Stop and Think

Yesterday I was in a meeting with a bunch of smart and capable colleagues, but we seemed to be unable to figure out how to talk to each other, outside of stating our solitary purposes, listing complaints, and finally there was the weather.  It wasn't a work meeting with an agenda.  It was an informal get-together at lunch for all of us who work in the same region, and although we work within the same bureaucracy we have different jobs, different approaches.  Different philosophies.  I've given "different philosophies" its own sentence status here because I think that's what made the whole shindig feel awkwardly unnecessary (at least to me):  the differing ways of comprehending what we are trying to do totally got in the way.  

I felt out of my element with these folks, but also somehow above-it-all, quintessentially shut out, but connected to some other stratosphere, some other form of culture.  Although everyone at this lunch was interested in supporting people with disabilities to the best of their abilities, we seemed to have conflicting ways of looking at, and probably doing, the work.  But we couldn't voice those conflicts because we were so busy talking about our own little realities and problems and crises.  

"Philosophy" might be too big of a word here, but what other word is there?  

Here's Merriam-Webster's elucidation:  Philosophy is "the pursuit of wisdom: a search for a general understanding of values and reality by chiefly speculative rather than observational means: an analysis of the grounds of and concepts expressing fundamental beliefs." 

It's values I'm talking about, beliefs, set aside from observation.  That gets scary when you're sitting and eating a grilled chicken sandwich with people who also are dedicating their work lives to helping people with disabilities, but "help" and "support," if they aren't defined outside of systems definitions, if they aren't given a philosophical scouring and inspection, become concepts that slip into discussions of "what works and what doesn't work," as in:  there are some people who can be a part of their worlds, get jobs, have friends, have real lives, but there are other groups of people who can't because they have significant, complex disabilities.  Once that dichotomy gets placed on the table, and there isn't any way to address the values/beliefs/philosophies behind it, the discussion takes on its own sad and tired momentum.  Anecdotes become the main form of discourse.  "Worst case scenarios" take over the way we talk and respond and communicate.

We always end up at a standstill:  if we had more funding, it we had more staff, if we had a better community, if we had better psychiatrists, better family support, better etc.

All of that stuff about needing better support is of course very valid in the lives of people with disabilities, especially people who are labeled with a variety of disabilities, but also wishing for better becomes a way to jettison the discussion on how to make things better.  It becomes a cop-out camouflaged in professional exasperation and eventual despair.  "I guess we'll just need to keep trying" becomes the way to codify failure.  

Of course we need better supports, but we also need to know pretty specifically and meaningfully just what those better supports would be supporting better, if that makes sense.  Because without that kind of an eye on the prize, the reason for doing anything becomes rote activity, becomes an exercise in blowing off steam.

I guess maybe that is what these lunch kinds of meetings are about, but I really feel a link was missing, words were missing.  We didn't know how to discuss anything because we did not have an agreement on what we might want things to mean.  For me, every professional discussion I'm going to have is about how to figure out better access for people to the actual world they're living in, not the program they have to go to.  I'm going to try to guide discussion toward jobs, relationships, freedom and justice and all that, for everyone, no matter what degree of disability has been attached to their person.  With that in mind, then, the lack of resources, the lack of whatever, becomes something we have to work on, but also something we have to negotiate realistically to still get whatever we can done in the meantime, and as we do that we often discover the unsurmountable is surmountable.  "Health and safety," in this context for me, is a baseline, not even the beginning of a journey, but the launching pad for connection, for what's next and next and next.  

If we have a discussion about philosophy first, getting it all out there, then the complaints about what is lacking might become more real.  The reason for trying to solve problems might get attached to something other than the problem being discussed.  We move forward in whatever way we can, whether of not the world and the system and everybody else is ready.  

That's what I'm looking for.  That kind of discussion, that kind of momentum.  I want us to have a "Come to Jesus" moment prior to every professional gig I guess.  

Why are we here?  What's the purpose for all of this talk?  Why are we even trying?  

I hate getting cute, but why not?  I'm going to go the New Yorker cartoon route:

How do you stop and think before you go into the same old routine, the same bitching and moaning?  How do you just stop and think about what all of this is supposed to mean before you move into what's wrong?

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.   

 





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.

 

  

 

 

 



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...

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.