‘I have to be out there. They’re killing us.’

The Work Cure

New subscribers: We’re on episode 7 of a multiepisode series called American Rehab. If you haven’t listened yet, catch up here.

Last week on American Rehab, reporters Shoshana Walter and Laura Starecheski headed to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to interview residents of the work-based rehab Cenikor. The task wasn’t easy: After the facility declined their interview requests, they resorted to an early-morning stakeout and followed an unmarked work van for miles.

When they did finally talk to residents, some swore by the program. Others said it destroyed their faith in God.

Chris Koon entered the program with few options. He’d been struggling with addiction for years, bouncing between jobs on an oil rig and delivering pizza. After barely surviving an overdose, he was arrested for meth possession and given two options: five years in prison or two years at Cenikor.

He chose treatment – or at least he thought he did. Soon after arriving, he began to observe how the reality of Cenikor seemed to differ from its stated promises. The facility, he said, resembled a “randown renovated fucking psych ward.” He found mice in his sock drawer. He was flabbergasted by a labyrinth of protocols, including an exercise called “hot seat” – a mutated version of Synanon’s “Game” in which participants formed a circle around someone and hurled verbal abuse.

One former counseling intern at Cenikor described a troubling system: Grab the participants anytime they’re available – no matter how short – and mark it down as a full therapy session. Several topics were off-limits, including the program itself, the staff or the work.

Then there was the work. Despite sometimes clocking 84-hour weeks, Koon spent 18 months earning nothing but cigarettes. Drugs were abundant both at the rehab and at job sites. He was often given one water bottle to last an entire 12-hour shift in triple-digit heat.

“They talk about you like you were just – like you were inventory, like you weren't even a person,” he said. “I've heard bosses talking, being like, ‘Yeah we need to order like five more Cenikors for tomorrow.’ ”

In/Vulnerable

Tawanda Jones’ brother, Tyrone West, died after Baltimore police tackled and pepper-sprayed him during a traffic stop in 2013. So when protests erupted across the country in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, Jones felt compelled to join.

Jones, a kindergarten teacher and mother of four, opted out of work in an attempt to keep her family safe from the coronavirus. But the protests, and what they represented, felt too important.

“I have to be out there,” she said. “They’re killing us. Even though I don’t wanna die from COVID-19, I’d rather die fighting for a cause trying to save people’s lives.”

This story is the latest in our In/Vulnerable series, a multipart collaboration with The Nib investigating inequity during the pandemic. Read all the installments here.

What we’re reading

Hygiene theater is a huge waste of time – The Atlantic

It’s as if an oceanside town stalked by a frenzy of ravenous sharks urged people to return to the beach by saying, ‘We care about your health and safety, so we’ve reinforced the boardwalk with concrete.’ Lovely, now people can sturdily walk into the ocean and be separated from their limbs.

In Chicago, a steep rise in suicide among Black people – The Trace

“Ignoring the issue until it becomes a crisis has become the method of treatment,” says one mental health advocate.

Farmworkers are getting coronavirus. They face retaliation for demanding safe conditions. – The World

Horrified at the outbreak, (Ernestina) Mejía and other Primex employees took part in a one-day strike in late June to protest what they viewed as their employer’s failure to protect them. They also demanded an investigation by the state’s attorney general.

Their situation highlights the tightrope farmworkers must walk to protect their health and jobs while avoiding retaliation from their employers. Within weeks, at least 40 Primex workers, many of whom were active in the strike, were terminated, former workers told The World. Others said they feared the same fate if they spoke up.

DHS compiled ‘intelligence reports’ on journalists who published leaked documents – The Washington Post

Over the past week, the (Department of Homeland Security’s) Office of Intelligence and Analysis has disseminated three Open Source Intelligence Reports to federal law enforcement agencies and others, summarizing tweets written by two journalists – a reporter for The New York Times and the editor in chief of the blog Lawfare – and noting they had published leaked, unclassified documents about DHS operations in Portland.

‘Every day is a struggle’: El Paso, one year later – The Dallas Morning News

How a hatred of Hispanics and three minutes of gunfire in a crowded Walmart changed 23 families forever.