Collected Item: “Vanessa Green Oral History, 2022/08/30”
Title
Vanessa Green
Who conducted the interview? List all names, separated by comma.
Kit Heintzman
Who was interviewed? List all names, separated by commas.
Vanessa Green
Email Address(es) for all interviewers. Separated by comma.
kheintzman@gmail.com
Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your oral history. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?
#abuse, #activist, #antivaxers, #Black, #billionaires, #booster, #California, #cats, #COVID+, #crisis, #depression, #DV, #hate, #flying, #food, #hugs, #masking, #medicalracism, #medicine, #motherhood, #organizer, #pet, #police, #policy, #race, #racism, #SanDiego, #selflove, #spirituality, #therapy, #trauma, #Trump, #urgency, #vaccination, #voting, #weight
What is the format of your recording?
Video
In what ZIP code is the primary residence of the interviewee? (enter 5-digit ZIP code; for example, 00544 or 94305)? In what city/town/village does the interviewee live? In what country does the interviewee live? All comma-separated.
San Diego, California
What is the gender of the interviewee? Be sure to allow interviewees to self-identify their gender in the pre-interview or interview. *Do not assign a gender identity to interviewees.*
She Her They
What is the age of the interviewee?
55 to 64
How does the interviewee describe their race or ethnicity? Be sure to allow interviewees to self-identify their race/ethnicity in the pre-interview or interview. *Do not assign a racial or ethnic identity to interviewees.*
Black
Describe the oral history.
Some of the things we discussed include:
Coming from a family of community organizers.
Surviving domestic violence; different trauma-responses in one family.
Being a mother of two queer children.
Starting the first chapter BLM Hudson Valley, after the death of Michael Brown.
Founding Call BlackLine in 2016, a crisis line from a Black femme lens.
Newly learning selfcare from younger Black femmes.
First experience being called the n-word as a child.
Noticing when your child’s dreams get deferred.
The Trump presidency’s emboldening racism; Joe Biden’s history of supporting incarceration and criminalization.
Living in a predominantly Latin/a neighborhood.
Being more vulnerable to COVID death/complications.
Medical racism and Black people have preexisting conditions in the first place.
Catching COVID recently: body aches, sore throat; worries about anti-viral rebounds.
Inequitable vaccine distribution at a global scale; vaccine wastage in the USA.
Keeping the peace in the household while different family members had different safety expectations.
Poor access to mental healthcare during the pandemic.
Being newly exposed to anti-science/anti-vaccine narratives during the pandemic; addressing misinformation with crisis callers; myth busting.
Call BlackLine became overwhelmed during the pandemic; demand exceeded capacity.
As crisis call volume grew, so did the volume of hate calls; listener burn out.
High volume of racist harassment and hate calls to the crisis line; looking for technological solutions to phone line abuse; contacting the family members of people committing hate calls.
Supporting the volunteer listeners who are taking these calls.
Crisis line listeners offering multilingual services: English, Spanish, Haitian Creole.
Putting together an app for Call BlackLine.
Living with a cat, Princess Marguerite.
Doing pandemic mutual aid work in the community with grocery deliveries; food apartheid.
Medical racism and the denial of Black pain, personal experiences of chronic and undiagnosed pain; fatphobia in medicine.
Medical advocates.
The importance of funding services in under-resourced communities.
Schools that allow guns but have no social workers.
Billionaires, poverty, and classism; environmental racism.
Policy-focused activism not reflecting the urgency of crises; that the pandemic proved that change could happen as a response to urgency, eg. homeless people getting hotel rooms.
Other cultural references: Serana Williams, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, John Crawford III, Black Women Deserve (https://www.ffbww.org/blackwomendeserve), The Black Panther’s Free Medical Clinics, The Child Tax Credit, YouTube, Twitter, UberEats, Elon Musk, Monsanto
See also:
https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/03/love-care-people-interview-vanessa-green-call-blackline-organizing/
https://www.callblackline.com/
https://www.chronogram.com/hudsonvalley/call-blackline/Content?oid=12245117
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxIh8AHX03U
https://sdpride.org/friend-of-pride-vanessa-green/
Coming from a family of community organizers.
Surviving domestic violence; different trauma-responses in one family.
Being a mother of two queer children.
Starting the first chapter BLM Hudson Valley, after the death of Michael Brown.
Founding Call BlackLine in 2016, a crisis line from a Black femme lens.
Newly learning selfcare from younger Black femmes.
First experience being called the n-word as a child.
Noticing when your child’s dreams get deferred.
The Trump presidency’s emboldening racism; Joe Biden’s history of supporting incarceration and criminalization.
Living in a predominantly Latin/a neighborhood.
Being more vulnerable to COVID death/complications.
Medical racism and Black people have preexisting conditions in the first place.
Catching COVID recently: body aches, sore throat; worries about anti-viral rebounds.
Inequitable vaccine distribution at a global scale; vaccine wastage in the USA.
Keeping the peace in the household while different family members had different safety expectations.
Poor access to mental healthcare during the pandemic.
Being newly exposed to anti-science/anti-vaccine narratives during the pandemic; addressing misinformation with crisis callers; myth busting.
Call BlackLine became overwhelmed during the pandemic; demand exceeded capacity.
As crisis call volume grew, so did the volume of hate calls; listener burn out.
High volume of racist harassment and hate calls to the crisis line; looking for technological solutions to phone line abuse; contacting the family members of people committing hate calls.
Supporting the volunteer listeners who are taking these calls.
Crisis line listeners offering multilingual services: English, Spanish, Haitian Creole.
Putting together an app for Call BlackLine.
Living with a cat, Princess Marguerite.
Doing pandemic mutual aid work in the community with grocery deliveries; food apartheid.
Medical racism and the denial of Black pain, personal experiences of chronic and undiagnosed pain; fatphobia in medicine.
Medical advocates.
The importance of funding services in under-resourced communities.
Schools that allow guns but have no social workers.
Billionaires, poverty, and classism; environmental racism.
Policy-focused activism not reflecting the urgency of crises; that the pandemic proved that change could happen as a response to urgency, eg. homeless people getting hotel rooms.
Other cultural references: Serana Williams, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, John Crawford III, Black Women Deserve (https://www.ffbww.org/blackwomendeserve), The Black Panther’s Free Medical Clinics, The Child Tax Credit, YouTube, Twitter, UberEats, Elon Musk, Monsanto
See also:
https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/03/love-care-people-interview-vanessa-green-call-blackline-organizing/
https://www.callblackline.com/
https://www.chronogram.com/hudsonvalley/call-blackline/Content?oid=12245117
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxIh8AHX03U
https://sdpride.org/friend-of-pride-vanessa-green/
On what date did you record this oral history?
2022-08-30T08:03