ADVOCACY-ORIENTED PEER SUPPORT PART TWO: Moving From Talk to Action
1999
by Steve Brown
How Does Talk Become Action?
This is a key question that center for independent living (CIL) staff,
consumers and board members may sit and ponder for years. We all know
people who talk a lot about change, share wonderful ideas, and have all
kinds of theoretical methods to put their rhetoric into motion, but somehow
never manage to translate that passion for words into concrete actions.
We also know another set of people who may not have much to say, but always
show up when there is a need for someone to participate in a legislative
action, or a demonstration, or a conference. Like most spectrums, these
two groups compose minorities. The vast majority of us neither verbalize
our frustrations nor do we act on them. At different times, any one of
us might fit into any or all of the three groups described above. At the
best of times, we somehow manage to take our concerns from talk to action.
The purpose of this paper is to identify some ways that CIL staff might
identity when someone is ripe to move from talk to action.
Anger
Anger is generally the most obvious sign that someone is ready to work
for change. Since people with disabilities often encounter discrimination,
anger is a frequent response. A person may call or come in to your CIL
who is exasperated with a bureaucracy, or who has just encountered a barrier
of some kind in your community, or who expresses one of a dozen other
reasons to be upset with something that has happened in his or her life.
Maybe a person who works with your CIL has been sent to you by Vocational
Rehabilitation or another agency to access peer support services.
They join a peer support group and you hope that this will entice them
to move from expressing their anger to doing something about it. But instead
all they do, and in fact all the group seems to do, is complain. What
can you do to advance the process so talk doesn't just continue endlessly
and no one does anything?
Acknowledgment
The first, and perhaps most important, reaction you can have is to acknowledge
that anger exists. A famous advocate with a disability often tells the
story of his younger years when he first began to understand he encountered
discrimination and oppression because of his disability. He expressed
this belief to some family and friends and they all denied his perception.
Years later he decided to see a psychologist who also had a disability.
When he proclaimed his frustrations with discrimination and oppression,
she did not deny his feelings. In fact, she affirmed them. Yes, she agreed,
you do face discrimination and oppression because you have a disability.
Now, what are you going to do about it?
Validating someone's feelings of anger is critically important. For a
group of people who have been identified for years as in-valid, having
emotions of anger denied or minimized is just another slap in the face
from an uncaring society. Before someone can act on their anger they must
believe it is justifiable. Before CIL staff are likely to be willing to
assist someone else in moving their anger from talk to action, they must
acknowledge their own feelings of anger as well as those of the person
with whom they are working.
Support
Support from CIL personnel many times leads to a way to funnel anger
positively. Each CIL possesses knowledge of many situations in your community
that need to be changed. CIL staff do not have to be the ones to make
all the changes. In fact, if CIL staff are unwilling to share the responsibility
of community change with others, then the bulk of the work required is
likely to remain undone. There are simply too many items in need of reform.
Once CIL staff recognize and acknowledge the existence of anger they
will be challenged to provide support to transform that anger. Individuals
coming into CILs often focus solely on what has happened to them. CILs
have a responsibility not only to address the individual problem, but
to assist people in understanding how their individual problems relate
to systemic issues. This may be the most significant role provided by
CIL staff because an individual whose attention is turned toward systemic
problems is more likely to become engaged in the necessity of a movement,
as opposed to resolving only individual concerns. This, in turn, is one
way to move someone from talk toward action.
The willingness of CIL staff is a vital component of this transition.
But an eager CIL staff does not necessarily translate into one that is
skilled at taking an individual or a group from talk to action. Both CIL
personnel and those who seek support from the CIL must be attuned to characteristics
of leadership.
Leadership
Leaders exist everywhere: schools, workplaces, institutions, families,
organizations. Potential leaders include not only those who work at an
independent living center, but also those who serve as volunteers or who
receive services from a CIL. All leaders have one thing in common: they
are able to move people to accomplish change. Sometimes leaders are people
who get tired of hearing other people gripe and do nothing. Some people
just seem born to lead. Others get angry and tired and decide they cannot
sit around and do nothing and just start acting. Some people lead by example
and others lead groups of people. All have an ability to persuade other
people that their issues are at the very least worth considering.
There is no set formula to become or recognize a leader. Indeed, there
are many formulas and lots of books written and seminars conducted about
leadership. For the purposes of an independent living center, everyone
the CIL comes into contact with can be considered a leader or a potential
leader. That way CILs do not make the same mistake other societal organizations
do and exclude someone from leadership because they look different, or
walk funny, or drool while they talk, or think more slowly than the peer
to whom they might be assigned.
There is another advantage to considering everyone a leader. Initially,
some people will rise to the occasion. Others will fall back. But even
those who retreat will learn something that will be of benefit to them,
and one day they may use that knowledge to assume a leadership position
with a CIL or elsewhere.
Combining Anger and Leadership
A CIL can be a perfect setting to offer someone a chance to test their
leadership skills. It can also be a place to squash leadership development.
What's the difference?
Some CILs are criticized for too much delegation and others for too little,
but if CIL staff do not share opportunities to create reform then why
should others be interested in working with them?
CILs who foment leaders are ones who are willing to let go of some of
the responsibility and work toward making change happen. All CILs have
many opportunities for people to try out their leadership skills. These
include becoming a peer supporter or counselor, facilitating peer support
groups, serving on CIL board committees, writing about their experiences
and concerns in CIL newsletters, volunteering for other community organizations,
communicating with elected officials, attending rallies, writing letters
to editors and opinion columns, and volunteering at the CIL.
Not every individual who tries one or more of these or other possibilities
will succeed. Neither will all fail. The same is true of every other demographic
group. But if people with disabilities are not encouraged to try and fail
(or succeed) with the support of a CIL, where will they find the opportunities
they need to test their skills? Possibly nowhere. That's why a CIL is
a perfect setting to offer someone a chance. It's a good possibility that
one or more of the CIL's current staff got such an opportunity in their
past.
Over the years since the first CILs began in the early 1970s, many people
with disabilities have combined anger and leadership to effect positive
change. Examples abound. The Americans with Disabilities Act resulted
from people with disabilities being tired of encountering discrimination
in a variety of areas of life and writing a law to forbid this discrimination,
then fighting to see that the law was passed. As this is being written,
many disabled people are readying themselves to advocate with their state
governors and with the federal Supreme Court not to weaken the ADA. Rallying
cries are occurring at this moment for a variety of causes: stopping the
attempts of Jack Kevorkian to promote mercy-killing; increasing Social
Security benefits and obtaining work incentives to keep people in the
workforce; diverting money from nursing homes into maintaining personal
assistance services in the community; increasing transportation options;
getting the study of disability into college curricula; promoting disability
history through events like Initiative 2000, a celebration of the 10th
anniversary of the passage of the ADA; and retaining
independent living centers as advocacy organizations.
What Can Your CIL Do?
Perhaps the most important supervisory task for CIL management is to
encourage staff to pay attention. With all the tasks facing CIL staff
on a daily basis there may be a tendency to become immersed in what there
is to do rather than who there is to do it. In this way we may lose those
who come to CILs for help before they are ready to become leaders. For
some people, assuming a leadership role will come quickly and naturally.
For others, it may take years. CILs, as organizational entities, need
to remember that sometimes the world is changed one person at a time and
that it is just as vital to interact with one consumer for many hours
as it is to talk with a legislator. That consumer may be around for years
to come; the legislator may be gone before you know it.
Once a CIL feels that it delivers its services as best it can, do not
become discouraged by a seeming lack of response. Even though you may
not think you are getting through to someone, you could be wrong. Many
times, someone will return to a CIL months or even years after their initial
contact. Something said in a first CIL encounter might have changed their
life or stimulated their thinking. Those in the CIL may be unaware of
these transformations. Just because they are not visible to a CIL does
not mean they are not happening.
Finally, just as CIL staff appreciate praise, leadership development
includes acknowledgment.
Sometimes the only way leaders know that they are leaders is if people
tell them how much they appreciate their efforts and that because of their
work change has occurred.
Every CIL has the potential to utilize peer support to move people from
talk to action, from anger to leadership. Just like individuals, CILs
are not all alike. What works for one may not work for another. But it's
more likely that a CIL that has identified some techniques of leadership
development will be able to share aspects of their success that do work
at other CILs. Contact the ILRU/NCIL National Training & Technical
Assistance Project to find out who they are. It may be the most important
contact your CIL will ever make.
Steven Brown
Institute on Disability Culture
Center on Disability Studies
University of Hawai'i
1776 University Ave., UA4-6
Honolulu, HI 96822
SBrown8912@aol.com
http://hometown.aol.com/sbrown8912/
About the Author
Steven E. Brown is currently a Resident Scholar
at the Center on Disability Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Brown,
founder, Institute on Disability Culture (IDC), earned a doctorate in
history from the University of Oklahoma. He directed an independent living
center in Oklahoma, organized numerous community coalitions, and served
as training director at the World Institute on Disability Research and
Training Center on Public Policy in Independent Living. He founded the
not-for-profit Institute on Disability Culture with his wife, Lillian
Gonzales Brown, in 1994. Since then he has become an internationally sought
speaker, trainer, and writer.
Brown's publications include dozens of articles and the books Independent
Living: Theory and Practice, which has been translated into several
languages; Investigating a Culture of Disability: Final
Report, the result of a prestigious Switzer Fellowship from the
National Institute on Disability Rehabilitation and Research of the Department
of Education, the first funding of its type for research into the field
of Disability Culture; A Celebration of Diversity:
an Annotated Bibliography about Disability Culture, Second Edition;
and Celebrating Passion, Relentlessness, and Vision:
the Manifesto Editorials. An award-winning poet, Brown has published
five books of poetry, Dragonflies in Paradise: An Activist's
Partial Poetic Autobiography; The Goddess Approaches
Fifty: Poems; Love into Forever: a Tribute to
Martyrs, Heroes, Friends, and Colleagues; Pain,
Plain--and Fancy Rappings: Poetry from the Disability Culture;
and Voyages: Life Journeys.
In recent years, Brown has conducted writing workshops and residencies
with groups of all ages, especially with middle and elementary school
students. He has written a children's biography about disability rights
pioneer Ed Roberts, distributed a monthly online newsletter and continued
to publish articles about disability culture and disability rights in
a variety of publications. He has conducted trainings throughout the United
States and Europe on a variety of disability related subjects.
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