Speaker 1: Cool Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who did
Speaker 1: cool stuff? Your weekly podcast, the only podcast that comes
Speaker 1: out every week. Actually, ah dude, oh no? Are we
Speaker 1: by weekly now twice a week? I know? Does that
Speaker 1: make it bi weekly? Or is bi weekly every two weeks?
Speaker 1: We semi weekly?
Speaker 2: It means both? Oh wow, I believe bi weekly could
Speaker 2: mean either way, which feels like very confusing.
Speaker 1: Mm hm, not the first confusion caused by bye. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy and with me today is
Speaker 1: you probably know because you probably listen to Part one
Speaker 1: is our guest Alison Raskin, who's a New York Times
Speaker 1: bestselling author, a podcaster, a mental health advocate, and a
Speaker 1: relationship coach and a master's degree in psychology.
Speaker 2: It turns out, yes, I've struggled my way through that,
Speaker 2: and now I get to claim.
Speaker 1: It as you should.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me back. I'm so excited to
Speaker 2: have my final verdict done. If I think this is
Speaker 2: a culture.
Speaker 1: Not yeah, yeah, no, I mean like I mean, And
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a two part question is it a cult?
Speaker 1: And is it a is it cool? They're gonna be
Speaker 1: separate questions. And our guest producer today is James Stout.
Speaker 1: How are you. I'm good, I'm very happy.
Speaker 3: I'm having my tea. I'm listening to cool stories about
Speaker 3: cool people.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, Well our audio engineers Rory. Everyone has to
Speaker 1: say hi to Rory because otherwise I'm afraid bad luck
Speaker 1: will happen. I've somehow convinced myself of this thing, and
Speaker 1: I'm not normally a superstitious person, but Hi Rory, Hi
Speaker 1: Roy Hior and our theme music was written for us
Speaker 1: by unwoman. Some weeks I completely forget and it seems
Speaker 1: to be okay, but whatever, it's gone into my head.
Speaker 1: Do you all have like weird work things, like podcast
Speaker 1: things where you're like, I have to do this thing.
Speaker 2: Well, I have OCD, so I have a lot of things.
Speaker 2: I got it too, but they're mostly they're mostly related
Speaker 2: to contamination and cleaning.
Speaker 1: Okay, fair enough?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I probably h I don't want to
Speaker 3: self diagnose myself. I have to go for a run
Speaker 3: before I do a podcast, or my brain just will
Speaker 3: not be quiet and it will go in lots of
Speaker 3: different directions.
Speaker 1: Fair enough. Well, speaking of getting stuff done, Fountain House
Speaker 1: is getting stuff done where we last left them. For
Speaker 1: anyone who missed part one. Fountain House is a well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm not going to do it all again,
Speaker 1: but it's a place that's like people go when they
Speaker 1: need help with their serious mental illnesses. But that is
Speaker 1: based on developing agency and giving them a sense of purpose.
Speaker 1: And Fountain House is starting to come together under the
Speaker 1: new directorship. From its start, its goal has been what
Speaker 1: could be called assimilationist, which is like in a lot
Speaker 1: of radical circles, a word that sounds bad. But the
Speaker 1: members of Fountain House overall desire to find a way
Speaker 1: to return to society and not be separated from it
Speaker 1: by their illness. Interestingly, at least these days, the staff
Speaker 1: are actually more likely to be radical than the members.
Speaker 1: But the members, for good reason, are the ones in charge.
Speaker 1: You know, they have more stake in it, right, They're like, no,
Speaker 1: we got to make sure that this thing works and
Speaker 1: we don't want to change it up terribly, right, because
Speaker 1: this is the thing that allows us to continue to
Speaker 1: live for a lot of people, and many of the
Speaker 1: members wanted to be able to work, and they wanted
Speaker 1: to work so that they can have the independence that
Speaker 1: money provides, or for something to do. Sometimes people want
Speaker 1: structure for a while in their lives, and for whatever
Speaker 1: different reasons, people wanted work, So fountain House started sorting
Speaker 1: out how to make that happen. In nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: they started working with what Gut's called transitional employment. Jobs
Speaker 1: for people with any disabilities, including SMIs, are rarer and
Speaker 1: they pay substantially worse. There's even like, even if it's
Speaker 1: not a job that's been set aside for people with
Speaker 1: serious mental illnesses, they'll be getting I forgot to put
Speaker 1: the actual number down of my scripts. It's like eight
Speaker 1: percent less or whatever. You know, there's a wage gap here, right,
Speaker 1: made me mad? Yeah, Well, in fact, it's perfectly legal
Speaker 1: for employers to pay disabled people less than they pay
Speaker 1: their other employees, including paying less than minimum wage. It's
Speaker 1: called subminimum wage employment. Do you all know about this?
Speaker 1: That's one would for it.
Speaker 2: I know there's a huge issue with them with disabled
Speaker 2: people not being allowed to have savings, and if they
Speaker 2: have savings, then they lose their benefits. And also a
Speaker 2: lot of disabled people can't get married because if they
Speaker 2: get married, then their spouse's income counts towards their income,
Speaker 2: and suddenly they'll lose their benefits. So there actually isn't
Speaker 2: marriage equality in this country. After all.
Speaker 1: It's so evil, It is just so completely evil that
Speaker 1: these people who are already dealing with so much, it's
Speaker 1: just on top of it. You're like, and you not
Speaker 1: even allowed the American dream yourass out.
Speaker 2: Of this, you know, like and most people don't know, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like a thing that's like was not talked about
Speaker 2: unless you are disabled or you know, in that world
Speaker 2: where people talk abo of these things.
Speaker 1: No. I remember my friend who was being like, no,
Speaker 1: I can only work thirteen hours this month. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: if I work more than thirteen hours at the following wage,
Speaker 1: I will lose all of my money. And they like
Speaker 1: live with horrible chronic pain and like, you know can't. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, it's also the question of like, what is the
Speaker 2: logic there, explain how that is an okay policy to me?
Speaker 2: In any explanation that is not that these people deserve
Speaker 2: to suffer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, sub minimum wage. The argument that they make
Speaker 1: is like the Department of Labor. I was like looking
Speaker 1: at their defense of it, and they're like, well, it's
Speaker 1: okay because they don't do as the work as much
Speaker 1: because they and I'm like that's not what minimum wage
Speaker 1: is about the minimum wages. You just can't pay people
Speaker 1: less than this unless they're incarcerated, which is also a problem.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, and subminimum wage employment, considering the fact that
Speaker 1: minimum wage is seven dollars and twenty five cents federally,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine working for five dollars an hour again,
Speaker 1: And I did the math. When I first started working,
Speaker 1: minimum wage was four twenty five and I was working
Speaker 1: for four to twenty five an hour because I'm bold whatever,
Speaker 1: And that four to twenty five I earned in the
Speaker 1: nineties is nine to twenty eight an hour to day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's astonishing that it does not go up,
Speaker 2: and that we and that California just voted against ending
Speaker 2: indentured service.
Speaker 1: The language used was slavery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was literally, and it literally on the ballot
Speaker 2: it said no opposition, and people were still like, not
Speaker 2: for me, Nah, yeah, let's continue this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's fine that we just literally have
Speaker 1: continued slavery. Sub minimum wage is bullshit. The Department of
Speaker 1: Labor is right now as I record this, considering getting
Speaker 1: rid of the program that lets the employers pay less
Speaker 1: than minimum wage. But the rule wouldn't take place until
Speaker 1: January seventeenth, twenty twenty five, which famously is three days
Speaker 1: before Trump comes to office, So we'll see what happens
Speaker 1: with that. Fountain House, of course, came out the gate
Speaker 1: with something better, and in these days they're doing something
Speaker 1: even better still, but we'll talk about that in a minute.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty eight, they started what they call transitional employment. Basically,
Speaker 1: certain employers would assign certain job slots to Fountainhouse, and
Speaker 1: then Fountainhouse would fill those slots with its members, who
Speaker 1: are then supported in those jobs because the job is
Speaker 1: sort of part of their therapy, right, And so one
Speaker 1: of these jobs, if you suddenly don't show up to
Speaker 1: work right because you're dealing with illness, someone else from
Speaker 1: Fountainhouse will fill that. Either it's another member or it
Speaker 1: will be a staff person if no one else will
Speaker 1: do it right. All jobs for Clubhouse members pay the
Speaker 1: same as anyone else working that job, and transitional employment
Speaker 1: positions are meant to be temporary, about six to nine months.
Speaker 1: These are usually fairly uncomplicated jobs. I don't want to
Speaker 1: say unskilled because that's a myth, but their jobs with
Speaker 1: a certain amount of routine involved working in the mail
Speaker 1: room or doing janitorial work, or stocking shelves, this kind
Speaker 1: of thing, the things that might like minimize the sort
Speaker 1: of chaos introduced. So there's transitional employment that they offer,
Speaker 1: and then they also offer supported employment, which are non
Speaker 1: temporary jobs, but the clubhouse is still and the social
Speaker 1: workers and such are so interfacing with the employer and
Speaker 1: offering some support in that workplace. And then there's independent
Speaker 1: employment where clubhouses will help you get set up to
Speaker 1: go apply at a regular competitive you know, get a
Speaker 1: regular job. And one of the most incredible things about
Speaker 1: clubhouses from my point of view, is that they seem
Speaker 1: to hit upon these very radical ideas, but then they
Speaker 1: come to them or prove the worth of these ideas
Speaker 1: empirically and not ideologically ideologically. I love worker cooperatives. We've
Speaker 1: talked about them before in the show. We will continue
Speaker 1: to do so again. But these days Fountain House and
Speaker 1: many other clubhouses develop worker cooperatives for their transitional employment.
Speaker 1: Both an Australian clubhouse and one in Michigan started doing
Speaker 1: worker cooperatives before fountain House did. I'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit later. I'm kind of playing with the timing. Later
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the spread of clubhouses around
Speaker 1: the world and cooperatives makes sense. One of the whole
Speaker 1: purposes of a clubhouse is to develop people's sense of
Speaker 1: purpose and agency, and traditional workforces strip you of that,
Speaker 1: while workplace democracy develops it. If you go in and
Speaker 1: you're part of making the place work, you have some
Speaker 1: ownership in it. For full disclosure, my work before it
Speaker 1: was a podcaster, it was that I worked in cooperative
Speaker 1: finance and like, so it was really funny. It was
Speaker 1: really funny to tell my because I've always been this
Speaker 1: like weird punk kid and like lived in a cabin
Speaker 1: and while I like lived in an off grade cabinet,
Speaker 1: to like tell my parents be like, I have a
Speaker 1: job in finance, I.
Speaker 2: Was gonna say that it almost sounds like an oxymoron.
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
Speaker 1: So actually, okay, as a tangent. Another group that I
Speaker 1: think is amazing that I don't know if I've ever
Speaker 1: talked about on the show because it's like newer than
Speaker 1: I usually cover. It's a group called seed Commons. Oh,
Speaker 1: we have talked about it when we talked about workers
Speaker 1: taking over their factories in Argentina in two thousand and
Speaker 1: three ish. Basically it's a way of financing worker cooperatives
Speaker 1: and getting them up and going so that they can
Speaker 1: become profitable businesses. But the money stays in the local
Speaker 1: economy because there's not this extractive force removing it. And
Speaker 1: then also everyone who has that job has an ownership stake.
Speaker 1: And it's cool because like during the pandemic or whatever,
Speaker 1: it's just totally over and everything's fine now. But during that,
Speaker 1: you know, restaurants and things like that, especially, we're closing
Speaker 1: left and right. And we had dozens of worker cooperative
Speaker 1: restaurants that we supported and none of them closed their
Speaker 1: doors for good. Because a worker own business is able
Speaker 1: to be like more agile because they're able to themselves.
Speaker 1: They're like everyone who's working there as part of it.
Speaker 1: So they get together and they say, well, what do
Speaker 1: we have to do and they can kind of like
Speaker 1: take the hit a little bit more when everyone's an owner,
Speaker 1: you know. Anyway, I love worker cooperatives, but they don't
Speaker 1: do it ideologically. They do it because it works and
Speaker 1: it just made sense for them. It made sense to
Speaker 1: help build people's sense of agency and purpose, and the
Speaker 1: way that they did it was also to feel that
Speaker 1: the traditional way that they were doing. It was collapsing
Speaker 1: because in the fifties, offices would hire their own janitors
Speaker 1: and their own mail room staff, and their own landscapers
Speaker 1: and such like that, right, But nowadays everything is outsourced
Speaker 1: to different companies. A business hires a janitorial company instead
Speaker 1: of having their own staff in house. So all the
Speaker 1: jobs that it used to be set aside for Fountainhouse
Speaker 1: were starting to dry up and became a problem. And
Speaker 1: folks were like, fine, will become the company that is
Speaker 1: outsourced to and so they set up worker cooperatives to
Speaker 1: do it. And I don't think that this is a
Speaker 1: total coincidence. The sort of model of being the largest
Speaker 1: worker cooperative in the US is coincidentally, it's not. It's
Speaker 1: not related to Fountainhouse, but it's also in New York City.
Speaker 1: It's called Cooperative home Care Associates and it is a
Speaker 1: home care agency in the Bronx. It has two thousand employees,
Speaker 1: well two thousand people hire themselves. This is a worker
Speaker 1: owned business, right, and it works really well with the
Speaker 1: sort of precarious workforce like home care. That's what where
Speaker 1: worker cooperatives often excel. And I think all workforces should
Speaker 1: be cooperatised, but that's my own, like, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: utopian visioning. And so transitional employment for most members is
Speaker 1: more therapeutic than career oriented. They over staff all their positions,
Speaker 1: so there's like three times the workers that are necessary
Speaker 1: in order to do one do the job, you know,
Speaker 1: less stressful, right if you work, And there's just plenty
Speaker 1: of people doing it. Although I guess there's certain jobs
Speaker 1: that I would be doing that I would not want
Speaker 1: that because I would be more stressed. But I'm a whatever.
Speaker 1: I don't suffer from a serious mental illness, you know.
Speaker 1: And since Fountainhouse is a nonprofit, it doesn't need to
Speaker 1: turn a profit and so it doesn't need to be
Speaker 1: all cutthroat about staffing. They can just be like, well,
Speaker 1: we make enough money, it's fine, we'll just hire a
Speaker 1: bunch more people. So some people do transitional work because
Speaker 1: they want to prove to themselves that they can hold
Speaker 1: down a job and are going to go on to
Speaker 1: supported employment and independent employment. And sometimes they just do
Speaker 1: it temporarily because they want to do it temporarily. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they take it on because they're talking to their therapists
Speaker 1: and their therapists or social workers or whatever. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you could use some external structure right now, just
Speaker 1: for a little bit, right, you know, you'll get back
Speaker 1: to painting and you're not depressed, and for now to
Speaker 1: go make soap. Right. Oh god, that's gonna make it
Speaker 1: sound like fight club. They do make soap. We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about that in a minute.
Speaker 2: I couldn't be more of a sucker for a fancy
Speaker 2: bath product.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Well, if you lived in New York City,
Speaker 1: there's I got a place for you. There's not one
Speaker 1: of the sponsors of our show. Although whatever, I'm clearly
Speaker 1: shouting them out, and because also I'm not gonna talk
Speaker 1: shit on them on like the sponsors of a show.
Speaker 1: This is not an ad transition. We'll do one in
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes. And sometimes they're talking to the therapists,
Speaker 1: and the therapists are like, all right, we can use
Speaker 1: some external structure. So take on a job for six
Speaker 1: months to get out of the house and get through
Speaker 1: this depression spell and then you get back to painting
Speaker 1: or whatever your real goal in life is or whatever.
Speaker 1: So it's sometimes it's pre vocational and sometimes it's not.
Speaker 1: And there's no pressure about that. I love that, right,
Speaker 1: it's like whatever the individual needs, it relates to it.
Speaker 1: And so fountain House runs a bunch of these places.
Speaker 1: They have a store called fountain House and Body that
Speaker 1: makes and sells high end soap and candles and such.
Speaker 1: And it's package free, so you can like just go
Speaker 1: in and they're gonna you can custom order the sense
Speaker 1: and they'll make it in front of you. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: I would bring my own little baggy though, to keep
Speaker 2: it from getting dirty.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely. Imagine like walking home with a bar
Speaker 1: of soap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's nightmare for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the texture your hand would become so dry.
Speaker 2: I have very few childhood memories I question for another day,
Speaker 2: but one of them is like when I went to
Speaker 2: summer camp, Like I think one summer, like my first
Speaker 2: night away or something. I had gone and the bathroom
Speaker 2: was not in the bunk because they specifically had different
Speaker 2: bathrooms because they didn't want kids from Long Island to
Speaker 2: go to this camp. So I like when it took
Speaker 2: my first shower that I was like walking back to
Speaker 2: my bunk and I like fell and my soap like
Speaker 2: fell on the dirt and so heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: And it's like but the soap is meant to make
Speaker 1: things not dirty. Row the soap is dirty or it
Speaker 1: now has like a nice texture to it, you know,
Speaker 1: it's more exfoliation.
Speaker 2: I branches are always helpful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I bet you pay extra to put
Speaker 1: sticks and twigs and soap, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you hit the right niche, you could
Speaker 2: really make a killing off of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, od crust or I don't know any French, but yeah,
Speaker 1: and so fountain House and Body they network with other
Speaker 1: social enterprises around the world, so you can like go
Speaker 1: in and buy dish towels made by blind folks who
Speaker 1: live in Finland or things like that. Right, I believe
Speaker 1: it's currently closed and not one hundred per cent certain.
Speaker 1: I think it's moving from Soho to be closer to
Speaker 1: Fountain House, and it's gonna reopen with like a coffee
Speaker 1: and tea shop as part of it. Then it becomes
Speaker 1: like the kind of place where I would just go
Speaker 1: hang out and do all my writing. I wrote a
Speaker 1: bunch of my books sitting in a worker cooperative cafe.
Speaker 1: It's a nice place to do it.
Speaker 2: I can't write not in my home. Really interesting, okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like I don't know. I've never been a coffee shop writer.
Speaker 1: Do you write with music, honor in silence.
Speaker 2: In silence? Me too, Yeah, music feels wild to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think I had to listen to music when
Speaker 1: I was writing in coffee shops. Oh, but it can't
Speaker 1: be music with words unless there are words that I
Speaker 1: don't understand, which is a lot of words because most
Speaker 1: of the languages in this world, I have no idea
Speaker 1: what people are saying.
Speaker 2: My dad's music taste is like spa.
Speaker 1: Music nice, so you can write to that, yeah.
Speaker 2: Like he could. Like we were in the car with
Speaker 2: him and it was his music was playing and everything
Speaker 2: was like spa music, and then like the soundtrack to
Speaker 2: sircd us away.
Speaker 1: That's worrying. I once traded a massage therapist friend of
Speaker 1: mine was like sick of all the like be massage
Speaker 1: music that was available, and I had been. I was
Speaker 1: thinking to myself, like, I bet I could write an
Speaker 1: hour's worth of this music faster than an hour. I
Speaker 1: bet I could write it in less than an hour.
Speaker 1: And I proved myself wrong. It took me ninety minutes
Speaker 1: to write a sixty minute track, but a terrible ratio. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So then I traded. I traded my friend this track
Speaker 1: for a massage, but I made two versions of it
Speaker 1: because the first version I described as Enya in Hell
Speaker 1: and uh and it was a little too much.
Speaker 2: To be honest, Enya all the time. It makes me
Speaker 2: feel like I'm in hell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2: And yeah, that's just a personal problem.
Speaker 1: I might have a similar taste of music as your father.
Speaker 1: I not sure is an an You're in hell just bulk?
Speaker 1: Yeah that's true. I mean mine's just like run through
Speaker 1: some distortion and with more like weird chanting in the background.
Speaker 1: But okay, Yeah, to make a version without the distortion
Speaker 1: and the chanting, and that's what I had to do.
Speaker 1: There's two versions of it anyway, James, are you Are
Speaker 1: you a quiet or are you a This is totally
Speaker 1: what we're all talking about today. You're a quiet writer
Speaker 1: or a music writer?
Speaker 3: Write my dissertation. I'm a music writer. I did my
Speaker 3: dissertation of my first book in coffee shops with music.
Speaker 3: I have to have my headphones on when I write.
Speaker 3: I have to like, I have to have very specific,
Speaker 3: like physical feelings to be like feel like I'm like
Speaker 3: locked in for writing. And it's the same with me
Speaker 3: for lots of things actually, and I have to have
Speaker 3: the headphones on, have to listen to music. Okay, as
Speaker 3: long as I have the headphones on, I have the music,
Speaker 3: then I can I can write anywhere.
Speaker 1: You know what else you can do with headphones? Take
Speaker 1: them off in the middle of the head break? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you can take them off for the next three minutes.
Speaker 1: Or you can listen to these ads from these amazing
Speaker 1: products and services, some of which will ruin your life,
Speaker 1: like gambling. Here they are and we're back, and I
Speaker 1: have no idea what we were talking. Oh yeah. Other
Speaker 1: worker cooperatives that they ran or do run. They do
Speaker 1: messenger work. Their biggest client is meals on wheels, so
Speaker 1: you know, folks need food deliver to their house. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's people from Fountain House doing it. They have a
Speaker 1: landscaping business that manages like small plots and rooftop gardens
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. They run a warm line so
Speaker 1: that people in crisis, are neared a crisis can call
Speaker 1: and talk to someone who you know has been through
Speaker 1: that shit too. That's great, that's pretty cool. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: they also have a non transitional worker cooperative like one
Speaker 1: that's a more of a permanent employment type place, and
Speaker 1: it's an art gallery and it's about to have its
Speaker 1: twenty fifth anniversary, and so they just get stuff done.
Speaker 2: And long term, like they've persevered through the decades, which
Speaker 2: is really cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's like, it's funny because I was like
Speaker 1: the fact that it's still a little bit like workplace focused.
Speaker 1: It still has a little bit of like a fifties vibe,
Speaker 1: you know, but not necessarily in a bad way. They're
Speaker 1: like pulling it off.
Speaker 2: You know what part of it's a fifties vibe?
Speaker 1: Oh, I think that like being kind of like work.
Speaker 1: It's good, go have a job. You know. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say work will set you free that I know.
Speaker 1: I know it went into my brain and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: not that it went into mind too, Margaret.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Plus if they all dressed like greasers. No they don't,
Speaker 1: but it'd be.
Speaker 2: Cool if it.
Speaker 1: That's why I was hoping it was outfits. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: actually don't think there's like a subcultural element to it
Speaker 1: that I'm aware of, but I would be fully supportive
Speaker 1: if there was. And I'm going to go on a tangent.
Speaker 1: Oh I should That's when I should have done the
Speaker 1: ad break but it's too late. I already did it.
Speaker 1: I co host another podcast called Live Like the World
Speaker 1: Is Dying, and it's about individual and community preparedness. One
Speaker 1: topic we've covered several times and will continue to cover
Speaker 1: is preparedness for people who deal with disabilities. About a
Speaker 1: year ago, episode one hundred and one is with a
Speaker 1: Canadian activist and writer named Leah Lekshma Piepshma Semersinga, and
Speaker 1: I think about this episode all the time because people
Speaker 1: often sort of ask how abled preparedness can apply to
Speaker 1: disabled communities, But in some ways this is an inverted question.
Speaker 1: Disability activists in communities have done way more of this
Speaker 1: work for longer because both individual and community preparedness is
Speaker 1: often required for day to day life, and so there
Speaker 1: are networks of people who track each other's needs and
Speaker 1: work together to meet them. And there's an awful lot
Speaker 1: thatabled people interested in preparedness can do that they can
Speaker 1: learn from the networks that disabled people have put together.
Speaker 1: And when I read about the Clubhouse model and Fountain
Speaker 1: House and it's focus on developing agency and healthcare, social
Speaker 1: environments and the workplace, all I can think about again
Speaker 1: is like, Oh, these folks are the teachers. Right, these
Speaker 1: are the people who've been trying this and doing this
Speaker 1: and running it through experiments for seventy years. You know, yeah,
Speaker 1: because folks fighting for their rights and agency as neurodiversent
Speaker 1: people have done an enormous amount of work in this field.
Speaker 1: And the people who study this stuff, who are often
Speaker 1: neurodivergent people themselves, have done an incredible amount of work.
Speaker 1: Fountain House changes people from patients receiving care to people
Speaker 1: who are working to develop their own agency around care.
Speaker 1: E L. Desi, one of the founders of self determination theory,
Speaker 1: put it like this quote. The main thing about choice
Speaker 1: is that it engenders willingness. It encourages people to fully
Speaker 1: endorse what they are doing, pulls them into the activity,
Speaker 1: and allows them to feel a greater sense of volition.
Speaker 1: It decreases their alienation. And boy, are a lot of
Speaker 1: people feeling alienated right now. Like we live in the
Speaker 1: golden era of isolation and alienation. And here is a
Speaker 1: component to solving that, and that is developing our lives
Speaker 1: by creating structures that engender purpose and give us choice
Speaker 1: and give us agency and things. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: I get really excited about it.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting time because the country is less religious
Speaker 2: and I personally I am not a big proponent of
Speaker 2: organized religion, but there was a community element to that
Speaker 2: of like seeing the same people every week and going
Speaker 2: to church and synagogue and temple it, you know, and
Speaker 2: so like we haven't filled the gap in terms of
Speaker 2: like how to have community places that people go to
Speaker 2: frequently enough that to like the fill the role that
Speaker 2: sort of organized religion did for quite some time.
Speaker 1: I think that's a a really good point. And you know,
Speaker 1: and also that like more and more communities are just online,
Speaker 1: and online communities can fill important purposes, but I don't
Speaker 1: think it's everything.
Speaker 2: You know, It's hard because I think online communities can
Speaker 2: be so awesome, but it also keeps you like immobile.
Speaker 2: It keeps you like locked in to the inside in
Speaker 2: a sense, like you know, like that it can make
Speaker 2: you more closed in versus like exploring nature with your
Speaker 2: friend or you know, going somewhere with them to do
Speaker 2: an activity together.
Speaker 1: You mean, like taking care of all pacas. Because that's
Speaker 1: the next part of what I'm going to talk about.
Speaker 2: Thank God, I'm so excited.
Speaker 1: Wait though, before we talk about the alpacas, I just
Speaker 1: got really excited about a good transition. But now I'm
Speaker 1: not even going to use it. Uh nope, I lost it.
Speaker 1: We'll just talk about out pacas.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank god? Okay, good, yea good.
Speaker 1: One of the many projects attached to Fountain House is
Speaker 1: called Fountainhouse Farm, which is an appropriate name for a
Speaker 1: farm attached to Fountainhouse. They call it the Farm with
Speaker 1: capital letter, which is a point in the Cult book,
Speaker 1: but you know whatever. This is a four hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy seven acre farm in New Jersey where members of
Speaker 1: Fountain House can go for a few days or a
Speaker 1: month to help grow the food that is served in
Speaker 1: the clubhouse. And they get to work together as equals
Speaker 1: with other people, and they get to eat community meals,
Speaker 1: and they get to hang out in animals. And this
Speaker 1: is less like the worker cooperatives and stuff and more
Speaker 1: run like Fountainhouse itself. The work there is volunteer. You
Speaker 1: can go there and just hang out. You can go
Speaker 1: there and take care of folks. You're taking care of
Speaker 1: yourself and your own community. Right. You're like producing the
Speaker 1: honey that gets sent to Fountainhouse. Some of it gets sold,
Speaker 1: but that get sent to Fountainhouse to feed people. To
Speaker 1: feed you you. The farm itself has an interesting history.
Speaker 1: There's a guy named Alfred Keller from a rich family
Speaker 1: who suffered from a serious mental illness, and in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties he used to run away from institutions. That
Speaker 1: I mean, I would say he was suffering from the
Speaker 1: institutions at least as much he was suffering from whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he would run away and he would go hang out
Speaker 1: at this farm, and his family never abandoned him, but
Speaker 1: he kept getting reinstitutionalized. He was actually a Fountain House member,
Speaker 1: but he kept getting reinstitutionalized, and so his family bought
Speaker 1: the farm, hoping that one day he would be allowed
Speaker 1: out of the institutions and could just live and work
Speaker 1: on that farm. As best as I can tell, that
Speaker 1: never happened. Alfred died institutionalized, as I understand, although his
Speaker 1: family then donated the farm to Fountain House. Most of
Speaker 1: the articles about the farm are framed kind of condescendingly
Speaker 1: in ways I don't like, with headlines like Modern Farmers
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen at this New Jersey farm al Pacaz help
Speaker 1: the mentally ill, and you're just like, well, it goes
Speaker 1: in both directions. Yeah, yeah. The opaca is on bringing
Speaker 1: their own crumbles. Yeah, like it's actually mutual. Eight is
Speaker 1: what's going on? Like the article itself is all right.
Speaker 1: I know writers don't pick their headlines. If you wrote
Speaker 1: that article, I'm not mad at you if you read
Speaker 1: the headline, though, we are mad at your editor. Yeah totally.
Speaker 1: But yeah, a fountain House farm people raise sheep and
Speaker 1: I'll pack us for wool, and they work with a
Speaker 1: co op that spins that wool. They keep bees, and
Speaker 1: they grow vegetables and fruit and I think maple syrup.
Speaker 1: They just do all the stuff. And there's like endless
Speaker 1: good quotes that didn't end up fitting into my script
Speaker 1: from people just being like this rules I get to
Speaker 1: go hang out with animals. They actually put it much
Speaker 1: more eloquently than I just made it sound, but they
Speaker 1: just are like, this is amazing. I love going out
Speaker 1: and hanging out with animals. And there's also a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff around, like I say this living in a
Speaker 1: house with only my dog that's curled up at my
Speaker 1: feet right now. Sometimes people have an easier time hanging
Speaker 1: out with animals and with people. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: know anything about that. It just must be other people.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, I mean either. Yeah, this is.
Speaker 3: A dream I've been to it. It's interesting. This is
Speaker 3: not the only i'll Paka Fom cooperative that we have
Speaker 3: covered here.
Speaker 1: On coolcert Media. Yeah, it's rules. Well apparently at the
Speaker 1: first I'm off script here, so I get the details wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Apparently for a while they kept our packers
Speaker 1: and then sold them because that was like there was
Speaker 1: a big boom in alpaca farming and like the early arts,
Speaker 1: the ol paka boom. Yeah, the old packer boom that
Speaker 1: everyone knows about.
Speaker 3: Okay, so when I went to was taking our packers
Speaker 3: off boomers who had got our packers during the boom
Speaker 3: and they could no longer look after them.
Speaker 1: Totally, that actually makes a lot of sense and explain.
Speaker 2: This boom to me. People are just like really into
Speaker 2: having our packers or they want the our pack of wool.
Speaker 3: I think it's the eighties and nineties. You know, people's
Speaker 3: wearing bright colored clothes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's for the wall. I think it
Speaker 1: was like everyone thought it'd be like the good business.
Speaker 3: It's having a resurgence. So actually, look, in the last
Speaker 3: four or five years, I get way more pr pitched about.
Speaker 1: Our pack of wool.
Speaker 3: Can I plug a brand of our packa wool clothing?
Speaker 3: I like?
Speaker 1: I mean, as long as everyone knows that's not one
Speaker 1: of our advertisers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they're not paying us. So the company called
Speaker 3: Arms of Andy's who make alpaca wool like pay slayers,
Speaker 3: and I love them. They're great. I was hiking the
Speaker 3: other day I wore one. I felt good. Hell yeah,
Speaker 3: it makes me happy. Yeah, ol pakas they're great. This
Speaker 3: podcast brought to you by.
Speaker 2: L Packers, by Big Alpaka.
Speaker 1: Yeah one big alpaca Godzilla size, the final boss you know,
Speaker 1: or the biggest friend. Both depends on how you depends
Speaker 1: on what you'd say to it. It's not a boss.
Speaker 1: It's a cooperative.
Speaker 3: Our packas are inherently cooperative that they can't have bosses,
Speaker 3: no god snow masters, just our packers.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they have a farm. They also support their
Speaker 1: members through education. They offer mentoring and tutoring groups. Like
Speaker 1: if people go and seek traditional education, right, they will
Speaker 1: the social workers there will you know, help you do that.
Speaker 1: They offer mentoring and tutoring groups and I think like
Speaker 1: helping people get ready for class and whatever whatever else
Speaker 1: folks need, Like a lot of the stuff that happens
Speaker 1: at clubhouse is just like you show up and there's
Speaker 1: someone who can help you figure out how to move
Speaker 1: or find apply for housing, you know, you know, like
Speaker 1: talking to my friends, they're like, oh, you know, what
Speaker 1: did you do today?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: I drove around all around town with like a couch
Speaker 1: in the back of the van trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to get it up the stairs or you know whatever.
Speaker 1: They just go around and are helping people sort stuff out.
Speaker 2: That's what these big companies should offer rather than like yoga. Yeah,
Speaker 2: right to to be like you need help with some
Speaker 2: weird technical issue or scheduling or something, We'll send someone
Speaker 2: to be at your place when the cable guy comes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's going to be a better benefit than like, you know,
Speaker 2: free like yoga or whatever, like the fancy snack.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh my god. There is going to be a
Speaker 1: dark part of the future where this clubhouse model is
Speaker 1: appropriated by big tech.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, probably as a result of this episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is cool, And I will feel great about
Speaker 1: it as long as they hire me and so it
Speaker 1: helps me when I can't. I like live alone in
Speaker 1: the country and every now and then I have objects
Speaker 1: that are too large for me, and I'm like, what
Speaker 1: the hell am I going to do now? You know,
Speaker 1: because I move a large filing cabinet down a hill and.
Speaker 2: Your Google helper will show up soon.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well you'll just turniate a disk trying to
Speaker 3: do it by yourself.
Speaker 1: That's the more likely thing. And as I as I age,
Speaker 1: I'm like, how do the people who lived here before me? Anyway? Whatever,
Speaker 1: there's more about my house than anyone needs to know.
Speaker 1: And so they help people through higher education enough so
Speaker 1: that a two thousand and three study estimated that quote
Speaker 1: the majority of supported education programs available for adults with
Speaker 1: serious mental illnesses were provided by clubhouses. Wow, which is like,
Speaker 1: there's only sixty thousand people who are being held by
Speaker 1: clubhouses in this country right now. So that's bad. It
Speaker 1: shouldn't be the I mean, or there should just be
Speaker 1: a ton more clubhouses. But that's how exceptional in the
Speaker 1: field they are. The clubhouse model spread and it is
Speaker 1: still spreading. It took a minute. A lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff they pioneered somewhat mainstream now, but it was revolutionary
Speaker 1: at the time. And then throw in the worker cooperative
Speaker 1: stuff and it's still revolutionary. In a literal challenging capitalism sense,
Speaker 1: although again a completely a political project.
Speaker 2: I want to push back on that.
Speaker 1: I think they identify as an a political project.
Speaker 2: But I think that's a mistake. Okay, but I guess,
Speaker 2: I know, I guess it's strategic, right, But I personally
Speaker 2: think that all mental health care has to be political. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because so much of our issues are our structures of
Speaker 2: oppression and the way in which society is set up.
Speaker 2: And to say that, like it's a big debate like
Speaker 2: within like therapists and you know, how political should you
Speaker 2: be with your clients. But I'm of the proponent that
Speaker 2: you have to be political because so many of these
Speaker 2: problems are caused by politics.
Speaker 1: That makes sense to me, and I tend to agree
Speaker 1: with you.
Speaker 2: Oh, we should write them a letter. We'll let them
Speaker 2: know totally.
Speaker 1: Well, what's funny is is like it wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to change without the members themselves agreeing to it, right,
Speaker 1: And so it's kind of interesting. So like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: recently was like helping a bunch of my friends deal
Speaker 1: with a bunch of pretty intense mental health crises, and
Speaker 1: at the end of it, I was like, if someone
Speaker 1: was able to give you cars that ran most of
Speaker 1: your problems would be your mental health would get better.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, you know, like you can't like positive think
Speaker 2: your way out of poverty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was that study a long time ago. I'm
Speaker 1: sure this number has gone up. There's a study a
Speaker 1: number of years ago that money does buy happiness up
Speaker 1: to about seventy thous dollars a year, and then it stops.
Speaker 2: I also don't believe.
Speaker 1: That you think it keeps buying happiness or.
Speaker 2: Well especially seventy thousand that needs to go up all
Speaker 2: the cost.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But I also, I mean just this whole concept of
Speaker 2: like money doesn't give you happiness, It's like that's just not.
Speaker 1: True, because yeah, that's and that's what the study was
Speaker 1: is They're like, oh, actually no, it it directly correlates.
Speaker 2: But I do think there's a difference between like I
Speaker 2: don't know, I think that there is something like you
Speaker 2: can go on vacation. Yeah, like if you are getting
Speaker 2: more money than just like your basic needs. I do
Speaker 2: think there is something of like, oh, I can take
Speaker 2: myself out to dinner, I can treat myself here. I
Speaker 2: don't have to worry about that. I can you know,
Speaker 2: do what I want to do for my children, like
Speaker 2: this idea that like, oh it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's being poor. It is very stressful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like we just got upgraded to seventy seventy thousand
Speaker 3: things thanks to a union, and like, yeah, it's nice
Speaker 3: to be like if my truck breaks, I can buy
Speaker 3: the pots and fix it, Like I'll be okay. Yeah
Speaker 3: that is couldsider be nicer than not being able to
Speaker 3: bite depots and fix your drug?
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, it is interesting because that was actually one
Speaker 1: of the part of the conversation I had with a
Speaker 1: friend about this is just like talking about how they
Speaker 1: do not perceive themselves as a political project, except specifically
Speaker 1: around these particular things where so many people in this
Speaker 1: field do. And that's it's not a plus or minus
Speaker 1: to clubhouse in a lot of ways, right, It's just.
Speaker 2: A thing maybe what makes them more effective because the
Speaker 2: world's becomes so politically divided that saying they're a political
Speaker 2: lets them through doors that would otherwise be close to them.
Speaker 1: As possible, even though it's like again I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're consensus based organization that fights for justice for people,
Speaker 1: or like on an individual level, fights for justice people
Speaker 1: with serious mental illnesses who've were forgotten by society and
Speaker 1: builds worker cooperatives and like, to me, they're political as hell,
Speaker 1: and they're like envisioning a better world in so many ways,
Speaker 1: but that's not the way they conceive of their project,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Right, And that's probably strategic and smart.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So deinstitutionalization swept across the US in the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties, and there's a bunch of different reasons
Speaker 1: for it, and I started learning about them, and then
Speaker 1: I realized this is only to be about a paragraph
Speaker 1: of my script, and I can't take two days of
Speaker 1: learning about this. But overall, psychiatric meds became more available
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties and sixties, and that helped an
Speaker 1: awful lot of people, as his own problems as well,
Speaker 1: And the political will to keep people locked up like
Speaker 1: chained to things, you know whatever, stopped being there. And
Speaker 1: some of it came from a desire to not make
Speaker 1: everyone's lives miserable by putting them institutions whatever. So they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're going to de institutionalize. And there was a lot
Speaker 1: of like radical movements. I think I'm gonna talk about
Speaker 1: more on the show that fought for this, especially in Italy.
Speaker 1: At least that's the one that I started reading about
Speaker 1: before I realized that fountain House was going to take
Speaker 1: up my entire script. Originally, this is going to be
Speaker 1: half and half fountain House and then this Italian thing.
Speaker 1: But for whatever reason, deinstitutionalization swept across the US and
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and sixties, and this meant that half
Speaker 1: a million people left institutions to live in the general public,
Speaker 1: but without proper access to housing and care and employment
Speaker 1: and shit like that. And there's a reason that there
Speaker 1: are so many abandoned psychiatric hospitals around the country. They
Speaker 1: are a model that has largely been proven ineffective, at
Speaker 1: least at the scale they were being used. But uh,
Speaker 1: it's messy, A don't do you know what all I
Speaker 1: know about it is messy. I was reading, like, there's
Speaker 1: some implications of how messy it is, but well.
Speaker 2: They just took away a resource that wasn't working and
Speaker 2: didn't provide anything else. So like, now you have people
Speaker 2: being like, well we should like people like Chrump being
Speaker 2: like we should put them back in an institution or
Speaker 2: back in a camp or you know, and it's like no,
Speaker 2: like those places are not good, but like there has
Speaker 2: to be something else, Like there needed to maybe be
Speaker 2: more outpatient resources that were given to people, and more
Speaker 2: social services given to people, and better access to mental
Speaker 2: health treatment. So you know, if you went for being
Speaker 2: in a psychiatric hospital where like I guess maybe you
Speaker 2: were at least getting therapy, questionable how good it would be,
Speaker 2: but now like you can't even afford any therapy because
Speaker 2: no one takes insurance or your insurance will cover it.
Speaker 2: Like it kind of went from like, well, we're going
Speaker 2: to take over your whole life and not do it
Speaker 2: very well to actually, you're completely on your own.
Speaker 1: Yeah that sounds about right. But what supports us and
Speaker 1: so that we're not on our own are podcast sponsors.
Speaker 2: That was a good one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, thank you. This is the only thing
Speaker 1: I'm actually good. Is The part I enjoy the most
Speaker 1: is the just pure raw cynicism, much like the cynicism
Speaker 1: with which these ads have crafted their messages to appeal
Speaker 1: to you. Here they are back. Sometimes we actually get
Speaker 1: like actual sponsors where I'm like that's kind of cool,
Speaker 1: you know, like that was like for a while, like
Speaker 1: a lot of the ads were like, go outside with
Speaker 1: your friends. National Forest Council says go outside, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know what, go outside with your friends. Hell yeah.
Speaker 2: I love the ads for Ronald Reagan's son's organization that's
Speaker 2: like about being an atheist or whatever. And he's like,
Speaker 2: I'm something Reagan and I don't care if I burn
Speaker 2: in hell.
Speaker 1: WHOA.
Speaker 3: It's a good at you to have to life if
Speaker 3: you're a Reagan to be fair, Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm not worried about burning in hell. And I'm like,
Speaker 2: that's a ad I can really get behinde.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, hell yeah. Well, the clubhouse model suits de
Speaker 1: institutionalization are all right because it meets former patients and
Speaker 1: folks with serious mental illnesses where they're at. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, the National Clubhouse Training Program was formed so
Speaker 1: that the model was able to spread. Standards were developed
Speaker 1: in nineteen nine, and Clubhouse International started accrediting clubhouses in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two. Not all clubhouses in the network have
Speaker 1: a credation, meaning there's some sort of like kind of
Speaker 1: like half clubhouses three quarter clubhouses right where they meet
Speaker 1: certain parts of the criteria not others. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of projects that are like clubhouses, but fundamentally different
Speaker 1: and aren't associated with Clubhouse International at all. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk about one of those in Japan. At the
Speaker 1: very end. There are more than three hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: clubhouse model institutions now in thirty three countries. I actually
Speaker 1: don't know institutions right where. It probably isn't that you
Speaker 1: don't live there, you know.
Speaker 2: None of them. People don't live in them at all.
Speaker 1: Ever. Oh it's funny. I did read all thirty seven
Speaker 1: of the principles, and I can't remember that's on there,
Speaker 1: but I think it is.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's yeah, got it.
Speaker 1: And they you know, they help you with housing and
Speaker 1: things like that.
Speaker 2: But oh great.
Speaker 1: In the US, clubhouses serve about sixty thousand members, but
Speaker 1: considering there is an estimated fifteen million people in the
Speaker 1: US living with serious mental illness, this is only a
Speaker 1: drop in the bucket. Clubhouse International has developed thirty seven
Speaker 1: standards for credation. It's a good list, and not all
Speaker 1: of them come from Fountainhouse. Some of them, and I'm
Speaker 1: paraphrasing here. Membership is voluntary and without time limits. Members
Speaker 1: choose the way to utilize the clubhouse. There's equal access
Speaker 1: to all opportunities without differentiation based on your diagnosis or
Speaker 1: your level of functioning. All meetings are open to members
Speaker 1: and staff both. There are no staff only spaces in
Speaker 1: any of the buildings. Clubhouses can't be attached to mental
Speaker 1: health institutions. Like any other organization, job placement will be
Speaker 1: the prevailing wage. And the very last of the thirty
Speaker 1: seven principles standards sorry is quote the clubhouseholds open forums
Speaker 1: and has procedures which enable members and staff to actively
Speaker 1: participate in decision making, generally by consensus, regarding governance, policy making,
Speaker 1: and future direction and development of the clubhouse. And it's
Speaker 1: this last part, generally by consensus, that I'm going to
Speaker 1: focus on for a second. These days, Fountainhouse has twelve
Speaker 1: hundred active members and seventy staff. Not to put you
Speaker 1: on the spot, but did you do it go to
Speaker 1: any of the like the Occupy era consensus meetings?
Speaker 2: I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Okay, in some ways you were lucky. James is now
Speaker 1: twinkling and the Occupy protests of twenty eleven first popularized
Speaker 1: consensus decision making and then kind of through backlash, unpopularized
Speaker 1: consensus decision making because everyone was sick of endless meetings
Speaker 1: and the struggles to find consensus, and saw all the
Speaker 1: ways that people can hijack that process. And though, of
Speaker 1: course though Occupy was a huge deal, it also didn't
Speaker 1: really accomplish its goals, which doesn't really make it seem
Speaker 1: to be able to say empirically like this is the
Speaker 1: that works right right During that period, I was talking
Speaker 1: to one of my friends who works at fountain House,
Speaker 1: and a paraphrase that conversation from memory from thirteen years ago.
Speaker 1: He said, everyone is saying consensus decision making can't work,
Speaker 1: or that it's too hard. We make decisions through consensus
Speaker 1: at fountain House with hundreds of people, all of whom
Speaker 1: have serious mental illnesses, and we reach consensus quickly because
Speaker 1: the people at fountain House know that they need to.
Speaker 1: They know that it isn't a game, it's their lives.
Speaker 1: And the reason I love this so much is that
Speaker 1: they didn't decide I know I've said this before when
Speaker 1: I beat this point home to you listeners. They didn't
Speaker 1: decide on consensus from an ideological position. They didn't say
Speaker 1: we do consensus because it's good and moral and everything
Speaker 1: else is authoritarian and bad. They reached the idea of
Speaker 1: using consensus because it worked, they tried voting and it
Speaker 1: quickly formed two factions peadily squabbling, and the whole thing
Speaker 1: almost fell apart, which we totally can't think about it. Obviously,
Speaker 1: no one in the United States is dealt with anything
Speaker 1: like that recently. Under John Beard for a while, it
Speaker 1: basically was like it wasn't consensus under John Beard for
Speaker 1: a while, right, the only factions are John Beard and
Speaker 1: then everyone else. And I think it was like a benevolent, accountable,
Speaker 1: transparent dictator basically was the whether who was director. Everyone's
Speaker 1: involved in a lot of decisions, but sort of the
Speaker 1: buck always stopped with him kind of thing.
Speaker 2: You know, you know, I really have this belief that
Speaker 2: that's the best way, but it's impossible to get a
Speaker 2: good person at the top.
Speaker 1: Well, and so what happened is is after that stopped
Speaker 1: being the case, he died in nineteen eighty two, when
Speaker 1: he was only fifty nine years old, he was still
Speaker 1: the director. I believe when he died they moved to
Speaker 1: consensus because it worked, and so that was mean.
Speaker 2: I don't know what it means.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. I take certain things for granted.
Speaker 2: But I don't know what.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, it's totally fine. Consensus decision making is
Speaker 1: when you get everyone to agree instead of voting.
Speaker 2: Oh so everyone has to be on board rather than
Speaker 2: you just need a majority.
Speaker 1: Right, got it?
Speaker 2: Got it.
Speaker 1: And consensus is interesting because everyone thinks it's like super
Speaker 1: aggressive voting and it's not. It's not getting everyone to
Speaker 1: vote the same way. It's saying, like, what is the
Speaker 1: thing that we can all agree to do? Because if
Speaker 1: you can't reach consensus, like imagine, imagine you and your
Speaker 1: friends wanted to commit a crime. I'm just using this
Speaker 1: because it's a heavy thing. Right, there's a consequence to
Speaker 1: committing a crime unless you're sometimes president. Yeah, yes, oh
Speaker 1: son off, Yeah, that's true. That's true.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 1: I did have a friend. I had a couple of
Speaker 1: friends who were had diplomatic immunity when I was a
Speaker 1: teenager because I grew up near DC and the stuff. Anyway, whatever,
Speaker 1: I would have raged. Yeah.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: Actually, at one point one of my friends, her dad,
Speaker 1: got promoted back to the country that she was from
Speaker 1: because they were sick of her and her brother getting
Speaker 1: in trouble and having to bail them out. My very
Speaker 1: first earring was shoplifted by her, and I met her
Speaker 1: on the day that she was supposed to be in
Speaker 1: court for shoplifting. She decided not to She went to
Speaker 1: a concert anyway before. I talked about international incidents that
Speaker 1: I was involved in when I was younger. So imagine
Speaker 1: you and your friends want to commit a crime because
Speaker 1: this is somehow better thing to talk about, and there's
Speaker 1: like eighty you and you're like, all right, shouldn't we
Speaker 1: go commit this crime? You clearly need to have everyone agree, right,
Speaker 1: and if everyone doesn't agree, then all eight of you
Speaker 1: shouldn't go commit that crime, right, Because if someone doesn't
Speaker 1: want to, they shouldn't have to go commit the crime
Speaker 1: because it's a huge, big risk. And so consensus is
Speaker 1: like a way of finding out what are we all
Speaker 1: comfortable with? And maybe you start off with a really
Speaker 1: big crime, but then like for you are like, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do that, or even two of
Speaker 1: you or one of you is like I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that, and you're like, well, we all want
Speaker 1: to hang out together, so what do we all want
Speaker 1: to do? I mean, honestly, I could have used going
Speaker 1: to a restaurant with your friends as an example. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like as the vegan and any given group like it. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's like everything we always have to go places that
Speaker 1: I can eat, you.
Speaker 2: Know, same both examples track, Yeah, totally, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So that's consensus decision making and that's how they make
Speaker 1: their decisions as with hundreds of people, and they talk
Speaker 1: about what they all are down to do together. And
Speaker 1: we know the clubhouse model works because there are thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of people telling us that it works, and
Speaker 1: we know that it's a model that we can learn
Speaker 1: from about how to build agency and community and alienation
Speaker 1: and how to make decisions collectively. We also know it
Speaker 1: works because it's been studied time and time again. According
Speaker 1: to a twenty twenty two paper by Joshua Seedman and
Speaker 1: Kevin Rice, quote, randomized controlled trials have indicated that clubhouse
Speaker 1: members experience a significantly improved quality of life compared to
Speaker 1: those participating in general community services or other models. Also quote,
Speaker 1: clubhouses have further been proven to reduce severe psychiatric symptoms,
Speaker 1: improve self esteem, and decrease internalized stigma, promoting greater recovery experiences,
Speaker 1: thus reducing the need for psychiatric hospitalization. Randomized controlled trials
Speaker 1: of clubhouse programs have shown reduced hospitalization of clubhouse members.
Speaker 1: Clubhouse costs are substantially lower than partial hospitalization. Thus, clubhouse
Speaker 1: membership reduces the overall cost of health care. And study
Speaker 1: after study, and I know this because I read the
Speaker 1: meta analysis study, because that's what I do with my time.
Speaker 1: It shows that clubhouse members have more secure employment, more
Speaker 1: friends and more people that they can rely on, and
Speaker 1: a higher standard of living, better wages, and fewer rehospitalizations.
Speaker 1: And it's not perfect, right, fewer rehospitalizations as I forgot
Speaker 1: to write down the numbers in the script, but it's
Speaker 1: something like it goes down from like forty five percent
Speaker 1: to like twenty eight percent, you know.
Speaker 2: All right, and it.
Speaker 1: It's not just going to like solve everything, right, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think it's also worth pointing out that you
Speaker 1: get this like sort of biodiversity thing of like this
Speaker 1: is a way of doing this, and not like not
Speaker 1: that now the clubhouse should take over the world, you know.
Speaker 1: And to contrast it, I asked my friend at Fountain
Speaker 1: House if there's anything else I should bring up, and
Speaker 1: he told me about a place in Japan called Bethel House.
Speaker 1: He went and stayed and visited a while ago. The
Speaker 1: people at Bethel House knew all about the clubhouse model,
Speaker 1: but they had their own spin on things. It was
Speaker 1: a more radical take, but it started quite similarly. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight, a group of people who'd just been
Speaker 1: discharged from a hospital got together to take care of
Speaker 1: one another. They bought it. This one's even more culty,
Speaker 1: but they also seem totally fine. They bought an abandoned
Speaker 1: church and they moved in together. And I just ordered
Speaker 1: the only book on English about this place, and I
Speaker 1: might end up doing more episodes about it. But for now,
Speaker 1: the big us different subjectively between Bethel House and the clubhouses,
Speaker 1: and there are clubhouses in Japan, is that Bethel House
Speaker 1: isn't assimilationist. It does not focus on rehabilitation. It forms
Speaker 1: essentially a counter culture. There's no like subcultural elements to
Speaker 1: it that I'm aware of, but it wants to create
Speaker 1: a different They're like, we will interface with mainstream society,
Speaker 1: but we're not trying to just go fix ourselves and
Speaker 1: be back right. It too doesn't see itself as a
Speaker 1: political project, because they'd see it as they see it.
Speaker 1: They're not trying to change Japanese culture or politics. They're
Speaker 1: just trying to live their lives outside the system that
Speaker 1: they don't participate in or agree with. They are integrated
Speaker 1: economically into the small town they're in, and they believe
Speaker 1: that they ought to be helping out those around them
Speaker 1: as well. There's about one hundred people involved in Bethel House,
Speaker 1: so it's a very different scale. These hundred people run
Speaker 1: a ton of worker cooperatives. While my friend was there,
Speaker 1: they ran a seaweed factory, a restaurant, a radio station,
Speaker 1: a knitting cooperative, and others according to their website. Now
Speaker 1: they also deliver materials to the elderly as one of
Speaker 1: their main businesses. So it's like a really similar set
Speaker 1: of things, right, Yeah, And the way that they make
Speaker 1: their decisions about who's going to work is even more
Speaker 1: like chaos time and super autonomy. It's really interesting. Every
Speaker 1: morning they gather together and the captains from each work
Speaker 1: or cooperative say, all right, well, this is how much
Speaker 1: help we're hoping to get today at the place that
Speaker 1: we work, Right, And people would volunteer to work their shifts.
Speaker 1: It's paid work, but you know they would decide to
Speaker 1: go do it. Some people wouldn't bother to work at all.
Speaker 1: Others would be like, eh, I only want to do
Speaker 1: seaweed for two hours, and I can only do it
Speaker 1: from eleven to one, and I don't want to do
Speaker 1: it any other at time. Other people would work whole
Speaker 1: shifts a Fountain House. If no one takes a place
Speaker 1: at one of the cooperatives, staff steps up and make
Speaker 1: sure that that business functions that day, right right at Bethelhouse.
Speaker 1: If no one works at the radio station, then the
Speaker 1: radio station just doesn't run that day. And one of
Speaker 1: their slogans from the English language section of their website
Speaker 1: is let's make a workplace where everybody can skip work
Speaker 1: without feeling guilty. Oh it's beautiful. I know.
Speaker 2: I almost feel like this setup would make you feel
Speaker 2: more guilty because it'd be like there's no radio station
Speaker 2: today because of me.
Speaker 1: I know, but I think that they, like really, I
Speaker 1: think they're really strongly like God's fine, all right, uh
Speaker 1: like not like, well, we're not even gonna do it
Speaker 1: if you all don't do it. It's just like, all right,
Speaker 1: no radio station today, like no one wanted to, Like,
Speaker 1: if no one wants to paint the walls, we can't
Speaker 1: make them paint the walls. They're just not going to
Speaker 1: have the walls painted. You know. Another one of their slogans,
Speaker 1: which I don't know how to entirely I have the
Speaker 1: way I interpret it, but I assume it's not a
Speaker 1: perfect translation, is no more upward life. We stay with
Speaker 1: downward life. And they honor those among them that hear voices,
Speaker 1: and they call them mister voice or miss voice. And
Speaker 1: they wear pins indicating how they feel that day that
Speaker 1: are like color coded if it's like kind of like
Speaker 1: a don't talk to me today, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And they're more on like a mad pride vibe than
Speaker 1: the clubhouse model is.
Speaker 2: But no, but again, they don't live there. They live elsewhere.
Speaker 1: I actually think those people do live there, but I'm
Speaker 1: not sure.
Speaker 2: Ye, I think it's the vibe that they live there,
Speaker 2: but I could be wrong.
Speaker 1: So it was described to me that there's like a
Speaker 1: group of them that are called nomads where I think
Speaker 1: they have a bunch of different like basically crash pads
Speaker 1: where anyone can stay at any of them. If you're
Speaker 1: a member of Bethel House, you can just show up
Speaker 1: at any other any Bethel House house and be like,
Speaker 1: I must stay here tonight. So I don't know much
Speaker 1: about them yet.
Speaker 2: Here's a question I have, how do you start a clubhouse?
Speaker 2: Who is like, how does that? How does a location
Speaker 2: decide to start a clubhouse? If like, are they like franchises?
Speaker 2: Is there like some overarching person in charge of making
Speaker 2: you know, because some are accredited, some aren't, Like, how
Speaker 2: does that happen?
Speaker 1: So every clubhouse is autonomous as long as they subscribe
Speaker 1: to the thirty seven principles, And so I believe one
Speaker 1: of the principles is that the clubhouses are autonomous, so
Speaker 1: like the decisions are made by those local members and
Speaker 1: things like that. And I know that there is an
Speaker 1: organization called Clubhouse International that I believe it's not formally.
Speaker 1: I believe Fountainhouse is like the flagship of Clubhouse International,
Speaker 1: but it's not running Clubhouse International. I believe that is
Speaker 1: a separate body. And so I believe that you basically,
Speaker 1: I assume you start a five LLE and C three
Speaker 1: and intend to create a clubhouse model and ascribe to
Speaker 1: these principles and then get a credation through Clubhouse International,
Speaker 1: and I assume probably the like financing of it is
Speaker 1: going to come the way that you would have to
Speaker 1: finance any nonprofit through grants and things like that. But
Speaker 1: I've been more certain about things. But that's my inference
Speaker 1: from what I've read a lot of shit about this,
Speaker 1: but I didn't read how to start on.
Speaker 2: And then so you said, there's sixty thousand current members
Speaker 2: in America.
Speaker 1: Or that is twe hundred twelve hundred is fountain.
Speaker 2: House, Oh, fountain House, got it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And then sixty thousand people in clubhouses across the country,
Speaker 1: of which I believe there's a couple hundred. I know
Speaker 1: it's like either two hundred seventy or three hundred seventy
Speaker 1: I don't remember I said it earlier, but that there's
Speaker 1: a number that is the entire world, and then there's
Speaker 1: a number that's in the US that I forgot to
Speaker 1: write down, but it's like two hundred dish.
Speaker 2: It's a wild yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you there's a map, if if anyone is
Speaker 1: interested in it's like, you know, honestly, this like seems
Speaker 1: like it's for me, right, There is a map, there's
Speaker 1: like a find your local clubhouse, and you know they're
Speaker 1: in places they wouldn't necessarily expect, and all of them
Speaker 1: are perfect, and you will have a perfect time and
Speaker 1: everything will be great and one hundred percent satisfaction guaranteed.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: You just can't talk to your friends or family, but
Speaker 2: that's fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all. You can give all your money to
Speaker 1: the call I mean the Clubhouse.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: I like, because if you give the really cliffs Notes
Speaker 1: version of Clubhouse to someone, it sounds kind of wacky, right,
Speaker 1: because we're so attuned to being afraid, because this is
Speaker 1: the kind of people who are preyed on by cults,
Speaker 1: you know, and even some of the like don't worry,
Speaker 1: We're all just working and work well, you know, set
Speaker 1: you free. Right, There's like cults that get together and
Speaker 1: make products that they're just exploiting people's labor and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. And I think that it's just so interesting
Speaker 1: to see someone not doing that, you know.
Speaker 2: Well, it's like really exciting and kind of a relief
Speaker 2: to know that that can happen, because I feel like
Speaker 2: so many things start off well intentioned and then become evil.
Speaker 2: And so to recognize like this has been around for
Speaker 2: decades and it seems to still be above board and
Speaker 2: doing the intended mission is like really wonderful. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: dare I say cool?
Speaker 1: I know, so is it cool people doing cool stuff?
Speaker 2: It's until I get an email from a listener saying, Alice,
Speaker 2: and how dare you if this is a very problematic institution.
Speaker 2: I will say it sounds like it's cool people doing cool.
Speaker 1: Stuff, and if you want to send that to Alison,
Speaker 1: you's just sending me instead. Although I'm not going to
Speaker 1: give you my email address, but people somehow managed to
Speaker 1: find a way to reach me anyway. Because it's my fault,
Speaker 1: not Allison's.
Speaker 2: Fault, I don't know how they find it. People find
Speaker 2: my email, I'm like, where I know?
Speaker 1: I know, and don't email me to tell me how
Speaker 1: you found my email.
Speaker 2: The best is I would get like these emails out
Speaker 2: are like I figured out your phone number from your
Speaker 2: dog's collar. It is blank, Blake, Blake, Blake Blake. And
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, but that's not it.
Speaker 1: This is why every time I take a picture of
Speaker 1: my dog, I make sure that his collar is covered.
Speaker 2: I know you have to, but it's always been people
Speaker 2: that are like, I'm not creepy. Yeah, I just want
Speaker 2: you to know that someone who is could decipher this
Speaker 2: because I did.
Speaker 1: And this isn't to say that everyone who has reached
Speaker 1: out to me, including by finding my email dress, which
Speaker 1: I think is available in some public place because enough
Speaker 1: people write me that it must be some more publicly.
Speaker 1: Most of these emails are very nice, and I'm oh, yeah, but.
Speaker 2: It's super well intentioned. It's just funny. When they're like,
Speaker 2: and I've cracked it, I'm like, and that's not my number.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: When the Nazis docks to me, they were like, and
Speaker 1: you live here, and I'm like, oh no, you've got me,
Speaker 1: don't go to that address.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, some poor lady, Yeah.
Speaker 1: James, you got any any final thoughts? Clubhouses?
Speaker 3: This is cool. I love a co operative I love
Speaker 3: people helping people. I like this.
Speaker 1: This is cool.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna I'm gonna look them up.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna see you see if it's one name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I haven't talked to anyone from any other clubhouse,
Speaker 1: to be clear, but I you know, it's like I
Speaker 1: was waiting for the other shoe to drop. And maybe
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's people have had bad experiences with it, right,
Speaker 1: but overall, I'm really excited about it. I warned Twitter.
Speaker 1: I was like, next week weeks episodes is going to
Speaker 1: be unrelentingly posey but yeah, how could you do it
Speaker 1: to de Margaret? Well, if people want to hear more
Speaker 1: of your voice, how can they do that Besides sending
Speaker 1: you an email?
Speaker 2: They can get the audiobook of my new book I
Speaker 2: Do I Think Conversations about Modern Marriage, which I narrate,
Speaker 2: and it's also available as a hardcover. And then you
Speaker 2: could listen to my weekly podcast called Just between Us.
Speaker 2: And if you just want to hear my thoughts in
Speaker 2: written form, so read my thoughts in written form, you
Speaker 2: could subscribe to my substack called Emotional Support Lady. And
Speaker 2: then I guess if you want to hear from me directly,
Speaker 2: you can go to my website, alisonraaskin dot com, where
Speaker 2: I offer a relationship coaching for both individuals and couples.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Also, I believe in your listener's ability because
Speaker 1: I do this with podcasters that I listen to. I
Speaker 1: can read their written work and hear it in their voice.
Speaker 2: I get that all the time. People are like, I
Speaker 2: read this exactly how you would say it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you know it's like I listen to podcasts
Speaker 1: all the time too. I understand that.
Speaker 2: You know, like I read this in your voice.
Speaker 1: It was fun yeah, James the I think you want
Speaker 1: to plug.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, I have a Patreon. It's my name, James
Speaker 3: Stout Patreon, dot com, slash James Stout. I believe people
Speaker 3: can read my thoughts there. I'm writing a book for
Speaker 3: a k Press about anarchists at war, and you can
Speaker 3: you can buy that in the coming year, in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five, it will be done and it will be
Speaker 3: available for purchase.
Speaker 1: I was a come out next year. I'm excited about
Speaker 1: that book. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I did the old author questionnaire and like we're closing in,
Speaker 3: I have to I rewrite the Syrian Civil War section
Speaker 3: about every month or so as there's things dramatically changed.
Speaker 1: That's finn for me, but yeah, I know.
Speaker 3: And then then the Me and mar one on the
Speaker 3: other months when I'm not doing the Syria one, I
Speaker 3: rewrite that one too.
Speaker 1: That's been enjoyable for me. Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's a problem with books, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can keep writing them as it turns out. Yeah,
Speaker 3: after you hear this, I'm doing an event to raise
Speaker 3: money for Rajava Rashava Cutistan, Western Kurdistan. But that would
Speaker 3: have been the day before this podcast comes out, so
Speaker 3: you won't be able to attend, but you can still
Speaker 3: donate heavier sore h v YAsO r dot com.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, if you want to read a book of
Speaker 1: mine and imagine it's in my voice, My most recent
Speaker 1: book is called The Sapling Cage. It came out from
Speaker 1: the feminist press earlier this year, I want to say,
Speaker 1: October twenty fourth. I'm not actually sure, and it is
Speaker 1: about a young trans witch, and it is not technically
Speaker 1: a ya. It is technically a crossover somehow different, and
Speaker 1: I mean, I actually do know the differences, but to
Speaker 1: me it's a pedantic difference. But I guess it's not.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I'm telling you about this, but
Speaker 1: you can read the book where I don't discuss that,
Speaker 1: but instead discuss the coming of age of a transwitch
Speaker 1: and a fantasy world. And it's not even mostly about gender.
Speaker 1: It's mostly a heavy handed metaphor about climate change. Don't worry. Wait,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make it sound better, but I'm sure.
Speaker 2: It's much lighter of a read than you thought. It's
Speaker 2: just a metaphor for climacy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, see, exactly, you understand. Anyway, you can catch us
Speaker 1: next week, well, probably just me of the three of us,
Speaker 1: but maybe who knows on Cool People Who Did Cool
Speaker 1: Stuff and we'll talk to you all soon.
Speaker 4: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
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