Protests After the Firing of Sera Davidow

Leaders in fighting psychiatric coercion, Wildflower Alliance staff rebel against the attack on their director and organization

Last week, Sera Davidow was suddenly removed from her position as executive director of the peer-support and advocacy group Wildflower Alliance. A co-founder of the Massachusetts-based organization twenty years ago, Davidow’s unexpected firing was implemented in an unusual and questionable way—by the board of a different and arguably separate organization. Wildflower Alliance’s (WA’s) senior staff leadership have collectively put out a statement criticizing the move and saying it endangers the entire survival of WA, and have launched a public campaign and petition to try to help get Davidow reinstated.

In full disclosure, as I’ve previously written, Wildflower Alliance has been a key, foundational promoter of PsychForce Report—indeed, without Davidow’s encouragement and support, I might well have never launched PsychForce Report. But much more importantly, Wildflower Alliance is a rare, and in some ways even unique organization in the U.S. political landscape—and much of its success and international recognition have been driven by the leadership of Davidow.

On one hand, WA manages $4 million in funding, much of which comes from mainstream mental health sources—primarily the Massachusetts state government Department of Mental Health—to provide non-clinical services, training, and supports. On the other hand, WA is entirely operated by diverse people with lived experience as survivors and consumers of mental health systems, and its staff regularly speak out against forced psychiatric treatment while working to forge peer-driven alternative approaches that focus on harm reduction and eliminating policing and coercion in mental health care.

Wildflower Alliance currently operates two peer respites (including Afiya, featured in a World Health Organization international guideline for creating alternatives to emergency psychiatric hospitalization), four community centers, the renowned Alternatives to Suicide program, and more. Various WA staff have also been featured openly challenging forced treatment in several New York Times stories.

Excerpt from Wildflower Alliance statement. Picture of Sera Davidow.

When I spoke in several cities in Massachusetts about Your Consent Is Not Required, one day I talked with a senior official from the state Department of Mental Health who’d attended my presentation organized by Davidow, and the next I sat in a discussion circle in a WA community drop-in center hearing from people living on the street about the constant threat of incarceration they were facing. It’s just a small example of the different cultures Davidow and Wildflower Alliance navigate and the bridges they’ve been able to build—but I’m unaware of another organization like WA, and to some degree one has to give credit to the Massachusetts government for supporting such an organization that is so strongly against coercion even as rates of coercion in the state are among the highest in the country.

A related press release from WA staff describes:

Perhaps most importantly, they [Wildflower Alliance] – and Sera herself - have become internationally known for fighting force and co-optation and prioritizing harm reduction, integrity and values-driven work. And through that unwavering stand for prioritization of voice, choice and personal agency, many other people and groups have come to look at them as a sign of what is possible and as a source of support toward building something similar in their own communities.

So, how and why has Sera Davidow been fired by the board of the Western Massachusetts Training Consortium (WMTC)—on the face of it, a completely different organization?

WMTC has long been what’s sometimes called a “fiscal sponsor” or “host nonprofit” for WA. These kinds of legal arrangements are generally not uncommon in the nonprofit sector, although each individual agreement can vary a lot in the nitty-gritty details. A typical scenario would be a new, small group starts up and, instead of going through the lengthy process of incorporating as a legal nonprofit entity right away, the group asks an existing nonprofit to “host” them. In effect, the new group becomes a “program” of the existing nonprofit and, through the nonprofit, is able to apply for certain grants from governments or philanthropic foundations that are only available to incorporated nonprofit organizations. Simultaneously, the host organization may provide some backbone services and also take an “administration” fee of, say, 5-15% of any grants received. This is similar to what happened in the development of what would eventually become Wildflower Alliance, with WMTC serving as its host nonprofit.

A small organization I co-founded, Building Resilient Neighbourhoods, had several such host nonprofit partners over the course of a decade without any major problems or misunderstandings before we finally incorporated as a fully independent nonprofit entity ourselves. Unlike our group, though, Wildflower Alliance grew into a fairly large and operationally expansive “program” or “sub-organization” within WMTC before recently beginning to re-visit the issue of becoming its own legally-separate nonprofit organization. Now, if Wildflower Alliance does become fully independent, WMTC stands to lose the enormous profile and prestige that WA brings, along with more than half a million dollars in fees WMTC is taking in annually as WA’s host organization.

WA staff say they believe that the WMTC board fired Davidow “in direct retaliation for Wildflower Alliance senior leadership doing research and planning toward starting an independent non-profit and separating from WMTC.” Other contributing factors, they argue, include dislike from WMTC for WA’s continued strong support for oppressed and marginalized groups amid the increasingly harsh, regressive political climate in the U.S.

I am not privy to internal operations at Wildflower Alliance and until this recent event had never even heard of Western Massachusetts Training Consortium. But in any situation of this kind, one would expect and hope that such a significant move would first go through extensive procedures and discussions, negotiations, alternative solution-seeking, and potentially third-party mediation. WMTC’s mission statement certainly suggests they would be and should be open to this:

The Consortium creates conditions in which people who have faced marginalization, oppression, or otherwise felt invisible are better able to pursue their dreams and strengthen communities through voice, choice, and inclusion. This is supported by an organizational commitment to address systems of oppression and work toward undoing the harms they have caused.

I hope WMTC board members will realize that this situation with Wildflower Alliance merits such attention and care, and choose to revisit their apparently hasty, unilateral, and potentially devastating decision. There is so much at stake—not only for Davidow and the many staff of Wildflower Alliance, but for everyone hoping to forge working alternatives to incarceration and forced treatment in America’s mental health systems.

Wildflower Alliance staff are asking for public support in their efforts to reinstate Sera Davidow as executive director and save their organization. You can read more about the situation here and write to key decision-makers or sign the petition here.