Exhaustion is a condition that even the most resilient activists can succumb to. Richard Brown has his own prescription for self-care: “Anytime it gets too heavy for me, I just retreat to those things that I like.”
That’s not to say he recommends abandoning your cause. The Skanner’s Saundra Sorenson recently did an interview with him about his new book (co-written with Brian Benson), This is Not For You: An Activist’s Journey of Resistance and Resilience.
Brown serves on the board of Oregon’s police academy under the state’s Department of Public Safety Standards & Training (DPSST) and spoke to The Skanner about his experience training law enforcement:
(After facilitating weekly meetings of Hope and Hard Work in Portland for 14 years), I was asked to sit on the board of DPSST and I jumped to that because every time there was a crisis, training was always a remedial action. I always felt like, what are these men and women learning, that their education doesn’t include some of these things? When I was in the Air Force, I was in missiles, and we did not wait for a missile to blow up before we tried to prevent it.
[…]
I found that when an issue happens the agency, like Portland, decides we’re going to train to correct this problem. That doesn’t mean they go back to the training academy. That’s done in-house.
[…]
About 20 years ago, to get through the academy was only about 10 weeks. So in the last 20 years, they changed it to 16 weeks. I helped write the 16-week program that they were doing five or six years before I got there. So it took that long for them to institute it.
https://www.theskanner.com/news/northwest/31109-portland-activist-richard-brown-writes-the-book-on-getting-involved-without-getting-burned-out
That’s right folks, it took that long to extend the training period to a full two months before letting police loose on the the population with all the power they abuse wield.
The full interview is worth the read. And while you’re at it consider ordering the book and check out an interview Powell’s hosted with co-authors Brown and Benson.
