All of that wonderful opportunity to work with inmates at Santa Rita jail, as well as recently released inmates, completely went up in smoke with the misappropriation of funds by the governmental organization ACAP (Associated Community Action Program) that was providing us with the opportunity.
http://www.eastbaycitizen.com/2011/04/human-costs-of-ending-acap.html
I am really surprised. I was expecting ACAP to be run better; the other women that were part of the program kept telling me, "we're paying our dues now, this is what we have to do, this is what we have to put up with". It was the program mantra.
I have found that many recovering addicts carry huge amounts of shame that set them up for possibly being taken advantage of, way after they pay their dues to society. The most insidious of all of this experience has been a Shelter Director and program staff connected to this program that were all pretending to care about us, our growth, but were actually taking advantage of the vulnerability of my colleagues...these incredibly strong, capable women that had this vulnerable spot...and hurting them in a particularly heinous way for recovering addicts. Our supervisors required us to pretend for them that everything was okay while they lied to us and kept telling us how they wanted to help us. Gee, kind of sounds like a pimp, doesn't it?
And, they took advantage of the ignorance many of us had about the appropriateness of their requests, with our desire to help, develop our skills, and make a difference.
We were frequently showing up for meetings that didn't exist, being told to do things that were legally questionable, like work for an entirely different program with recently released San Quentin male inmates in a highly skilled position for which none of us were trained...and then being told we had to do that as our training for our completely different program for which most of it was inapplicable. They wanted us to do work for free for the government that they were paid to do. They also were asking some of us to pick up recently released Santa Rita inmates from the jail in our own cars, until we refused. Frequently none of us knew where the meeting was, and we would roam around Eden Area One-Stop from floor to floor like a herd of bison looking for some lawn. The program supervisor often forgot us, phone calls were not returned, people were promised salaries and then pretended that they were never promised...all of this incompetency and obfuscation of the truth was particularly horrifying to deal with as we were there to help, to truly help others.
So what I did, early on, was to not drink the kool-aid. There's an advantage to being able to withstand not being liked by others, though I have to admit the training program for that particular skill was not fun.
I read their grant proposal for this program, and saw that they were expecting us all to have been previous inmates in Santa Rita jail. They didn't specify that qualification when they interviewed us, they assumed it because they pulled all of the participants from my Substance Abuse Counseling Certification program, of which most of them are recovering addicts. I was honest with them after reading the grant. I then requested that I work with them in a different capacity, as a teacher for my Phoenix Rising Homeless Project. I was very excited with the research I was doing with recently released inmates, and was preparing lesson plans for them. I got to separate myself from the process of the program and do my own thing.
Anyway, it's over, the whole program is under investigation. I am grateful for having been inspired by the possibility of it, for gaining more insight into the self-perceptions of clients, and deepening my commitment and the bonds I formed while standing up for my colleagues, with my colleagues, in the aftermath of it all.
Now I am back on my fiery steed, and will find some other way to get in there.
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