Conversation to Transformation

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KUNV Studios on public radio. KUNV 91.5. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and More, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education. Introduction of COVID into our society helped make more clear than ever before the importance of connectivity.

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We can systemize this whole thing. No one, no one is better.

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I guess maybe it was the intensity of fear and uncertainty that somehow simultaneously and magically magnified the intensity of compassion and innovation.

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Welcome everyone to Conversations to Transformation. I am Magdalena Martinez. I'm an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in the College of Urban Affairs. I'm also the director of education programs at the Lindsay Institute. Our podcast conversations are with folks that we have interviewed as part of a research project that we have initiated here at UNLV, looking at the COVID experience in Nevada. And today I am joined by my colleague and friend Carmen, who is going to take the lead in introducing our guest today. Carmen.

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Thank you so much, Magda. I am so excited to bring this project to life after all the research that we've been conducting all year. And the people that we get to talk to are so interesting. And they provide a lot of insight, a lot of contextual background for this type of research. So we're joined today by my friend Vera Moore, the founder of a truly remarkable nonprofit here in Nevada. The nonprofit is called True Beginnings. Vera, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do and why you do it?

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First, let me say thank you so much for having me. awareness about the cause and our movement. As you said, my name is Vera Moore, and I'm the founder and director of True Beginnings. What that looks like is being a formerly incarcerated woman who has sustained many trials and tribulations from domestic violence, homelessness, substance abuse, all of those things, and has made a decision to walk in my purpose of giving back. And so what we do, what I do, is provide housing and life skills services to other formerly incarcerated people here in the Las Vegas area, knowing that housing and support networks and safe spaces are the first things that people need, their essentials, when we talk about COVID, right? They're essentials into reintegrating and being able to become a productive citizen right here in our community. I do it because someone offered me an opportunity at one point, and that opportunity changed my entire perspective. And in my perspective changing, it made me want to change my life. And so I want to give back.

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Yeah, I love that word perspective. And so I want to build onto it by asking you when you say life skills and essentials, what do you mean? Can you be a little bit more specific?

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When we talk about essentials at True Beginnings, we talk about things that are definitely needed, especially for women, cultural support. Women need to know that they have a family, a network. They do better, well, prosper, heal in spaces where elbows are linked together. So our home is what makes it so special here in Las Vegas because there are tons of homes here. I'm not going to act as though we're like this only entity out here. But our home, what makes our home special is that we do everything from a gender perspective. So where women need nurturing, culture, social environments to blossom and be able to heal so that they can be amazing parents and pass healthy, functional traditions on. That's what True Beginnings does. We offer this space, and the essential of it is that it's the need. It's the necessity. Some people thought during COVID that keeping Dollar Tree open was essential, and I'm one of those people because there's so many low income people. That's that's where we have to shop. But before you can even get there, you got to know what you need. You got to know how to spend your money and to be able to have some things left over, be able to take care of your children on the salary that you're provided. are important and how to utilize those things and to come beyond that. And then also what things to purge. That's so big, right? So when we think about essentials, we think about the root, the things at the very, very bottom. So you can have $20 stretch and still feel like you're taking care of yourself and not looking down on that $20 and going, this is all I have and I am broke, but thinking I am grateful because I'm not spending this $20 on drugs anymore. I'm not utilizing this $20 to pay some person that is going to abuse me to allow me to stay in their home because I have no place to live at the night time. I'm not utilizing that $20 to put in the machine hoping that I'm going to win so that I'll have more money to either use or whatever, whatever. So it's the root, right? Knowing that what gratitude looks like.

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Mm-hmm. That is so powerful, Vera. And the work that you do is so incredibly important. For our listeners, give us a little bit more of a background on the population. We know that it's probably the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. And you specifically serve women. Can you give us a little bit more of a background in terms of what it looks like for Nevada, or more specifically, Southern Nevada? What are the numbers? And I'm sure a lot of people have some preconceived notions of who these women are. So can you share a little bit more about the population that you serve?

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Absolutely. Thank you so much. A lot of us tend to focus on the humanity of it, right? But there's a great deal of us out there that look to the data because we don't see it every day and I try to tell people that you never know who you are in line at the grocery store with or who is walking across the street in front of your car, might drop their purse or what have you. You just never know who these people are, who works in what industry. So here in Nevada, this is what caught my attention because I moved here from Virginia and I thought that Nevada was a little more progressive because it's kind of a purple state, but then now I've learned that it's a red, it's a blue state with a red line, right? It's like this red line goes around it and the system that manages our amazing community here and I say that it's it's it's amazing because I Love the people whose feet are on the ground and those people who want to put their feet on the ground So the numbers look like this over 200 women come home every single month to our community in the state of Nevada from majority non-violent crimes.

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Okay.

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84% of those women are moms. is that the incarceration of women has progressed 19-fold since 1980. And they're for small infractions. And when we look at those numbers, with 55,000 women going, having been incarcerated, right, and some of those women are pregnant, when we look at those numbers, you have to also take into consideration the children that are attached to them. And so then if we are increasing the incarceration of women, and I'm not even gonna put a color on there because just think about women in general, our children are who's inheriting the earth regardless of what their ethnicity, background, culture, color is. When we think about that, we think about what's going to happen next. So when I look at Nevada, and I give you these numbers, 55,000 women incarcerated, 80% of those women, mothers, Mothers and it's just going up. It's going up and up and up and here in the state of Nevada We practice what we call indeterminate sentencing Which means that when you get a petty theft Say you just went in the store and you and your kids need to eat and so you still these top ramen noodles And you want something for yourself? And so now you also get some lipstick, right? And it pushes you over I'm gonna say you've gotten diapers because diapers are expensive right now, right? So you've gotten diapers and formula all of these things and it pushes you over a certain amount like five hundred dollars So now you're in the upper range of a felony When you Get to that point and you go in front of the judge and the judge gives you a sentence, the sentence can be from one to three years. Now, first of all, this woman where she came from, of course, she's impoverished, she's underserved. So that's what's led her to steal. And that in itself is traumatic, to live in poverty, to not have the essential items that you need in order to provide for your children. No matter what your intentions are when you go in that store, no matter what you've done or what has happened to you, you still stand before this judge who says to you, one to three years. That is trauma. That right there is perpetuating violence. And it's not just women. Everyone gets these sentences here in Nevada. It's something we practice in determinate sentencing. But that trauma in itself on top of all the things that have happened to you, and then it trickles through the family because now the kids don't know when you're coming home. And if the grandparents have taken the kids, the grandparents don't know when you're coming home. So there's no structure. And then it perpetuates, it literally feeds the education to prison pipeline. Because children act out when they don't know, right? They ask why kids ask why all the time, why, where, how, all these things. And when an adult does not have the answers, it's, it feels inhumane within that person. And then that child is also having to suffer that. So indeterminate sentencing here in Nevada, is incarceration here is stretching amongst whole generations of people. And that is what my population looks like. These women that have not only sustained domestic violence, substance abuse, homelessness. And domestic violence, by the way, does not start with your partner, domestic violence starts in your domestic intimate relationships, which is your interpersonal family. So maybe you had a violent mother, violent father, and that mother has had a violent mother or father, and it just goes back and back. And so her people hurt people, right? And some people deal with it one way, some people deal with another. But say this particular woman that we're using as an example. She's come from this domestic violence situation, got into a relationship, domestic violence, and then now she's perpetuating violence upon her family by committing crimes. We don't know why she's doing it. We never ask why unless there's drugs involved. And that is a whole nother subject. But now, it's like here she is, and now she's perpetuating violence because the kids take it personal. The kids don't blame the judge. The kids don't blame the public defender who didn't fight for their mom. The kids don't blame, you know, the police officer. The kids don't blame the dad. And that's where my story was. My son, even to this day, is like, well, you didn't have to stay with my dad. But I did. stay there because if I would have left I would have been a statistic which would have been a single parent and I probably would have been a worse mother if I didn't have two parents in the home. At least having two parents in the home I didn't have to be the one that always said no or yes I could say I'm gonna let me ask your dad and I have a safety net back there. I didn't think about the violence that was happening between him and I that was feeding over to my children. But now I see how my girls took it and was like, Mom, this horrible thing happened to you. And my son takes it. Mom, you could have left. I realize that we take things differently as individuals. So here for the state of Nevada, we are pushing and I'm just going to be blunt, slavery. We really are by saying, by utilizing this system of indeterminate sentencing, putting people to work while they are incarcerated for pennies, then not providing them those same employment opportunities when they leave with those corporations that they've worked for while they were inside. And still allowing our minimum wage to be $7.75, $9.75, $10.75, but then allowing rent to go up to $15, $16, $17, $100 a month, and then the lower income areas to rot away and pushing those individuals, even if you haven't been incarcerated but you don't make very much money because your education sucked or you come from trauma and you don't know how to deal with it. So you end up in a lower income environment, and Nevada just lets that area rot.

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So along those lines, I was going to ask a follow-up question, and then I'll have Carmen follow up with some questions. From your perspective, what led you to start this? It sounds like you looked around and you said, I don't think there's enough programs out there to really reintegrate, do reentry for this population of women. Tell me from your perspective, what are the services that are out there? Is this really, it seems to me based on what you're sharing that there's a real gap in terms of social services.

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I'm going to say that, quick story, the reason that I started this, and it's not the story that I usually tell about how there was these kids behind my house selling drugs, the truth, the truth of it. I had my real estate license in 2000, from 2000 to 2006 2007. Right before the real estate market crashed. And when that market crashed, I went on to affordable housing. And my second oldest daughter had my granddaughter and I moved to Virginia to help her out. I got an amazing job out there, amazing. I was going to take over the entire region for affordable housing where I did recertifications. If you guys are out there and you know anything about affordable housing, every year you have to provide or prove that you deserve to remain in this space, right? And I love that demographic. When I was a realtor, I loved working with people that were in section 8 and orientating them on how to become homeowners. I knew that housing was deeply rooted in me from the time that I purchased my first home. So when I moved to Virginia, I got this job. It was amazing. It was through a temp agency. When they went to hire me permanently my background came up even though it was years old And they just was like, oh my goodness and they shunned me Like it was just like they turn the lights out like I walked in the room was like Yeah, and instead of the lights coming on going surprise the light went out It was like surprise and then they just kind of kicked me out the door No words the temp agency, they blacklisted me. So I had to go to the college and sign up for their reentry class. They give you this piece of paper with all of these jobs that people that are formerly incarcerated can apply for and then they get you suited up with a nice outfit from dress for success and they type up your resume and make it look all glamorous and pretty by what the standard is at the trend at that time and Then they could the case manager goes now go out into the world, you know, and get yourself a job. And I thought, that is not how you get a job.

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That's not realistic.

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It's not realistic. And I felt like the component that they were missing was how to market your most valuable asset, which is yourself. And I realized as being a formerly incarcerated person, sitting next to a formerly incarcerated person, that although we had incarceration as our one demographic that bound us together, we were all different. So there's no cookie-cutter approach. So if a case manager, if social services, if the government follows this particular line of action, you're only going to get, what, 26% that doesn't recidivate

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That's what you're going to get

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but what if we stopped looking at people as numbers and start looking at them as People and saying okay what you need is You already know how to dress. You're already articulate You already, you know have a background you've already worked, so this is what you really need. Let's work on this and refine it, right? And I started doing that. And I said, you know, you guys are doing this all wrong. And at the time, I was super angry. I was super angry, one, because I failed my kid. She had had my granddaughter in college. I took that on very personal. It's not my issue. But now I know but then I was like, I was angry because I was still in a marriage with a man that I knew very well we should not no longer be together, but I didn't have the strength and courage inside myself to move forward. I was very angry at the way society was shunning me for something that I had done. It was a mistake. I did this thing. I learned it. I was punished for it. I moved forward. I wanted them to move forward, but I walked out every single day feeling like I had this orange jumpsuit on and my state number plastered across my forehead and on my back it said She's been to prison and she's a violent criminal So all around to me everyone was judging me and I was angry so I decided to start wagging my finger and getting involved in reentry and I wanted to do something about it and That's how true beginnings was formed, which is super funny because in I wanted to do something about it. And that's how True Beginnings was formed, which is super funny because in 2005, I went to jail and God gave me this entire business plan for this organization. I thought it was mock society at the time, but it was to build this housing community for a demographic of people who I didn't know at the time who they were, for them to have like this society that was going to help them flourish and be better. And I wrote this business plan on legal papers. I had no idea that in 2013.

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So you were sitting in a jail cell coming up with this idea, right? And just thinking about what your experience is like. Vera, I'm glad that you talked about that holistic approach, right? Instead of taking a cookie cutter design and applying it to everybody impacted by the system, there really should be a holistic evaluation. And it reminds me of how we met. So I was conducting research under Dr. Emily Salisbury, who is a gender responsive criminologist. Yes, shout out Dr. Salisbury for listening. I was in a research study lab, and it was one of my first ones, we were putting together an interview protocol, survey protocol, if you will, that was meant to revolutionize the way that the state of Nevada's Department of Correction that was meant to revolutionize the way that the state of Nevada's Department of Correction evaluated the people that they were coming into contact with. So before our instrument, our survey, there was a very basic one to two pager based on a population of men mostly, and it didn't really have a deep questions, right? So we redesigned this thing. We got together in a conference room. I remember it was the top of COVID, right? to do this? You know, are you down to meet up? And so we were in a room with court practitioners, with stakeholders, with drug court practitioners, as well, graduate students. And I remember asking you, Vera, how are you going to use this tool? Like we're, we're training together on how to evaluate a person holistically. So what has that tool meant for a true beginning since then? That was two years ago.

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I've seen you grow.

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Man, 2020, 2021, 2022.

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Yeah.

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Three years.

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Three years ago.

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It's three years.

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Yeah, no, for real. Let me tell you what this tool did for us. It gave us the ability to have some insight on how to service each and every woman that comes into our home. And the house is called Divinity House, because we want each woman to find their divine purpose upon entry. And that's not easy to do. You first have to get them to open up. And that's what the Women's Risk Needs Assessment Tool does. Right. What I love about it is that it's a conversation. It's very fluid. If you use this tool correctly, it is not an assessment. It is a way to form insight and to love on the person and give them the understanding that they have just landed in a very safe space. Because you have to wrap your arms around them, literally and figuratively, to get the information. assessments and a much colder approach, people will lie. Oh, no, I've never been through that. Oh, no, that's never happened to me. That's why we don't have a lot of good data around being formally incarcerated, especially where homelessness is concerned, because people feel like if they say that they've ever been on drugs, if they say that they've ever been incarcerated, it will diminish their ability to receive resources. So people say no, no a lot. No, no, no. No, no, that was not me. Very pompous, you know. But when you use the WARNA and instead of going, so have you ever been incarcerated, saying tell me your story. Right. And utilizing it that way because you know when someone starts speaking and is very fluent with it, you can check the boxes in that conversation and literally eye to eye contact and not have to read the questions. If you familiarize yourself with this thing and you guys perfected it in such a way that it gave me the ability to kind of see what was going on within myself and how I could help that person. I believe that each and every one of us, when we don't like someone or if we feel completely drawn to them, it is because there's a reflection of that person within us. And that has given me the ability to say, I know how to help you. I know for a fact that if I attach this service next, you're going to blossom. And the WARNA gave us that because it smooths the entry. They feel less threatened. They feel more willing and open to receive. And they believe that from the scoring that we've attached them with the right person that's going to help them get to the next step.

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So you really did your best in a trauma-informed environment, which is a key word for your practice, right? Absolutely. Be it housing, be it food, be it employment training, or just be it a coaching for changing your mindset, growing as a person.

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Absolutely.

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Right? So I remember during COVID, we conducted one of the very first Warner assessments at Divinity House virtually, because we couldn't meet in person. So I remember talking to some of the stakeholders that ended up at Divinity House. And that was quite an experience to be able to say, I'm going to hug you virtually. I want to know not just what you need, but we're going to talk about your strengths, right? This is where you're at and this is where you're going to go moving forward. So that's really something truly special for the system, Vera. So how has True Beginnings changed since then? I mean, that was one house, you had maybe four to five bedrooms available, it was a smaller population. Where are you now? The growth of it, the capacity building and infrastructure. The first thing I want to say is where we have grown is that we have taken away the, we have stopped pushing mental health.

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We have started pushing harm reduction.

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Okay, that's interesting.

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Yes, and so that's where everybody uses this word trauma, right? Trauma informed. It's really, people have attached this whole trendy thing for trauma. And a lot of people feel like, oh my God, trauma, I'm not broken, and they become offended. So what we practice is harm reduction by providing life skills and life coaching in those spaces to weave in and out of that trauma, to teach them, and even shadow work. And a lot of you may not believe in that, but what I found is that when you can go back and address the space and then provide that younger you with tools moving forward, you're healing the inner kid as well, right?

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Deep reflection.

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And because we have changed this, we now have our intake house, Divinity House One, which is where I met you, you know, that's the very first thing we opened up on March 1st, 2020 and now we have an amazing independent living home that is opening up February 1st. Another four bedrooms with a swimming pool and jacuzzi in the backyard because we want the women to feel like they're leveling up. Right now they cannot afford to go and get their own apartment in an area that is conducive to the growth that they've sustained in the last couple of years.

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But you also serve men now. Can you tell me why?

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Our goal at True Beginnings, I'm so glad you asked me that, our goal at True Beginnings is to build whole families, is to get rid of the stigma of dysfunction and the only way you can make a whole family. And whole doesn't mean mommy, daddy, grandma, uncle, kids. It doesn't mean that. Whole means that we practice positive, healthy, functional traditions. And the only way to do that is to provide services across the entire realm. It takes a man and a woman to make a baby. So the whole family gets services. And we know that you cannot provide a healing space to the women and then leave the men hanging over to the side because it will always be at odds. It's like always having a cat and a dog in the same space and then keeping them both crated and then letting them out but feeding the dog all the time and not doing that with the cat. It's just so much. So we wanted to be able to provide function in our community by healing the whole community. And our next thing is to go into the youth. So we have a House for the Women, a House for the Men, an independent living home opening for the men January 1st, and an independent living home opening for the women in February 1st. And then we're going to start building. We're looking for land right now to build this housing community. Wow everybody that's true

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beginnings. If you want to donate look for Vera Moore True Beginnings in Southern Nevada. This really is a vision for a society of the future Vera. A way Avoid systemizing families, right? And systemizing their problems and giving everybody the agency that they know that they have, right? Because nobody needs to give that to you, but if you're taught how to find it within yourself it really can be a beautiful thing for yourself and your generations.

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It is, and I'm proof. Talking about transformations, right? I am proof and that's all I can say about that. So look me up, that part.

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Started with a conversation, right?

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Okay, true beginnings, everybody. Vera, thank you so much. It's been an honor.

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Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me.

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Thank you for tuning into this episode of Conversation to Transformation. Opportunities born from the pandemic. This podcast is made possible through the Lindsay Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. For more information, please follow us on social media and visit our website at www.unlv.edu.