Credentials

Recently I applied to help out a reporter. They wanted information on prison life: 

Here it goes!

My name is Evan Baker and I am a Licensed Master Social Worker employed at Rikers Island Jail, located in New York City. Although Rikers Island Jail employs many African Americans, I am one of only a handful of African American male mental health clinicians, as most Black men are in jail or undereducated in New York City. I have written a book titled Rikers Isand Theories of Racism which is available on line on demand through Barnes and Nobles as well as Amazon. I was able to place copies in the actual Barnes and Nobles locations in New York where they all sold out! Recently I have started a blog. My site is evandrake.blogspot.com.

As a mental health therapist in Rikers Island Jail, I am responsible for running the dialectical behavioral therapy program. This program is designed to work with adolescent males who are housed in solitary confinement, punitive segrigation housing area. This area often referred to as “the bing” or “the box”, is designed to house adolescent inmates who have been infracted for fighting with other inmates or DOC officers. 

The DBT program is designed to work with adolescents who have a wide range of behavioral disorders. These disorders include but are not limited to anxiety, depression, adjustment disorder, self harm behavior such as suicidal ideation, suicidal gestures, self harm which includes cutting their own body or self mutilation. The DBT program helps these children manage their frustration which can lead to violent or inappropriate behavior in this housing area as well as in general population housing. Inappropriate behavior manifests itself in the form of throwing urine or feces on staff, flooding the tier by overflowing the toilet bowl, wiping feces on the cell or eating their own feces in protest for being placed in solitary confinement.

Although this program is helpful as it offers a rehabilitation component, as is the purpose of mental health, I could elaborate further about the negative impact incarceration has on the larger Black community. 

solutions

I had to respond to an earlier statement which went as such "all you do is bitch and offer no solutions.

Dear Richard Cranium

You're so cool, I think I'll call you culo. You're a disrespectful mean spirited right winger. I get it. However, I did provide solutions. Adult development spoke about validation as a solution in dealing w/ troubled youth. Validation may sound simple but its what needs to happen in treatment! Jobs had a message to do what you love to avoid having to suffer the hardships associated with employment. Panhandler was a story of what I experienced and spoke to a state of mind that captivates people when dealing with begging. Aliens was not a focus on a problem but rather an explanation of or why extra terrestrial life forms might be visiting us. Math did focus on a solution by pointing out the importance of allowing people to explain how they arrived at math and physics problems when we think they arrived at the wrong answer. Monopoly focused on a solution by pointing out the need to articulate the difficulties associated with obtaining free energy. By the way, I don't know that too many people are familiar with Troy Reid and his electric car that he powered using a magnetic generator. Further, that he has been silenced from talking about this invention should create outrage. Perhaps the strongest attribute to this piece is the kindling of discontent. In the future, I would appreciate if your comments were rooted in intelligent rhetoric rather than emotionally driven insult. 

A Job

Making money is quite possibly one of the most meaningless activities you'll ever have to do. Oh I can hear your minds churning with dissent. How could that be you ask? My answer is simple. If what you do for a living was so much fun, you wouldn't be paid for the job. Oh yeah right you love your job. Nonsense, nobody loved their job. The word love and job don't even belong in the same sentence. If something you did was something you loved, it wouldn't be a job. A "job" is never meant to describe a fun activity. The word job means a labor you have no choice but to do. "it's going to be a tough job", you may hear somebody say. Have you ever heard the phrase "it's going o be a tough fun?" Of course not; because tough and fun don't belong in the same sentence. Tough bad job do belong in the same sentence. Oh yeah, right, I can hear it already. That's not true, you can use the statement "fun job". However, if a job was so much fun then you wouldn't have to use the word fun to describe this activity; it would speak for itself without needing the word "fun" to explain its meaning. No jobs are not fun. Again, if they were, everyone would do it and thus you wouldn't be paid. Now some may argue that a career is different than a job. Well really it's not any different than a job. A career is a job that you do forever or at least until you're dead. Still not convinced? Know somebody who loves what they do for a living? Well then that person does not have a job. I don't think that there has been a word to describe what that person has. Whatever it is that this person does to make money is deserving of a talk show. Most of us have jobs. So in that case, most of us are totally unfullilled spiritually and intellectually. We are in charge of completing mundane tasks in repetition to satisfy a corporation so that we can make money. This is really what a job means. If a machine could replace us, we would be out of a job. All you are as a job holder is a machine; a robot. I know that you went to college to learn your skill, this is the real world though were bottom line is what's most important. Want to be a medical doctor? It was so appealing in med school to study Medicine, here in the real world, you'll find that money is the real practice. If someone needs help, you don't help them unless you're getting paid. It's a job, not a charity. Don't want to charge the person money? Fine, be broke. See how fun that will be. Time to go to work at your job. Want to be a lawyer? It was so exciting studying case law in law school. Moot courts and discussion in class. Want to be a lawyer? You do what you're told in a specific practice day in day out. Boring! Yes when we go into practice, we find out that we are working for is the bottom line. The bottom line is money. You'll go through hell to get money. You'll do the most mundane repetitive things so long as you get paid. That's what it means to have a job. This is what we all are lucky to have; a job. If you are saying to yourself ," that's not me. I love what I do" then you don't have a job. You have something that has not been given a word to describe your method of gaining income. For the vast majority of us who are forced to go in to work everyday whether we want to or not, obey orders we don't want to obey, punch a clock and leave only when we are told, we have jobs. No creativity. No free thought. Machines in a factory is what an employee is who works at a job. Oh well, it's a dirty job but somebody's got to do it!

Math

Math is a tricky subject. People always are catogorized as good at math or bad at math. We are taught this from an early age when we are taught in school. I remember being taught math at a young age, I was one of those kids that just didn't seem to understand arithmetic. I remember the frustration coming from my grandmother while she tried to explain how math worked." No, the answer is five! How did you get seven? You add this and take away that; how did you get seven?" when thinking about this conversation, I can't help but wonder what I was thinking. Whatever it was made sense in my mind. What didn't make sense was the math problem. Whenever we find a student such as I was, we tend to say,"He's not very good at math." we are taught to believe that math is done and understood only one way. Two times two is four. That's the end of the discussion. We are taught to believe that when you have two objects,if those objects are doubled, then you get four objects. That's a fact! No other truth can exhist. Thinking and believing otherwise is not intelligent. We are taught to narrow our minds. Questioning or understanding life in any other way but this means that you are not good at math. What? Okay, you may not be good at this particular style of math; however, that you may have trouble with the mainstream math we are taught does not mean that no other math concept exhists. In other words, how do we know that you may not be good at math because you have another way of practicing mathematics? To say that someone is not good at math just doesn't make sense. We are born thinking in terms of math. Everything we do is quantified from the time we are born. We as infants look for breasts to feed. Once a baby is done with one breast, he looks for another breat. Our sheer desire and need that we are born with requires us to think numerically. In fact it is this innate need that introduces is to the concept of numbers. From infancy, we are aware of the concept of more versus less. This concept of addition and subtraction is our gifted survival mechanism. We are, in my humble opinion, born mathematicians. Could it be that people who are considered poor in math are really gifted in math? Perhaps these people are tuned in to a more advanced way of understanding numbers. Instead of criticizing our students who are not so called "good in math", maybe we should instead ask them to explain and prove their answer. Maybe that person knows something about math that we, who have been forced to succumb to the prison of conventional math concepts, have overlooked. I began to understand this after reading about Albert Einstein. Einstein who was very critical of conventional math in the same way, wrote 2+2 =5. I learned by reading about Einstein how to think in this manner when confronting math. Einstein would take a Socratic approach when he professed to his students. He and is students would have coffe, walk and discuss physics as well as math. Bless my grandmother for trying to teach me math; however if Einstein were teaching me math, I think he would have had me explain how I came up with the answer. I'm sure he would be curious to find out if in fact there was another angle we haven't found. In keeping pace with this attitude to accept different ideas in math, I might have found something. To make five objects, you must have five spaces. Without space only one object exhists. So isn't it just as relevant to count the space with the object? So to say there are five objects, we actually mean ten components; don't forget the space. Take space away and the two bodies of mass become one body of mass. Doesn't this basic concept of arithmetic fly in the face of conventional thinking? Aren't we taught to think that five objects equal five, not ten? What if I were to write 2+2=8? Wouldn't that be "wrong"? Yet if numbers are infinite, then so are the possibilities. In that case, there really is no wrong answer. I was studying physics and learned that an object propelled by a string in a circular motion maintains the same velocity. How could this be? Shouldn't the gravitational pull from the earth control the velocity? Not when the acceleration is being created from the center. In other words a circular motion can defy gravity, thus making it's own gravity by the acceleration in the center. Centripetal force creates gravity in this way! So, in essence, it is possible to create your own gravitational field using this system of acceleration. The gravity that is created may then be harvested and produce further energy by way of gravity to feed the accelerant that is propelling the circular motion. I tried to explain this to the psychiatrist I work with but he would not accept that the accelerant works independant of gravity thereby creating it's own gravity. He argued that the accelerant would not be able to work independant if gravity since the accelerant would have to overcome by the gravity that already exhists. This was a sticking point since none of the physics problems that focused on this circular motion accounted for gravity. The truth his however that the doctor was correct as well was I. Gravity or lack there of has to be controlled for when creating any accelerant; yet once this measurement of necessary acceleration is controlled for, a constant velocity can be created independant of the current gravitational forces. This means that its own gravitational force exists independantly. Now I could have said this doctor was an idiot when he tried to argue that the constant acceleration does not act independant of gravity. I could have stuck to my guns and proved that such was the case using the absence of a gravitational component in the physics problem as evidence. However, thanks to Einstein, I was able to link our two theories together so that both statements were true. This is how math should be taught, as an ever fluid philosophy that can adapt and amend like life itself. Math is not a ridged instrument where only one side is right.

Adult Development

My name is Evan Baker and I am a Licensed Master Social Worker employed at Rikers Island Jail where I work as a mental health clinician. I have been employed at Rikers Island for five years. I have written a book titled Rikers Island Theories of Racism as well as struggled with homelessness and poverty.  Although I have worked with all age groups incarcerated in this jail, I have a particular focus on working with patients aged 17 to early adulthood. Recently, I have been running the dialectical behavioral therapy program for adolescents housed in the solitary confinement punitive segregation unit. 

When understanding the mental health issues associated with young adults, it is particularly helpful to have an understanding of the adult transitional fazes outlined by Daniel Levinson. Levinson found that young adults from age 17 to 22 are at a point where for the first time they are forced to make adult decisions about love, occupation, friendship, value and lifestyle. This is very important to understand when working with this age group as these decisions have a huge impact on how the person will function mentally as well as physically in society.

A person who is 17 years old was only seven years old ten years ago and only ten years old seven years ago. A person who is 22 was only ten years old twelve years ago. This is important to understand when dealing with young adults of this age group. When a therapist or mental health professional allows themselves to make a cognitive  awareness of this fact, it becomes more clear the rational and pathology of many mental health issues faced by this group. Such issues often include depression, anxiety, substance abuse as well as anti-social behavior.

In our society, as in most if not all societies, we are forced into a world of adulthood without any experience. When we turn eighteen, we are told we are adults. However, what experience do we have as adults when just eight years ago we were ten years old? We are reminded that we now have to take responsibility for ourselves. Learn a trade, go to college or suffer the consequences of failure in society. However, what skills does someone have who is eighteen or twenty two or even twenty five? An 18 year old has no skills unless of course the person has been in the profession since age 10. Most likely, however, the young adult is thrown into this world without out any skills that would allow him or her to buy a home, pay a mortgage or afford just about any luxury or necessity to function properly in mainstream society. At age twenty-five, the person may have a few years of experience on how to become a professional but few years of professional experience that would allow for a major role in adult society. Although some may argue that there are people at age twenty-five who are established well enough to have a stable life, it is important to understand that there is a considerable amount of pressure on young people to obtain this level of social affluence.

Many people I work with, if not all, have had extremely difficult transitions into adulthood. A number of psychosocial stressors contribute to this phenomena. Such stressors include parents or other adults that do not know how or have the resources to provide a stable transition into adulthood. These resources include, but or not limited to, a career that can be transferred to the young adult as well as financial support. Even with these gifts, young adults are still inexperienced in adulthood. For instance, a person this age group may have never known what it was like to pay their taxes or rent or pay for their own food. Yet, they have been forced to take on this role of adult practically overnight.

As a result of these responsibilities bestowed on to young people, many people find themselves struggling with depression, anxiety and substance abuse as well as anti-social behavior. When we force our society at a young age to take on responsibilities that there is no way they can possibly respond to in any meaningful way, we create hopelessness. When we force people to earn a living when there is no possible way for them to find a career, we create anxiety. How is someone supposed to find employment with no experience? Further, how is someone expected to create a career without fully knowing what career they want? With the need to support themselves, what legal route for income is available to someone who has all these questions to answer?

As mental health professionals, it is important to validate the person. In the case of young adults, it is important to make them aware that they are under this tremendous amount of pressure. We must be careful not to become the society that is rejecting them by letting them know that it is not abnormal to feel depressed or have the feelings of anxiety that they suffer. Validation is important because it allows the person to become more free in their thinking. Such freedom in thought will allow the person to explore avenues of self that will allow them to become that functioning member in society that we demand them to be at age eighteen.

Evan Baker

Aliens

Why don't the aliens attack? Well it may be that the aliens are us looking at our past!!! If you think about the speed it would take to travel from one star system to the next traveling at faster than light speed, time would be very warped because of the speed. So what would be a month traveling at light speed or faster would be hundreds of years on earth or even thousands. For a creature to travel from one star system to our star system in a matter of days would be thousands of years from their planet to ours since time slows the faster you travel. Any creature traveling at this speed would therefor have the ability of time travel as a result of the amount of speed travelled. So, if this creature were to travel to it's planet and not miss thousands of years, it would have to be able to travel into the past as well as the present in order to make it back to it's planet in the same time dimension that it left. Which leads to the bigger question; do they even need a planet? Now why would this be us visiting our past? Well scientist say that the universe is round. If this is the case, and let's assume it is and the universe runs clockwise, wouldn't it be possible to travel counter clockwise back in time? Since the light we see from the stars take billions of years to reach earth, we see the stars in the past. The light beams that reach us are in fact from the past and the particles that make the light called photons are from the past. Therefore wouldn't it be possible to meet those particles from the past? In other words what we see is in fact an object and not just a mirage. So, the object still exists further in time. This could mean that were an alien or something see earth from the opposite direction, it would see earth from say, 130 million years ago. Could an object travel to that image and land on earth 130 million years ago? If so, could it be possible to travel the universe counter clockwise and catch earth at a later period in time? And since the universe in this scenario is round, perhaps all objects and planets are just different dimensions in time of an earlier or later history.

Monopoly

It is scary to think about how many choices we don't have. The lack of choices are represented for most of us daily. You want to drive a car? Pay three dollars and eight sense a gallon. Want to have electricity? Pay whatever charges you are told you need to pay or get your electricity cut. Yell and scream all you want just make sure at the end of your rant you have the money. I love hearing people talk about capitalism. You know the conversations that promote and extol the fantasy of competition. The idiot that won't face reality about this so called free enterprise society. Try challenging this lunatic. Oh sure, there are all sorts of different types of energy to power your home. Take solar for example. I hear about solar power every five minutes. "Get solar" the commercial will cheer. Great you think to yourself, all you have to do is call the number! So you call the number to find out how much money you're going to save. Oh? You're disappointed? What, too much money? Damn right! I was quoted that a solar system that could sustain my home costs fifty thousand dollars! My electric bill ain't that high, you realize. So let's make our own solar powered system. Searching the Internet gives you so much hope that such an endeavor can take place, however all you really learn is how to create the solar panels where the solar cells are stored. What are solar cells you ask? They're what creates the energy needed to run your home. How much do solar cells cost you ask? Well they're not cheap. You'll spend thousands of dollars purchasing enough solar panels to sustain your entire household. Not to mention the costs, time and labor to build the panels. Then you'll have to call the solar company to hook up the system, should you make it that far. It's just far easier to keep getting screwed by the power company. Yeah solar works, but it's hard for the power company or the solar company to make any money. Solar just works too damn well to make accessible. Oh, but wait, there's a thing called magnetic energy created by magnetic generators. A man named Troy Reid powered an electric automobile using this technology. How fantastic! All we need to do is implement this technology in electric cars and bye bye gas station. Dream on! He's not even allowed to talk about the invention. How do I know? Because I tracked down his son in Oaklahoma. This fact was explained to me over the phone. No, we're stuck with good old fossil fuel. Free energy? What? How would the power industry screw us then? Hydrogen power, solar, magnetic energy, I even heard that sewage waist creates energy from methane gas. Why don't we use this technology? Because we are monopolized by corporate greed and interests. What will it take to move past this childish, primitive mindset? How much desperation do we need to suffer before we let scientists, engineers and inventors pull our human race to the infinite possibilities that await man kind? Those creators should be hailed for their selfless inventions. Instead, they're threatened, killed, withheld and crippled just so that some corporate pinhead can have more money than anyone needs. In short, monopolies suck..

Panhandler

Why does it always have to be me? Is there a sign attached to my body that says,"Sure I'll give you money. Just ask." I thought to myself as I drove into the gas station that I was not going to give in this time. I saw the drunk homeless man standing at the gas station as I watched people walk in and out of the gas station store past him. I thought to myself that perhaps this wasn't going to be so hard. Hey, everyone else is walking past him and he's not asking them for money. Could it be that he's nit panhandling? Could it possibly be that he's just hanging out minding his own business? Yes, of course he is. Why would he ask me for money? He's not asking anyone else. Wow! This is great! A panhandler who doesn't ask for money! I'll just go inside and buy some water then come back to my car with my purchase without anyone asking me for money! As I left the store I think I made my most important mistake. I looked at him. Yeah, I made eye contact. I didn't realize that this was a mistake at first. After all, I make eye contact with people all the time and no one asks me for money. Just then, as I made eye contact, I felt this strange uncomfortable feeling of responsibility to this man's plight. However, I was going to stick to my guns. I wasn't going to give him money. Why should I? No one else was, I thought. Surely I can't be the only person to have made eye contact with him. These other people must have made eye contact and they didn't give him any money. I'm good! Oh no! Not so fast! He sensed that I was a sap. " Excuse me mister. Can I get some change", he asked. Great, what am I supposed to do now? I had plenty of change in my car. Of course he could have change. I'd be a god damn liar if I said I couldn't give him ant change. Crap! Okay, I'm going to stick to my guns. Now I have to think of a reason why I'm not going to give him my change that I know I can afford to give him. I got it! He drinks too much! All I have to do is voice my disapproval of his drinking. I said to him,"You need to sober up." Oh really you hippocrate, I thought about myself. He needs to sober up? What about all those times when you needed money? What about all those times you were waisted off your ass and you lied to motorists and said you needed five dollars because your car ran out of gas, I continued in my mind. What a stupid thing to say. This statement about sobering up didn't faze this guy one bit. It's as if he knew I was a hippocrate. He just walked right over to me as I got in my car. It's as if I said," sure I'll give you some change. Come on over to my car." He asked me again if I had any change. Again, why me? I've never seen this guy before in my life and he acts like he knows me. I'm caught. If I say no to this guy I'll feel like the biggest peice of crap lying a-hole on earth, cheapskate, tight ass , self ricthous, hippocritical, phony that doesn't deserve the respect a dog would give a flea. "Yeah man, I got some change. Here you go", I said as I reach into my consol and hand him a fist full of change. He thanks me and then gives me a brief history of his life explaining that he is fifty years old and he's going to get sober later. "it's going to be a rough night", he says. "Hey man, I've been there", I say. I then drive away. Yeah, I think to myself, I may be a sap as well as lighter in my change consol, but at least I'm not a liar. At least this poor drunk homeless guy can get another drink. All this is understood. However, what I still don't understand is how this guy knew to ask me for the change.