Eleanor Smith oral history interview, 2016-05-13

ILENE SCHROEDER: I'm Ilene Schroeder. It's the 13th of May, 2016. The interview is in the home of Eleanor Smith, who I'm about to interview for the Georgia State Archive Karuna Project. Hi, Eleanor.

ELEANOR SMITH: Hello, Ilene.

SCHROEDER: How are you?

SMITH: I'm very well, thank you.

SCHROEDER: Well, good. Could you tell me a little bit about yourself, about your history, about your family, about where you come from?

SMITH: Sure. I come from a Midwestern family in central Illinois. I always say I was born among the cornfields, because that, a small town, if you drove out a few miles one way there would be cornfield in each direction you drove out. (laughs) It tended in my area to be cornfields all the way and flat as a pancake. So you'd drive on these two-lane roads and through the cornfields and 00:01:00that's where I was raised, in a family of five kids. I was the fourth and it was a Mennonite family, which is of course, a religion and when I say that quite a few people think Amish or think people who dress really differently. That was not our kind of Mennonites. We looked pretty much like everyone else except the women were supposed to dress a little bit plainly. But it was very tribal. Very ethnic and very extended family-oriented, which I think had a big influence on, on who I became, even though I departed from it in many, many ways.

SCHROEDER: When were you born?

SMITH: Nineteen-forty-three.

SCHROEDER: So that makes you how old now?

SMITH: Seventy-three.

SCHROEDER: Thanks, I can't do the math. (laughs) Seventy-three. And so what do you remember about that time? What might have been kind of formative for you in terms of who you are now?

SMITH: The clan-ness of it, the extended family-ness of it that we just took for granted, their aunts and uncles lived in the same county. One set of grandparents in the same county. The small town-ness of it -- as I look back, the regular-ness of it, in the sense that supper was at 6:00 and you all showed up for it. And also a certain amount of freedom, too, on the streets, you know, running out to play with very little immediate, parent, parental supervision. You know, you could just run through the neighborhood for blocks and blocks and blocks. And even, well, I got polio when I was three, which of course, was huge, 00:03:00a huge event. And I have memories prior to that, quite a few memories prior to getting polio and even at that age, at age three, I was permitted to walk away from home a couple of blocks.

SCHROEDER: Why?

SMITH: To the school, to swing and so on. So then of course, when I got polio in 1946, which was the year that polio just swept the nation, it was a huge, epidemic year -- I recall getting it. I recall being in the isolation ward at a hospital thirty miles away, where your parents couldn't come in and there were these rows and rows of cribs. I don't know how many, of children who were totally isolated, except from the staff who would come in and with the masks and 00:04:00of course, it was extremely terrifying in some way. And at that time then I was totally paralyzed, I could not move my legs, my arms. One night, I hear from my mother many, many years later, that I couldn't swallow and came very near death that night. And then you know, I gradually recovered what I have, which became my arms and -- but I was in the hospital for a full year back then. Didn't see my sibs except through a window once when they came to visit and stood down in the parking lot a few floors down. So that was very formative in some ways, of course, because I came home then a disabled kid and it was, it was 00:05:00just constant -- bad vibes. (laughs) Not from the family so much as it was, you would go out in the street and children never saw other kids in wheelchairs back then. And they would literally turn around and stare while their mothers drug them on ahead and be looking back at you and -- so there was a huge amount of ableism without the word or the concept of ableism. Without any political analysis, without any magazines for the parents.

SCHROEDER: If you could define that.

SMITH: Ableism?

SCHROEDER: Yeah, for the record, how you mean it.

SMITH: I'm glad to define "ableism" for the record because it's an evolving terms and it's an actual dictionary term, it's actually not a word that I made up and it is, "ableism" is the exact equivalent, in terms of 00:06:00meaning of sexism, racism, homophobia. It means systemic, changeable, prejudice, both in terms of how things are set up in systems and in terms of people's internal processes and how that has to be worked out, both internal oppression and external oppression. It really is very interesting to me, in the little group of Karuna-ites who just met, you know, half an hour ago here in the living room, to have one of our, one of my colleagues say that she remembered and it had been a nightmare for her to use -- her exact term, to have this memory of having said something at a party to me years ago, that she considered very 00:07:00ableist and that she suffered under that and there was no vocabulary to even, for her to even tell me that till right now. Which was extremely interesting to me and what I also noticed, sitting there at the table, was having said that, she did not make eye contact with me for many minutes, so I had the privilege of taking the initiative and saying, "Now I'd like to go back to that moment and tell you that I don't even recall it," and then what I noticed -- was that she did make contact frequently for the remainder of that. So I think that would be an example right there of "no fault ableism," is what I would call it and how before that word existed, there was less of a way to talk about the 00:08:00issue itself. It was -- things were seen as a personal problem, a personal thing to work out and with that word came the realization that with a disability the primary issue is not the actual physical or mental situation or cognitive situation -- the heaviest problem is the systemic and the interpersonal that can be undone in some of the same ways that sexism and homophobia and racism and classism are undone, through analysis, through work, both legislative and interpersonal. So I smile when I say all of that because sometimes I feel very 00:09:00hopeful about how to undo, how to undo isms and then at other times I feel like damn, (laughs) you know, having experienced it and still experiencing it.

SCHROEDER: Do you think your getting ill and ending up in a wheelchair and struggling with all of those issues somehow contributed to your political direction, in terms of how you think about yourself? Do you think of yourself as a feminist? Do you think -- how do you self-define?

SMITH: I self-define as a -- ex-Mennonite and current ethnic Mennonite. As definitely a feminist. As a lesbian. As a person with a disability. As a person very drawn to collective, living situations and groups. As a person with a 00:10:00certain type of intelligence.

SCHROEDER: What's that?

SMITH: (clears throat) Well, I believe in intelligences, plural. I was so glad when that term came to me but -- just sort of a way of analyzing. Sometimes a way of seeing the big picture and seeing systems and how they affect things. It sounds strange but I have a good eye for how, how boards should be set up, when something is being built -- where it's going to fall down and where it isn't. Where it needs to be moved a couple of inches. Some people lack that 00:11:00eye and I happen to have it and I think, I have a similar eye when it comes to institutions, groups like the one I live in here, which is a co-housing group, that is extremely hard to manage and I can't say that I'm doing a great job of participating in that, although I do try. But what I'm talking about is that sort of, that sort of intelligence. It's not analytical in the, strictly in the brain kind of think, think, think way. It's a combination of a feel and a think. So I also have, of course, like everybody else, enormous gaps in abilities and intelligences and -- but that one I kind of identify with and also, this is something I got from the hospital, it may be connected -- I have 00:12:00to lie down an enormous amount of the time and I've always been grateful that there were no televisions at that time in the hospital rooms and so I like would just have to gaze out the window at the little piece of sky I could see and developed some, some habits of mine that have probably been useful in terms of being able to be quiet and have a mind that is working but not racing at the same time. And then I think that having a disability and being out in the world also probably developed some things in me that are not so great as well -- and some shells, some distances, some seeing myself as an observer, even though 00:13:00I'm seeming to be a participant. Things that lots of other people experience as well, but I think disability played into that. We were not a family that I would have been able to say that to, so I really had no adults in my life that I could talk to about what I was experiencing interpersonally. We -- my family was very stable. Supper was at 6:00, as I think I mentioned and you always had clothing and you always knew that if you were hurt you would be taken to a hospital. There was no insecurity around things like that. But in terms of emotional sharing, like actually most of the people that I know, there was not a 00:14:00high amount of skill or in the family around that -- there was not what is now called "emotional literacy." And then the other thing I would add about my upbringing is that I was really glad to have all those siblings. We had rough and tumble and -- they continued to treat me as a sibling when I came home.

SCHROEDER: That must have been really important.

SMITH: It was very important. And -- so even now we're good friends. Although I did not have a close relationship with my parents, in the sense that they knew me or I really knew what was going on with them. I do have a close relationship with my siblings, even now.

SCHROEDER: And you feel like they know you?

SMITH: I feel quite known by them. And I feel that they, I know them quite well.

SCHROEDER: Can you talk a little bit about how you move from a Mennonite community out in the cornfields into, eventually you ended up at Karuna. What was that path like? I mean, how did that happen?

SMITH: Okay, that would be from 1960s up to the 1980s, that would have taken me over that twenty-year stretch. Well, my father was, went out to Kansas and took our family from what was remaining at home, my brother and me, from Illinois out to Kansas because he was called out there to be the president of this little Mennonite college. He answered the call to go out and save it from financial ruin essentially, which he succeeded in doing. And I was not crazy about being 00:16:00the president of the college's daughter, although I had my friends and we operated separately from any sense of that. I just wanted to be out from under the roof and of course, I could not drive a car. I, we didn't have hand controls on our car at that time.

SCHROEDER: How old were you about then?

SMITH: When I was nineteen I said, "Okay, I'm not going to be here anymore at home," by that time I had had a year at this Mennonite college and two years at the high school, that was also Mennonite. And so I apparently applied to schools on my own to get out of there. I could not go onto the Mennonite college in Indiana, which I wanted to go onto, in a hypnotized way in that we 00:17:00all went there. We were hypnotized and we had to go there. And so I departed and I found a state school there in Kansas and I got myself in. I looked for a school that had disability access, which is not so common. It was pre-any -- it was before laws that would have made that necessary and I, my parents drove me there. You know, I guess it was sixty miles away or so, to be in a dorm in this state school and they were willing to do that, which I was glad of, because they were not eager about it. Left me at the dorm, one of the -- only of two times I saw my mother cry for thirty seconds upon leaving me. I'm not sure why. And there within two days I found this woman who absolutely knocked me off my feet 00:18:00and it turned out I did the same to her. (laughs) And I was a Christian at that time, an actual, believing Christian and not, not in a bad way. And she was an atheist, which absolutely fascinated me to no end. She smoked cigarettes and cussed, too. Whoo. (laughter)

SCHROEDER: Did you know you were a lesbian prior to that?

SMITH: I had little glimmers. I was really bisexual and I still would be, but I'm not. Mostly I loved women and I had glimmers because I remember being up in the library at this Mennonite college and looking in the stacks. Many, many lesbians of that era will testify to this -- looking in the stacks in the abnormal psychology books, looking in the back for the word "lesbian" or 00:19:00"deviant" and looking that up and I remember looking it up and I remember a feeling of almost sweating and hoping no one would find me. And that was pre-going to that other college. So how much of that would play into looking out beyond, I don't know. But when I met her, I just, we just really, really liked each other and I realized that I was a lesbian. One time, at that time I was strong enough to be in a push wheelchair and I found myself pushing back to the dorm really, really fast. I can remember the moment. I can remember where I was on the sidewalk and I thought, "Why am I pushing so fast?" and then I thought, "I'm pushing fast because I want to see her," and then I thought, "I'm in love with her, I'm queer for her," and then I thought, all this 00:20:00was sort of instantaneous. Supposedly God would not like that. And then I thought, "No, that's too bad, God," (laughter) because this is too, this is too great. She made me feel great and the other way also. And so -- shortly -- I struggled, not so much with being a lesbian, that never bothered me. We did not actually make love, but we had this huge romantic relationship and we made love later, a couple years later. But in the meantime I'm a Christian and she's an atheist and I worry about her going to hell. I literally do. Not because she doesn't believe in God, and I -- I struggle with that and -- and 00:21:00then, this is kind of a long story, so I'll try to make it shorter. When I went home for Easter vacation I went to my Bible teacher, who was not a stupid person at all. None of my teachers at the Mennonite college were stupid, they were actually good teachers. And I told him, "I have this friend, she doesn't believe in God and I worry about her," and he gave me this book called God, Man and the Thinker and I assiduously read this thick book over Easter vacation and then I went back with the book to her, he gave it to me and I said, "I found a book that has all these answers. Here." She said, "I'm not going to read that book. You tell me what it says." (laughs) So I go, "Well, ah -- well, ah --" (laughs) I could not begin to articulate it 00:22:00and so I think we probably both laughed at that point. And then that summer my parents were leading a Mennonite tour to Europe with some twenty or thirty other Mennonites to go to the places where Mennonites had begun and all the things that had happened. They're a peace church, they had to be underground. They were persecuted, they were martyred because they would not go to war and they believed in re-baptism and all these reasons, so it's an interesting deviant history, actually, that actually had an influence me as being able to deviate, although not in the ways that they would have had in mind. (laughs) So anyway, that summer I went on the tour because I was only twenty by that time and I wanted to go. And there were a few young people and a bunch of old people and I 00:23:00thought, no, I'm going to find people who I can talk to again about reasons, shoring up my belief in God and my belief in all of that and there was one girl who I particularly liked and she kind of liked me, too and one day we ended up on the tour bus side-by-side for quite a long -- maybe moving from one country to the next and I told her about my friend who was an atheist and how I was worried about that and how I loved her so much and was worried about her and she looked at me, this young Mennonite woman and said the following line, "What's so hot about Jesus?" (laughs)

SCHROEDER: That surprised you, I imagine.

SMITH: It did. I thought, okay, the one person that I feel really connected to on this whole trip and I have put out this issue to, and I said, "God, you call me because this is over," (laughs) and from that moment on I was agnostic 00:24:00or some version of it.

SCHROEDER: Of?

SMITH: Whatever. From that moment on.

SCHROEDER: And how does that fit with the other ways you tend to look at the world? Hi, cat. Do you see that as being something that's central to the way you view the world, view yourself in the world and the direction it took you?

SMITH: To being -- having decided I didn't believe in God, you mean?

SCHROEDER: Moving into agnosticism. Which to me sounds more like not knowing.

SMITH: Well -- that was an evolution as well and has been an evolution and I, I 00:25:00don't see it -- I would call myself an atheist rather than agnostic. And I would say that I go by likelihoods, not by proofs. And that seems extremely unlikely to me, that there's a supreme being that knows who we are and so on. Well, it just seems true to me, that's all, true. And that's what I try to go for without always succeeding by a long shot. So that's what I would say about that and it's also of course, been a minority view, very much a minority with atheists in the closet, having to be in the closet and now coming out more. So the atheist magazines that I get, well, there's only one, reminds me of the 00:26:00early lesbian magazines. They were kind of hokey. It's kind of hokey in a way and kind of repetitive and kind of not the best writing and also groundbreaking in that very same interesting way as those very early lesbian magazines.

SCHROEDER: Well, I'm thinking about you being somebody who grew up in a community that was very structured, very safe, but coming into your own as you went along into being somebody who started taking risks and living a little bit more on the edge, but still really needing and wanting community. Is that sort of accurate?

SMITH: That's very accurate. Because -- along that journey I always felt communitarian actually. Kind of a conscious way, like when I was fourteen and fifteen, thinking about that and being interested in that and then I had made the opportunity to go down to South Georgia to a Christian communal living 00:27:00situation where I was not a Christian but I read a book about it, where I saw it was not authoritarian, which I would not gravitate toward, but was extremely communal. It's still existing down in South Georgia, called Koinonia. It began in 1942 as a, an anti-racist endeavor. And I went down there and lived there as a long-term volunteer for a year and a half. And by that time that first lover, Lynn and I still knew each other and still had, had various, many deep connections, but they were across state lines and at some point in there she just withdrew from it, from the relationship. For complicated reasons. And then 00:28:00I realized I'm a lesbian whether I know her or not and that was a step in and of itself. Without a partner I'm still a lesbian.

SCHROEDER: Yeah, it wasn't just that you were in love with her, therefore, it was that you were.

SMITH: Exactly. Which was quite a transition that I was making back there at about age twenty-nine and thirty. Well, all kinds of radical magazines were coming into Koinonia at that time. Because Koinonia was edgy in a really neat way and of course, very communal. And so one of the things that came was The Great Speckled Bird, which was an early radical Atlanta magazine, with all kinds of interesting articles that was subscribed to down there at Koinonia and in it was this amazing article with photo, if I remember right, of the Red Dyke 00:29:00Theater. (laughter) The Red Dyke Theater, which was a bunch of very left-leaning lesbians who had put on plays and -- radical plays and I went, wow, this is going on? How great is that? And eventually that led me to Atlanta because you're speaking of institutions and communal-ness. Well, there was the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance and I wrote to them and they were very welcoming, a wonderful handwritten letter from an activist still involved in the larger community, Lorraine Fontana, wrote me a great letter, welcoming me if I wanted to come and when I came to town I got involved with the Atlanta Feminist Alliance.

SCHROEDER: Do you remember about what year that was?

SMITH: That I came to town? About 1973. And the other magazine that came in, 00:30:00among the many that I read was this magazine called R.T., which I don't know what it stood for exactly, Radical Therapy? But it was about radical therapy and the philosophy behind it and taking hands, taking therapy and mental health out of the hands of the psychiatrists, putting it to the people in a very political way, which I loved and that's where I ended up training, just before I came to, to Karuna.

SCHROEDER: How did -- what kind of training did you do?

SMITH: I went up there at, in about 1980 and was there for eighteen months studying radical, what was then called "radical psychiatry."

SCHROEDER: And where was there?

SMITH: San Francisco.

SCHROEDER: San Francisco.

SMITH: Right. And that training was very hands-on. You observed groups of -- 00:31:00they ran almost all entirely group therapy, very little individual. Individual would only be short-term, prior to going into a group. So I observed groups, I was in a group twice a week as a client and then we had a training every Friday that we went to and sometimes weekend conventions, little radical psychiatry conferences where there would be 100, 150 people.

SCHROEDER: Had you been interested in being a therapist yourself, prior to that? I mean, how did you get into thinking, gee, I think I want to do therapy, I want to be a therapist or whatever you would actually call it?

SMITH: Well, partly it was reading and reading those magazines and reading R.D. Laing and reading other folks like that and, and then just after Koinonia, which would have been about 1974, some visitors that we had down at the farm, there were constant visitors from all over the map, both politically, religiously, it was a wild, wild place to be and also very structured and disciplined. In the best sense of the word. So some people who were doing political therapy in North Carolina, in Chapel Hill, had an institute that was a T.A. Gestalt Institute and they came down for a weekend to talk to us and meet with us and -- because they were very anti-racist and doing political work at the same time they were doing 00:33:00shrink work. And I was interested in them and made contact with them and was able to go to an all-summer institute that they put on, which was primarily for therapists and of course, I was not a therapist. They only had two people who were not therapists. Myself and an Indian from -- a native, a Native American from Idaho, I think. We were the red meat. (laughter) But the therapists were also engaging in being therapized. They were being trained and it was very intense, every day, every day. T.A. Gestalt therapy, very effective and -- influential and it made me realize that I would like to do that and so that's 00:34:00one of the things that led me to seek further training and then I thought of those people who I'd read about, back at the farm and I contacted them and went out there and got training.

SCHROEDER: How did you end up back here?

SMITH: I always planned to be back. My other forays I kind of considered extended field trips. Well, I should say that I came to Atlanta for the first time leaving the farm. That would have been about 19-- about 1974 and the reason I chose Atlanta, coming back from that radical psychic-- or that T.A. Gestalt school in Durham, or rather Chapel Hill, I chose Atlanta because it was near the farm, like four hours away and I still had connections, mostly because I wanted to become a real lesbian in a real lesbian community, and also because of the 00:35:00weather. Because I'd been raised in the Midwest and gone to school in the Midwest and I knew snow and I knew snow and wheelchairs and what happens if you are on your own and I absolutely needed to be in a place where I was not going to be dealing with snow and ice as living by myself in wheelchair. So for those reasons I ended up in Atlanta and I built a community sort of for myself and I felt at home. And so when I went out to do my therapy training in 1980, I'd already lived in Atlanta a good number of years, seven or so, working in food stamps and a couple of other places. And getting to know lesbians and working politically there in ALFA, marching in the gay pride parades and doing feminist 00:36:00things and hanging out almost entirely with women. What was the question again?

SCHROEDER: I don't remember. (laughter)

SMITH: You asked, oh, if -- how I got back to Atlanta after San Francisco.

SCHROEDER: Right.

SMITH: Well, I had always planned to come back to Atlanta. I considered my San Francisco foray an extended field trip and I enjoyed being there. I loved the training. I loved the concept, I loved the type of therapy. I liked being in San Francisco. And then Oakland, I moved to Oakland, but still trained in San Francisco. And I also, when I wanted to come back to Atlanta, that was my plan and I also felt like politically, you know, San Francisco/Oakland was highly, 00:37:00highly, highly political, to the extent in the circles that I traveled in, not the therapy circles, some of the other ones, I mean, they sliced the politics mighty, mighty thin. Some other groups, you know, you know, to make the joke that goes on sometimes where they say "I need to find a Marxist vegetarian bisexual group that has this," you know, by that, that's what I mean by slicing it pretty thin. Whereas I considered Atlanta more of a raw frontier that I wanted to be part of, in terms of political action. If that makes sense.

SCHROEDER: It does and if you were going to be self-defining about that moment for yourself, how would you slice your politics into those? How would you have described your state -- you place?

SMITH: Okay, well -- feminist, still feminist and still lesbian and getting somewhat more class-conscious. And -- and then my disability awareness improved in, in San Francisco. Not through radical psychiatry. We were not so great on that actually. But through two, there were groups out there that were actually disabled lesbian groups. Where are you going to find that? San Francisco, Oakland. And I was a member of a disabled lesbian group that was very, very, very helpful to me -- to be able to sit down and really, really talk about disability, oppression disability experience, in a very emotional way. There was 00:39:00a leader. It wasn't just a chat group. It was actual therapy, really. And helping me think through the whole scene, the whole -- my whole history of disability, my present of disability, how huge that was and put that gradually into a political framework where the personal experiences could flow with at least some, some kind of analysis that helps.

SCHROEDER: And so you came back here and then how did you end up at Karuna?

SMITH: Well, that was really -- ending up at Karuna was really easy because I had two friends who worked at Karuna, Sharon Sanders and Diane Dixon and I was in communication with them and I don't know who said it first -- I don't 00:40:00know if I said I'd like to work at Karuna or they wrote, would you like to work at Karuna? I honestly don't know. But that's how that came about and I haven't mentioned here in this interview that I had been an early client at Karuna -- that when I first came to Atlanta from North Carolina I was really again taking a plunge where I knew no one -- I was anxious, incredibly anxious and nervous. I had no job. I was just -- I threw myself into a sea, an ocean and I was trying to swim and I was feeling very anxious and depressed, but also looking for work. And I opened a Creative Loafing and there was an article about 00:41:00Karuna, a new organization that did therapy for women and it either it said or implied lesbian friendly, which back then would have been very earthshaking and I thought, oh, that's it and I called them up and got into a group that was run by Doris and Susan and then before too long I was an individual client of Susan and that was way back in about 1974 and '5, so I'd already been a client of Karuna for at least a year back then and then, then years past where I wasn't and then I came as a counselor seamlessly, because I had more or less been invited to Karuna.

SCHROEDER: Were Susan or Doris still there? Had they already left?

SMITH: Susan had left and they had both left. Neither of them were in the 00:42:00collective. Doris was sort of mentoring new Karunites with a few articles that she gave us to read, but they were not in the collective anymore.

SCHROEDER: When you say "collective" maybe it would be helpful to define that and talk about what that is or was, was back then.

SMITH: It was a -- Karuna was certainly a collective in almost every sense of the word in that there were no officers, certainly there was no president. It was, the decisions were made by consensus. It was a large group of women, I think twelve at that time. Self-run. We took responsibility for calling the plumber, paying the rent, by taking turns doing those things. Some women who were better at finances run the finance, ran the finances, in terms of keeping the books. But I also mean by "collective" that we shared the money. We 00:43:00offered therapy on a sliding scale so that our philosophy was that we wanted to be available to just whoever needed it and so we had many women who could not afford much and other women could afford, you know, a fairly high fee. But I think it was on the low side in general and then we pooled that money and were paid according to how many hours we put in. But the amount of money that we got per hour was totally collective. It was what was put into the pot by everybody. So both financially and governmentally, it was a collective.

SCHROEDER: What philosophy do you think for you underlied that? What was it that was so appealing to you about working in that kind of environment?

SMITH: Well, one of the things was in fact what we were just talking about, how it was not hierarchical. It was self-run. There was room for a lot of putting in of your talents to help run it. And then where your weaknesses were, someone else would have that talent, which has always thrilled me as a concept. And as a working concept. In the disability rights movement, in every movement, I just gravitate toward peer groups that work together to make something happen and that's, that's what that was. Additionally, of course, one of the few places that was not just accepting of lesbians but nurturing of lesbians, with a lot of therapists who were lesbians and not all were, by any means. But a lot of, all 00:45:00were welcoming of lesbians and at that time out in the larger world of therapy you would probably run into some people who absolutely were a little bit judgmental against it and then the most you could hope for was somebody who would feel tolerant of it. Whereas at Karuna there would be an understanding that there would be a need to support that and so I really was glad to be part of that. That was one of the things that drew me, besides the collectiveness of it.

SCHROEDER: Do you think it was sort of like a, having a family again that would actually know you?

SMITH: Yes. I think that's, that's well said. In every way. And many of the things I've gotten into have been exactly what you would, what you just said -- having family that actually knows you. Obviously working that out in practice 00:46:00has many bumps, many, hit many rocks and many flat tires, but the idea behind it is exactly, exactly on target.

SCHROEDER: And do you think that that's sort of underlies a lot of the things you identify as, needing a community that you will feel known and also know others in? Your feminist community. I mean, you can't really separate all these different communities, they overlap so much but in all of them, are they a way of being connected and contributing to people being known as well as being known yourself?

SMITH: Absolutely. All of them. And I think that the hardest part, the part that is hardest to integrate is the disability aspect, because -- for most people 00:47:00have not yet worked on it, have not yet looked inside for their own ableism, like their what, my what? Who am I scared of sitting by and what am I afraid of and what reasons do I have for being afraid of that? And how can that change? And how does this happen systemically? So in terms of being a person with a disability, that is the part that feels the least integrated except in my disability groups. I've been very active in some disability rights groups for -- I've done, maybe my most radical work, if you're going to think of it radical in terms of civil disobedience and jail and all of that, has been in the disability rights forum.

SCHROEDER: Have you gone to jail?

SMITH: Mm-hmm.

SCHROEDER: What for?

SMITH: I've gone to jail for disability rights issues. I have been arrested 00:48:00about thirteen times and gone up for arrest twenty or thirty times. The issues that the Disability Rights Movement took on that I involved myself in were first public transportation, back in -- about 1984. This is -- back to San Francisco, because that's where the Disability Rights Movement was having their action, up against the APTA, the American Public Transit Association. We were working for a lift on every new bus. That was the mantra. Very, very focused. Because at that time people with mobility impairments could not get on the bus. You wouldn't dream of getting on the bus, except that a few municipalities who 00:49:00had, that had been on the forefront of that, but in general nationally, no. And it -- we were saying, "You can't go back and do all the old buses, that's not practical. But when you buy a new bus it has to have a lift," and we had foes, naturally of course, and we would follow the American Public Transit Authority, who were against what we wanted, from city to city as they had their national conventions and impede their national conventions by blocking their transit and blocking the doors to their galas and getting in the newspaper and all the things that civil rights movements do when no one is paying attention. 00:50:00And I was also working legislatively at the same time, which is one reason why I totally respected and still respect that group called ADAPT, which then was American Public -- AP, APT, American Public Advocacy for Disability Transportation, something like that.

SCHROEDER: That's a mouthful.

SMITH: Yes. And we succeeded. Some 500 people maybe, working across the country -- in the sense that we, we made it become part of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which it would not of, without the action of those people. So -- and then when that was accomplished, ADAPT changed its focus to assistance in the home, run by the person with a disability, funded by the government to shift some of the money that goes to keep you in a nursing home, to provide services 00:51:00at home, which most people want, want the option of remaining at home. And not new money, but not a new tax and also not what they call "nursing home on wheels," which is still very corporate, but it's in your house but it's still run by a corporation with investors, that with the executive pays a lot of money, the worker gets almo-- very little money and the executives get a lot of money. But rather, the alternative to that is "money follows the person," is one way it's called, where you actually receive some money to live at home and hire your attendants.

SCHROEDER: And you can directly hire them.

SMITH: Right. And some of that has begun to happen, partly, mostly because of 00:52:00pressure from that group. But it's been more difficult to make progress on that because it actually takes money from industry that loves the money, whereas the transit did not. And then I'll just mention my own political work that I took on as an individual, which is coming home from that first action where I had my head turned around from actually seeing street action and badly behaving disabled people disrupting things for a very focused purpose. Then I came home and was working with a tiny disability group here in Atlanta and had my almost epiphany, a zero-step entrance on every new house. Why are houses built the way they are? They don't have to be. You know, you can't go back and put a ramp on every old house. And widen every old bathroom door. That's what happens 00:53:00when somebody gets disabled. But they can't afford it, so they end up in a nursing home or moving. Speaking shorthand here. But my mantra became, every new house with basic access, and I started an organization for that, well after I left Karuna and worked on that for thirty years, till I retired.

SCHROEDER: While you were at Karuna did you find yourself struggling as a group around disability issues and ableism and was ever that ever, I mean it's such a strong feminist group with a, a mission to be collective and connected and open and talking and healing things. Did that ever come up as a conversation for you there?

SMITH: It did not come up as a conversation, which speaks to the depth of ableism. On the other hand I was hired and people accommodated what I needed in a person-to-person way and I think that is major. At the same time we didn't have the vocabulary for that. I didn't have the vocabulary for it. And still the silence around it is very, very high. So I do remember one person remarking to me, one of the more forthright people said to me when I was pretty new, "Do you think that the clients are freaked out by your disability?" Your clients. She didn't use that word, but there was some concept similar to that. Disturbed, distressed.

SCHROEDER: Uncomfortable.

SMITH: Uncomfortable. And I said, "No, I don't think so," because when clients come in they are interested in, are you going to help me? I'm not saying they didn't notice the wheelchair. I'm saying they decide in twenty minutes whether you're going to be assist-- helping them or not the person who can help them. They are focused on themselves and they're focused on how focused you are on them. (laughs) And so that's one of the situations where I felt like it was a non-issue. That was my experience and interestingly, I can't remember that I ever had a client with a disability. Because I wasn't talking about myself, we were talking about them, I do remember one time when I was able to bring my disability into play in a way that I think was helpful to 00:56:00the person because this was a person who needed, really needed medication and we were not medicating or sending people for medication much, which I'm actually glad of. Actually think was a strength. Maybe we didn't enough, but I don't remember that we very often sent people to psychiatrists for medication, but she really needed medication and she was not wanting it and I said, "You know, I can't walk so I use this wheelchair. Without this wheelchair I would not be moving around and I see medication for you as a very, very similar thing, so I get to move," you know, how can you say no to this tool? I didn't put it quite that way, but the analogy really went, I think for her, away from "this 00:57:00bad thing that makes me a crazy person if I take it" into the realm of a tool and that's the only time I remember bringing up my disability. There were maybe a few other times but in answer to my colleague's question, I think I answered pretty accurately that in that particular setting it just didn't matter.

SCHROEDER: How do you think being at Karuna shaped where you went next? Whatever it was you did next. I mean, how long did you stay there and what did you get from being there?

SMITH: I was at Karuna for I think four years and I would say, to be perfectly honest, that -- being a therapist itself was not a great fit for me -- that I 00:58:00did all right at it, that I did okay at it. I had long-term clients who I think were helped or they wouldn't have been long-term. I know they were. But I still didn't feel really confident and completely at home in that role.

SCHROEDER: Do you know why? I mean, what wasn't quite right for you?

SMITH: I don't know exactly. It didn't feel bad to me, but it didn't feel right, right, right. Sometimes it did, once in a while. Part of the reason for that was that I was thousands of miles away from the people who trained me and the kind of therapy I was doing was, without going into a lot of detail, quite unique, what I was trying to do. It seemed like other therapy, but it was 00:59:00different in some important ways. And I didn't have the people right there who I could say, "Look, this happened. What do I do?" I would call them sometimes. I think had I had that I would have felt more at home, probably, in being a therapist. So -- just to be, just to reiterate, I don't think I'm a therapist at heart.

SCHROEDER: What are you at heart?

SMITH: At heart? (laughs) Well, I'm all those things we've been talking about. And certainly I still like to sit down and really listen to people. I'm not saying I came away with no -- added elements to my personality, because of 01:00:00course, I did -- and no added skills, because of course, I had got some. And no added relationships because I had some very meaningful relationships with clients that mattered to me a lot and with my colleagues as well.

SCHROEDER: What would you say you [gave to them?], even after you left perhaps there's an echo of, if anything?

SMITH: I think I gave a lot of enthusiasm. I think I gave -- even by being there as a disabled person, I think I gave some consciousness about that, that even though we didn't talk about it and in fact I feel quite sure of that -- and in 01:01:00fact there were a few conversations, one with someone who had a disabled sibling. And I believe people consulted with me occasionally when disability came up, as they were therapists. The positive feeling toward the sliding scale that I felt and expressed, the positive feeling toward being a therapist is only slightly related to credentialing and articulating that at a time when that subject was coming up, the subject of requiring a state authorization for continuing to work as a therapist -- my belief that there's only a slight 01:02:00relationship there and that in fact credentialing should happen in a very, very different way, if at all. And I think others would have to say maybe what they might have felt like contributed.

SCHROEDER: If you have your own way of looking at the world in a way, if the pieces worked together in the world and what you like and don't like about how pieces of the world work together and it sounds like a lot of the isms you talk about to some extent are shaped, or you're shaped in your world view by those isms and your reaction to them -- would that be at all accurate?

SMITH: I'm not quite sure exactly how to answer that. Could you -- ?

SCHROEDER: Well, I'm not real sure what I'm asking, I'm not sure 01:03:00(laughter) I could ask any better. I think I'm trying to figure out a way to talk about, a little more about the basic, underlying philosophy of Karuna and how it fits with you and your life philosophy, you know, and political, I mean politics is personal, so here are my thoughts --

SMITH: Yes, I would say the match of my life values, both then and now, were almost a perfect fit there. Because of the collectivity, because of the commitment to helping as many people as possible, the commitment to listening to each other, even when we disagreed, and working it out. The commitment to always being, attempting to be, to learn from people in the group who were saying, "No, you're not paying attention to the fact that I'm African American and 01:04:00I experience things in these ways," and people saying, "Well, you're probably right, tell me more," the whole thing about the importance of addressing the injustices of the world and that the way that is done both intellectually and emotionally and that one without the other is not as helpful as the two together. I think Karuna attempted to live out and did live out to a quite high extent the -- those issues, so the collectivity, the attempt to help as many people as possible and the attention to injustices and inequalities and attempting to redress them -- and the fun, the fun of laughing together and 01:05:00getting through tough things and then, then laughing -- it was a good time.

SCHROEDER: Yeah. And then you left after four years-ish.

SMITH: Yeah.

SCHROEDER: Why did you leave?

SMITH: Well, I left partly because my post-polio was kicking my rear end and did not have a name. At that time I was, I began to be very, very exhausted. When I came into Karuna I didn't have any, particularly energy issues. I had pretty high physical energy. I always rested more than other people, always from the beginning, a little more, even when I was a seven-year-old and an eight-year-old. My siblings would say that I, I went to bed earlier than they did more willingly. Because I had a lot to do during the day and so I had to rest. But I ran around like crazy when I wasn't and also looked out the window 01:06:00a lot and I, I became very tired. I didn't know why I was so tired and the doctors didn't know why. That combination and the combination that I was not earning enough money, several people who talk about their Karuna experience like the idea of the sliding scale but also realize that as you become more and more -- your life becomes more and more involved and you become older, you need more money somehow. And you don't have the energy to work as many hours to draw in -- your life gets more complicated -- well, all of that happened and I was not earning enough money, like a lot of my Karuna peers. So I was going out and working part time at DeKalb Community College, which is now Perimeter, teaching English as a Second Language and so I was doing both things and I remember at 01:07:00Karuna meetings, even one day just sobbing and sobbing, I was so exhausted, I could hardly be there. I remember [Jessie's?] little boy, Sam. He would come to meetings sometimes and he was a little, tiny toddler, less than two and it was so cute because I was crying, I just was crying, I was so tired. We were at one of our meetings. I looked up and he was standing in front of me, wearing his diaper, looking at me so sympathetically, it was so sweet.

SCHROEDER: (laughs) You were tired.

SMITH: I was tired and he was noticing I was crying and he came to look at me in a very caring look -- so it was the combination of not enough money and being 01:08:00really, really tired, that caused me to have to move to where I knew how many hours I would have, which would be out at the community college, and I really liked English as a Second Language. I loved teaching that.

SCHROEDER: How long did you do that?

SMITH: I did that for nine years.

SCHROEDER: Wow. I can see -- given what you've said about yourself and the things that move you, I can see how helping people who have not got the greatest facility with English would be really meaningful on some level -- helping them find a better way to move through this universe, this country that they find themselves in, where their English isn't so good. It's hard to find your way through, I mean, you run into other isms when you're in that condition.

SMITH: That is really true.

SCHROEDER: Yeah, so, I can see it sort of sounds like it's part of a piece, I mean, it fits in with how you seem to be as a person.

SMITH: I hadn't thought about that but I think you're right. About that. And 01:09:00another thing that would be like Karuna, they come voluntarily. They come because, not because you're wanting to push something on them that they don't particularly want, but rather because they're seeking something and they really want someone who could help them figure it out and I'm here to help you.

SCHROEDER: (laughs) Did you do any other work while you were doing that, or was that all you did for the next nine years? I mean in terms of work and employment.

SMITH: In terms of work, the ESL aspect coincided and overlapped with my disability rights work. So that I was doing the disability rights work in a very excited manner with no pay and all volunteer and then I morphed that, eventually I could not do the ESL because of I couldn't get up in the morning. The 01:10:00post-polio got more and more intense and then I had started an actual organization with the housing mantra called Concrete Change and I'd started that organization and I was able to direct that and it became a national endeavor with some successes and many efforts that did not pan out but perhaps planted seeds and so I became, made that an actual nonprofit organization with a board and again, my own boss, but collective, collect, operating collectively. And so those two overlapped and then I stopped doing the ESL, for exhaustion reasons, rested up, and at the same time did some of the disability work and 01:11:00then actually became the director of that, so that's how that happened.

SCHROEDER: What years were those approximately? I'm just trying to keep (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) of the timeline.

SMITH: The years would have been my, my going out to San Francisco for the first disability rights action. I was still employed by DeKalb Community College. I actually took a vacation day to go out there, while being frowned at by my supervisor. And -- and then -- I retired from there, I think it was about 1990. So I've been retired from, actually technically retired from that kind of work for quite a long time and then I retired really for sure three years ago.

SCHROEDER: Meaning, what's for sure? I mean you stopped doing what?

SMITH: (laughs) I stopped doing what? That's a very good question. Well you know, I was completely caught up in the disability rights stuff and this would (inaudible) and I would read in the paper, I think, no, that cannot be. I must gather a group to do something about that and -- so I stopped. I turned back the money that I was receiving, which was not a lot, but I wrote to the funder and said, "I don't want to do it anymore. I'm retiring. The last two years of the money you can keep," so that's pretty official retirement. I took Concrete Change off the answer phone, as an answer and now I do a little bit of that. The other issue I'm very involved with disability rights, Off the Beaten Path, is that I, I and a group of other people are very, very concerned and 01:13:00against doctor-assisted suicide. We certainly are not against stopping medical treatment, if someone chooses to do that. But we see doctor-assisted suicide as a leap, not just a slippery slope, a leap into the dark side, the worst side, and in that way we, although politically liberal, almost all of us, have the unusual and sometimes very distressing situation of being not joined by our liberal friends (clears throat) who see it as a choice issue similar to abortion. So that's kind of tough, but I really believe it's probably the most important disability rights issue currently going on.

SCHROEDER: And what is it that shapes your belief about that? Do you know? I 01:14:00mean, what's the idea behind it? Why is it so risky?

SMITH: Well, it's a little bit difficult to say in a very short time, I'm a little bit running out of energy here, but I will say that I still want to continue and try to, try to answer that as best I can. And it will be very inadequate. I have maybe a two-page thing that would answer it much, much better. I just want to begin by saying there are lots of disabled people who are lawyers, who are brilliant, who are left wing, who have started, are deeply, deeply committed to fighting doctor-assisted suicide. It's not just a handful of kind of wacky people, which is, I sometimes get from people as an assumption. 01:15:00One of the things we would say is that we want equal access to suicide prevention as non-disabled people receive. But that's quite the opposite when you are not only not receiving that, but are receiving an actual pill from a doctor that is a lethal pill and you become part of a group that is singled out for suicide when other people are being talked off the ledge by the police force -- if that makes any sense. And another piece of it that I would -- that's a huge piece right there -- another piece of it would be that we live in a society where, it's so driven by the dollar and what is less expensive, in terms of treating low-income people with a major medical issue, what is the least expensive than them not being around anymore? There is that, which is a huge 01:16:00kind of goose-bump inducing concept and then the whole, a whole other side of it is, there are alternatives on the other side that this group is not saying -- you should suffer till the very last screaming moment. That's not it. It's -- you should seek palliative care and it should be given. You shouldn't have to die screaming in pain. But if you choose to end your life, you end your life. When you call in the medical establishment to end your life, you have moved, you have endangered -- it may look for you as a well-supported, fairly well-to-do person, but you have endangered a whole set of other people who are not you, who 01:17:00are the most quiet, the poorest, you have made it safe to end their lives, if I've made any sense by saying that. So obviously I have a lot of, of feeling around that and have done some actions around it and even some civil disobedience around it, with the group Not Dead Yet. But I'm also trying at this stage in my life to de-stress, finally, at last. Both in the governments here at the community, which can get kind of wacky -- it's a co-housing community and very large, much larger than most co-housing communities, with kind of wacky things going on from time to time along with the beautiful ones. 01:18:00And so -- I resigned from that one week ago, by getting off of a certain committee and I really am at the point where I want to -- daydream.

SCHROEDER: Look out the window?

SMITH: Look out the window. Not stress about suicide pills or I mean murder pills very much and only engage in things at the moment that it feels right to. From a non-stress standpoint. And go to more concerts and go to more movies. I already do some of that.

SCHROEDER: Yeah. I've seen you at many movies.

SMITH: (laughs) I love movies. (laughter) And I love concerts and I love singing with little groups and there are a couple of, a couple of, a friendship that, some that fell by the wayside, I need to pick up and those sorts of things that 01:19:00I would like to spend some time.

SCHROEDER: Well I heard you say that you are running out of energy, in this interview, so I want to really respect that. And at the same time I wish we could keep talking. So -- and I hope on some level you sort of feel that, too. But the thing that strikes me is that you've spent a lot of your life fighting really hard for things that are really meaningful and maybe now is -- a little bit of what I'm hearing you say is now is the time maybe to just really fertilize your life a little more personally.

SMITH: You are so right. Yeah. So yes, I've been a little bit of a warrior a lot of the time and -- some of that is fun and a lot of it is fun. A lot of it 01:20:00is useful and then a lot of it is something now that I need to stop doing, or do much, much less of.

SCHROEDER: Do you have people you're handing the torch over to, so to speak?

SMITH: In which part?

SCHROEDER: Well, any part. Maybe the Concrete Changes thing (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) --

SMITH: Yeah, yeah. Well, yes, some people are working to keep the website alive for me, which has a lot of information and that's a -- that is an issue that will inevitably prevail. It will just happen. Because not doing it becomes so glaringly obvious every time you gather money to put a ramp on or send you mother to a nursing home five years before she wanted to.

SCHROEDER: Even without knowing that you have that particular website or that that was one of the things you were working on, I have to give you and the people like you who have talked about that issue in one way or another, some credit for actually affecting a change I did. I added on a new bathroom in my 01:21:00house and because I was looking at a knee replacement I said, "We're putting in a roll-in shower, because you never know what the future will bring."

SMITH: There you go.

SCHROEDER: And so there was one lip that I made sure was not going to be a barrier -- (laughter) would just be able to move in and I thought, you know, I may be able-bodied and so very close to the end of my life, I don't know, but you just don't know.

SMITH: That's right.

SCHROEDER: And so I think people like you give the consciousness -- you've made an impact on consciousness around you and that's all I think any of us can hope for, right?

SMITH: Thank you and yes. Yeah.

SCHROEDER: No, thank you. Maybe this is now when we should stop because you're tired. Unless there's something you want to add.

SMITH: No, I can't think of anything I particularly want to add. I mean you know, our lives are such big topics and Karuna in itself is a big topic and so we're never really done. I appreciate the attention that you paid and the 01:22:00things you pulled out. It was fun. It was meaningful. Thank you.