One Thing That Can Help : Advocacy

One thing that I saw both in the movie and in the life of Jane Addams was the mobilizing of people with lived experience. In the documentary, it was folks with mental illness, in the case of Jane Addams, it was the people living in poverty in the Chicago neighborhood in which she lived.  So often being diagnosed with a mental illness or living in poverty can take away the power of a person or even a whole subset of people. Because of this, Addams believed that the best way for a person to get better from a situation that they were suffering in was for they themselves to take action.

The story in which Addams and her community organized around the issue of  trash in her neighborhood is a prime example of this. It was first an issue of just the trash that was not getting cleaned up, but soon the focus was their living conditions in the neighborhood in general. Soon there were dozens of tenants from Hull House and the surrounding community that had begun to organize around the issue, led by Jane and her partner in such issues, John Dewey. As a result of the investigations and activism done by this group of individuals, 11 of the 24 people employed by the Chicago Sanitary Bureau were fired.

The example from the documentary that illustrates this is the Foundation House's tenant's work with getting a bill passed around free bus passes for folks on SSI, just as their counterparts with SSDI did. He was able to go to talk to law makers themselves, and prepared information and charts to back up the claims that he was making. The bill ended up passing with flying colors, making his advocacy efforts successful. This was not only good practice for this gentleman in advocating for himself and his community, but it also was a valuable experience for the lawmakers that heard him speak, as it proved that people living with mental illness are able to do things just as successfully as others who do not ave MI.

There is one major thing in the way of assisting people become advocates for themselves: the societal belief that others know better than them. As it says in the text: "The idea that people with mental illnesses can still identify their own needs and know what is best for them remains a radical notion in much of the current mental health system in the United States." (p. 95) People who are oppressed, such as those living in poverty, those experiencing homelessness, racial minorities, or those living with severe or persistent mental illness, have been silenced. They have been told that their voices don't count or that in no way could they know what they are talking about. Even though they are the ones who are living or have lived the oppressed experiences, others - even social workers - tell them that what they can and can't think about their own lives. Even in efforts to serve folks, we are at risk at further taking away any agency that they might hold in their own lives, something that Jane Addams felt firmly against. Even when those with MI or those in poverty have a chance to have their voices heard, they can easily be discredited or dismissed. For people to have full agency over their lives, society needs to give them space to do so.