together an existence in order to make what they need and want to make.

 

I guess that's why I think pulling together an employment agency/organization for people with disabilities using Thunder-Sky, Inc. as the foundation makes sense.  I'm sure most people will find it odd, but what I love most about Raymond, and Antonio, is their unpretentious, completely organic merging of art and life, so that the two interchange seamlessly.  In Raymond's case, he used his desire to make art and to make a living as two forces that combined to create his iconic persona.  In Antonio's case, when he is at work bussing tables, he is thinking of all the drawings he is going to do when he gets home, and when he has time time to do the drawings he remembers the toil and frustration and joy of working and that informs what he does.

 

Don't quite your day job is not a presciption.  It's a formula for success.  And creative artistic people who happen to be labeled with some kind of disability often don't need that much help with making art as much as they need assistance in making a living.

 

April 26, 2013, 6 to 10 pm, we're doing the opening reception for Antonio's next gig at Thunder-Sky, "She Blinded Me with Science."  This one is a collaboration with Pam Kravetz and Matthew Waldeck Sr.  It's going to be a blast. 

 

In the basement we're going to have a makeshift "whiteboard" for people to write down what they think Thunder-Sky, Inc., as a non-profit organization, might look/feel like in the future.  One of my main contributions is going to be that Antonio quote:  Don't quit your day job.  And under that I'm going to write:  "Thunder-Sky Industries."  That's the name I'm floating for this little endeavor.

 

Stay tuned.     



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.