CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets) is White Bird Clinic's Crisis Intervention Program. In the last few years CAHOOTS has gained national notoriety for their use of de-escalation and wholistic problem solving. Cross-trained crisis worker and medic, Chelsea Swift, talks about her job in the CAHOOTS van.
To find out more about White Bird Clinic, visit whitebirdclinic.org.
CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets) is White Bird Clinic's Crisis Intervention Program. In the last few years CAHOOTS has gained national notoriety for their use of de-escalation and wholistic problem solving. Cross-trained crisis worker and medic, Chelsea Swift, talks about her job in the CAHOOTS van.
To find out more about White Bird Clinic, visit whitebirdclinic.org.
Hi, I'm excited for this
Hana Francis:welcome to White Bird Mutual Aid. I'm Hana Francis. And this hour we talk about the different departments of whiteboard clinic. We do this through getting to know the people who make the services available. Today we're talking about CAHOOTS. This stands for Crisis Assistance helping out on the streets is the department of White Bird that houses the mobile crisis intervention unit. And this model, there is one van on duty 24/7 And a second van that is on duty for another 12 hours of the day. In Springfield, there's also now a single van on duty 24/7. For 12 hour shift, there's one train crisis worker and one EMT certified medic in each van and these vans are dispatched by the police fire ambulatory dispatch line. In the last year and a half or so the Black Lives Matter uprising spurred by the killing of George Floyd in May of 2020. Encouraged people to search for alternatives to the police. This has led to increase national attention of this program. So what exactly does CAHOOTS do and why does it matter? Today I speak with Chelsea Swift, a CAHOOTS cross trained worker. This means that she is both a medic and a crisis worker. She has been with White Bird for about five years now.
Chelsea Swift:My name is Chelsea's Swift. She/her. I am a CAHOOTS crisis worker, a CAHOOTS medic, which means I'm a cross trained codes worker on the van. And then I hold an agency outreach support role, where I do a lot of our community presentations and maintain ongoing relationships and give trainings to community partner agencies in town and to other programs in the US and elsewhere who are looking at developing their own mobile crisis intervention programs.
Hana Francis:Um, yeah, can you tell me about what being a CAHOOTS worker is like, I'm interested in both the technical aspects and your personal experience if you're open to sharing
Chelsea Swift:Our work on the CAHOOTS van - this is cliche - but it is just so vastly different every single day. We work with everyone. We work with everyone in this community, every neighborhood. We are counseling around the same issues, whether it's in a camp in Washington Jefferson Park, where I might be providing support for someone whose friend was just Narcanned, I will have that same interaction in the Southwest Hills up on a clean talking to a parent whose child was just Narcanned because they were overdosing. Um, the issues that people face are so often a consequence of what our community has doesn't have what capitalism has provided and not provided. So the call types range widely, and then where those call types take place range widely to so that looks like welfare checks for people who are sleeping or having a medical emergency on the sidewalk that looks like de escalating people who are psychotic that might be in public, or that might be someone who, you know, in the last year has not left their home has been deprived of their social support network, what we kind of refer to as their natural supports, and just those conditions have led to psychosis or deep depression. And we are often the first time someone has ever touched the mental health system or the public safety system or the first time someone has talked to a medical provider, even if just an EMT basic who's taking vitals and collecting history. Um, we are a link who I know we have a lot of wonderful skills and a lot of knowledge and rapport and ability to navigate the system but the most valuable piece of our services that we come when you call and it might take hours but in In a world where there is not enough resources, um, where many of those resources in the last year have had to make themselves less available for dropping in person, we are part of a system that never stopped showing up in person, and when somebody needed it. We take a lot of our calls also from third party so that could be someone driving to work who sees someone who seems like a safety concern, maybe they're walking unsteady on, and we are sent to find that person based on behavior, direction of travel and clothing description, or someone out of state who saw that their friend or family member made concerning statements on social media about wanting to die, or "I'm sorry, and goodbye". Um, we come into situations with very little information. *background clatter* We come into situations with very little information. And that also means that we're showing up with no agenda. And those very few details get us to where we are, but we're, we're showing up not on any one side just ready to figure out like, you have like kind of operated with your life and certain conditions for a very long time. What about today, made it that someone felt like they had to call public safety? Like what is the moment of the right now, that landed me on your doorstep. Um, some other calls that we do might look like first aid like ongoing first aid for wounds that drug users have, or folks with like chronic health conditions, people with diabetes, high blood pressure, hypertension ongoing on are more likely to have like wounds due to poor circulation and just kind of other systems not working well to take care of wounds that on could otherwise kind of be a simple issue can end up being a chronic condition for people. So, we are able to fill the gaps of when, um, yeah, traditional systems aren't available in the medical system as well. I just always like to point out that wall, about like 50 to 60% of the folks we work with are homeless or unhoused are living outside on the other 50 or 40 to 50% of who we work with are people behind closed doors in their residences. And that work is not seen. So it's often not the populations or the neighborhoods that we are associated to. And we have to do a lot of work sometimes right off the bat kind of undoing stigma when somebody's immediate reaction to seeing us as oh my god, my neighbors are going to see the CAHOOTS van parked outside of my house and what are they going to think about me? So we are constantly trying to equalize; Well, do you think they would have the same reaction if they saw a Eugene Springfield, Fire Department ambulance outside your house? They would be concerned they would say, Wow, that person needed help. So um, a lot of the work is is just constantly making yourselves available in a destigmatize way. And trying to Why is this work important to the community, I feel that there point out the positives of what engaging with us is, which is that we are confidential, we are a free service, we give free transportation, no ambulance bill, we cannot force anyone to do anything they don't want to do. There's a lot of youth in Eugene and Springfield who grew up being told "I'm going to call CAHOOTS" and they're gonna throw you in the big white van and take you to, you know, a non existent kid jail mental health facility. We don't do that. We can't do that. So, um, even within that, like often we have kind of this phrase we use where it's who's crisis, is it? Is it the person on the sidewalk who has been sleeping on that sidewalk for everyday for the last 10 years? Or is it the person who called who just saw that person on the sidewalk for the first time and is sort of horrified or saddened or upset and annoyed by what they see and how can we have a conversation with that color around? The reasons why this is happening and why we can't force someone to leave often. are people who have never needed to use these services and don't know what the need is. Yeah, I can go to just kind of a deep philosophical starting place, which is maybe meeting the community where they're at and meeting kind of humans as they exist in the United States and 2021, which is that we all have to work a lot to survive, we often have very little time to take care of our own selves, our own personal relationships on showing support and love and advocacy and counseling or mediation in our own relationships on. And so as years have gone on, and services do not exist, health issues complicate mental health issues on the rise, addiction continues, like people are suffering more than ever, there are less resources accessible to address those issues. And people have then such a hard time navigating their own issues that we end up contracting out our community care. So in a world where maybe somebody had to work less and driving home, and they would be able to instead, stop and say hello to their neighbor, see if there's an issue. So often a CAHOOTS call is call or requesting welfare check on somebody sleeping, or somebody laying on the sidewalk, but was not willing or not comfortable getting closer to confirm if they can see chest rise to see if someone's breathing. We don't have time to take care of each other. So we again, kind of using the phrase we like contract out that community care. And in most other communities that looks like calling 911, calling a local non emergency number and asking the police or other traditional EMS. Here, it's a fire department to respond. So while there is a lot there to unpack and look at how we could instead be enabling ourselves to take care of each other. Ideally, we would exist in a world where we could abolish CAHOOTS, not even we would be needed for so many of the calls that we've stayed, very, very busy handling. But when someone in Eugene or Springfield has to make that decision of I want this safety issue to be handled, this person will be provided care, I want this person off of my lawn. So I can have dinner with my family without my children being distracted or scared or whatever. Like, at least when that thought process is taking place on we have the option of concrete, I want help for this person. I am hoping CAHOOTS can show up and provide assistance. And so often in those details of somebody laying down and wanting CAHOOTS to check on them, we might have a business owner saying like business owner is hoping you can have the person move along because they don't want them tresspassing - they don't want the police to get involved. They're not looking for that sort of encounter to happen. For the person who is quote unquote, "trespassing". They also don't want that encounter to happen for themselves, they might not want to interact with the police that day, either that might not be a comfortable situation for them or interaction for them, that's then having to surrender the power of outcome to law enforcement and inviting them into your space as the decision makers. And often people might not want their customers to have to experience that or on kind of see this business as a place where the police could come in at any time and kind of disrupts the space. So, um, I think we allow in those moments - where because we're kind of, like, trained throughout the course of our lives to to call for help and help is needed, because we may or may not be prepared ourselves to provide that help, um, - that we are allowing people to kind of start that triage on their own and also for in our community, like people who have been harmed by the police or have like, been deeply affected by incarceration, um, systems of punishment. People who might have never called 911 or the police can engage in our system as well, in this resource that you get to call and at least someone shows up there are a lot of communities that do not get that benefit whatsoever because it is not safe, comfortable or therapeutic for them to call. There is still it is not perfect, there is still risk of calling CAHOOTS that law enforcement could or will get involved whether in tandem or without CAHOOTS, depending on the details of the situation. I think that is on us to be more transparent about that relationship at dispatch. That dispatches the one who makes the district decisions around if CAHOOTS is dispatched. But still, there's so much on that allows for more accessibility with first responders. Another really important piece is that calls that come in to to 911 Dispatch, where someone may or may not even be explicitly asking for CAHOOTS will get CAHOOTS instead of a police response based on the details. And then we get to have that transformative moment in the encounter of, "No, here's why we showed up there's not a safety or criminal issue as we define what criminal activities are, so you're gonna get me." And some people might be upset for that CAHOOTS response. And there is amazing conversation to be had in those encounters. Because then we get to apply all of our same skills of building rapport, reflecting empathy, being on the same page that's just like humans also operating in the community. I also don't love seeing people suffer on the sidewalk, and fields of people in tents during a pandemic. I don't love that, either. So I can agree with you that this is an issue. And I can tell you why police showing up will not change these conditions, and why us showing up might not change the conditions, but can at least try to change this encounter to be less violent.
Hana Francis:By the time Chelsea started working with White Bird in 2015, she already had a strong background in harm reduction, according to the National Harm Reduction Coalition. This is to look through the veils of stigma and criminalization to see the full humanity and potential of people that society has deemed deviant, dangerous, disposable. The intention of harm reduction, in other words, is to recognize that there will always be people who engage in high risk and or criminalized behaviors, whether it is by choice by necessity or circumstance. And the aim is to reduce harm as much as possible around these instances that include drug use, and sex work, among other things.
Chelsea Swift:I am from the East Coast originally, but I was living in San Francisco from my early 20s, doing harm reduction work street outreach in Haight Ashbury and needle exchange services and a Haight Ashbury and found great resonance in that work. And also, I'm never meant to be in San Francisco forever, and it's an expensive place to live. So and looking elsewhere on the West Coast. I came upon some job openings at White Bird Clinic, and then pretty quickly learned that wiper and clinic services were really modeled off of Haight Ashbury free clinic. The agency I worked for the Homeless Youth Alliance and San Francisco needle exchange, used to be a program at the Haight Ashbury free clinic that broke off due to the Haight Ashbury free clinic not wanting To distribu te naloxone or Narcan, to drug users, and the belief that that was an enabling practice. So here we are, a couple of decades later. And that is a well acknowledged practice among kind of all public health programs, not just harm reduction programs on so I was really interested in thinking about going to, like, work for this program that had so much of the values and, um, anyhow, ended up applying for a position had not been to Eugene before, knew it'd be an adjustment moving to like a smaller town after living in such a big city and drove past 341. The, the original, or the, you know, kind of White Bird base, and I saw it and was like, this is kind of gnarly, Super Wonderful. Those are probably my people here in Eugene. And while I was on that visit, I happen to hear back from White Bird and an interview and ended up accepting a benefits assistance, which was then at the time, like outreach for Medicaid, Oregon Health Plan. And on that same visit, I also, remember the first time I saw a CAHOOTS van, and saw hoots workers interacting in the public. Um, and it just struck me the moment I rounded the corner - I'm pretty sure it's actually after I drove by 341 for the first time, and just like turn left on West 11th. And I saw the van first. And then I saw a CAHOOTS worker, just the back of their jacket, I said CAHOOTS, and immediately just felt what was different about that interaction, because the CAHOOTS worker was squatting and looking up at the client, who was sitting on a window ledge, and just seeing what was so obviously a first responder what would still obviously be an interaction, like, I feel like I know what that interaction was. And, and I saw it while driving by just struck me. And so that work was kind of always in the back of my mind as I kind of did the case management stuff, and did enrolling people in Oregon Health Plan. And while I had that job, I actually also ran the needle exchange at HIV Alliance, which was a part time job at the time. So I did both and just kind of really jumped into what social services and which social services were actually really practicing harm reduction, as I learned about it in the Bay Area where best practices really get to be fully fulfilled.
Hana Francis:When Swift moved to Eugene from San Francisco, she found the hippie culture to be surprisingly familiar. But she also found some of the aspects of the culture to be a little harder to adjust to.
Chelsea Swift:Yeah, I think, um, you know, I moved to San Francisco and as 20 Most kids that I grew up with in New England, you kind of have this idea in your mind, like, Oh, I'm gonna move to California one day. And, you know, your gay best friend says, let's move to San Francisco and you say, Absolutely, let's do it. And um, I was like a deadhead in high school and super immersed in learning about like the the cultural revolution of the 60s. And I also found myself really out of place working at a Doc Martin store. And this needle exchange that historically was very punk rock. And, um, I was I held the title of the first hippie my boss ever hired at the Homeless Youth Alliance on Haight Street. So coming to Eugene, and coming to White Bird clinic, I feel like I've found what I expected I would find working in the Haight Ashbury, and um, yeah, that was like a very funny shift. But what was also a really big shift and what I think kept me from Kahoots work in the first couple of years that I lived and worked in the Eugene area was on you know, in Golden Gate Park doing outreach, if we saw the police and they approached us we would turn on our heels and walk away, um, if police were are in the area of our syringe exchange, we would directly confront them and say you are compromising confidentiality and safety for people who need to access our services, we were really mindful to never talk to law enforcement in public where our clients might see and get the impression that we are collaborating with them. So that was how I came into this work, how I was mentored into harm reduction and on direct service. So that relationship was hard to understand coming from a place where there was no working relationship with law enforcement and the agency I worked for. But living in Eugene, where CAHOOTS has existed, you know, then for like, 25 years now over 30 years on, it just got to this turning point of that service has the most access to the people who I want to show up for who I want to work with. And if I can be in those moments where I know I am so directly diverting them from being criminalized from being part of the carceral system, I probably need to do that work, if it's going on in my community. And I need to use the privilege of my values and my identity and my ability to advocate for people. In that work in this community, it kind of became what felt like a responsibility, and then was really, really lucky to have been hired and made it through that interview, and training process and have just become an absolutely new human in the last almost five years of doing CAHOOTS work.
Hana Francis:Over the years of working within this community combined with their previous knowledge. Swift has found new ways of looking at the dynamic between law enforcement, the community in her work,
Chelsea Swift:A conclusion for now that I've really come to in the last year of conversations around why we need mobile crisis intervention options. And something I've thought of in all of my years in CAHOOTS, because I see these interactions police encounters play out all day every day. And I work with police officers over the years at a time that I have been through more emotionally intense situations with than many of my own friends or family members. I really understand that many, many police officers are showing up with sincere intention to help and they do very often help, right like that is objective. For a lot of people who can have helpful experiences with law enforcement. However, when law enforcement is showing up, they right now are handling the issues of homelessness, the issues of mental health substance use, many feeling like this is not what I signed up for. They are showing up to that because like, it is so often not a crisis of safety. It is a crisis of need. So a single parent who has just worked 16 hours and is now trying to help their child do school on the computer and then a conflict breaks out with their child and they maybe another day where they didn't have to work overtime would be handling that situation today had to call 911 Because they are worried about just things getting really chaotic in the house on. Yeah, police. Someone needs to show up. But when police show up, they are bringing this inherent power dynamic that at any point someone's rights can be taken away. At any point the decision of how an interaction ends is not up to the caller anymore. So maybe there's a better example on if someone is in what is like referred to in the public safety law enforcement world as a domestic dispute. So a couple who is struggling. There was violence when police show up to that situation if there is physical evidence of violence. While the person who called maybe called them because in that immediate moment, they felt really unsafe, but they were not looking to get their partner incarcerated, or get themselves incarcerated. If there are injuries in that situation, police have a mandatory law that they have to arrest someone. So the public making that call initially may not know that, and are now what they thought was helpful, it's very likely that if that person, um, you know, if it was mutual violence, that the caller who called for help could get transported to jail that night. Um, as long as that power dynamic exists with law enforcement on a scene, they can have all of the crisis intervention training in the world, they can be the most relatable human ever, they can have like great affinity with the people they are responding to, they could be having a really great, um, meaningful encounter. But if their course of action is then and now I have to take you to jail, and while a night in jail for them is really routine for that individual, it means I now have to pay a bunch of fees, I have to go to a court date, I have to miss work, I don't have transportation, I now have to inform my job. Like, the the lifelong repercussions of something as simple as like the domestic violence encounter that I described, or just like getting pulled over because you had a taillight out and then getting a fix it ticket, like I do this work, and I would not be able to afford on a couple $100 If it's the end of a pier pay period, and I'm waiting to get paid on that is a huge power dynamic, and especially the financial power dynamics that come into play there, which are kind of unspoken as the encounters play out, but you're having to like, pay to be a criminal on that is so anxiety producing, like, even for me at baseline, if I got pulled over by law enforcement, like it's very likely I would know that officer's name, I might be driving home from work having just been on a CAHOOTS call with them a few hours ago, if they gave me that ticket, like the amount of fear I would have in that encounter, the amount of upset the amount of spiraling around how am I going to pay this bill? How am I going to, um, you know, get by on what groceries I have in my fridge, I could know that officer enjoy working with them have rapport, and that encounter with them getting a ticket or having a taillight out would be absolutely demoralizing. And that then brought to a place with communities who on just like in the way they move through the world - already experiencing racism, classism, transphobia ableism, the violence that they experience and the way that they are marginalized and discriminated against - police, what they are doing is just kind of heightening that same violence that already exists in their lives. And, um, because of the power that they bring into their encounters is where these really nasty outcomes take place. So while a black person in our community might be used to going into a restaurant and being discriminated against as like, oh, you need to be more quiet or Oh, like, we're gonna follow you around the store to make sure you're not stealing anything, those biases. Like there's so much violence in those encounters already. And then when police are applying those same biases that occur everywhere else, they are so much more violent, because of the outcomes that they wield and the power that they wield in their encounters.
Hana Francis:It seems really important that CAHOOTS works with the police. And I wonder if you see this like going in any specific direction in the future, like do you think that goods could handle more of what the police do and the police could do less? I don't know if that's an okay question for you to answer. But
Chelsea Swift:Absolutely. I think, um I think any law enforcement officer in the United States or in an area small as our own community knows most of how they spend their time. They know it is responding to situations where there is not a criminal element, or at least as we are told criminals act and behave. Right, like, it's not bank robbers, it's not extravagant kidnappings and police chases it is, um, yeah, just smaller disturbances on that just need some sort of outcome that really often just looks like okay, how can we get this person physically out of this exact space, because maybe their behavior is not criminal, but where they are right now. It is disruptive. I think we are at a point now that the criminalization response to that, that we see in our community with things like, I'm as specific as like, open container laws, or, um, in Springfield, they did pass and Eugene, they've tried to pass and it didn't make it through city council ordinances that punish the driver of a vehicle who has just handed money or some sort of donation to someone flying a sign, panhandling on the side of the road, for change. So we have instead of responding to issues have figured out a way to criminalize behaviors that if people did, inside, or behaviors that if people did with a different on ethnicity, or a different gender would get away with, police have a lot of tools for when they feel like they need an outcome, they can subjectively apply a criminal excuse to kind of, um, justify an intervention. But like, I believe that even like those encounters, where somebody is drinking a beer on the sidewalk, and really what needs to happen is that person needs to not be on the sidewalk directly in front of a business. So they use the open container as a way to criminalize and get that person away from the business. CAHOOTS can handle that call. And CAHOOTS can get that person to the sobering center to lay down and get rest and therefore not exist in front of any business for the day. Um, that is way more helpful for the public safety and, you know, enjoyment of the community for everyone, including the person drinking the beer. So right now, we at any point in Springfield, we have one CAHOOTS van on the road operating for 24 hours. In Eugene. We have 36 hours of Van coverage in a 24 hour period, which means that half the day for 12 hours, there are two kids vans on the road, the other 12 hours, there is only one we still handle, in 2019, 24,000 calls 18% of the calls that came through dispatch, and while we can't say that we diverted 18% of calls that would have otherwise gone to law enforcement because so many calls are CAHOOTS specific, um, EPD determined with their data that we divert like somewhere between 5 and 7%. That is with four - at most - CAHOOTS workers working at a time and half of that is with one CAHOOTS van on the road. Imagine like imagine there are on hundreds of police officers in Eugene. Our team has about like 35 van workers. The amount of calls that we get that hold for hours is most calls. It's for me unacceptable. I think sometimes it feels really unethical because people don't call expecting that they will have to wait hours. And because of a safety concern, maybe someone who is suicidal has a history of self harming with cutting, they aren't able to, you know, they haven't cut today, but they are able to contract for safety with a call taker. If we are already, if the one van on the road is already engaged in a call, police will get sent, even though it was details that CAHOOTS could have responded on their own, that reaches this area of safety where it's like, okay, we need someone to respond now that this information has come to dispatch, and we don't have CAHOOTS available so that 18% can get even bigger with like the calls types that we do now and the calls that are coming in now. And we have not been given the power from the city of Eugene or the Eugene police department to meet the need that already exists.
Hana Francis:So what would y'all need to increase capacity? Like what do you think could could really do good in that
Chelsea Swift:That is another question I've thought about a area? lot because while I know we need more CAHOOTS vans on the road, I know that the community has asked for that. Again, probably without realizing that there is at any point just one or two, I did not realize that until I joined CAHOOTS, I thought there would be several at any given point on we have an extremely hard time retaining staff, because we do not pay well. And we do not pay a living wage, um, we also on work, pretty intense hours we work on at an agency that maybe has not historically like been a safe or on like inviting place for people of color. So we don't have the most diverse staff.
Hana Francis:This is something that I've mentioned a couple times in the last few episodes. And this is something that White Bird is actively trying to address. By creating an Equity Committee and learning new ways of working together.
Chelsea Swift:I am of the opinion that the way that we change that the way we diversify our staff get more people to look at this job as a career and not a stepping stone or not something that they burn out on whether because the work itself is intense, or because they've been overexposed because they've worked too much over time, or whether because they've experienced too much racism and discrimination and trying to do their job both with like the police and the systems we work with, but maybe within our own agency as well, like, we need to treat workers better. My answer to that is pay us the starting wage of a Eugene Police Department officer. Because we live in a society of like class division, and if we are treated as like the lower class service, then that is how we are going to be utilized. So even at like the level of how police are thinking about us when they want to call upon us to assist them, like we need them to see us as equals. We operate in a world of, um, money is power in a way. So I think it meets the need of like, how reputable how legitimate our service is seen within the systems that we are trying to subvert. I also think that um in order for us to keep subverting the systems by bringing in identities, bringing in people who have been harmed by carceral systems like we need to make this job really accessible. And um not just a job that young white people can work for a few years before they decide to go on and get their master's in social work or become a registered nurse because they need a more stable job.
Hana Francis:There's a huge lack of people who are willing to do these jobs. Whether it is because of the reasons that swift just said because they don't want to do such stressful jobs or they want better paying jobs or simply because our society doesn't place enough importance on these positions of Social Service. This puts a special pressure on the people who are willing to do it. Martyr complexes make these jobs even harder. People feel that they should not have the time to take care of themselves, because there are so many people whose basic needs are not being met.
Chelsea Swift:Yeah, I think in social services in general, health care workers in general, I mean, I get "thank you for your service" all the time, you know, and it's a totally bizarre interaction um because like, so often encounters, they, they don't feel heroic, they don't feel like I'm doing something wonderful, wonderfully brave, it feels like I'm doing something that other people just don't want to do. Um, And I think then healthcare workers and social service workers kind of take that as on what feeds kind of the the martyr complex of, if we don't do it, no one else will. And so we need to give everything we need to work over time, we need to overextend ourselves, within those shifts, where we're working over time, we need to take on the responsibilities that are so much bigger than even um, you know, what our agency could meet. So I think, then, within that martyr complex that, um, you know, it's not the only thing that informs White Bird Clinic's culture, but like our agency was formed by young as far as like, I am aware in our history, like predominantly like white young college students who lived on a commune together and worked out White Bird Clinic for free, that is the value that we have Hold on, hold on to on in 2021. And as long as we are expecting people to give everything at the sacrifice of stability in their own lives, this job is not going to be accessible to single parents to people of color, who are already having to give everything sometimes just to exist in Eugene, Oregon, um, we need our workplace to be like, safe and caring and empowering and then also willing to be creative. And um able to make change and our expectations of like what someone might be able or willing to give when they show up for this work. And that just because somebody can't give it all doesn't mean that they aren't fit or cut out for this work. Or just because they might not have the skills that in a training process. Other people would gain 30 Or sorry, like, yeah, 30 days of training, we might expect people on the CAHOOTS fan, or on the front desk to be at a certain place, maybe someone who is on you know, English is not their first language like that, what we are perceiving as like, Oh, they're just being like super kind of mechanical in their counseling, or they aren't seeming to really be able to like build rapport and this like humanistic way that we do so naturally at White Bird, that actually might be because that person on is in their mind at all times having to like do more mental work to communicate how they want to. And so maybe instead of cutting that person's training after 30 days of it feeling awkward, we need to be able to say yeah, that's what we've done in the past, but maybe what what happens in another 30 days. And if we are a bunch of white folks who have been doing this job in a vacuum of a bunch of white folks, we are not going to be able to see what is not our experience. We don't know what we don't know. And I think paying better is a first step to getting more people represented on our team. And then we need to do again like a lot of creative work to actually listen and validate what they say their acts. variances are at this job and not try to apply our culture to those experiences and instead say, how can we apply their experiences to change our culture? We've spent the last year talking on a lot about this at White Bird Clinic, a big conversation was around this phrase that we've used in our work since like, I don't think it was since the late 60s, I think this might have been more 70s or 80s. Based on I've heard the story told, but we use the phrase "until the revolution" um, people who have followed revolutionary histories, um, may be engaged in that work. 50 years ago, when revolution seemed possible to a lot of people doing that work in the United States, like revolution is an ongoing process. And I just have to believe that like, the people who founded White Bird, who came up with our values and how we wanted to operate out of the conditions that existed then would be horrified if we said, we have to hang on to these values as they were written 50 years ago, because that is not revolutionary. That is like a great comparison to like, okay, we're supposed to, like, follow the Constitution as written hundreds of years ago, like that's wild. We know that's not the case. So why are we replicating these like, liberal systems within our agency that was founded out of a revolutionary context, but that context is different in 2021.
Hana Francis:Swift says that self care is vital to overcoming the martyr complex in the industry, and to making sure that this job can be sustainable. At the beginning of the pandemic, when stories of healthcare workers dying from overexposure were rampant, and the overall uncertainty of the situation was causing confusion and panic. Swift decided to take some time off.
Chelsea Swift:So I think, um, that break really helps me realign with like, Okay, I'm not going to work overtime on the van anymore, because that overexposure with a COVID freaks me out, I'd like to avoid that. Um, I had the wild opportunity to move from downtown Eugene out into the county, 40 minutes out of town, I'm surrounded by no neighbors. I don't have to hear sirens anymore, which is a mixed bag experience for me, like where I live downtown in Eugene. I heard sirens on live every night. And, um, you know, I think when I was a kid, I was told like, Oh, if you hear sirens, you know, my mom was Catholic. And it's like, oh, pray for someone someone's in help. And, and I know what those sirens mean. And I know again, even when the sirens go on, it's often somebody who is doing something that is like, not that big of a safety ordeal. But that's a fear tactic use to to try to get people to make mistakes, that they can be more easily caught or reprimanded or whatever. Um, so that response to sirens was one of just like, anger, frustration, apathy. Oh, my God, why do I live in a town that feels like it is occupied by militarized police responding to someone who just tried to steal a beer from 711 and is now refusing to leave because they are intoxicated, and homeless and really want this beer and don't want to step out, back outside in the cold and rain um that being able to remove myself from that situation has been really helpful. And it's also been an interesting trip, because I think there's a lot of critique of like, how police operate in communities they do not live in and so therefore don't have value and buy in and who they are serving. I know that it's not the case for me, but I haven't thinking about that a lot and trying to at least apply the same values for me and I'm, I've remained very invested in Eugene Springfield and do a lot of community organizing around the issues that do bother me that I get to see at work um that has been another part of my self care, like, I have to know and love and take care for a lot of people who die. Maybe right after I saw them, maybe after I've counseled them for years um. So one of my long term sell strategies is that I helped organize and we've now done it twice. And we'll do it again this year a candlelight vigil for people that we lose in our community to homelessness, whether if they are homeless because they died or having a long history of homelessness that really contributed to the health outcomes that are the reason they died um bringing people into that pain from all sides, as providers as neighbors as the friends and family and loved ones of those people who maybe were living with them outside or were disenfranchised from them for years because of like, just disconnect and families are complicated um bringing the community into that pain and that complicated experience in a something as like beautiful and meaningful as a vigil, where there's singing and storytelling and um people sharing what it is like to know that they live outside and could are at much more risk of dying for reasons that they would otherwise not die from um has been really beautiful. And keeping me grounded in this work on. I think within that though, I've really also had to come to a place of like, I do this work because it gives me the incredible privilege to interact with the masses and know their stories and know that like, when I see an article published in New York Times of like, suicide rates are up in youth I'm like, oh, yeah, no, I'm seeing that in my work right now. Um right now there's this like, phrases being used as I don't know if people are calling it a diagnosis, but cave syndrome, like kind of a long term effects of what shelter in place and quarantine and reduce like social interaction and COVID has had on people on who otherwise didn't have like organic or chronic mental health issues that are now experiencing I am just seeing people who two years ago, were on this intense career education path or like, really engaged in something that they are now like, utterly unable to do because of like, anxiety, or panic or social isolation. Um, so really, for me like having to reframe like we on CAHOOTS say we cannot be attached to the outcomes. Like I cannot take on the responsibility of the systems. I don't actually even believe at this point that we have much ability to change the system as it is. So I've had to reframe like, yeah, my advocacy around shelter issues have not really as resulted in a lot of tangible outcomes. But what is tangible is like, my relationships and again, like that privilege that I have, and being able to hear these stories and just recenter like, that is what I'm showing up for.
Hana Francis:As we bring this episode to a close, I invite you to ask yourself, what does it look like if we recenter our values around self care and around showing up for the people in our community? My deepest thanks to Swift for contributing her time, experiences and voice to this episode. If you have questions or comments about anything that you have heard, feel free to reach out to me at whitebirdmutualaid@gmail.com Thank you for listening. I'm Hana Francis.