What exactly is Radical Hospitality?

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did,

but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

— Maya Angelou

This will be a three-part blog. First, I will define Radical Hospitality. Second, I will share thoughts about Radical Hospitality from other thinkers far more erudite than me. This will be with the help of a guest author on this blogsite. Finally, I will describe places where Radical Hospitality is evident in our American mental health system. By contrast, I will describe places where it is woefully not evident and suggest easy ways it could be embraced. I look forward to comments from readers on what resonates or other ideas you might have on this topic.

Part One: What is Radical Hospitality?

When I spent a month living in Trieste in 2019, and was graciously welcomed into observing their mental health system, I was looking for the “secret sauce.” How do they do what they do so well? What is the formula? This is such an American question. Within a week, I was struck by how often I saw this sign in the community centers which served as the 24/7 hubs for service: Accoglienza.

It seemed to point to an area of “reception,” but there really wasn’t a reception area the way you would experience this in the U.S. Reception was everywhere. Truly, one experienced the sense of welcome there. People were milling around in the hallways. Users (the word they use for patients or clients) were mingling with staff. It was impossible to discern who was who.

It felt so different from anything one would experience in the U.S. except for a happy workplace, an open house, or a clubhouse (more on that in Part Two).

The definition

How do I define this? Radical hospitality is a posture one assumes. There is no power dynamic; no authority conferred or assumed. It is horizontal and is defined by four attributes:

We see you
We hear you
You are safe here
Your voice matters

Sounds simple, right? But take a walk in the shoes of someone who experiencing the opposite of Radical Hospitality:

We don’t see you; *you are invisible, anonymous.*
We don’t hear you; *please be quiet and we are too busy to listen to you.*
You are not safe here; *bad things can happen here so follow the rules or else.*
Your voice does not matter; *this is the way things are done and we cannot change things.*

The system in Trieste is bedrocked into a culture of Radical Hospitality. And it doesn’t cost more money to be kind to people. Arguably, it costs less.

So often, I’ve heard reasons why we cannot emulate the guiding principles we see evident in the Trieste mental health system. Here are some of them:

Trieste is a small city and its easier for people to manage their mental health situation.
Italy is a country with strong family values.
People are more dangerous in the U.S.
There are more weapons in the hands of people with mental illness in the U.S.
We have meth raging in our homeless communities and they don’t have that problem in Italy

So, I guess these reasons, and others, condone continuing business as usual with respect to how we see and interact with other human beings? Let’s just give up.

Could it be possible that a change in our posture could turn things around?

There was a quote in the Los Angeles Times two weeks ago where the former director for the LA County Department of Mental Health said: “To think that you can all of a sudden bring in a culture of radical hospitality and solve that problem is just not reasonable . . . It’s not based in reality. And we knew that going in.”

I do not disagree with the inference that a “sudden” change is not reasonable to expect. Certainly Martin Luther King did not think that civil rights could all of a sudden be embraced. Radical Hospitality is not a cultural posture we find easy to adopt in the United States. We are at the doorstep of generational change, not a quick fix.

But do I stand by these beliefs about Radical Hospitality:

It will transform our American mental health system
We are capable of exercising Radical Hospitality. Each of us is capable, and deep down we know it.
To suggest we cannot and our only option is to accept the status quo is wrong and arguably immoral.