A lot can happen in a year… and even more in 40 years!

This week marked the one-year anniversary of the invasion of POV Headquarters, my home, the home of then Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, the Hall of Administration, and Metro Transportation offices by the now former Sheriff at LASD. I wasn’t specifically paying attention to the memory of that frightful day, but I did feel kind of off and not my usual energetic and optimistic self for about a week. My body was giving me a message, but I wasn’t reading it until I got a message on Facebook reminding me “you have memories from a year ago… September 14, 2022.” Everything fell into place, and I realized that I was having an anniversary reaction to a trauma. The whole awful experience was hard on my family as well as the POV staff and volunteers. Working at a trauma recovery center, of course, I know about this aspect of PTSD, but I didn’t quite grasp the significance of what was happening in me.

I started having the remembrance and flashbacks of ten Sheriff’s deputies showing up at my home at 7:00 AM in swat gear with a search warrant and a battering ram. This outrageous, retaliatory action by the former Los Angeles County Sheriff due to my role as a Commissioner at the Sheriff’s Civilian Oversight Commission made local and national news. There were helicopters! Needless to say, POV staff and Board went into action to assure the public, our funders, donors and our greater POV community that we had done nothing wrong and that this was a Sheriff and a law enforcement agency run amok.

Once I realized what was happening to me in this anniversary remembrance, the very fact of the awareness woke me up. I began to pay attention which allowed me to begin to take good care and use my resiliency techniques to move through it, mainly paying attention to my body and my thoughts. So, one year later, while this unfriendly memory came up, I was able to place it in perspective and began once again to feel grateful for all the support POV received at the time and how I was able to handle the crisis. (After all, I lead a crisis agency). 

I feel such gratitude for the way our Board members, our advisory circles, our leadership team, and staff stayed steady to weather the fictional, retaliatory, and vindictive drama perpetrated against POV and the others cast in that same light. The local LA non-profit community and groups and individuals from across the country stood strongly by our side. This was extremely gratifying and powerful. So now I am back breathing deeply and feeling the joy of living once again. So grateful that I work at a trauma recovery center and benefit from the skills and knowledge that we teach every day.

The other anniversary I am experiencing is my 40th year working at POV. I started as a volunteer in 1981, became the training and self-defense manager in 1983 and was appointed by the Board to the role of Executive Director in 1985. It has been an amazing journey filled with opportunities for growth, creativity, and community. Running a non-profit social service, social justice agency is not an easy lift. But what a gift it has been to be able to work at a place where my values align with the organization’s values.

How amazing it is that as a child growing up in Little Italy on Long Island in an immigrant Italian Family, the first person to go to college in my family, that I could land at an organization that would mesh with who I was and who I wanted to be. And as a young person growing up in the 60s and 70s impacted by the ideas and the ideals of the Civil Rights movement, the Women’s movement, the Gay Liberation movement, and the Anti-Vietnam War movement - I really feel that those times were some of my most profound teachings. When I landed at the agency then known as LACAAW, I found a home where I would develop and test my values in a community that wanted to do good. Service, change and justice have always been fundamental to the way I live and Social service, Social change and Social justice are one of POV’s now well-known mottoes. These along with some of our other mottoes like Violence is Preventable and It Is Never Too Late to Heal have become lifelong values and at the same time goals for me.

So many people from different walks of life, age, race, culture, gender, orientation have come together over the years passing through the agency, doing the work and/or supporting the work, staying for a while or sticking around for years and have made this community of POV happen. Through change and crisis and the commitment to good-people oriented values always rooted in compassion and love, I have been able to make a life at work that has sustained me. Over 40 years still sustains me. My learning journey at POV has been blessed by the people I have met across the decades. Folks I have worked with, struggled with, made change with, begged for money from, fought for justice with, argued with, collaborated, and created with. Folks who challenged me and who I challenged and struggled side by side with to make the world a healthier more welcoming place for everyone…no matter their language, or age, ability or color or pronouns free from the trauma of all the violences that can harm a life. If not free from, then heal from those traumas.

When I started to write this, I wasn’t sure where it would take me. This piece sounds like a moment in search of a memoir. But most of all I hope it is understood to be an appreciation.

A lot can happen in a year and so much can happen… and has happened in 40 years. I want to bow to all of it and to all of you who have been a part of this peace over violence journey. For me it’s a journey of a lifetime.

Let’s keep going!

9/20/2023

PS I hope you will join us for an Evening Over Violence on October 26th and help me celebrate my 40th anniversary milestone!