Meet Cassie Hanson

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cassie Hanson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Cassie, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?

Working as a caseworker for formerly-incarcerated women, and also as an advocate for prison abolition, much of my time is spent brainstorming solutions to problems big and small. These range from solving interpersonal conflict between housemates to conceptualizing accountability measures outside of the realm of incarceration. Our societal paradigm of creativity is often focused on the individual, and measured by a person’s “creation” of some sort of product. In my work, I envision “creativity” as something more collective; it is more like the sum of collective imagination and experimentation among a group trying to achieve a similar goal. Because the result of this kind of creativity is owned by more than just a single person, it often speaks to a greater variance of human experience.

I keep creativity alive by allowing action to flow from many different points of inspiration. Sometimes, my experience as a caseworker and community member is enough to spark something innovative. Sometimes, a creative solution comes from the experiences of great minds of the past and present (activists, artists, essayists, etc). Sometimes, creativity comes from the lived experiences of my clients, with their discussions and proposals often fueling our own programming changes onsite. The way I keep my creativity alive is to make sure that I am not creating in a vacuum; the more I am open to outside influence and experiences different from my own, the more I am able to access a variety of creative tools.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

Benevolence Farm is a non-profit organization which provides housing and employment to women leaving prisons in North Carolina. Formerly-incarcerated people are one of the most vulnerable populations in America, struggling to secure everything from housing and healthcare to food and employment. Our organization tries to place the foundational elements for sustainable success under formerly-incarcerated women by providing them with survival tools (housing, employment, etc.) and helping guide the beginning of their journey towards self-actualization through investigation into their goals and passions as human beings. In a system where lack of resources drives people back to incarceration, we are hoping to be a compassionate safe haven to give support.

We are aimed at providing dignity, agency, and empowerment to people who historically have been traumatized by systems of oppression. Statistics show that a huge amount of people entering incarceration have a history of trauma (36%, Bureau of Justice Statistics), a cognitive disability (23%, Bureau of Justice Statistics), or a history of addiction (65%, National Institute on Drug Abuse). We believe that these illnesses in combination with systemic violence are more often than not the leading impetus towards incarceration, not an inclination towards violence or a need for punishment. We are working to build a world in which communities take accountability for their most vulnerable members before they become imprisoned, and we are passionate about pursuing creative alternatives of accountability, healing, and rehabilitation in communities.

If you are interested in supporting this mission, we’d love you to consider supporting our social enterprise! On our website (benevolencefarm.org), we sell a variety of body care products and scented candles; 100% of the proceeds from purchases of these products go into resident wages as part of our employment program. Our residents grow, harvest, and dry the flowers and herbs in our products onsite, and also make the products themselves. With the holiday season coming up, we will have several seasonal scents coming to our shop very soon. I really love our products, and I love the feeling of using something my clients put love and care into.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Compassion, adaptability, and the ability to pause.

Compassion is a muscle; as one exercises it, they find it gets bigger and stronger. With any form of direct service, one works with many people who invite us to expand our understanding of how to offer love and care. There are lots of ways to build the compassion muscle. One way is to learn softness with oneself; analyze how you love yourself and practice forgiving your own imperfections. Listen deeply to others as often as you can, especially to those whose values and lived experiences differ from your own. Ask a lot of questions, and ask them to understand instead of waiting for an opportunity to respond.

Adaptability is hugely important in the realm of time management and internal philosophy. In direct service, an entire day’s schedule can change over the course of a phone call; it’s important to let things unfold and to adapt readily as priorities are required to shift. It’s also essential when offering care. People need care in different forms, so it’s important to be inquisitive and flexible with the ways one serves others. Work hard to become fluent in different “languages” of care, from expanding your knowledge of community resources to developing different avenues of case management. This will help clients have agency over the nature of their care.

Lastly, pausing is a skill I practice in a variety of settings. If I’m having a hectic day and find my mind racing, I try to build in moments of pause to clear my mind. This helps me focus more singularly on the tasks I need to complete. If a client comes to me with a challenging issue, I try to pause before responding so I can analyze my choices and weigh them with intention. If I start to feel burnout coming on, I pause and reflect on how I could change the way I am spending my time to stay engaged with my work. In Western working culture, there seems to be a trend of urgency, which is often artificial. If we let this manufactured urgency permeate our working lives, we will find ourselves overly-busy without intentional engagement. Learning to pause is a great way to come back to the present moment and re-evaluate the nature of our work.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

Community is immensely important in the world of reentry. There is a saying that sometimes comes about in reentry circles along the lines of, “Every conviction is a life sentence.” Even after someone has served time for a conviction, they will find that their record follows them in all aspects of their life, from housing and job applications to social discrimination in their communities. With this in mind, we are always interested in building out communities of care for our clients, as well as value-aligned friends of the organization!

In terms of values, the partners we hold closest are those who believe in the dignity and agency of all people, and believe that this dignity should not be revoked because someone has been convicted of a crime. In terms of expertise, our clients often benefit from the help of therapists of all kinds, lawyers and law experts, professionals working in accessibility for disabled individuals, and people working in substance abuse recovery. Our clients often struggle to find housing and employment, so we are always on the lookout for property managers and employers that are flexible and amenable to housing/hiring someone with a criminal record. We also would love to connect with more professionals and advocates creating resources for the use of people on the sex offender registry; we find that our clients on the registry are our most disenfranchised in terms of access to community spaces and resources.

All that said, every person we serve is different, which each building a unique pathway to stability and self-actualization! Any caring community partner of any expertise is always a delight to connect with. Anyone who is passionate about revolutionizing the carceral system and placing system-impacted individuals in a space of greater dignity is a community member of ours.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://benevolencefarm.org
• Instagram: @benevolencefarm
• Facebook: Benevolence Farm