Crisis Theory, Opportunity and Bridge Builders

Summary Paragraph: In which Menin sees opportunity where others don't.

In an earlier incarnation, I spent five years doing Emergency Mental Health work, both over the phones as a suicide counselor, and as an Outreach worker. I made 1,400 "home visits". I use the term home in it's broadest sense; we were the team of specialists who would get called to talk people off of bridges, do hostage negotiations, talk people out of killing someone else, visited alleys, department stores, bathrooms, city buses, just about any place a person can get themselves. We essentially served as a bridge between those in need of supportive services, and those services.

It was the most learning I have ever done in a five year period. I learned about humility and grace, fear and anger; I learned about how people cope with loss, and in several cases, how they prepare to die.

And I learned about me. In 1,400 home visits I was assaulted ten times, by a tiny fraction of the people I saw. I can tell you from personal experience that you are far more likely to be assaulted in a bar than by some one with mental illness. I also learned what it is like to be shot at, have a refrigerator tossed out a window at me; dodge a knife; a client once opened their door and had a loaded cross-bow pointed at my gut. I learned what it is like to try to resolve a hostage situation negotiating through a door while I could see the SWAT team setting up on the roof across the street. Another time, we were called out to talk with a Viet Nam vet who was parked in front of his ex-wife's house, an empty syringe, filled with air, jabbed into a vein in his arm; when a press helicopter flew overhead for pictures for the late news ("film at 11"), he started screaming. The only reason I think we didn't lose him was that the police all pulled out their service revolvers and aimed it the copter, which took off like a bat out of hell.

I learned what a privilege it is to serve, to be present with a person in their hardest, most frightening moments. Believe me, there was nothing heroic, by any tortured stretch of the imagination, to the work we were doing. It was humbling, powerful; and it was threaded with moments of otherworldly grace.

What does this have to do with Newburyport? Something I have alluded to in earlier posts was perfectly articulated in Mary Eaton Baker's Wicked Awesome Website this morning. Building bridges.

In crisis theory, the way it works is simply this. It is about building a bridge that will hold your weight.

We all have ways of coping with stress. Most of the time they work. When they no longer work for a person, or a city, you enter a period of crisis, which is characterized by two things-- a rise in energy, often dramatic; and a push towards some sort of resolution.

There are really only three ways a crisis can resolve. You can get your balance back, and restore the old ways of coping. The downside to this is that you are embracing a system for coping that has already failed. Another failure is inevitable, you've just pushed the problem into the future. Kind of like putting sick leave buy-back on the table when you have no money for raises.

The second option is to adopt new coping mechanisms, new ways to approach problems. When you think about it, there are really only two ways you can try to resolve a crisis by using new coping mechanisms. You can adopt mechanisms that are self-destructive, like drinking, suicide, social withdrawal, acting out, having a tantrum, electing the lesser of two evils, convincing yourself that it doesn't matter, they're all the same, and so on. You get the picture.

The final option is to channel that energy into finding new ways to resolve problems. Constructive, empowering; thinking about the problems in a new way.

Building bridges, for example.

A small group of people from the city side and the school side have been quietly talking about our fiscal crisis, and the impact it is having on the schools, and we've come to some interesting, consensual conclusions.

The Schools are symptomic of the problems faced by the City, and solving the problems of the Schools without looking at fundamental changes in how this City does it's business (Ed Cameron's calls for municipal reform) won't fix things for very long.

The answers are out there; we lack leadership.

The answers are complex, and we want simple.

The answers require some degree of sacrifice, and we want ours.

It will take a community to solve these issues, and our approach has traditionally been divisive, because it is too simplistic, and it plays to the least civil elements in our collective personality.

The quiet message of the Override was that YES people are pushy, SUV driving know-it alls; KNOW people are local yahoos who didn't make much of the schools when they were in them. The elderly came out to vote against the schools? Well, let's see what happens when they come to us for a debt exclusion for a senior center! It was about the Franklin's, for sure, but it was fueled by the socio-economic kindling of a City where more than 50% of the people living here as of ten years ago weren't born here.

We need bridge-builders. They share some very common qualities. They listen. They question everything, especially the status quo. They constantly try to find new ways of looking at the issues. They refuse to accept as justification for continuing a certain practice (say, contract negotiations), "Well, that's the way we've always done it."

They persevere. They keep their eyes on the prize. They have little time for petty, vindictive games. They respect process, and are inclusive and transparent. And most importantly, they don't carve up the town into liberal or conservative wards, they can see something that many can't, for some reason. That we probably agree on 85% of the issues, can find consensus solutions to 10% with real leadership, and agree to disagree on the remaining 5%.

I'm not sure what to call this group of "new" thinkers- there's nothing new about the way they think; many of their ideas defy categorization, as do they, come to think of it. They have a consistent set of principles through which they analyze an issue, and as a result, end up with solutions that range from conservative (in it's original meaning), to progressive and populist. Probably another key characteristic is that they don't presume to have the answers, but they have faith that they can be arrived at collaboratively. Finally, to a person, they simply are not afraid of the truth, of speaking it aloud, to the powerless and the powerful.

For now, I'm just happy to be a part of that dialogue. A few of us feel like we've been trying to figure this stuff out alone, when all the time there actually were other people doing the same dance at the same time.

And when this "movement" reaches critical mass, watch those old and dysfunctional coping mechanisms that characterize Newburyport civic life melt away.

Can I get an "Amen?"

We need bridge-builders. There are a few on the ballot this year; Mary Baker Eaton has a nose for them.

In some cases, it means returning people to their elected offices; in other cases, it means finding out whether an opponent can be a bridge-builder as opposed to an incumbent who is a divider.

We are the change. The people we choose to represent us are the tools of change. If we don't change, we will wither. Choose wisely, and vote for the city you want to see, and not the city we have become.