Antidotes to a Carceral System: Ysabel Garcia on Dismantling White Supremacy Culture in Crisis Work

Ysabel Garcia was a faculty member in IDHA’s Fall 2022-Spring 2023 training series, Crossroads of Crisis: Dreams & Strategies for Collective Care. The second class, “Shifting Mindset to Shift Practice: Visions for a Liberated Crisis Response,” invited participants to scrutinize mindsets rooted in white supremacy culture, noticing how and where they show up, in order to shift practice. You can enroll in a self-paced version of the original course here.

In this follow-up interview with IDHA Training Committee organizer, Frankie Dawis, Ysabel delves deeper into her perspective and expertise. The recorded conversation explores questions such as:

• How did you start to connect the dots between the characteristics of white supremacy culture and your experiences in the mental health system?

• What characteristics of white supremacy culture can be found in dominant crisis response strategies, and what are some examples?

• How may a crisis response infused with white supremacy culture actually intensify the crisis?

• Recognizing the importance of examining and changing individual responses, how can we also dismantle systemic crisis response practices that perpetuate this culture?

• If we find ourselves or a colleague responding to crises in a way that perpetuates white supremacy culture, what actions can we take to unlearn these behaviors?

VIEW THE CLOSED CAPTION TRANSCRIPT FOR THIS INTERVIEW HERE

Resources and References

• Organizations

  • Estoy Aqui (trainings challenging traditional norms and shedding light on the critical social and cultural factors contributing to mental health and suicide)

  • People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (and the Undoing Racism training)

  • Project LETS

  • Wildflower Alliance

  • Growing a New Heart

• Resources

• Rational Suicide, Irrational Laws: Examining Current Approaches to Suicide in Policy and Law (Susan Stefan)

• Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture (Tema Okun)

• Pods and Pod Mapping Worksheet (Mia Mingus for the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective) 

• Dialogues Across Differences (Growing a New Heart)

• Research

• People with disabilities or mental health challenges are most likely to have a deadly encounter with the police

• Involuntary treatment can increase the risk of suicide

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Ysabel Garcia (she/her) is a Dominican immigrant with a bold mission to engage in honest and authentic conversations about mental health, equity, and suicide. Having survived the psychiatric system, Garcia has witnessed firsthand the harmful effects of mainstream mental health practices. Despite this, she maintains a sense of humor and openly discusses her experiences with suicidal ideation to encourage others to do the same. She embodies her messaging and personality through her work with Estoy Aqui LLC, where she provides clarity, compassion, and culturally responsive support to organizations seeking to learn more about the social, cultural, and structural aspects of mental health in Latine and Black communities.

Francesca Dawis, LMSW (she/her) received her Master of Science in Social Work from Columbia University and Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Stanford University. She interned at IDHA for her final-year field placement at Columbia and served as coordinator for the Crossroads of Crisis training series. Francesca now works as a criminal defense social worker at The Bronx Defenders and is also a student in the Clinical Training Program at Critical Therapy Institute. She is passionate about creating and uplifting transformative responses to harm and violence, especially abolitionist crisis interventions. In addition to her career as a social worker, Francesca is a professional actor and musician.