NASW Social Work Talks - EP93: Social Work and Squeegee Kids in Baltimore

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

Dr. Kyla Liggett-Creel talks with us about her work to support young people who squeegee car windshields at intersections in Baltimore. She outlines why squeegee workers have been a divisive topic in the city, and discusses her work to get their voices heard. Dr. Liggett-Creel is an associate clinical professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work. She leads The Collaborative: A Healing Centered Community, which partners with community groups, grassroots organizations, governmental organizations, universities, and non-profits to address equity and violence prevention in Baltimore City. Read the show notes to learn more and find related resources. Thanks for listening! Please subscribe to Social Work Talks podcast so you'll get new episodes delivered right to your podcatcher. And take a moment to leave us a lovely review in Apple Podcasts.

This episode is brought to you by the American Diabetes Association. Welcome to Social Work Talks. My name is Greg Wright. Today's issue is one involving Baltimore, and it is the squeegee kids there. Squeegee kids are young people who basically panhandle and wash car windows at intersections. It sounds like an innocent thing, but it's actually proved to be a controversial issue with a lot of the business owners saying that they are disrupting business there and they're also turning people away from Baltimore. So we're going to have a conversation with Dr. Kyra Legate Creel, who is an associate clinical professor at the School of social work at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. Dr. Kay actually did a study

to look more into the story of the squeegee kids and why they are doing what they are doing. So I welcome you to Social Work Talks, Dr. Kay. Thank you so much for having me here. I appreciate the invitation. I'm excited to talk about this topic. A squeegee kid, what is that exactly? How old are they, and where are these young people coming from? We refer to the young people as squeegee workers, or sometimes it's youth who squeegee, because person first. So they can really range in age. We have seen kids that are as young as 8 years old out there, you know, to 24, 25 years old. They are from Baltimore.

There's, you know, various reasons that they're out there. Most of them are male, about 98%. Vast majority, if not 100%, are African-American. What is a controversy over them? I live in Baltimore. There are panhandlers at intersections of all races, male and females. But it seems like there's been a visceral reaction to people who like squeegee for some reason. You can't talk about that without talking about bias.

you just can't i mean to your point there are panhandlers of all races and so on certain streets if you drive up the street you're going to see white panhandlers on the roads they're going to be holding signs saying you know please give me money i'm you know whatever the issue is um they're not getting the same level of attention again you have to look at the demographics that we're describing we're talking about young black men i think that because of racial bias because of the white gaze there are people who are like oh my god you know they're they're threatening they're aggressive well hold on let's think about the words that are being used and we can apply those directly to you know the historical racism current racism of describing black men as scary

right so when they see five young men coming towards their car there is a there is this bias that comes up where it's like oh my god they're gonna attack me and it's like no they're gonna to wash your window. And if you say no, many of, many of the young people will put a heart on your window and wave and say, have a good day. Right? So, so I think that is, that is driving quite a bit of this reaction, in my opinion, that, that you cannot take out the racial component of this. I think that there are, you know, the vast majority of young people who are squeegeeing are respectful. When somebody says, no, don't touch my car. I don't want that. Please don't do that. There is a small percentage, a small group of young people who maybe they don't respect

that. Right. And they, they're like, no, I'm going to wash your window anyways. Sometimes they want money. Sometimes they're just like, I washed your window. Have a good day. Right. And then there's even a smaller, smaller, smaller number of young people who they have other things going on. You don't really know what's happening but yes are they hitting a car with their squeegee yes that might happen did they you know pull a scam with cash app yep that happened but we're talking about 150 to 200 young people and these incidents of actual damage to cars or you know taking money on cash apps or you know whatever you're talking about a handful it's not all of the young people who's squeegee. But because of media and the narrative that has been put out there,

it's like, oh, all the squeegee workers are doing this. And that's just not true. Baltimore, I mean, I've lived there for a decade myself. And my daughter is a graduate of the School of Social Work there. Just a shout out to you. But it's a city of like haves and have not and it's also uh gentrifying slowly in a similar way to what happened in uh dc about 30 miles distance so it's like this a um economic thing too are there like people there who are gentrifiers moving in and they don't want to like see that they don't want to see the poverty they want to um enjoy the like harbor the um aquarium the restaurants but they don't want to acknowledge that there's a lot of economic disparities going on in Baltimore?

A hundred percent. You cannot talk about squeegee workers without looking at the historical racism that has happened in Baltimore. And then that takes us to today of gentrification. You know, Baltimore is the birthplace of redlining. This is where it started nationally, where they said, okay, well, here are predominantly black neighborhoods and we're going to say banks can't give money to open businesses to buy homes to invest in those neighborhoods because they're predominantly black and so lawrence brown did

this work um where you know they literally had maps and they circled neighborhoods with red and said okay you cannot invest in these neighborhoods because they're predominantly black well if you then look at who are the squeegee workers they're coming from those neighborhoods they are coming from the red lines neighborhoods right so that's the historical that now applies to today and then you are 100 right there are two baltimore's there is the inner harbor there is fells point there is you know certain neighborhoods going to the stadium where people are like we're going to come in and this is going to be quote unquote our space so then when you have young people who are standing there like they're having to stand there to help

feed their families at the age of 14 that is an inconvenient truth that that is something that's like oh that's not what we want to see and so yeah you definitely have this clash and then again you put in that bias and now it's like oh no no i'm coming in for a night at theater and then go to a nice restaurant and now i have five young men coming and you know saying they want to wash my car like those two things are not working together um and that's why there has to be a narrative change. You are at a organization, it's called the Collaborative. So the Collaborative is part of the University of Maryland School of Social Work. Really what our focus is, is making sure that the voices and experiences of people with lived experience are at the table, are driving

the programming, driving evaluations, that their voices are being listened to and heard. You know, we work with various partners on that we have sort of three buckets of work that we do we do youth development we do violence prevention and then we do consulting work within the community when i read the news about squeegee kids almost all the time it's uh negative social media comments on them it's always like baltimore is um a rat hole um and the reason why is that they have these youth here, et cetera. So it's really like bias and you don't hear their voices a lot. Interestingly, I learned you actually did a study where you heard them and why they are out here. I wanted to make sure the youth were being heard, their voices were being heard. So one,

people use, you know, study and research and all of that. But I think it's important to recognize that quote-unquote research has been done to the black community for generations right for hundreds of years and so I want to make sure that you know we weren't studying them we were lifting up their voices and making sure that they were being heard because as you said there are a lot everybody's talking about this right but very few people are talking with the youth and making sure that the youth story is being heard so what the way I did it was I contacted some incredible messengers. These are guys who have been out in the community. Sometimes they were out in the corners. They were returning citizens. So they've been imprisoned and then they've been released in

the past couple of years. They knew the kids who squeegee. So I asked them to connect me with the young people. I met with a handful of youth who squeegee and said, what is it that you want people to know about your community and your community being the squeegee worker community, right? And so they came up with the questions and said, well, I want people to know these things, right? So they created the survey. Then I said, okay, well, you've created this wonderful survey, go out and collect the data, you know, go and talk to your community, talk to your peers, ask them these questions, and

then we'll come back and go over the responses. So as I said, there's about 150 to 200 squeegee workers, and they got 31 surveys collected, which is pretty good representation i met with them again with a larger group so we had 16 squeegee workers come together and we went through the data okay you know x amount of people said this and then ask more qualitative questions like does this ring true to you why do you think this is you know what does this really mean how does this really impact young people and then from that conversation we took notes and that conversation was facilitated by you right so it was youth facilitating the conversation with youth, I was the secretary in the room and took notes. You know,

I wrote up just quotes and put it in a PowerPoint and then met with a subset of youth again. So about five of the workers and said, okay, this is what I heard you say. Is this accurate? And again, these were quotes. It wasn't my interpretation. It was just direct quotes. They read through it and said, yep, that's accurate. And then I said, okay, well, how do you feel about presenting this to the squeegee collaborative which is a group of about 120 to 140 people who have convened for the past three months to really talk about this and what we can do to try to address some of these challenges so they then presented the outcomes from both the quantitative and qualitative data gathering and then answered questions that people you know have regarding the data the

statements things like that i think two things were important to lift up about some of the information that we did. And one was people want to talk about accountability for the squeegee workers, right? So, or enforcement is, you know, like clear the corners, right? Like if they're on the corner, you should arrest them, charge them, you know, all this other stuff. So accountability kept being a conversation, but you know, I said to the youth, you are not the only ones that are accountable in this situation. There are systems and as social workers, we're always thinking, right fontanbrenner like individual family community policy so let's go through that what are the systems that are impacting you that you engage with and what has that impact been

and so they went through and talked about let's talk about education let's talk about housing let's talk about employment right like these are the systems we have to look at so that's one thing the second thing is when we were going through the powerpoint i had to put pictures on the powerpoint because of the literacy issues that some of these young people are facing and we're talking about 21 year olds where the direct quotes were from them this is language they use this is not something you know i'm not writing a you know high level you know whatever and i had to put pictures because they couldn't read on this this line so i think those are important things that people have to understand people are like blaming them and like saying go get a job but you're

finding that when you look at their like systems there they don't have the um education sometimes there are not jobs available baltimore also has um a transportation like issue it's really hard and it's also um expensive to go to places where there are like work so what was their like story why were they out there? There are several, several things that came up. So one, the vast majority of the young people said, I'm out here because if I don't do this, my brothers and sisters aren't going to eat. We're not going to be able to pay rent. You know, my family cannot afford the bills that are coming in. And so I have to make up that gap between what's coming in and what it costs to live in Baltimore. So that was one thing is that the vast majority of the kids

were saying that like, I'm helping to pay the bills of the family. We had kids where they were saying, I am the only income for the family. And I have five brothers and sisters. So you know, and they're, you know, 17 years old. So that's one thing. But system wide, they talked about why would I go to school? Sometimes I'm not even there and I'm still getting passed. So why would I even go? I'm just getting passed through. Some kids were saying, I was in a school. I had to go into a special school because there was an incident at my original school. I went there. It was right by my house. Great. But I was only allowed to go there for 45 days. Then they assigned me to a different school, which required me to take two buses to get there. It was on the

other side of Baltimore. So it might take me an hour and a half to get there. Well, that's the system issue that is not okay that we're telling you know a 16 year old take two buses go an hour and a half by yourself to the other side of baltimore like that doesn't even make sense right um and then the education is a direct correlation with employment there were young people who graduated from high school they learned a trade so that they could be a certified x whatever that X is. And they had all of the skills, but when it came time to take the certification exam, they can't pass it because they don't have the literacy skills to be able to read the test and pass it. Well, that's a setup, right? Okay, we're going to teach you

this thing, but you can't pass the certification, which means that you cannot get the level of pay that you would if you got certified, which means that you're getting a subcontract of a subcontract. So instead of making $60 an hour, now you're making $20 an hour, which then feeds into housing to afford a two bedroom apartment in Baltimore city, you have to make $28 an hour. The average income of somebody with a high school diploma in Baltimore city is like $16 an hour. Well, there's the gap.

So people want to know why young people are squeegeeing. There's the gap. So we do not have a guaranteed income. We do not have a living wage. Our education system is setting kids up so they can't pass the certification exam and then they can't get employment that allows them to pay for health. Introducing a free self-paced program for diabetes care team members from the American Diabetes Association. Earn up to 5.25 continuing education credits

and help people with diabetes overcome behavioral health challenges. Register now. This program is supported by an unrestricted educational grant from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. Dr. K., you've actually broken a lot of stereotypes that I read almost daily, that they are lazy. This is easy money. They don't have to pay taxes on it. Some of them are making a few hundred dollars a day. I don't know whether that's correct, but there's a gap in understanding between the public and the politicians and these people. So how do you get them to talk about a solution?

And I also want to add, there was a murder a few months back where a motorist got in an altercation with a group of people who are squeegee. so that kind of like fueled even more controversy over it in the um aftermath of all of this happening how hard is it to find um a solution again you have to look at the bias in this situation there there was a an altercation but an adult male got out of his car with a baseball bat to come after youth young people children and then one of the young people had a gun and shot the gentleman so you know sometimes there's this like misrepresentation of what happened like the young person was just standing around shooting ran you know like this was an adult male who came after a child with a baseball bat and so yes that did kind of light a fire under this and say like

hey something has to happen I do want to point out before I go into the solution conversation that as I was talking with you they were saying you know but nobody's telling the story about how drivers are hitting children with their cars. Like literally there's a young man who's been hit twice with a car and ended up in the hospital. All of his teeth have been knocked out. He broke his pelvis. Okay. So let's talk about that and the harm that's happening to the children, but also, um, you know, they talked about, there are people who drive by and call them the N word. There are people who drive by and have a knife sitting on their lap and, you know, looking at the young people, threatening them with a knife, right? So these are also there are

assaults that are happening to the young people that people aren't talking about. Now, as far as bringing people together for a solution in the collaborative, there has been a representation of all these different groups. So we have the squeegee workers in the room, we have businesses in the room, we have nonprofits in the room, we have racial justice, you know, leaders in the room, And so we're all coming together and doing that work of really saying we have to let's start with the idea that we have to recognize the role of racism and systems of oppression in how we got here. Now, let's talk about how we're going to try to address this issue. You know, it's hard work. It's hard conversations. But we're going to get to a place that there is a solution that offers safety for everyone and well-being.

Our children are not being taken care of. We need to do something about that as a community. If we are the village, we need to act as one. I'm a resident of Baltimore. I attend a church. We are part of like Bill, which is an organization of like faith-based ones who are working to uplift Baltimore. I always keep like a few dollars I give, but what could I do more?

I think that's a great question. And one, help with the narrative and help get the word out and remind people these are young people. These are teenagers. These are children. Right. And so when people are using all of these derogatory words describing, you know, young people, these young gentlemen as all these negative things, we all have a responsibility to challenge that narrative and educate people. Hey, wait a minute. Did you know that? So that's one thing is education. The second thing is, as the solution, the plan comes out, everybody should be looking at that plan to see what role can they play. Whether it be, you know, oh, you want to help the squeegee workers?

Here is a way that you can donate. And that can go into, and maybe it's a direct donation plan. I don't know what the plan is yet. We're still coming up with it. But, you know, it may be that there's a, okay, if you want to give to squeegee workers, here's a way you can do that. It could be that they say, well, we need volunteers. You could volunteer in that plan. If you have a business, you could say, okay, you know, I'm happy to have a squeegee worker come and, you know, have them as part of the business. So these are all things that, you know, each person, every person can do. Also voting and political advocacy. you know, we can't sit back and say, well, these kids got to figure this out. No, no, no, no. We

need to be voting and saying, okay, well, let's talk about a living wage. Let's talk about guaranteed income. Let's talk about education reform. Those things have to be part of this because these are the systems of oppression that are causing the situation to happen. Sometimes, Dr. K, it seems so overwhelming. I mean, I love Baltimore. I live in a neighborhood that's not gentrified like fully you know there are really good people there and there's um a stereotype that it's it's like uh man max beyond like thunderdome and it isn't it's it's like real like people but but as you had like said you know there's historic systemic racism there's um a redlining issue um our governor um of maryland i was really um angry because they wanted to like

build um a light rail that went from like west side east side where it's like needed no it actually goes up through like areas that are gentrified so you know it's not like helping how do you not get overwhelmed with your like work and discouraged because it's it's like micro mezzo macro it's all levels. So the challenges that I face as a social worker pales in comparison and is nothing compared to what people that I work with experience on a daily basis. So that's to start with, you know, I am a very privileged person. I am a white female with a PhD, right? I almost check every box of privilege except for the female thing. I mean, that's, that's not so much, but I have all of privileges, right? So even when I have a day or I look at my work and go, am I making any

difference at all? I have to think about the folks that I work with where they are in almost every category of oppressed populations. And yet every day they get up and try to make the city better. So I got nothing. I got nothing that I can look at and say, oh, I'm stressed. Like, well, have a minute with some of the guys I work with, right? Yeah. So I think as social workers, it's important for us to recognize our own privilege. And by definition, if we're social workers, at least in Maryland, you have to have a master's degree, you have to have licensing, which means you had a way to go to school, you have education, you have literacy, you know, you have employment opportunities. That's a lot of privilege that we have to recognize.

and then that really helps with like i'm not going to be overwhelmed because look at the folks that i work with and what they have to deal with every day i'm thankful and i'm blessed and i'm privileged so move on and do the work you had like mentioned earlier that you're working on a plan about uh squeegee workers oh yeah i mean like i said the collaborative is made up of you know people from the city government non-profits business community squeegee community higher ed all of that and it's really a collaborative uh process the plan is not ready yet it's not out yet but we do hope to have it out in the you know this fall sometime i want to like definitely definitely follow up with you on it um before we let you go though i mean i want to find out more

about how you entered the social work profession. Where are you from and how did you end up where you are now doing this wonderful work? Thank you. So I grew up in DC, in Washington, DC. I grew up in Shaw, which is down the street from Howard University. I grew up, you know, in the 80s in Shaw. Um, so Shaw today is not the Shaw of, so, you know, when I was growing up, it was at the height of the tech epidemic. It was at, you know, DC was mostly cracked. There was some heroin. Um, it was also during the height of the AIDS epidemic. And so, you know, I did grow up with crack pipes at the front, you know, guys and gangs on the corners, open air drug markets, you know shootings regularly i also grew up going to schools that were failing schools um so that

you know they usually have a rating system you know one to ten and one is the lowest those were the schools i went to i went to school honor roll you know honor society all of this and then when i graduated and i went to college i was confused as to why i was in remedial classes and i was like wait a minute, that doesn't make sense. Now, you know, I was the only white kid in my neighborhood, in my church, in my elementary school. So I grew up as, you know, in the predominantly Black community, learning about, you know, systems of oppression, racism, civil rights movement. I went to Shiloh Baptist Church, which is a historically Black church founded by 19 runaway enslaved people. i sang in a choir there a few times in my youth so small world oh my gosh yeah yeah children's choir

yeah um i grew up um outside of uh dc in um upper marlboro and um some of my uh neighbors um attended there so they would grab me on like sundays come on and like sing so yep i know well um i've actually been in um a few weddings there and uh go ahead enough about me no no no Um, so, you know, I did grow up in the children's choir, the youth choir, they have a deaf ministry. So signing at the deaf ministry. Um, so I was there three, four days a week. And, you know, on Sundays in a black Baptist church, we start at nine and we end on Tuesday. So I was there, there all the time.

Yeah. So when I went to college and I was like, well, why am I in a remedial class? But yet I was an honor society in my high school. And then I started to really think more. You know, why did I have teachers giving us coloring sheets in AP biology? And when I asked, like, why are we coloring? The response from the teacher was, you're never going to be anything but a ditch digger. So it doesn't matter what I teach. Wow. Wow. Wow. And so, you know, my major was family sciences with a focus on the African-American family, minor in women's studies. You know, I did more of the academic learning and sort of saying, oh, wait, now I have to understand. You know, I learned about systems of oppression. I learned about civil rights. And now I'm putting it at the micro level. Oh, so when redlining happens, this is how it impacts the family and the person.

oh now i'm making these connections um so i went to smith college for my master's in social work it's an anti-racist institution so that all of my education was done with a anti-racism lens so that i could understand the clinical meaning and also you know as we're learning about some of the quote-unquote fathers of psychology so first of all let's talk about fathers like right We're talking about the men, but I'm, you know, going to keep going. But also the misdiagnosis of, you know, the African-American community, the role of mental health in oppression, you know, going back to the days of slavery, right? From there, I did my internship in Baltimore, Maryland, where I worked at Kennedy Krieger Family Center, trauma center for 10 years. And then I came to the University of Maryland, where I did place based programming. But, you know, I was very clear when people said, Oh, can you go into this community and create a parenting program? Well, that doesn't make any sense. I'm a white woman, not from Baltimore, I am not going to go into this neighborhood and say, Hey, black moms, this is how you should raise your children in the neighborhood you grew up in.

so i really focused on partnering with people in the neighborhoods um where they we were co-creating you know like oh there's a parenting program what do you think should be important and so my dissertation was comparing the outcomes between when the mothers and fathers implemented the group to when social workers implemented the group we had the same outcomes so why are we paying social workers why are we having white social workers come into this predominantly black neighborhood and say okay i'm going to tell you how to raise your children that is not okay um it's patronizing it's paternalistic you know and it upholds the the racism that um occurs in this country so um you know that has been my work for the past you know 13 years is really partnering with community

and trying to say to predominantly white institutions or communities of privilege, we are not the experts in the life and experience of the communities we partner with. They are the experts. So our role should be to support, remove barriers, and access resources, not tell people how to raise their children or how to address the challenges that are currently happening. Wow. So that's my journey. Yeah. A wonderful one. Wow. And, um, interesting. I mean, I could do, um, a podcast, um, episode on, on, um, a white woman at shallow Baptist church, just on its own. So, but, but, but, um, Dr. Uh, Kate, it has really been, um, a pleasure. Um, I'm so glad that we had this, um, opportunity to have you on and thanks for being a guest with

social work calls. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you. You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks, a production of the National Association of Social Workers. We encourage you to visit NASW's website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members, to create and maintain professional standards, and to advance sound social policies. You can learn more at www.socialworkers.org. And don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode.