Pressed for Change

At protest walkout, DHS workers blame Inky, mayor for unnecessary shake-up.

by Doron Taussig

The mayor's plan, presumably, was to do a Friday news dump. His office announced the 1 p.m. press conference at 12:05, and he told the small gaggle of reporters who made it that, in light of The Philadelphia Inquirer's investigation into the deaths of children under the watch of the Department of Human Services, DHS Commissioner Cheryl Ransom-Garner had resigned and her deputy, John McGee, had been terminated.

Street also said he was appointing a commission to conduct a "comprehensive review" of DHS. He answered a few questions without actually answering them, and then left.

NO CHERYL, NO PEACE: Some 300 DHS workers descended upon City Hall to tell Mayor Street he shouldn't have forced their boss to resign.

By Monday, it seemed fair to assume, when people started paying attention to the news again, the media would have moved on to something else. But while the mayor spoke, word of Ransom-Garner's resignation was spreading through the DHS offices in the government building at 1515 Arch St. Some got the news by e-mail; others by word of mouth. Almost everyone was angry.

"Who's this new guy?" a woman asked in the elevator, making reference to Arthur Evans, the director of the Office of Behavioral Health/Mental Retardation Services, whom Street had named acting commissioner. "Is he even DHS?"

Community Behavioral Health, a man said. "It's all political."

By 2 p.m., workers were buzzing about walking off the job in protest. Normally, the bosses might have put the kibosh on such talk, but most of the department's top leadership was out of the building, dealing with the shake-up. As a result, there were no politically cautious voices to temper the discussion, and people like Joyce Trawick, a supervisor and shop steward, were free to fan the flames.

"I've worked with this commissioner," Trawick said as she charged around the eighth floor, drumming up support for the walkout. "She's been compassionate, hardworking to the point this woman used to throw away vacation days. She's a diligent commissioner and she's fair-minded."

Ransom-Garner was popular, "as good as you're gonna get," more than one person said. She had begun as a social worker in 1983 and rose through the ranks. Employees felt that she had demonstrated a genuine concern for children and for her subordinates' working conditions, and credited her with starting innovative programs for teens and for changing the way the department functioned.

"She made social workers and supervisors accountable, by making them do their reports," added Diane Jones.

Many DHS employees took Ransom-Garner's dismissal and the preceding coverage as an indictment of the agency writ large. The Inquirer was particularly unpopular. Its stories revealed that DHS had failed to make substantial changes in procedures for investigating child abuse after the brutal and well-publicized death of 3-year-old Porchia Bennett in 2003. The paper also argued that the department hid its failures behind a veil of confidentiality concerns.

When asked, workers said they weren't sure if investigative procedures had stagnated under Ransom-Garner. "You'd have to ask an administrator," Trawick said. But the Inquirer's linkage of DHS inadequacies with children's deaths unseated a deeper anger about a perceived lack of appreciation for the challenges of social work.

"No one understands that we don't sleep with these parents at night," said Sterling Goode, a social worker. "When we leave there, all hell could break loose, and we don't know the difference."

"It's the judges who decide if a child stays or not," said clerical worker Virginia Smith, as she left her desk for the walkout.

One major point of contention was that the Inquirer had appeared to consider DHS culpable for deaths that the department could not reasonably have prevented. The story had focused on three cases in which DHS (and not judges) had clearly failed to remove children from dangerous circumstances.

But it had also written that, between 2003 and 2005, twenty children had died of abuse after their families came into contact with DHS. Two of those children had been neither born nor conceived when DHS closed the case on the family (a fact which the Inquirer had access to, but has not published). Two others were murdered when an abusive adult moved into the home several years after DHS's involvement (information which DHS had not provided in whole to the Inquirer).

"I cried when I saw the article," said Diane Jones. "That was a one-sided written report."

"Why don't [the Inquirer reporters] come out with us and see what we do?" asked another employee, though this is more easily said than done. DHS is reluctant to let reporters tag along with workers because of confidentiality concerns.

Somehow, out of the chaos and anger, the decision was made to march to the mayor's office at 2:30 p.m. On the third floor, a union leader named Mike discussed whether "E-day" workers (people on "emergency days") should participate, and the state Department of Public Welfare prepared to cover the city's child-abuse hotline. On the ground floor, outside the elevators, a woman set up a table with big pieces of paper and markers, so people could make signs that read, "No Cheryl, No Peace."

By about 2:40 p.m., the hallway outside the mayor's office was overrun by at least 300 DHS employees, most of them black, many of them women. City Hall police scrambled to control the crowd, and mayoral press aides Joe Grace and Ted Qualli (who previously handled communications for DHS) stood watching the throng gather, wearing expressions that said, We didn't see this coming .

During the next 45 minutes or so, the crowd pointed its anger in the direction of the mayor's closed door, chanting things like "No Cheryl, No Work," "Cheryl Is a Scapegoat," and working in some call-and-answers like, "Where is Street? Coward!" Perhaps the most heartfelt chant was simply, "Do Our Job!"

During a quiet moment, Grace peeked his head out of the press office, which is across the hall from the mayor's door. Coincidentally, a small woman standing in front of the door picked that moment to start a new chant: "The Mayor Should Resign!" Grace ducked back in.

The protesters seemed simultaneously satisfied with the event — "We ain't been together like this in a long time," said Sterling Goode — and spurred to greater anger by their apparent consensus. When two enormous cops stationed themselves in front of the mayor's door, a woman yelled, "Y'all don't come when we call you."

A social worker named Jean Merritt became increasingly riled about the Inquirer report. "I want to know how Richard Gelles," she said, referring to the dean of the Penn School of Social Work, who had been quoted extensively criticizing DHS, "got to become the expert of all time."

"Ugh. Gag me with an M.S.W. [Master of Social Work]," said the man beside her.

For a time, it seemed the social workers planned to stay put until someone came out and announced Ransom-Garner's reinstatement. ("Take off your coats," union leader Kahim Boles said. "Get comfortable.") But the crowd soon became enamored of the idea of blocking traffic, and moved into the stairwells of City Hall, yelling, "Shut it down!"

The bad news, from the protesters' perspective, was that their numbers appeared paltry on the street compared with the packed hallway. The good news was that they still had enough people to block traffic coming up 15th Street at JFK and off of Market onto 15th.

For about 30 minutes, only a van with a child needing medication and a trolley carrying bridesmaids to a wedding were allowed through the two intersections (and there were objections to their passage.) Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson arrived on the scene, prompting shouts of "they still got their commissioner, why can't we have ours?" Johnson found himself negotiating with a midlevel DHS supervisor named David Edmonds.

Edmonds usually spends his days trying to calm down angry parents. Johnson, who is a much bigger man, at times looked down at the social worker with an expression that said, "Is this guy kidding?" He wasn't.

Gradually, union reps who had become the de facto protest leaders agreed to back workers off from the intersection, although they continued to block City Hall circle, and to blow on whistles that had been given out to social workers in case they found themselves in danger. There was no leadership and no apparent plan; a couple of times, particularly aggressive groups moved back into the intersections, shouting, "The unions didn't come out here, we did!" No arrests were reported.

Finally, at about 4:30 p.m., the union leaders convinced some of the more radical elements to head back to 1515 Arch. Everyone promised that the battle for their commissioner was not over. They had already, at least, assured that the mayor would not be able to pawn all the embarrassment of the week's debacle onto his subordinates: His Friday news dump had become big news.

Back in the lobby of the DHS building, a crowd of tired workers turned a corner and, stopping in front of the elevators, let up a huge cheer. The elevator doors slid shut, concealing the subject of their affection.

"Who was that?" they were asked.

"That was our commissioner," said Goode. "I guess she's cleaning out her office."

(doron@citypaper.net)