Music: Here's an experiment, here's an experiment. Here's an experiment to begin with,
Damon: Welcome to One Million Experiments,
Kiss: a podcast exploring how we redefine and create safety in a world without policing and prisons.
Damon: I'm Damon,
Kiss: I'm Kiss,
Damon: and we are back in the lab, and we are so excited to actually be in-person, physically with each other. And you know, we're not alone. In order to do this, right, we had to link back up with the one and only, the homie, our partner in decriminalization, Eva Nagaos back in the building wit us.
Eva: Hey, hey,
Kiss: Literally in the building.
Eva: Literally.
Kiss: It's wonderful to be sitting down with you.
Damon: The like meta narrative is like all of this came out of uprising, which was also deeply shaped by pandemic, as our show was. And so as we are coming back out into the real world, more and more, so are the projects, organizations and experiments that we are partnering with and amplifying.
Kiss: Plus now we know how tall you are. Listenters at home, Eva is seven foot, one of the best dunkers I've ever seen.
Damon: So Eva, who we got in the lab with us today.
Eva: Oh, we have a special guest today. This is something a little bit different than we do. Dara Bayer, who has been in communication with interrupting criminalization for a long time now, agreed to step into the studio, even though she stepped out of her role at Cambridge Heart. And she was an instrumental part of the founding of Cambridge Heart, and also an original co-founder of the Black Response, which was a predecessor of Cambridge Heart. For those of you who aren't familiar, Heart is Holistic Emergency Alternative Response Team.
Damon: Awesome acronym.
Eva: Let me tell you, Cambridge Heart. This isn't the only acronym that they play with. It's a grassroots organization led by individuals with lived experience and deep connections to the Cambridge, Massachusetts community. They exist to model a world where people in crisis are met with care, compassion and transformative accountability, rather than punishment. At Cambridge Heart, they believe in a future where communities are interconnected through practices of care, healing, self determination and transformative accountability. Their goal is to build a society that is free from carceral systems, where the dignity of every individual is respected. Centering marginalized people, they build local capacity to disrupt cycles of harm by responding to crises, conducting research, and facilitating community cohesion.
Kiss: You can find out more about Cambridge Heart — well one by listening to the next hour of conversation —but also Cambridge-heart.org.
Damon: Check us out at respairmedia.com, @respairmedia, at all of our socials. Go back and check out season one and two.
Kiss: Make sure you watch One Million Experiments, the film, available now on Apple TV, Google Play and YouTube movies,
Damon: and check out all of the phenomenal work of Interrupting Criminalization
Kiss: at interruptingcriminalization.org.
Damon: Another org.
Kiss: Now I feel self conscious that we're dot com. It's for short for community, guys, don't get mad at us. All right, with that, let's hop into the lab with Dara.
Damon: Let's get it.
Damon: We are back in the lab. We're ready to dig in, and we are honored to be here with one of the founders of the phenomenal Cambridge Heart. Everybody we got dar Bayer in the building,
Kiss: And the crowd goes wild.
Damon: The people have been clamoring. They've been wanting more experiments. They've been wanting more Cambridge Heart. We're bringing it together. Let's get this thing started. We're gonna hop right into it. We like to begin all of our conversations, a little bit of a ritual at this point, with a two-part question, and that question is centered around time. So in this time, how is the world treating you and how are you treating the world, Dara Bayer?
Dara Bayer: Well, I'm very honored to be here and very humbled by the overwhelming applause and hype. Welcome to me. Wow, overwhelmed, absolutely overwhelmed. Thank you all so much for having me, appreciate this question. I was reflecting on it because I've gotten to listen to some of your other episodes of this really important contribution to our shared movement and work. I would say that the world is treating me, I think with a lot of care. I feel really blessed to be in a place of some spaciousness and reflection as I have transitioned out of Heart and gotten some time to exhale a little bit to work on my art be more present with my 18-month old, has a lot of energy, a lot of energy and a lot of curiosity.
Damon: That's the age where they can move by themselves, but still can't be alone.
Dara: Yeah, they can't be alone for a second.
Kiss: A lot of experimenting happening over there.
Damon: They could never be alone, but they're still. Now, they're mobile. Talk about mobile response unit.
Dara: Oh, my God, 24/7. Anticipating crisis 24/7. Yes, I call her aggressively curious.
Kiss: That's great.
Dara: Yes. So yeah, you know, have deep level of gratitude and privilege for a little bit of spaciousness for me. In terms of how I'm treating the world, feeling deep grief about where things are in the world, to be honest: Palestine, the state of our own country, metropole of the empire, just what communities are facing right now. Yeah, really, really trying to sit with what's next for me and my own way to support community and be in right relationship. So, I don't know it's a very, very heavy time, and I also feel trying to always practice gratitude, so I'm holding that as well.
Damon: We're going to ground again with the 1ME, tradition and practice of going into what is the hypothesis of the work, right? So you know, we know that Cambridge Heart came out of the 2020, moment. We know that there were observations of state violence, observations of the potential of movement and community, and then y'all built this wonderful experiment that you've been practicing in. And so can you take us back to what were some of the initial hypothesis that built Cambridge Heart?
Music: I tell you my hypothesis.
Dara: Yeah, you know, Cambridge Heart was actually, literally built on participatory action research. So there's...
Damon: Ding ding ding, that fees like, a good little vocab words for reaction,
Dara: Yeah. Which basically is just like doing inquiry with your own community to really determine what the solutions for change should be, rooted in what people's needs are. So it's a fancy word, but it's really, it's really about grounding in hearing from the community and using inquiry process to shape action. And I just want to start by saying, like I am one of many people who were instrumental in developing the vision for Heart, the model for it. But I think it really came out of a moment where, initially, we were really trying to push for broader discourse around what Black folks in Cambridge — which is the community that we're very rooted in — the desire to really expand the discourse around the idea of policing abolition inside of our Cambridge community, and particularly among Black community members because we had a local context in which the leadership in power that were Black folks were really a pro-police leadership and were really trying to silence calls for defunding the police or reinvesting in other ways, using identity politics. One of my friends I grew up with and I really were interested in offering a different narrative at the very beginning. And then when the city put forward a policy order to create a non-police response for mental health, for crises related to poverty or substance use, we were really like, okay, so this is an opportunity to really center marginalized communities in Cambridge and to create a opportunity to not have a police response to those types of crises. How are you going to involve community?
So I guess I'm just saying this to say we didn't have, like, a clear hypothesis for Heart. It evolved through what was unfolding in our local context around how we were seeing the mobilization in response to the murder of George Floyd and so many other police murders of black people, what we were saying we felt was needed, which I think, I guess maybe this is more the hypothesis is, what would it mean to create a response program that centered marginalized communities and that when people asked for help, they really got the help they needed and didn't have to worry about other harm happening as a result of asking for help. Yeah, I would say that was like, maybe the hypothesis of like, okay, how do we actually develop something that truly supports people without the risk of more harm happening to them because of the criminal punishment system in all its forms, whether it be related to immigration or the child services, DCF or the police getting involved and further causing harm. It was something that evolved like we were like, okay, maybe we can advocate with the city to make sure that they center community in addressing program. They said they were going to develop truly hearing the community about what is needed, listening to other people from around the country to see what the best practices are, and when it was really clear that that wasn't going to happen, they literally assigned the police commissioner to facilitate the task force to conceive of this program, it was behind closed doors.
Kiss: For our listeners at home, we're nodding knowingly with grimaces on our faces.
Dara: Yes, this is probably, or we know for sure, this is not a new dynamic that's taken place. So when it was really clear that there was not going to be transparency, there was actually really not interest on the city council — the majority of the city council — to truly create an open forum for our marginalized community members in Cambridge to share about their needs, that's when the coalition that developed Heart was born. And there's like so many people to name who are instrumental in also being in leadership in that. But, yeah, I'll end it there for now.
Kiss: So in that trajectory of like, maybe we can shift how the local government builds this process to then seeing, oh, that's actually maybe not a viable entry point to try to meet this need. And then there's this like, alright, well, then maybe we can take that on ourselves, figuring out some models of that. What were the initial types of crises that y'all were seeing and trying to figure out how to respond to?
Dara: Hmm, I mean, I think there was a broad range of things. I think crises related to poverty, I think are a huge number of them. We have folks who are living outside and needed support in a moment when just basic needs weren't being met, or if someone was experiencing a different reality, and the police were the ones to intervene in that and potentially cause more harm. Housing was a huge one like and that was one that we continually, I think, supported, even in our first iterations of Heart around, like facing eviction, the crises of that, and then there's, like, other kinds of crises that come from those kinds of crises, right, related to that. So, like that then creates a mental health kind of crisis when you don't have your basic needs being met. Relationship, you know, interpersonal or intimate partner violence also was, was definitely one that we were experiencing. People who were struggling in the moment with their own mental health and needing support for people to show up.
I think we were also really interested in intervening when people would call the police, around noise complaints, around like engagements with young people who are out being themselves, and people had issues with that. But if, if there was not the police getting involved, could there be someone else to interrupt that and prevent any kind of criminalization from happening to those young folks? There's a whole, a whole range of things that we were thinking about.
Kiss: All the easy ones we're talking about, mental health, intimate partner violence, all the smooth you know, we could just nip this, yeah, but no, I hear you.
Damon: So, you know, we are approaching, and probably when most, if not all, people hear this, we will have recently passed the five-year anniversary of the uprising. With that comes, like, a lot of weight, a lot of loss, a lot of like internalized feelings of defeat, or, as we've talked about in previous seasons, like having to face failure in certain type of ways. But one, just like your energy and the excitement of you talking about this, and like, I could just, like taste the air of us balancing social distancing, but also engaging thousands of people at the same time. And like, the mechanics of that, and so I'm feeling it. I'm like, in the zone.
Kiss: You're have an uprising positive flashback.
Damon: Yeah, I'm rising up a little bit. And so can you take us through, particularly, like, in the early practicing, the early rollout, of what it look like to operationalize responding to some of these communal needs?
Dara: Yeah, it's a lot. Um, so, I mean, I think the reality is that people involved in this were doing that in their own lives, in many different ways, without it being a formalized organization. I mean, my, my particular background is in transformative justice and trying to suport people. Yes, and you know, very, you know, deep...
Damon: It [disruption] felt needed. I apologize, maybe. It felt extremely necessary at the moment. In reflection, I'm questioning, but at the time.
Dara: It's okay. You do you, you do you for sure. Yeah, just like really trying to hold folks through causing harm, who've experienced harm, thinking through how to address community needs through that, that lens and so both in responding to mental health crises, like if there's an internal experience of harm happening, but also interpersonal. And so my own experience is like showing up for a survivor of domestic violence and kind of doing some ritual work with her to reclaim her physical space after that person left, and then accompanying her the next year through a process of figuring out safety and care for herself. Naming some of the people who were essential in building Heart like Stephanie Garand, she was doing a lot of response work around fundraising for folks who need to pay rent. And she was incredibly connected, brilliant networker around redistributing wealth through her network of people who had more money. And then people, you know, rooted in communities, doing mutual aid work, collecting clothing and hygiene supplies and just basic things that people needed, and redistributing them regularly.
So there was, like, all of that kind of in the background happening from the people who are organizing. And then, you know, this model of Heart got created through a coalition, there was many people invited in to be part of conceiving of and developing Heart that included service providers and organizers rooted in Cambridge and Boston, mostly in Cambridge, who were supporting different kinds of communities in different ways. We had some incredible city councilors who were really committed to this and who were present for some of those coalition meetings. We had young people showing up, people in community-based organizations, coming and participating and sharing ideas.
And then also calling in people from across the country to share what they were building and developing, who were further along in that process. So I'm sure Mental Health First, you know, we had, we worked really closely with folks in Oakland who were building Macro, and some of the folks who had helped develop that model were really guiding us along and supporting us.
So it was national and very hyper local and like, really thinking through, like, okay, if we were to build program that really supported people and held these values that were rooted in transformative justice, that root in disability justice or really centering people's needs and self-determination, what would that look like? And so that model got developed, and then the vision for that model was actually for the city to fund it, partly, and for that to really make it a sustainable program that could...
Damon: Divest invest public good,
Dara: Exactly, all of that. Sure, it was a long journey of really coming fully to that conclusion, but, like we really tried for a long time, and the city council actually voted to fund it, but then the actual process of that happening was a different experience. So I guess I just want to give that story to say that from the model, there was like a desire to have it be funded and to hire folks from our communities to be the ones, to be peer responders, and pay folks a really good salary to do this important work inside of their own communities. And it was clear, you know, constantly advocating for the city to make good on the promise of funding it. Then when we came to a certain point of like, well, we're not getting what we need, we're going to try to do it ourselves. So then that led to a part of a lot of fundraising and recruiting folks from the community to be in this first cohort of first going through an EMT training to learn some like, foundational skills around crisis response, and then they very quickly got hired, which, you know, if you wanted to reflect on things I'll share more about, like moving from a model on paper to a full organization workplace. You know, creating a nonprofit to sustain work like this is a whole other complex thing.
Kiss: Yeah, let's put a picture.
Dara: Yeah, there's a lot of reflection there for me, but I would say that the process of, you know, bringing folks on, and then from there, we started doing what we call non-emergency crisis response, which it sounds, like contradictory, but a moment of acute crisis is really one moment, and that people are dealing with deep emergencies and different iterations constantly. And so we weren't ready. We didn't have the infrastructure to do in the moment show up to a crisis like that, but we were responding to people's acute needs. And so just kind of naming like how what Heart was doing first was really like again, supporting people who were navigating potential eviction, supporting people who were coming out of a violent relationship, supporting people who were called out around harm in an organizational context, and moving through accountability and accompanying people for sometimes up to a year we were doing that initially, like an extended period of time. Doing a lot of court support through the criminal legal system and that actually was a huge need we realized. That people don't have folks to accompany them inside of those institutions, through child custody, stuff in DCF, or through navigating housing court, the ongoing emergencies, of situations they're facing, and the huge gaps that, you know, our typical service agencies don't provide, and that also with our guarantee around self-determination and confidentiality and that we're not mandated reporters, people are really needing that kind of support.
Kiss: Yeah. And so in that, there were two things I wanted to come back to. I'll start with, this like distinction between emergency and crisis. That makes a lot of sense, and it's new to me to hear differentiated or parsed in that way. What did coming to that realization of the distinction between what those two things could mean make easier in ya'lls work? Because when you're thinking about how do we meet people's needs, it's so daunting. Did it help to have that differentiation and then little bit of that separation there?
Dara: Yeah, I feel like it wasn't super intentional at first. It was just like we don't have capacity to meet people in the moment of emergency. I would describe, like emergency being, like the acute moment where you need someone in the like, real time, this is it, right now. And then the crises are ongoing, right? Like the crises are happening because of the systems we live under. And guess we would say, like we were doing non-emergency crisis response. I think that might have been how we were framing it. I mean, well, I think one thing was like, because we didn't have, like some of the foundational infrastructure, like call center or a phone system for people to call into us live and get support, we didn't have a van yet to, like be mobile to respond to people in the moment. And, yeah, seriously, no. Like these very like, you know, logistical things that are actually absolutely essential to be able to to say, like, oh, you can actually call us and we can guarantee that we're going to show up in the moment. And, you know,
Damon: ...bring some stuff or get some stuff out of there, you know.
Dara: Exactly, exactly, exactly. If people need to be moved in a moment, if that's what they need.
Kiss: All right, I've come around. Shout out to vans.
Damon: You were van resistant?
Kiss: Maybe, they get a bad rep, but I was thinking about now the amount you could bring with you in a van. All right, I'm pro I'm got you. I'm with you.
Damon: You can bring a whole event. You can set up canopies and speakers and chairs all types or housing? You can do a lot with a van. All right, oh, my God. So now we have a van.
Dara: That's a whole story in of itself. Like, what is the van gonna do? And how do we, you know, what is that going to look like?
Kiss: But there's this understanding of not having the infrastructure and the capacity.
Dara: Yes, and the material resources to, like, have those things yet. And then also a lot of like, even some of the more organizational infrastructure pieces, initially. Like our protocol, like really tight protocols to guide some kind of ,like the crisis response in the moment because there's a lot of safety considerations that people need to make for themselves in responding to something in the moment like that. So yeah, we initially just had an email. Well, initially, let me actually back up. We were doing more mutual aid support, so partnering with this really incredible organization in Cambridge that is, like a mutual aid hub and has tons of kind of material need resources, like I said, clothing, hygiene supplies, they create, like free stores that they regularly open and offer to the community. And so there was a partnering with that and that organization to take orders that the community had and make sure that those got processed. So people would call in to say, like I need these, like a bunch of clothes for my kids, and then those would be packaged and sent out to really just meet people's material needs that are very real. And also it was an opportunity to continue to engage community and do outreach about Heart. To say, like hey, this is something we're gonna be offering. What do you also need? What do you see as your needs for safety and for care in your communities? Like, what would you want to see? So that was, like some of the early response work. And then we were moving into building that non emergency crisis response, where responders, people could email Heart and responders would be in pairs. We always were committed to, like people working together, that no one was gonna respond alone. That felt like a really important value, and something I would continue to uplift, that crisis response work should not be done alone. It really should be done...
Damon: Big buddy system.
Dara: ...with support. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so that was a huge, a huge commitment that we had, that people would then be working with people who emailed us and we would follow up. Of course, that is, like a limited point of access for some people, like not everyone has an email, not everyone has access to a phone or a computer where they can send messages like that. So some of some things were also word of mouth and through relationships with other organizations that referred people. My life got support through Heart, you know, which was also complex when you know people, some people, other responders. Family members, got support through Heart, you know. And so we're trying to also hold like we want to support people in our own lives, in the moments of crisis, and also, like we need to be able to offer everyone the same and not favor people just because we have direct relationships. And how do we also create some space to make sure internally we're operating with integrity, with the kind of support we're trying to offer? So I don't know. I feel like I went all over the place when you asked that question about crisis.
Kiss: No, but that balance of like, this is — pun intended — like heart work. This is work that's a commitment to your people, and also you're trying to like, quote, unquote, operationalize an organization to provide a material. Like I'm hearing, if not a tension, at least like an overlap between those two worlds. And I feel like I could imagine that becoming more in focus once it became clear that the city was not going to, like embrace this and bring it in, and so I want to stay in that moment of that becoming clear because I think it's something many people who built formations in the midst of uprising experience, right? Like, we know we're in opposition, or an adversarial relationship, to the carceral aspects of the state. But as a result of uprising in many places, there was this sense of like, oh, we might be able to get a little inroad here. Or there's some city councilors who have come on board who are like, with us. Let's see if we can actually get something on the books as part of the formal public, as part of the state. And sometimes it works. Sometimes it didn't. Often, I would say, always, it was complicated. And so I'm curious for y'all, if city council says yes, the like exuberance that that would create, and then the reality of what came next. Can you just talk a little bit about, what are the contradictions that became clear for you going through that part of this journey?
Dara: That's a really important thing to reflect on right now because I'm in a different place than I was, you know, five years ago, when I was imagining what could be possible. So, yeah, the model of Heart that was written on paper was actually that it'd be a non, a quasi non-governmental organization, which basically meant there was going to be an embedded community safety department, and then there would be a non-profit partnering with it that could, you know, allow us to be politically aligned with the work we were trying to do, which was to make sure that, you know, we weren't beholden to the liability issues that the city would demand of an organization like this, especially not mandated reporting. You know, having employees be required to report to the state. Yeah, we were really hoping the city would would fund that, at least partially fund that, and also just the context of Cambridge. Cambridge has a Plan E form of government, which is incredibly undemocratic form of government. So we do have elected city council. We have a mayor who's basically like a figurehead. They're chosen by the city council, but they don't have power that Mayor of Boston does, for example, who create a budget. The city manager, which is not elected, is appointed by the city council, actually has all of the power of creating the budget. Really, has all the power of the purse strings in the city, and they're a technocrat, bureaucrat role, like the person who was in that role was in there for 15 years, like when we started organizing. And it's challenging, because basically the city council can only vote up or down their budgets, and then, because they have so much power, the city councilors all just end up making deals with this person. It's just so shady. It's so shady. The city manager we had was very pro-police, like definitely had no intention or desire to, like create a legitimate, totally separate entity that could also respond. And you know, our vision was to reallocate 9-1-1, calls. You know, really still being connected to that emergency communication system to have people be able to choose Heart when they called 9-1-1, instead of the police. I don't believe that's possible anymore.
Damon: You don't believe it's currently possible, or...
Dara: I don't believe in my con... — in the context we're in — and I'm not going to speak to anyone else. But I would say, in the context we're in, to be connected to the emergency communication system through nine, like to use 9-1-1, as a vehicle to access an option outside of policing, because of the power of the police union and the ways in which...And I'll say that because we got co-opted, and there was —well, I wouldn't say Heart got co opted — but the model of Heart got also extracted, and a city department was created in Cambridge. And I just want to be clear, I'm speaking, like not on behalf of Heart anymore. I don't work for Heart anymore. I am a community member who was part of building Heart. I worked for Heart for a period of time, but I want to make that distinction, because Heart is still working to survive and build and flourish in Cambridge, and really trying to offer something necessary to our community.
But my perspective is that one of the reasons we did not get funded is that the city decided, well, we're going to create our own community safety department and create our own thing. And they literally stole our language, stole our framing, gave their own department — after several years, even though we had started working and building and creating our own thing — they gave them several million dollars to create their own department and to be able to respond to certain 9-1-1 calls. And now, currently, like the police, is admitting that they actually didn't allow for a lot of calls to even go to this department, which in this department, they were mandated reporters, but they weren't police. And so I guess I'm saying that to actually access that system requires so much compromise that what I imagined and like what we we knew we were trying to create and build as a really legitimate option for community to access outside of carceral systems and policing with what's currently in place couldn't exist inside of that emergency communication system of 9-1-1.
Kiss: Like, the value of that infrastructure, what isn't worth the compromises it takes to get access to it.
Damon: And they're aware of the value of that infrastructure and want to maintain their monopoly on it.
Dara: Yeah, so, you know, we have our own number. And, like the vision was like, let's just make sure the community knows about this number and this option. We continue to fight for funding. And we finally got some funding from the city through this community safety department that they created. And it's like, you know, we asked for like, $5 million to make a legitimate fully, like, not 24/7
Kiss: Which sounds like a lot, but in the grand scheme of things, is really not at all.
Dara: I mean, it's not. Police in Cambridge, their budget $80 million. So if you think about — which is twice as much as, like, the city next door, Somerville, who has this same population as Cambridge. So, like, it's a really, really overblown budget, and we got $150,000.
Kiss: After years of building, too.
Dara: After many, many years of doing this on our own. We got, we got some ARPA money, you know, the money that came after Covid, but that was federal money that got distributed through the city, and then we got this tiny, comparatively tiny, tiny sliver.
Damon: What I'm hearing, right, is this, basically, this practice of extraction, co-optation, which, at this point right, like is a known entity in the landscape of what we're doing. If you name something that is popular, that people want, if you then do the groundwork of, like raising people's consciousness around it, right, like the bureaucracy is going to recognize, at least the PR value of it, or the danger of what it can interrupt, and are going to try often, you know, if they're not going to outright crush or, you know, demonize, how to play the inside-outside game, and as well a way to quell and a way to protect their own power. And so the human side of that really comes up. Like, you can know, co-optation is a thing that's coming, but that's different after you spend months canvassing, all the community meetings. You know, all the effort that went into this possibility,
Kiss: building the report, building the language, building the process, yeah.
Damon: I'm sure that just wasn't a smooth like, oh well, now we got to pivot thing. Like, I'm sure there was some pain, I'm sure there was some loss, I'm sure there was some frustration. There's the possibility of that even creating tension within the group. And so I don't want to just make it like a chess play of like, oh, and then they co-opted. Now you do this, like, I want to, like, kind of unpack all of this brilliance, all this effort went into it. And, you know, the work continued. But what was it like moving through that extraction.
Dara: Yeah, incredibly painful, exhausting, demoralizing. Like, yeah, to be absolutely real, those are all feelings that I think I and other folks shared and, you know? And it's not like a singular moment, either. It's a process, you know. Yeah, there was this, like moment of victory, of like, wow, June of 2021, the city council, almost unanimously, voted to fund Heart. And again, this was alongside this other task force that was led by the police and didn't even have a cohesive proposal for, like what they were going to create.
Damon: They're terrible at homework.
Dara: No, yeah, like the level of rigor was like nothing compared to what we were doing to be real, you know? And then what ensued was a series of meetings with the city manager where it was just like a runaround. So that was like the summer of 2021 into the fall, into the winter of 2022 trying to negotiate and actually get clear about what actions was the city going to take to move this forward. And so then they created a community safety department that had nothing attached to it. It was just a name, some some language that sounded exactly like the language we had, but no accountability to what we were doing. And at that point was when, like, a serious fundraising effort began, on a grassroots level, to say, like, let's try to make this. Heart wasn't an organization yet. Black Response, which I want, I want to uplift the Black Response was the organization that I helped found, but was, you know, driven by others to really push and advocate for the funding of Heart. Those community folks were were brought on to pilot training around, okay, like, what are the kinds of trainings needed to have folks be peer responders in the community?
So a lot of effort while we're trying to build an organization, Heart as an organization, we were constantly advocating for the funding of Heart through the city. I mean, that went on for years, and then when there was an internal hire for someone to lead the community safety department — and because a new city manager came on, we met with him a couple times, he seemed to be a little bit more progressive, a little bit more open to potentially supporting Heart — and that's when we got some of that money from the Rescue Cct, ARPA money. But, you know, at the end of the day, it was just really clear that it was just like racism, mostly young Black women leading this and like not a belief that we knew what we were doing. I mean, I really think that's what — yet they hired somebody who had never, no experience doing crisis response, like in this kind of way, or knew anything about that, to lead an organization. "Only we can do it." And then, you know, funded them $2 million, $3 million to start their own, you know, to have this, and then to hire people, you know, and pay them almost twice what we could pay people to do Heart. So it was, you know, it's like a really that's really demoralizing to see, like another organization pop up and have all the flashy things, and get to have all the time and resource to kind of engage in, like a PR campaign, and to kind of just be set up to start really quickly. We were, you know, really trying with what the little we had cobbled together to support people and to maintain people's livelihoods that were then working full-time for Heart — the responders and then some of the admin staff, including, you know, myself, and we had, I was a co director with someone else, and to really just figure out how we could keep afloat with what we got. So it was that part was really hard. And I think the hardest thing was that, for me, and like, when I just was like, I've had it, just so angry. You know, literally, like telling us, okay, do this thing and then we're gonna give you the money. No no, do this thing, and then we're gonna give you the money. No, no no, do now you gotta present this. No, no, no, no, you have to present this budget or that budget. Or it was like, such a runaround. And they had no process to actually distribute us any money. There was no actual infrastructure for the city to give Heart money. The whole system was set up to basically give money to who they felt like giving money, to who they felt was legitimate. But there really wasn't any clear infrastructure. And so when we presented what we thought we were supposed to get, they're like, this isn't what are you talking about? This isn't what we wanted. Presented again, and eventually they were like, okay, well, we're just making a process where we're going to only give up $150,000 grants through this community safety department that has co-opted all of our language and wouldn't exist without the advocacy of the work we did to push this forward. Now you get this tiny, like amount, and you have to go through an incredibly rigorous, difficult process. It was like, incredibly rigorous and technical, and we have incredible volunteer grant writers who supported us with that. But like, the amount of labor it took and then the reporting that it takes to then get the money. Because they actually reimburse you. They don't pay you upfront anyway for anyway. So just kind of the mechanics of that.
It was really, really hard and really time consuming in ways that it's like, if we maybe just really, we're, like, we're doing our own thing, and we're really going to double down on finding other, more sustainable forms of funding. I mean, the hard thing is, you can't, like the vision for Heart was like an $8 million budget, right? It's not like, a single foundation necessarily is gonna, like fund that. So we, you know, we have incredible donors and a volunteer grant writing team, but just the reality of, like, what does it take to really resource something like this and to pay people well in a city like Cambridge, where, like, I think the medium income is almost $100,000 like, and the cost of living is, like, one of the highest in the country. I don't know. It's really, really hard.
Kiss: It's really hard. So I'm hearing that as like, almost a potential reflection of like, I don't know what the right pathway to get that eight million dollars would have been, but the thing we tried caused a level of like, disruption and heartbreak that ultimately pulled so much from the energy that people were willing to give. Does that ring true? Like at this point five years out, how do you hold that, that learning that tension?
Dara: Yeah. I mean, we had, again, like a coalition that was some folks who are really invested in the city component, like going to the city council meetings, always being in public comment, to continue to advocate. And we had a couple other, like, smaller victories around that. So, I mean, I think there was some, you know, value in that, in terms of, like, pushing the discourse around what's possible for community public safety in Cambridge, like, I don't think that what currently exists, that the city is offering is great, but also it's another option, and it hopefully is helping people, like, not get entangled in the criminal legal system. I'm hopeful like that there's something valuable to that, and it's a hard one to know, like, was it a complete waste of time? I wouldn't say that, but I would say I wish that we had also given a lot more time and energy to like doing the work inside of our own community, to strengthen our presence, to develop, I think, before Heart even existed, membership in the Black Response, to really develop more shared leadership in those areas, so that there was some more sustainability and with the people power we had maybe redistributed it more proportionally in that way.
Damon: I know your focus was around building the structure of the organization in many ways, but I'm curious during this time that we just went through for your team of responders and practitioners that you know, I'm sure, some things were in flux, but they're practicing, you know, y'all are starting to get emails in, you're starting to respond to your community. Did you recognize growth in capacity, or any experiential learning of skill, like collectively that, oh, once we first started, you know, we got these trainings, we got these things on paper, we have these folks with previous experience, and now we've formally built this container, people are intentionally reaching out to us, we have developed this theory around non emergency crisis response, so we've designed what we're responding to — I would love to learn any of the growth of the skill-building, of the learnings of the folks who were showing up to these crisis that you saw or observed?
Dara: Yeah. And again, I don't want to speak for anybody like I want to just reiterate, I'm one human in the sea of many,
Damon: amongst the collective power of the liberatory, magnificent superheroes that is the Cambridge Heart expanded, extended community. We didn't talk to all of you, but we see, love and appreciate you all, because Dara not do it by herself. We know that.
Darar: Yeah.
Kiss: The Cambridge Heart cinematic universe. This is your Thor.
Dara: There's a whole ecosystem.
Damon: I could be Sam Jackson at the end. Hey, motherfucker, you got to do another movie,
Dara Bayer: Right, right?
Damon: Hey, motherfucker, there's some more people out here.
Dara: Don't forget that. Yeah. I mean, I think, a big takeaway and reflection that I have, the initial group of responders got over 600 hours of training — lots and lots of different kinds of training, really and some really incredible like, we have some amazing organizations in our local area that our values align, that do work around mental health, non-carceral, anti-carceral mental health crisis support around domestic violence that's, you know, I think are really committed to our values and really good at political education. And a big learning is like when you want to invite folks in building an organization where people with lived experience and who are deeply rooted in the community are the peer responders, which is what we absolutely wanted and wanted to center also making sure that people are in the place in their lives so, like fully take that kind of work on and have done their own internal healing, as well as creating the kinds of infrastructures we need to support people managing and responding to crises so that they don't burn out. So I just want to, like, really uplift that piece about how important it is to really assess if people are in the right time in their life to be doing crisis response. Having lived experience by itself is not enough. Like you need to have done some of your internal work apart from training, but like your own healing journey. Where are you in your healing journey to to really show up for people in the moment of crisis?
Damon: You mean, I can't just have been a follower of Mariame's Twitter in 2019? So after we got to make sure that we all right, okay.
Kiss: In addition to, like, therapy, internal work, were there other types of, like, on a personal level, things you saw that helped prepare people to be able to step into that, that wasn't a training, but, like, when you're saying that, what, yeah, other than just like, quote, unquote, go to therapy would be helpful?
Dara: No, yeah, and I wasn't. I don't even just think necessarily it's therapy, right? Like, whatever modality you're using in your journey to do your own healing. And really, I think it's actually like also, what kind of healthy coping mechanisms are you using for yourself? And that that there could be a range of things, there's no definition of that to move through your own trauma and your own histories of trauma. What are the healthy practices you're doing that are going to be life giving to you and to those around you? So I think having deep assessment tools around that, for people to reflect, self-reflect, and also for an organization to be clear this is a good fit.
Damon: I want to say there if we can .
Dara: Yes, yes, and I'll add something also.mon
Damon: I apologize, but that right there is so rich. Because I think even in our like collective-facing spaces, so much of what we call that work we think of as internal, as private, as confidential and self-led. And so I'm really curious about what culture was created that allowed for other people to assess name, reflect on someone else's like internal work, internal process. I just can imagine all of the stickiness and the difficulties of, if you see someone's clearly not right. Yeah, just just talk me through a little bit of what that looks I mean.
Dara: I don't think we've fully done that. Yeah, I guess that's my point of like, a point of learning is like how to do that is an area of inquiry that people should be in together. An idea we've had that we haven't. fully implemented yet — but I think it would be a really great thing, and again, it requires resource, so that's a little bit complicated — is to sort of do, like an apprenticeship model, where people try it on and go through some training, really do some of the deeper reflective work collectively. And there's also some assessment. Were you able to show up in a way? Like, how are you doing in your life to really meet this moment, and is this really something you could take on full time as a responder? So that's an idea that I think would be ideal, is, like, really helping people skill up already to do some of this. But then also, it wouldn't be necessarily like, oh, you're just hired on the spot to be a full time responder right now. Like, let's do some shared learning. Because I think a lot of stuff came out was, like, uncovered, through the training, through the practice of beginning to meet people in the community, trying to hold our values to support people.
And then also, like, do you have the systems in your life to, like, be consistent? Like, show up to work and be consistent? Like, those are things that are really needed, especially in a startup, I think. How much that balance of like, support and accountability in building a workplace I think, is a big, a big question that we're, you know, we were trying to build everything kind of on consensus or, like, developing our protocols. We didn't have any infrastructure when people were hired, by the way, so don't do that. We didn't have any like, we didn't have like, workplace agreements. We didn't have like, clear expectations about attendance or about conflict, even, like, none of that was established. People were already hired before any of that, there was, like, anything on the table around those things. Communication systems, like, how do we communicate if something comes up in our lives and we can't make it to work? Or, how do we practice accountability with each other in a way that's non punitive, right? That's essential, essential piece, like, we're trying to live the values we're building in our community. We got to live those internally, first and foremost, with each other. How do we build those systems?
I come from, like, more of a community organizing and education background of, like, really trying to create those systems collaboratively, and I still believe in that. And it's a really different thing to be then in a workplace environment where, like, there's positional power dynamics at play immediately, and how do you make those clear and transparent? And like, make sure roles and responsibilities are clear, and also when we've been acculturated into hierarchy so intensely, co-ops are not people's everyday workplace experience, so those are skill sets that you need to build to like, be able to be in shared leadership. So those are some big pieces too around, just like the mechanics of building a workplace that can hold crisis work in a sustainable way that is both supporting people whose lives are like, really complicated, like people have gone through a lot, their lives are complicated coming in to do this really important work inside of their own communities. How do we do that in a way that's like, sustainable and centers the mission of the organization?
I think a lot of a struggle was like, wanting to take care of our people inside our organization, and also like we have a collective mission and commitment to like the work we're trying to do. So part of my work was to build systems of collective care for ourselves. And a very concrete example is, like, we have wellness days, right? We got some funding to actually implement, like, a concrete day where, like, we actually just, like, spend time together, and people take turns planning those days that are rooted in tending to ourselves collectively as a community, and that looks like cooking together, that looks like going out into a park and enjoying nature, that looks like going and solving puzzles together, like a escape kind of room thing, you know, like, those are all kinds of examples of like things we would do together to bring joy and tend to our relationships in like, a positive way. And along with like in the daily practices of like having meaningful places to debrief and check in systems of accountability, accountability partners, so that people can be supporting each other's accountability, one-to-one and practicing feedback, which is an essential piece of crisis response work. You have to be able to give feedback to each other, and if you can't receive feedback. It's not safe to do crisis response work, because you have to be able to like in the moment, name something like, I gotta tap you out. And if someone can't hear that or gets defensive, that's not safe actually. That could compromise, responding in a good way. Having practices around all of those things and to like continually show up to hold that is, is not easy collectively, you know.
Kiss: I want to just get a little bit deeper in this relationship between, how do we care for the people we're working with, and recognize that we're serving a mission all of this work is in service of I think that's a contradiction that I know we have seen and struggled with, and I think it's a very shared experience, especially for people in positions of leadership within that the discomforts around hierarchy, being in a position where there's a power dynamic trying to make sure that people are okay, while also knowing that like work. Needs to be done. Things need to move forward. I'm just curious, what was your kind of journey in the comfort and discomfort of that of like, Yes, I have a commitment to this person, and we have a collective commitment to actually making sure the things we said would get done get done for the people we're committed to.
Dara: super challenging, really, really uncomfortable and really hard. I mean, because some people, you know, like, I grew up with people that I work with, you know, like, that's also true. So I think I have more clarity now that I've left wishing there had been more clear, transparent processes around accountability. And I think, to me, the most important part is transparency and communication and making sure that there's, like, shared understandings of what is needed. I think one thing that we struggled with from the very beginning, like even before Heart was an organization, is decision making. It's like, who's making what decisions how. Because I think there is a discomfort around hierarchy when we're trying to fight these coercive, top down systems that are really harmful. But I actually like, and I really appreciate a lot of my teachers, especially from indigenous communities, who've like, been really clear, like, hierarchy is not a bad thing necessarily. It's how it's if it's used in an abusive way it is. But I think being clear about how power is distributed, the transparency part, honestly, is the most important part to me, that like power is made transparent and roles and responsibilities are made transparent so that people can consent to what they're choosing to be part of, and when that's not clear, that's when like harm and conflict are more likely to happen.
So I think that my learning and my biggest takeaways have been around practicing really transparent, clear communication around power more explicitly. I think we didn't get to a place of being like, actually, there is supervision involved in this work, until, like, months into the work, you know, which is not the best, like, ideally, people opt in to understanding those systems before they start working somewhere, there is some choice there. It's like, are you able to meet these expectations or not? And if not, like, this might not be the best place. I don't think that's punitive in and of itself. It's like being really clear about expectations and consequences. So I think the implementation of our systems and being really consistent with those is, like, what got hard? Like, okay, how do we actually maintain the expectations we all agreed to hold together At the end of the day I think we were thinking, everyone's gonna hold them together because we all consented to them, but that's the responsibility of leadership, and so making sure that that's upheld. And I think I went in and out of feeling really challenged by that.
Damon: So, you know, as we're winding down one this has just been been wonderful, and, you know, so nourishing. I have a question that you can you know, as much or as little as you want to respond to, but I would like to talk about the value of transition. I know that it is important for our spaces to have healthy cycles of leadership change, and it is important for our people to not perpetually be in leadership or be the sole or the primary person responsible for these like large endeavors, not only for the health of the work, but for the health of our people, like we want our people to sustain and be with us for the long haul. And so I would love for you to talk about the value, the importance, maybe some of the challenges, of transitioning out of the role, and, like, how that shifts your relationship to the work. And if in that, I'm gonna just little squeeze in, if you could give, like, a little bird's eye report of like, where the work at the time that you transitioned, what was the state of things, and then could that lead into, like, the larger journey of what it means for you to no longer be the co-director?
Dara: Yes, thank you for that question. Transition has been a journey. It was like a eight month plan, I think, for me. So it definitely is something. I think good transition takes time, probably even longer than that would have been ideal to really like prepare for that. But just to answer the other question, first, currently Heart so we were able to build a infrastructure for a call center so Heart has a phone number people can call. So 617-902-0102. The Heart line exists. It's only open twice a week, because of the size of our staff. We don't have the capacity to be open all the time, which is obviously a need more resources to have more people. But from 10am to 4pm people can call and receive support over the phone, and they can leave a message anytime, and there's a commitment to calling back. Heart's on now on a four day work week. So that was also supporting wellness and supporting capacity and sustainability. We open Monday through Thursday right now, and so people can call that number, and we have a van. The hope is to have mobile crisis response live by the summer. That was the timeline I left that left off. I think there's been some challenges. So like that might not end up happening. I think the reality of like, continually trying to do what we're doing with limited resources is really hard, so but mobile crisis responses in the very near future, of like actually being able to meet people in the moment.
And I'll just say, because we didn't actually touch on this one, one big shift that happened is when we stopped doing the non-emergency response, which was like the longer term work. You know, we were really like, we're designed to be first responders. Like, that's the hope for Heart is to be able to offer support in the moment, which means we can't work with someone for months and months. We have to be able to support people in the moment and hopefully do some aftercare, but then be able to transition people, if they need more support find the values aligned place to transition them to and do the warm handoff. So that's ongoing work we have around working with different organizations, doing political education with different organizations, to really support them in developing more anti-carceral, self-determined practices. So like there's a domestic violence working group that I used to facilitate, that still exists. There's a mental health workinggroup as examples of like bringing partners in to be in conversation and do some mutual learning around how to respond.
Kiss: And then you can hand people off and feel safe putting them in their hands.
Dara: Yeah, or at least be really clear about with people like informed consent, right? Like this is an offering that could support you longer term. And these folks are mandated reporters, so you need to figure out how to navigate that. But yeah, ideally is to, like, really find the practitioners, the service providers that could work with folks longer term if they need to around housing, around, you know, leaving a harmful relationship, whatever it may be that is going to support them, hopefully in a way that feels human and care-centered and transformative. So that's kind of where things are, like, with the organization I came into the co-director work role as, like, a necessity, not really as like, oh, this is, this is my desire. Like, I want to do this for my for life. I've never done that. I've never been a co-director. Like, I don't have any professional experience as a crisis responder like that hasn't been the area I was cultivating. Like, I was like, okay, I'm stepping into this different kind of leadership, and we'll see how long feels like I'm gonna be a good fit for it. You know, in the midst of that, I had a child, so that was a big life transition, and so I feel really proud of the really intentional work that my co-director and I did to support a transition that was going to be sustainable.
We worked with someone, an amazing coach, for months to really think through what was needed for the organization, for ourselves and things didn't work out the way we ideally wanted, you know, so I'm trying to hold that. I'm still doing some things to support the organization. And I mean, everyone knows, like, it's not like I'm leaving Heart. I'm just leaving I'm transitioning out of a particular role in Heart, and I will always be part of that family and community. It's, it's a lifelong commitment. So I think it's, it's really just kind of navigating boundaries in a different way and space, and like doing my own spiritual work, to kind of disentangle some of my sense of responsibility for certain kinds of aspects of that work, to allow it to be in its next phase of evolution and growth and transformation. And I think that's so important. A big lesson is wishing I had offered more as a mentor and really doing more, like, earlier on, to cultivate shared leadership across the board and in more shared capacity and leadership. I mean, this is a pain point, I think, in a lot of when a founder transitions and like, how do you navigate that? And I really, really believe that, like, this is not something anyone could do alone, individually. It's not an individual endeavor at all. And so I feel really proud that Heart still exists like that's not a given, right?
Kiss: Yeah, a five year experiment is no small feat, you know?
Dara: Yeah, yeah. So holding that and grateful I can still be in relationship with people there. I have deep love for everyone who who has given incredible amounts of time and care and love and vision and like, you know, we've built a really amazing board. You know, we're existing in the non-profit industrial complex now, so there's all of that, but we're in a place where, I think, regardless of what unfolds, there is systems and practices and people who will move in a good way to see where it goes. So I'm grateful for that.
Kiss: That's a beautiful thing to know and feel as you step away, and that's a beautiful thing to feel when you think about the kind of assurance needed to respond to crisis, right? It's like we don't know exactly what it'll look like, but we know we have some people who are showing up with some tools and with some grounding. And so I think our last question we're going to be asking this throughout the season, what have you learned through this experimentation about how to stay grounded, regulated and focused in moments of crisis?
Dara: It's being in practice in a lot of different ways in daily life. So being in the practice of tending to self, the foundational things, which I don't take for granted right now, because I have a small toddler — sleeping enough, right? Like, are you getting rest? Are you taking care of, like your health, like physical health, in ways that your body needs to be taken care of? Are you tending to your relationships so that when you show up, and hopefully never alone, like in certain moments, you will, maybe will be alone, but you have the resource to ask for help and knowing, like very rarely, can a full crisis be managed alone. Who are you calling on, and knowing that you can call on people, and ideally having someone by your side to be there with you and accompany the journey of supporting someone in like, the hardest or most vulnerable time?
I can't stress enough, the capacity to give and receive feedback being so needed and really like working through our own like triggers, and like shame responses, defense mechanisms, like being aware of those so that when hard feedback comes, it can be received. And also that you feel like you can give hard feedback if it needs to be shared, along with like, loving feedback, like that should also be part of the practice of responding. We also need to give each other a lot of grace, a deep gratitude I've learned from practicing transformative justice is like, you know, non-binary thinking. We have to be like, able to live in the gray at times and like, there is nuance to like pretty much every situation. And while it's like having clear compass, but also really seeing the complexity and not shutting down or dismissing a situation, and I'm thinking this more like interpersonally, with the people that we're working with, to like, show up into in crisis with to like, hold complexity and hold nuance while maintaining a compass, while being clear about your non-negotiables and the practices and the values that are needed to be holding it in the good way. So yeah, yeah, those are the things that are coming to mind right now. There's a lot more probably.
Kiss: Great tools in the toolbox, though, great things to carry with you into that. Dara, thank you so much. One, of course, for spending this time with us, but two, for the disciplined, caring, and consistent stewardship you've done of this work over these years, and the kinds of reflections that you're sharing, I think. I know they're useful for me. I know they're going to be useful for other people. So appreciate you. How can folks find what's the Heart line? One more time?
Dara: Oh, the Heart line, yeah, we can support people over the phone that aren't local, but the mobile crisis will be like in the localized, you know, area of Cambridge.
Kiss: You're not taking the van on road trips to meet needs in Minneapolis.
Dara: No, sorry, not, not able to do that right now, which you know in the future. But also we want to support Minneapolis and having its local, which they do. They have some brilliant stuff happening there. So anyway, the number is 617-902-0102. I am really grateful for you all inviting me on to be in conversations for your really deep and thoughtful, intentional questions, and thank you for the work you're doing to uplift this all around the country and to give people inspiration in important places to learn. We need it.
Damon: Alright, y'all you know, it's not over. It is time for the peer review.
Music: Hoping I don't offend all my peers.
Damon: And of course, we have to welcome back to the lab, the one and only our partner in decriminalization. Eva, how you feeling?
Eva: Hey, Chicago, it's nice to be in the lab with y'all again.
Kiss: I just watched our other peer for this peer review decide whether to do a sound effect or not. And I respect the discretion, and I think we should bring you into the convo, because you showed great discretion and poise in that moment. We're so happy to have you here. Deana Lewis is joining us for the peer review all season.Yeah. There it is. Let it out.
Damon: Yeah, are we gonna...
Kiss: Our sound effect game has descended into chaos. And I love it. I love it. It is not a crisis. I think big cat. Deana, let's hop into this here peer review. What jumped out to you from this conversation?
Deana Lewis: Sure, I really wanted to talk about the vulnerability that the folks from Cambridge Heart displayed in the episode. So I heard disappointment after working so hard to create this amazing model with community, only to have that model co-opted and bastardized into this thing that actually supports carceral systems, and it's a huge disappointment. What I also heard was that they took a beat and they really leaned into hope. And of course, I want to bring up what Mariame Kaba has said multiple times and is just should be a movement ethos, is that hope is a discipline. "It's just true." Which means you say, all right, that didn't work, that fucking sucked. So now we iterate and we do something else.
Kiss: Yeah, it makes me think about something when we talked to Mariame at the end of season two, a lot of the conversation was about the difference between evaluation and reflection. Like, sure, reflection can feel good, can feel healing, but evaluation is what she was really advocating for. Is like, not just how do we ruminate, but how do we take the lessons we learned to then be in motion again? But I think you're right, that that like the heartbreak and that vulnerability is very real and really came through for Dara. I'm sure that's not unique just to their experience. It's actually something that there are versions of in all three of the experiments we're talking to this season. But the heartbreak is different and unique each time, for sure. What about for you, eva, what jumped out?
Eva: Interrupting criminalization has been following Cambridge Heart really, since, not the inception, but close to have been following the story closely. And I think that it's a fascinating one, in that this is a movement that has really been started by young people. It's really centered the marginalized. You know, that has been a guiding force throughout all of these different pivots. And I think that there is to Deana's point, just a real vulnerability that Dara brought to this episode, to, you know, be a young person who had swung all the way, you know, had pointed out to the field and said, like, we're going the distance. And yes, she called her shot. And to bring that in and to really, like open up about all of the things that they wish were different, that it really goes to show that you can bring so many good ingredients into the kitchen, and it doesn't always mean things are going to work out the way that you want them to. But I go back and I imagine Dara and the crew and the Black Response like going out there and saying, we take none of these options. We are going to go out into the community and we are going to do our own participatory action research, and we are going to bring better options to the table. And the truth is that people may not be ready for those options, but here again, like REP, is this core group of people who is committed to keep trying.
Damon: I know there's no like one-size-fit-all solution, and like Andrea said in last season, we're not like trying to build the institute of abolition, and like this will remain an emergent grassroots practice. But for us, are folks taking any lessons or any big picture learnings from this seemingly consistent practice of co-optation from the state of like there's obviously an opportunity to have infrastructure, to be in people's lives in a way that it's you can't do by yourself. And people have recognition of government institutions and want to see their city or municipal bodies like, buy into things, to like, fully believe in them or think of them as real. But then we see time and time again, there's been this notion of co-optation and disregard for the true spirit that are innovating these models. And so I'm just wondering for us as peers, like, is there anything we can process for listeners about that reality, in terms of how we face the state?
Deana: One thing I think about is endurance and sticking to values. The state might take this model, but we still have the work. We know the work is good, and we're still going to keep it moving. We're more nimble than the state. We can change to make the model that we have work for our communities.
Kiss: Another thing for me that comes through is the difference in how power and influence plays out on a municipal level in different places. So like in Cambridge, they're talking about there's, like this, basically city manager position where you can get all the city council votes you want, but like, the buck stops there. In Minneapolis, like, that's a larger city with a city council that maybe had a little more sway in the referendum, but then what was the relationship to the mayor and the city charter like? Basically, what I'm advocating for is a more accurate power mapping of how decisions are actually made in your space before you start the campaign. We have this like, weird mishmash in this country of like, different ways that municipal governments are structured and like, structured and like, it's not standard at all. And so trying to have an understanding of like, actually, where does the power lie and how are decisions made in my space, is really important, because you'll just keep running up against trying to replicate what works somewhere else. But if the rules are different, it can shift your strategies. So that would be one thing that comes up is having an accurate understanding of how power actually functions in your particular place.
Damon: You have thoughts on that, or anything else coming up for you. Eva?
Eva: What stands out to me in Cambridge Heart's story too, is that even when you do find these routes of success at a municipal level, at a funding level, at a logistics level, if you haven't really tended to your home, to your relationships, to really been very vigilant about the values and how those values are enacted in space, you'll run into trouble. And this is true for every organization ever . You know, this is true for Interrupting Criminalization. I'm gonna go ahead and say it's probably true for Airgo. We have to tend to our relationships and so build it, and they will come. But like these small building blocks that are making movement possible, the basic relationships that we maintain continue to be of vital importance. I won't hesitate to say that I think that we see this in the movement ecosystem throughout right now we are all like having to take a hard look at conflict, accountability. and relationships, wherever this work is going on.
Kiss: I think that's a great lesson, as you said, that many people are wrestling with. Is there anything else to Dame's point that we can learn from how Cambridge Heart has moved through growth and crisis that might be helpful for all of us moving through the crisis of our time?
Damon: There's a way that they parse out the notion of crisis — that like divide between emergency and non-emergency. Like, I think we think of crisis and emergency as synonym, but the like immediate versus something that is more protracted, right? Like, the crisis of housing is something that people are experiencing in a prolonged situation, which is different from, you know, maybe a intense mental health episode or a fight that's happening. And so that really is something that stuck with me, of like we know, like we say, the issues of racial capitalism and patriarchy create these crises, but putting them next to each other in a way that allows response for this, like ongoing system navigation, and how that's different from the things that people have been taught to call police for, and the going back and forth between what they have capacity to face. It was, was really interesting.
Kiss: Yeah, that emergency versus non emergency crisis response was ding ding ding.
Damon: Write that down at home, folks.
Deana: Yeah. Yeah, that, yeah. That was interesting. The I want to also, I want to go back to what, what you were saying, Dame, about the, you know, co-optation, and what I was saying about longevity and endurance. And I want us to remember that we have been doing this work without the state for a long time. And I want to bring up my family here. Shira Hassan writes in her book Saving Our Own Lives, about liberatory harm reduction. And she points out that sex workers, AIDS activists, drug users, trans folks, queer folks, have always been keeping us safe without the use of carceral entities or the government or the government's funding. That's not to say that Cambridge Heart doesn't deserve the funds and doesn't deserve to be supported, but it is to say that there are examples of the grassroots work that has been being done for years and years.
Eva: Deana, I'm so glad you brought Shira's book up. One of the things that we produced at Interrupting Criminalization, alongside Shiraz book was an essay called Painting the Ocean and the Sky. And so.
Damon: Deana, did you print out a version of this essay?
Deana: Absolutely, I carry it right. I do because I carry shira with me good
Eva: Logisticator in the house. And it is, you know, it is a zine, right? So put it in your purse. That's right. But in that essay, Shira talks about crisis response versus emergency response. It's so clear. And Shira also goes into a section that is talking about working underground versus above ground. I think these are all just really important insights from somebody who has been doing this work in community for decades to pick up right now. So like Daena, print out Painting the Ocean and Sky and stick it in your bag today.
Kiss: And we'll throw it in the show notes for this episode as well.
Damon: Yeah. And you know, just, I think one point of emphasis that we don't even have to get to. I just want to uplift. What Dara offered is for folks who are wanting to do this work, particularly that is intervening in people's time of need, you need to have tools to assess if you are you equipped to show up and meet those moments? And if that work is something that would be triggering for you, like it's not just about the strategies and tactics of how to build an organization, there is some like, internal capacity check-in and or building that may need to be the first step before we are out in community intervening. And so just like, that point of emphasis is really important, and just want to highlight and celebrate them for offering that knowledge.
Kiss: Yeah. I think people, myself included, struggle with that. Because you don't want to admit to yourself that you may not be able to, quote, unquote, like, rise to the occasion, but the worst thing you can do, and I think we've heard this in all of these on the ground experiments, is offer something that you can't actually deliver.
Deana: Absolutely. And I want to point out like guilt and shame. Huge, but there are feelings that don't really serve anyone. So it's okay to say, you know what, I can't do this right now, but there might be something else that you can do. This is a callback to REP, and their commitment to 10 years is also a commitment to not burn out. So you have to be really honest, do you have the capacity to be beside someone right now? If not, that's okay. Do something else.
Kiss: Yeah, that was why I was really, actually grateful to get to talk to Dara as she transitioned out of that role, because I hope for listeners, but even especially for her, it provided an opportunity to have the kind of moment of reflection and evaluation that we so rarely get. Alright, let's hop on out of here. Deana, you know, where can folks find your work in the ways you'd like to be found?
Deana: So I am the host of a podcast called Stories for Power. You can find that and review it and subscribe to it on whatever. You can like it, yep, on.
Kiss. You can love it.
Eva: Share it.
Deana: You can do a lot of verbs. Lot of verbs can happen with it. So we trace the work of some of the architects and radical organizers of this current wave of community accountability, transformative justice, and abolitionist practices.
Kiss: So go ahead, plug in with Stories for Power. Of course, make sure that you do all those same nice podcast things for One Million Experiments. Check out One Million Experiments of the film available now on Apple, TV, Google Play, YouTube movies. Dame and I also host a podcast called Airgo, which we've been doing for the last 10 years, documenting movement builders, organizers, people, reshaping culture for the more liberatory and creative. That's a i, r, g, o, wherever you get your podcasts. And of course, respairmedia@resparemedia.com, Eva, how about I? See, let's get those plugs in. Where should people plug in?
Eva: A couple more folks stick with us here. You can get us at interruptingcriminalization.org We're also on socials @interruptcrim, and I encourage you to check out Cambridge Heart. You can go to Cambridge Heart at Cambridge-heart.org, and on socials @heart_cambridge,
Kiss: Yeah, season four, it's gonna just be pugs to that point of Cambridge Heart needing to be supported. I know that they're in the middle of a pretty active fundraising spree right now to keep operations up and running, to continue doing the really important work that they do. If you're listening to this and want to support their work, you should absolutely plug in at Cambridge-heart.org, that's right, there's a dash you don't see that every day. So thank you so much for hopping in with us today. We'll see you back soon in the lab.
Damon: Much love to the people.
Kiss: Peace.