Full Transcript for Dena Heals

we're told to believe about humanity, human nature, about, and frankly about poorer communities is that when disaster strikes, we expect people to look out for themselves. And there's been stories from past disasters. People were told in Hurricane Katrina, for example, that there was looting and all of this kind of thing. But that's not what happens and that's not what happened in Altadena. 13 00:08:12.000 --> 00:10:42.000 Let's start like I'll go individually and then go macro to community. So I am part of the Revolve Impact team. We're a social impact creative agency, right? And we were a team of 10 and two of us were impacted and I was one of them, one of the people on the team. And so my beautiful team said, corolla, do what you need to do, Take care. What do you need? That was the first question. No questions asked. Not like, you have some pto, take some vacation time, nothing. It was like no questions asked. Whatever your family needs. So I took a couple of weeks just to be with my family and process this shock. A couple of weeks later, I told my team, okay, I'm ready. Being an organizer and a non profit leader in a previous lifetime, we're very mission driven folks. So almost to the point, at the expense of our own wellness and bodies because we just go, go, go as service, right? So that was my mode. So after a couple of weeks, my team says, hey, let's meet at this, this little strip mall called the Paseo in Old Town Pasadena. And I remember telling one of our founders, Mike, I said, why we made the Paseo, that place has been dead since COVID So I, I said, okay, well let's meet there. And I walk into this beautiful space that has, it had chairs in a circle already. What's going on here? And our team's like, this is. Our new project is Dena Heals. We came together with a few of our partners. The city of Pasadena, the Paseo team Tepido Coffee, which represented small business in the community, Homeboy Industries, Altamed to provide immediate medical service needs. And my team said, this is our mutual aid project, Dina Heals and this is what we're going to be doing. And I was just overwhelmed, to say the least. Overwhelmed to be able to hold that space for my community while also being held. 14 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:43.000 Beautifully put. 15 00:10:43.000 --> 00:11:20.000 I think that's the magic of Altadena. You can hold people while being held and in such a caring, compassionate way. My kids lost their school so we had to deal with that. As a parent, first on the list is your kids. And so my wife and I were pouring everything we had, all of our energy, physically, emotionally and spiritually into our kids and then the rest. I was fortunate enough to be held myself through the Dina Heals work. 16 00:11:20.000 --> 00:12:12.000 It feels like there was an understanding of the necessity of healing together while the reflects as a community organizer. And I also identified this in my work as a social entrepreneur and activist to just do, do, do,

do, like action oriented. Let's save people, let's build something, let's recreate and just be in that mode of that is almost a sort of coping mechanism as well. And not to think about what we are feeling, but put that energy into doing something. But then your colleague said, no, let's stop, sit and be together because the moment needs it, deserves it and it's part of the doing, I guess, but it's not exactly doing. It's something new. 17 00:12:12.000 --> 00:13:55.000 Yes, absolutely is. It's, it's a way to be. It feels like it's a continuous cycle, like you're given, you're being given, you give and you're being given. And I think that is what's happening in, in Altadena. It was, you know, so, so much sometimes against our own will because we're just so used to giving. But as we know, especially our leaders of colors in organizing communities are getting burned out, tired, sick. I myself am a breast cancer survivor. When I got diagnosed, I was an executive director serving 2,000 families a day in Long Beach, California. I think that I'm in a place thankfully because of my community, my spiritual community, my spiritual belief system and the resources that I have, and I like to name that, that is a privilege in itself, was able to process in a healthy way. And if it wasn't for those cancer cells, I don't think I would have been able to pause and reflect and really see the need that we just can't give. We also have to receive and especially for A first generation immigrant, queer woman. The layers of oppression that I have to constantly work through as I navigate my own healing. Man leaders don't have. They put that at the bottom of the list. Right. 18 00:13:55.000 --> 00:14:13.000 I want to zoom in a little bit on Dinah Heals and I've heard it described in that first period as a, as a mutual aid marketplace. Can you help us understand a little bit more of what was going on in those first few weeks in that space? Help us like be there. 19 00:14:13.000 --> 00:17:27.000 Oh my gosh. So right away people didn't have their clothing and basic needs. Right. So we as a company revolve, impact, we leverage of our partners. And originally it was two spots at that mall. It was a marketplace and a wellness center. And of course immediate needs at that moment, like I said, were clothing. So we had donations from our partners and we had like this amazing, amazing team of volunteers that had also been working. Across the way from this spot was the convention center where Red Cross had established their hub, where there were hundreds of beds of people. So this volunteer team called Colibri Collective were there first. And then we connected and we said, oh my gosh, we would love to run this because this is, they were going to do it in a neighborhood on a neighborhood that was a 20 minute drive from us. It was the only place they could get. So now being especially right across from that red, the Red Cross center hub and we leveraged all of our, our small business partners to get the word out and we build the wellness center. And as we got proximate to people, we, we, we noticed things and we were able to pivot. We're really good at change management as a team, right? So we said, okay, let's just have, you know, a store and have people come. And then we were learning that these donation centers, and I experienced this myself, they say, okay, you have the window from 10 to 11 where you can come and get stuff. And it was me and maybe 50 other people. So you go in, in that window and then you feel like you're fighting with your neighbor for a T shirt. So then we said, this is not dignified. So then say, let's make it an appointment based. So then as a family you would go, my name is John. We're a family of five. These are our sizes. And we have. So then you, John, get an appointment with your family, where it's only two families in the store at a time. You get welcomed with some tepito coffee. Tapito provided some pastries and coffee. We got trained because we realized we couldn't Ask people, how are you? That was a loaded question at the time. So we had a therapist come and train our team in just simple interactions like that to make people feel safe. So we learned that we would say, thank you for being here, I'm here to help you. Let's start. So each family would get a volunteer and they would go through the store to fulfill the list. Get a brand new suitcase because they didn't have storage. And that's how we were able to hold the dignity of the folks. So we would pivot at the very beginning. We weren't asking for any documents and proof of residence because nobody had their documents. Like little things like that. And we pivot and we constantly had to fill and meet and move with the needs of the community through the marketplace. We ended up serving 1500 families. 20 00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:28.000 Wow. 21 00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:58.000 And, and then in June of last year, the needs changed. Nobody needed new clothes anymore. Everybody needed new appliances, a set of eating utensils, a blender, an air fryer. So then we decided to sunset the marketplace. But the need for wellness services increased. And so we decided to keep and double up on the services we offered at the wellness center. And it's still going on. 22 00:17:58.000 --> 00:18:12.000 And just to be clear here, this is not a government operation. This isn't insurance companies paying for stuff. This is, this is local organizations, local people, people coming together to help one another. That's right. 23 00:18:12.000 --> 00:18:13.000 Yep. 24 00:18:12.000 --> 00:19:39.000 It was neighbors helping neighbors straight up and leveraging our own connections. So one of the volunteers is, was actually Shilpa Shah, one of the co founders of retail brand called Kuyana. She, she leveraged all, all her resources to continue to get more close as revolve impact through our vertical athletes for impact we leverage Nike, our relationship with Nike. And they came

forward, Amazon came forward with ridiculous amounts of pallets that and so then we would call our partner homeboy industry where their participants would come and help us move all this stuff. Right? And Tapito coffee would offer and feed us and give us good coffee while we were doing all this. So it was really, I keep using the analogy Fellowship of the Rings. Tell them a nerd, right? Like we figured out that okay, these are the elves and this is their gift and this is how they're going to come. These are the dwarves. This is their gift and this is going to come. There were no duplication of efforts. It was truly an organized fellowship where everybody's no hierarchy. Everybody was a decision maker. Everybody was an was implementing, everybody was assessing. And, and that's, that's just how we moved organically. 25 00:19:39.000 --> 00:19:50.000 Do you feel that was present before the fires, or was it something that spontaneously kind of emerged with the need, the needs of the community after? 26 00:19:50.000 --> 00:20:12.000 I think both. I think that as a company, that's how we moved. We move, right? Those are our values. And I. And sometimes in this work, especially with the current climate that we find our country in, we thought we were in a bubble. Right. But it was just so. 27 00:20:12.000 --> 00:20:16.000 As in, you thought you were the only people who work like that? 28 00:20:16.000 --> 00:20:52.000 I've been for over 20 years in the workforce, and when I found my team, I thought it was really unique. Yes, there's similarities in other teams, but just the speed of trust that we move within our company, it's really fast and makes things very easy for us. But we have really underestimated the power of our friendships and the way that we moved and really the mutual respect that we have in the community. So it was present before, to answer your question, but I don't think that we were that aware of it. 29 00:20:52.000 --> 00:23:17.000 In the research for my book Citizens, I came across a wonderful book called A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit. I don't know if either of you have come across this. So what Solnit did for this book is she went back through disasters, through history, and what she found is that pretty much every time disaster hits this to some, I mean, I'm not saying everywhere is Altadena. I think you guys are quite special. But pretty much everywhere through history, humans do respond to crisis, not by tearing each other apart, but by. By an deep instinct to help one another. And what she finds is actually that there's an initial phase of that and then often when the point where it gets sort of quashed a bit is what she calls elite panic. When there's a sort of sense that actually people are organizing and finding solutions to their own challenges and the systems kind of reassert themselves because they feel like they're being superseded. And this has been a key inspiration for some of the work I've been doing because I

think the. The opportunity, when I think back to when Covid first hit, and actually across the world, I believe there were sort of street level WhatsApp groups and mutual aid groups kind of springing up everywhere. And it was only. And that energy could have been sort of supported and enabled rather than squashed. I think one of the stories we've come across, Corolla, in our podcast, we interviewed Audrey Tang, who was among parts of her journey, became the digital minister in Taiwan and was part of Taiwan's Covid Response where actually they tried to come in behind that energy. And they, they, they set challenge prizes for the tech community to create apps that would track face mask availability and case outbreaks. And they even set up a phone line where anyone could ring in with ideas for how the country's response could be better. So they sort of leaned into this idea that people want to help and want to support one another. And I guess I'm just, it feels like. Am I right in saying you're still continuing, still without kind of. It sounds like the state is largely absent and insurance companies still not leaning in and you'll continue anyway. And I guess I'm imagining what would be possible if government came in behind those efforts rather than trying to sort of come in and fix it. 30 00:23:17.000 --> 00:26:13.000 Oh my gosh. I mean there's so many. I feel like our community has set up the entryway and open the door, right, like for our, our public officials to come in and be in partnership with us. One very like top of mind example and even easy example, simple example is the soil, right. As a breast cancer survivor, my, you know, everybody has with this fire like different needs and different fears and different worries, if you will, right. For us, for me personally was the toxicity of the soil, right. We have some legacy contaminants that were ignited by and came alive through the fire, not to mention other contaminants, right. So, and then, and then the rains. So you can you get your lot cleaned and then if you're on a hill, the rains come and all of it again, you have to get that soil reassessed one more time. Construction goes up or cleanup, then you have to get the soil reassessed. So I was worried. I said how can I come back to my beloved Altadena when my kids are going to be playing in toxic soil? And nobody was talking about the land, Nobody. I think that is still a big gap in our community. So this group of folks of color, farmers, scientists, local, they create, they and a couple of organizations created the Dina Soil project where they go lot by lot, they connect with volunteer organizations, so and come and clean up the lot and they give three inches of this beautiful compost and then three inches of this mulch of mushrooms that really clean the soil themselves naturally. So for example, at my lot there was 40 people. They, it was a potluck, there was music, there was a indigenous person that did ceremony to bless the land and we

did that twice. And my soil was remediated after three, after three tests. And that's where I'm just Sometimes trying to continue to regulate myself, to know like public officials are also human. And I, I don't, you know, I don't want to put that. That energy of, of anger and rage strictly on one person. Right. But I figured like, oh, that is such an easy, economical, budget friendly way to clean the soil and be in good relationship with the land and also our indigenous partners and come together. So that's one of the things that I'm just like, why isn't this happening? 31 00:26:13.000 --> 00:26:21.000 So there's so many opportunities for this to be a healing process of actually a relationship between citizen and state as well and land. 32 00:26:21.000 --> 00:26:54.000 Right. In Altadena, we are very, very big on acknowledging, honoring the legacy of the land, past, present and future. So. Exactly, exactly. There's a lot of opportunities. The opportunities that that have happened are with, with big companies, some big names and they want to put their name on our park and. But still we have not seen the. If that test, if those. If that baseball field has been fully remediated, if you will. Right. 33 00:26:54.000 --> 00:27:08.000 So and so tell us a bit more now about. So 18 months. Well, 15, 17 months on from the fires. Are you, are you back in Altadena? Have you moved back or you're still living outside? 34 00:27:08.000 --> 00:28:22.000 No, we're still in Eagle Rock, which is about 15 minutes from Altadena. We wanted to stay local. We do want to rebuild. And to be in all honesty, it was after like 12 months, 13th or 14th, where I actually felt grounded enough to be able to make decisions such as architects, contractors, making sure insurance money came in. I was not. My nervous system was shot. At 16. I was operating Dina Hills in fight or flight mode. To be quite honest, my family itself, we are part of the lawsuit. We decided to really center our mental wellness first get grounded and then. And now we're starting to talk to architects. And again, I want to name that privilege because that is a privilege that we have two incomes in this family and we're able to pay our rent and our mortgage right now. I don't know how long we're going to be able to do that, but for now we can. 35 00:28:22.000 --> 00:28:27.000 And Dinaheals continues as the wellness center 36 00:28:27.000 --> 00:30:12.000 in that guys it does is still going on. We have amazing partnerships with the David lynch foundation, who is still offering free meditation courses to our community in Spanish and English. We have partners like Hands in the Soil that. That facilitate men's circles every other weekend. Those are the men's circles have been growing in a way where I've never seen men show up like that in my life. To. To talk. To talk. Right. And the women's circles I was facilitating at the very beginning. And then throughout the year, I could not hold space to be a participant and

a facilitator. We decided to pause, and now they're revving back up again with. With a beautiful somatic facilitator for those. So now every Thursday, there's a circle yoga every Saturday. Then we have practitioners coming in, doing songwriting classes for healing, drumming for healing. That's on public facing. But internally, we decided to take care of the caregivers for all the grassroots organizations. We invite them to come, their staff and their main volunteers. And we just do three hour retreats. They get a massage, we do incense making. We get in circle, we share a meal, we dance. And at least it's something that we're. Because secondary trauma is still very much a priority for the caregivers. 37 00:30:12.000 --> 00:30:22.000 So this is a story of, in the context of disaster, neighbors helping neighbors, but for a long time, like, committing. And that is still the vibe. 38 00:30:22.000 --> 00:31:56.000 Yeah. Oh, it's still. It's still the vibe. It is still. I think there is a new level now of transactions that are new. Right. We are now dealing with, for example, for the homeowners that want to rebuild, which contractor do we trust? Are they. Are they like, you know, quoting me outrageously? Are they trustworthy? We've heard horrible stories where even people have paid a deposit to their contractor, and then the contractor calls ice on their own workers and then they disappear. Those are the latest stories that are happening. So I think, like, it's just the. The different level of the recovery, if you will. We're at a place where there's. It's very transactional now and people need a lot of support. And so that's why Dina Heals. I think we are always like, okay, so you core. You're helping people with, with contractor assessment and, and what to look for and what to ask. That's a big decision. Let Dina Heals help those folks in terms of grounding their nervous system so that they can think clearly and make that decision. That's why I talk about the fellowship. Right. Like, yes, this is great transactionally, but emotionally and physically and psychologically, are they okay to be able to make that decision? 39 00:31:56.000 --> 00:32:00.000 So the relationships are the foundations for the transaction. 40 00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:02.000 Exactly. 41 00:32:02.000 --> 00:32:44.000 I mean, I find this story just deeply inspiring. I think that the. This idea of. And what I want to argue from it, I guess, is that in times of crisis, actually people want to be what I would call citizens rather than consumers. They want to collaborate and work together and find ways through together and want to contribute. A lot of what we've heard from in the podcast today is stories of when sort of government systems change and open up. And this is in a way a story of what that opening up can come behind what is in humanity and in communities that can be supported. 42 00:32:44.000 --> 00:35:27.000 No, what I'm hearing is really inspiring. And at the same time I'm wondering how much this is. We can make it like a universal truth. We hear a lot the crisis. In times of crisis, it's the worst of people that we see. But here it's really the story of. It's really the best of people. And I'm wondering how much this depends on the people of the community affected. And in your story, it's amazing how much beauty is in there, but also awareness and consciousness of what needs to be done that is not important from somewhere else, but it's really from you and your knowledge and everything you inherited and adapting to the needs of the community and adopting a very respectful approach to kind of not force anything on anyone, but just be there and follow the movement where the community is heading and being there and holding each moment to really support that transition, whether from immediate needs of clothing, basic. Yeah. Needs to just dress and then to. Then the appliances and then the emotional support that was there from the beginning, but then now it becomes the most important, certain support that you're bringing. And I find this fascinating. And I'm wondering, yeah, what is replicable. You have such an incredible amount of expertise and knowledge of human beings now that it feels like that's the ideal disaster response. How can other communities be supported in that way where they don't turn against each other? Because while you were speaking, John, about the COVID the first moments of the COVID pandemic, I had these images in the US where people were hoarding, looting supermarkets to get the toilet paper and that like. And I was wondering, watching that from Tunisia, why toilet paper? What's happening? And they were fighting against each other to get the toilet paper. So sometimes also some images really stay in our consciousness and this goes against that crisis bring the best of humanity. But this is what I would have loved to see more on the media and what. 43 00:35:27.000 --> 00:35:28.000 Yeah. 44 00:35:28.000 --> 00:35:32.000 With me, like after LA fires. 45 00:35:32.000 --> 00:38:28.000 Yeah, yeah. And yeah, the media also clamped the Palisades fire and the Altadena fire together. And they're two drastically different communities, number one. But I think that we to. I think this might be a long, like this curiosity that you have almost seen of what can be Replicable. And I, I really think that I feel like, I feel like I'm blessed, but I feel like no, no, this can actually be a model, right? Like this is just like not like divine intervention that gave me all these, all these resources. I really think that is at Dina Heals we said like okay, what is our, what is our belief? What's our highest belief that we're going to be operating with, making decisions with, creating operational systems with. And what is the culture, the DNA of Dina Heals? And I am a certified laboratory coach. So I bring that lens of looking at everything in an anti oppression lens, like really naming the systems that are, that we not

name outside of traditional Western like trauma research. Right. Trauma informed research. So I think that we really started with. We believe that everybody has the medicine they need within, right. Like we're not really eliminating any sort of hierarchical savior. Like we're not here to offer like you know, to, to save you from this spot. We're here to be shoulder to shoulder and witness you moving through this at your choice, at your pace, and then also pausing, getting educated from trauma informed experts on basic questions like thank you for being here as opposed to how are you? It starts very little, but it starts with that belief that everybody has it within themselves and we're just here to guide. We're not here to heal, we're not here to fix, we're not here to save. We're here to really walk together. And I think that allows us to be more curious. So when folks come in, there's a lot of external crisis going on, especially in our community. We had ice rates in Pasadena in the middle of all this to get curious, to pause enough to get curious and say this person is angry right now. Is it at me? Is it the situation? What do we need to do? And to just have that humanity and meet people where they're at, educate ourselves of the external factors and also again, going back to the highest belief that everybody has the wisdom within and we're just here to friendly reminders or walk 46 00:38:28.000 --> 00:39:00.000 shoulder to shoulder what we know. We don't know much about what's coming in the next 10 years of our world. Right? It's going to be a crazy ride. Probably if we know anything, it's that there will be more crises, more disasters, more trauma and how we deal with that, whether we can get governments to sort of reorient and come into the role they need or whether it's just down to citizens and communities to respond as best they can. I think Dina Heals is a hugely inspiring example. 47 00:39:00.000 --> 00:40:27.000 I think both can happen, right? Communities can do that and also government can also do the same thing. It doesn't have to be one or the other. Multiple truths can be there. And I think that I hope that through our experience, folks can learn that. I learned this from actually meeting Bryan Stevenson a few years ago is that the secret ingredient in this North Star of people having the medicine within and we're just here to, you know, walk together is proximity. It's just really get proximate. And I really, when I met him and had that conversation is what, what does that really mean? Right? And it actually means being physically proximate to folks is that simple. In this digital area, it's amazing. It's an amazing tool that we have that we can able to connect. Like this is beautiful. I can talk to my tias in Peru, right? Like it's beautiful. But at the same time it does not meet like the human to human connection to really know the needs of folks. I think we're not proximate enough to each other and I think that can change and it's something that's easy that we can change right now. 48 00:40:27.000 --> 00:40:41.000 This was how to Save Democracy, the podcast for people who love democracy, but know we've got serious work to do to save it. This episode was hosted by John Alexander and me, Omezin Khalifa and produced by Joe Barrett. 49 00:40:41.000 --> 00:41:04.000 Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or if you want to get closer, find us online at howtosavedemocracy co and sign up to the mailing list. We've got big plans, so if you can chip in to help us make them happen, we'd love to have you on board.