When the Alarm Never Stops

The Toil of Constant Crisis

The Alarm

If you have an alarm in your home, you know what it feels like when it goes off in the middle of the night. There is fear, and then the requirement that you make a decision. You will need to get up and investigate what is occurring. Your peaceful night has been disrupted.

Most likely it is nothing; a storm might have blown a window open, or a door latch has come loose.

As the clinical manager of a Planned Parenthood, it was my responsibility to not only wake up if the alarm was sounding but to drive to the clinic and meet the police. For a period of a few months, the alarm sounded almost once a week. We never clearly determined what was causing the alarm; we had the sensors cleaned, and eventually it stopped, I was able to sleep again through the night.

Every time that occurred, I was rattled. It was my responsibility to ensure that the clinical staff and the patients were safe. It shook the clinical team; we were on alert and discussed the events throughout the day.

It distracted us from the work and it slowed us down. It was a wrench in the machine.

The Wrench in the Machine

Fast forward nearly twenty years. I am the case manager in a pediatric transgender center in a massive children’s hospital. I know nothing of social media; I know nothing about the existence of Libs of Tic Toc.

A video from the pediatric center, which had been proudly posted on the hospital’s website, was discovered, clipped, and shared on Twitter by Libs of Tic Toc. It was just like an alarm had gone off and woke us all from our stupor.

Do not underestimate the power of the wrench in the machine. Especially when the machines are complex and huge. The wrench can cause chaos for days.

The video release meant entire departments suddenly not only knew we existed but they were required to stop their usual work. IT had to pull videos, management had to watch the content with a critical eye and review and assess risk in a new way. We had multiple meetings. We shut down the phones in order to plan for what we anticipated would be an onslaught of phone calls.

We discussed this event for at least a month; it rattled the team. It slowed us down. Morale, productivity, and job satisfaction were all impacted. Other divisions that once might have blindly supported us started to consider the other perspectives.

When the alarms are rare, most people will continue the work. They will discuss, maybe even feel more cohesion as a team.

When the alarms become regular, when it begins to feel like a war, when it begins to feel like you are under siege, the cohesion will eventually splinter.

That’s when many teams will fall apart, that’s when some people will walk away, for personal reasons, because they have kids, because something starts to nag at them in the middle of the night. Waking up wondering, am I wrong?

It’s time to become the alarm system in this industry. And we believe we have two pathways forward to do just that. Pathways that we will be rolling out as campaigns that you can engage with. One pathway we are calling Quiet Quitting; one pathway we are calling Direct Action.

The Campaigns

We believe that we will need to pivot into entirely new directions as we have reached an impasse. Twenty five states have laws regulating pediatric gender medicine, but twenty five remain. Most believe that only a potential small handful of states might join in enacting regulations. We need new ideas and new tactics.

We know that many of you have already undertaken activities in your own lives similar to the campaigns that we are rolling out. You have sent letters and information to hospital executives; you might have even already held a sign outside of a clinical space. We want to formalize these into a movement.

We want to help develop ways for you and your affinity groups to raise the alarm and become the wrench. This month we will consider non violent direct action and next month quiet quitting. We welcome you along.