Quiet No More

Redefining the Complainer: A Journey of Activism and Community Transformation

• Carmen Cauthen

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Embrace the power of your voice as Carmen Cauthen challenges the label of "complainer" in the pursuit of meaningful community change. 

Discover how turning questions into collective action can transform the landscape of local governance, education, and healthcare. Carmen shares her inspiring journey into activism, where her efforts to organize a community meeting not only addressed communal concerns but also championed equitable access to resources. Her personal stories reveal the critical role of inclusivity and the importance of ensuring that our voices, when raised, lead to actionable solutions that benefit everyone.

The episode further delves into Carmen's advocacy for patient communication, highlighting a moving personal experience that led to hospital policy changes. Hear how her determination to be heard, in a moment of personal frustration, sparked improvements that now benefit countless others, particularly the vulnerable elderly in hospitals. 

Carmen's story underscores the profound impact of persistence and the necessity of directing complaints to those with the power to effect change. Through her experiences, listeners are reminded of the strength found in numbers and the potential for collective action to create a more inclusive and equitable community.

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Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.

To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com

Speaker 1:

Unseen, unheard. We've lived like that far too long. I'm Carmen Coffin and this is Quiet, no More.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes I can complain. In fact, I've been accused of complaining a lot. I don't think I complain about a lot of stuff. I think I have concerns about things or I'm asking why something happened, not just at home, but other places, like I want to know, why did the city make the decision to do this? Or why didn't they tell us something? Or why, why did you mix that color with that color to create that? Or why do you ignore the fact that affordable housing is not affordable?

Speaker 1:

And when you grow something or build something else, why do you have to tear down everything that you do instead of just fixing some of the things that are wrong? I complain, I want results, I want things to change, and I think I learned I think I learned this from my mother that when you have a concern about something that happened to you, you're probably not the only person that it happened to. So when I have a concern about my family or my community, I don't make it be just a personal concern. I mean, sometimes it is, but a lot of times other people have those same issues and concerns and nobody says anything. So I try to make sure that I carry others along with me when I am voicing my concerns or my complaints or my questions. Why I urge you to do the same thing? Because you're never going to be the only person who has that one concern. There are going to be other people.

Speaker 1:

I remember when I really got involved in community activism, someone wanted to know some information about what was called the Opportunity Zones that were created by the federal government and she didn't know how. You know exactly how to have a meeting to have that happen. And someone reached out to us and or to her webpage and said how can I connect with your community? And so we put a meeting together and we reached out to community members and said come on over here and learn about this, but share your other concerns at the same time. It was a Saturday morning in August. It was a meeting we threw together in three weeks and we had 75 people to show up. We had set up for 25. So we had to hurry up and put out more chairs and tables and we turned it into a charrette. A charrette is a way that a community can talk about something that they want to see, or their concerns and get answers, or figure out ways to get answers to concerns, things that they have. We had, like I said, we had 75 people to show up. We had lots of questions. We had things in our community we want to see done.

Speaker 1:

It wasn't a complaining session, it was a why question. It was a this is what we want question. So I've learned to complain away, because complaining, while a lot of times it sounds like it's something bad, it's just a way of getting a question answered, and so we know I ask questions. Do you ask questions? We do it A lot of times. We do things that are personal in nature. So when my children were in school and there was an issue, I didn't just bring the issue up about myself because I knew that if it affected me and my children, that it affected other people and their children and they might not have the time or the energy and they might not know how to express the concern so that it would be answered. Sometimes we are so busy taking care of us that we don't think about the fact that there's a them that also have those same concerns.

Speaker 1:

One of the things that I found, even with children in school. I remember one the teacher, the reading teacher telling me that she was going to send packets of work home for summer to the students, and then she turned around and required the parents to come to school to pick up the packets. Well, we have students whose parents don't live close to the school. The students rode the bus to school and this was elementary school. How did she expect those parents to take off work and come? We were in a small school but a lot of the students especially because she was a special reading teacher the parents were at work or they might not have had transportation. It wasn't a concern for her. She didn't think about it, because a lot of the parents at our school were parents who didn't work outside the home. Those were the white parents, the black parents, with the exception of a few of us. They couldn't have easy access to get to school and so finally, I said to her after I heard that I said that's not fair. That's not fair. So if the parent doesn't show up at school during the school day, then they don't get access to the extra work that you're sending home over the summer because they don't come. I said that's not right. I said you either need to put it in their backpacks and let the parents know with a note or a phone call that you're sending that home, or put them in the mail. Put the packets in the mail. If there are parents who are able to come and pick up that work, who are able to come and pick up that work, then that's all well and good. But you shouldn't penalize children who don't have the same kind of access to get the work. And I don't think it had ever crossed her mind to do that.

Speaker 1:

I did the same thing, you know, for PTA, but even one of the last visits that my father was in the hospital In fact it was the very last visit he was in the hospital he had fallen at home and he was in hospice care at the time and he broke his hip. So the hospice nurse came to the house and said we need to take him to the hospital. And we did. This is right. Maybe two or three weeks before COVID shut the country down and with the broken hip, daddy already had cancer that had metastasized to other parts of his body and he had dementia and the doctors had said he probably didn't have a year left to live. I asked while I was sitting there all that day, if the surgeon would come and talk to me before he put any orders in. Because I wanted to have an opportunity to find out what the process might be. And we took Daddy to the hospital, probably about 3 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

Speaker 1:

That morning at 6, the nurse came in and started telling me what they were planning to do. And I looked at her. I said I asked her as a surgeon to come in and see me. Um and, and I haven't seen him. She said, well, he's put the orders in. I said well, the order should not have gone in if he didn't follow my request and come in to see me, because I'm my father's health care power of attorney and I don't want him making decisions without talking to me. And it really angered me because my father was 88 at the time I believe close to 89. And because of the dementia, because the pain that he was in, he couldn't have answered and I didn't go to sleep.

Speaker 1:

I stayed awake all night long waiting for the doctor to come and talk to me and I was angry and I didn't want to complain, I wanted to fuss. So I reached out, went on the Internet, looked up the president of the hospital and looked up some other people's email addresses at the hospital and figured out what his was and sent him an email about 5 o'clock that morning and said you know, this is what happened, and unfortunately there are people who are elders, who would be in the hospital alone and you all would not make the effort to talk to them and they might not understand what you have to say. So I think the fact that I asked for a surgeon to come and talk to me before he made a decision should have been taken care of. And so suddenly at 730, care of. And so suddenly at 730, a young lady from the CEO's office came into daddy's room and talked to me about it and I said you know, this is not I'm. You know, I'm concerned about my father. Obviously, I said, but, as I said in my email, this could have been someone who was here all alone, didn't understand what was going on, and you all just ignored the fact that somebody else needed to hear what had to be said. And so they changed their policy and asked me to participate on a patient board.

Speaker 1:

But of course, you know, with COVID that got canceled, but the doctor had to come back in and talk to me and he tried to tell me that I was asleep when he came in the room.

Speaker 1:

And I know I wasn't, because that's why I take my little go bag when I have to go to the hospital, so I have stuff to do, so I don't go to sleep when I'm waiting with somebody, so I have stuff to do, so I don't go to sleep when I'm waiting with somebody.

Speaker 1:

But he did finally apologize, he did finally admit that he just wrote up the order and you know, sometimes that's what it takes. It takes a complaint, it takes sharing your concern and you're not just doing it for yourself or for your family member. You might be doing it for 20,000 people that you don't know about because they might have to take that somewhere else. It's important to share your concerns and to follow through to make sure that whatever concern you have or whatever complaint you have whether it's health care, whether it's health care, whether it's city ordinance, whether it's trash not getting picked up, whether it's things going on at school with your children or your grandchildren, or just because you need to know something it's important sometimes to carry that complaint through and make sure that it's heard by the people who can make change and make decisions, and so when you do that, you're being quiet no more. You've been listening to Quiet no More where I share my journey, so you can to quiet no more where I share my journey.