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