 |
| The way my friend tells it, they are a vicious bunch |
I am doing a friend a favor and posting her new blog, MCHVictoryGarden.blogspot.com.
The way she describes it, she began gardening about a year ago as a way to deal with a couple deaths at her permanent supportive housing which is run by Catholic Charities. The permission was given by a new senior program manager at her house, but that manager has since cooled down on the project. The reason is inexplicable. By all appearances the resident is a model resident---doing chores, paying rent on time, attending meetings, getting along with other residents. However she is not African-American, and that is seen as a big negative by the social dominancy of that minority. Even as a minority, it cannot matter unless it is the right kind of minority.
Complaints against the staff go unheard or are addressed in the most superficial manner possible. Even the priests, located nearby at the church, frown at any residents because they are all stereotyped in the most negative possible light: poor shiftless disabled minority women who are just a burden on society. They cannot see that Jesus was poor or his disciples were wandering preachers. They forget the history of the Sisters of Poverty. In the age of Trump, anyone who is not monied or propertied is just a pariah. They should tear down all the artwork in Rome, half of which were merely the products of poor Italian artists and sculpturers who survived on the beneficence of nobles willing to house and feed them.
The staff are no longer even willing to listen to my friend's comments or take questions. As soon as the program manager was assured that her job was secure, thanks to the departure of the social worker, her attitude towards clients changed overnight. Suddenly a sort of long dormant angry race-fixated personna emerged---even her hair style changed, reminding one of the early days of Angela Davis. When she first was hired, her demure was such that she had her hair straightened and tied in a pony tail, and wore nurse-assistant uniforms. Now she wears the standard DC office bureaucrat attire. In fact, according to my friend, she worked in DC government for almost two decades, enough to retire on comfortably, and yet, here she is at Catholic Charities, such a wonderful second job.
There is a suspicion that some second careerists might be plumbing the lists of older housing for DC Housing Authority to speculate on, or that her relative who works at the Community Partnership and is a realtor, needs more listings. Who knows? Any questions about her background or interests also go unanswered: it's none of the residents' business. Since they are just on charity, they should count themselves lucky to not actually be slaves.
Reading back in history, in fact, slavery in all its worst forms was long practiced in Africa, and often any captives, poor people, people in debt, women sold or traded, were kept in cages and merchants even counted merchandise using slave-units. Captives could be used for slave labor, for servants if they were lucky, or fattened and kept till ripe for cannibalism rituals. As these practices continue today even in the Congo, it should not be surprising that these kinds of attitudes on second or third-class people have persisted, and that the main perspective of the staff is that the residents in their rooms are viewed as prisoners, and they as the guards.
As a prison-warden, the staff is doing well. My friend has done most of the work on the herb and vegetable garden herself, but the staff are taking full credit for their career portfolios. The staff did clean out a portion of the storage shed which can be used for tool storage, and they did sort of clean up the patio. But my friend does this every other day---tidy up the patio. As for the labor, the actual physical labor of watering, weeding, taking care of, planting, transplanting, feeding the birds, and so on, my friend does this all by herself, every day.
To alleviate some pain and misery with regard to the cruelty of the new program manager who has become extremely icy, based on trying to frame the resident as a race-ist, but not succeeding yet, and therefore persistently using many different styles of baiting, including sending the program coordinator (fancy name for bookkeeper) up the stairs every day to knock on doors to check if all the residents are "still alive"...The reality is that the PC only really knocks on my friend's door mostly every single day at least once. So if the resident didn't answer, the PC actually puts her key in the door and tries to go inside the room! Fortunately my friend invented a "doorsock" to secure her doorknob, and the PC doesn't like to be seen struggling with a doorknob sock in the middle of the hallway---yet. This PC (and the other social worker) have been accused time and again of breaking into residents rooms in order to snoop around. And yet Catholic Charities just keeps them around. The social worker may have left on her own accord, but several residents accused her of breaking into a resident's room after that resident was found dead in her room. Even my friend is worried about what this PC means to do in her room. Is she interested in proving herself as a empowered administrator? Is she trying to find out about bank accounts? Is document forgery in the picture? Are there more sinister intentions, such as food poisoning?
The strangest part about Catholic Charities is that many of their staff are just incredibly thick when it comes to career entitlement. They may not have even graduated from college, but once they put on the badge, Catholic Charities offers them many free training programs, and so they acrue many training certificates, which of course make them feel empowered. Plus there is a certain culture of entitlement as well. In an era where many are working from home, factories are downsizing, many accounting offices have gone part-time seasonal, these paraprofessionals are still walking about like it's the 1970s Archie Bunker union worker mindset, except that they are people of color, and feel extra entitled from all the slave reparations owed to them from nonblacks, whether or not those nonblacks' parents were here during the Civil War. It's a very thick mentality, but extremely prevalent on the East Coast.
So the staff are fully part-and-parcel to this worldview, and they encourage the black residents to wax their privilege against the nonblacks. Never mind that the residents sign an anti-bully form, never mind that there are ways to complain, never mind that some of those residents have problems stemming from drug abuse, criminal history, instability---and in fact may even still have those sorts of gang affiliations---the fact is that they are privileged because they are black, and the staff almost all the way up the food chain will basically almost do the opposite of all the rules they are supposed to support or promote for the clients protection. This is just the opinion of my friend, but I am here to protect her 1st amendment rights.
Her opinion is that when the staff hold meetings, what they call talking about the clients becomes a source for basically gossiping and intriguing new ways to torment certain people. The new rule on knocking on every resident's door every day to see if "they are still alive" seemed to be a good safety check, but it is in reality only done to residents who the staff want to take extra steps to try and bully and intimidate. When my friend pointed out that the staff mainly only knocks on her door while ignoring most of the others, the PC tartly says "well, I already know they are here!" So somehow, even when the PC mostly works behind a closed office door, she can know those residents are present and alive, but not sure about my friend?
Another example is how my friend started this garden and went so far as to write a small grant proposal. Well, the director did thank her for the work, but she did not actually thank her for writing it, rather, she thanked her for "reading" it. Great difference between reading vs writing a proposal. Same with the blog, I will bet. That is why my friend is sharing it with me. It's a simple enough looking Victory Garden blog, but apparently she feels anxious that the staff might just plagiarize the whole thing and claim they wrote or directed the writing. It shouldn't be a big deal whatever they say, but in an era of no-work and no-pay, my friend does not want to feel both slighted and cheated, both harassed and exploited, and to have words or facts put down that do not in fact match the reality. I guess that is her way of looking at it.
So here is another photo she has to share from said blog of another client---her foot. Yes, AM can definitely put her foot on it that she also contributed many valuable ideas, but yes, she is sort of being razzled a lot too, although it appears a lot more subtle in her case.
