Healing On High (in progress)
Preacher Westerly By Kari Orvik for issue 3
For issue 3 of eth6 I have been working on a story that coincidentally became newsworthy, as seems to be my luck with every issue. The first issue I wrote a story titled “Miss Meth” in which I detailed the grotesque neurological and social horrors of crystal methamphetamine using my experience work at an inpatient psych ward and a tweaker friend. By publication Meth had made it headlines where it had been only in back covers, there were national ad campaigns initiated to scare people from its use by showing pictures of meth mouth and some of its other cosmotologocial degradations. Now meth is practically as house hold a name as HIV-the power of public awareness!
Last year I wrote about the difficulties of keeping severely mentally ill people off the street, examining the theoretical conventions and weak policies that prevent people from being held for treatment. On the way to publication the Virginia Tech shooting happened and for about three months people talked about this issue, but sadly it too has fallen back in to the shadows of media coverage. Unless you live in San Francisco the concern that so may people are ‘free to be mad’ in the streets and seedy SROs throughout the city is no longer an everyday consideration. I still choke to think about the argument that allowing people to live on the streets, out of their minds, is giving them their civil liberties, their right to choose. No one would chose their mother, brother, friend or even acquaintance to be living on the street and the idea that this is a choice is dismissive, condescending and dehumanizing.
Now for issue 3 I began an article to discuss the role of the amazing violence response teams I have worked with out the County ER who are dispatched when there is a shooting. The two I work with primarily are literally heaven sents in the ER, coming to console families, provide counseling and support throughout the surgeries, ICU, sometimes death all the way to the mortuary and funeral. The operate on the idea that the healing does not begin until the mourning ends, and when the mourning is continual, as it is for many residents of Bayview there is no healing. For this article I traveled to the churches where these violence responders get their healing, and was witness to the amazing power of African American Churches in San Francisco. Then of course Reverend Wright, and the Obama speech. To be fair, I never heard anything near liberation theology at these churches and my mission there was simply to experience the healing that happens, however the coincidence is apparent and I wanted to share a couple photos taken by the amazing Kari Orvik as a teaser for the next issue! Visiting these churches and talking with Pastor Yul Dorn and Pastor Westerly profoundly changed my experience, albeit limited, of churches. I was humbled by the impact which the spiritual relationship can have on even the most horrific of suffering, the loss of a child, the loss of self to addiction, the loss of community to violence…. More to come in issue 3!
