madbook ~

SOCIAL JUSTICE | COMBATTING PREJUDICE
The discussion on activism and humam rights continues:
     Elizabeth (and the others who are reading the dialogue):
     Your response is, equally, heard, but it seems the points I try to make are missed. This time, then, I'll try to be more succinct.
     I get a sense that part of this discussion [from comments made both by E A Ricter and David B] that one of the ways to trash psyche survivor movement elder statesmen for the failure of society to listen to what we have been saying for decades | This may be an inaccurate supposition, perhaps, but it one that comes across when reading their comments nevertheless |
      You are quite accurate in identifying that the breadth and spread of influence of the medical model has expanded in those 30 or so year, rather than contracted |
     Yes, there are probably more kids on "Big Pharma cocktails" and the citizenry in general is more apt to run for the quick fix "cures" offered amd promoted by drug companies, social policy planners and the psychiatric industry | But none of these phenomena are the fault of long battling activists who are also psyche survivors [and their supporters] Indeed, some history lessons are in order here |
     Take time to read things like Leonard Roy Frank's books on the history of electroshock, Peter Breggin's books or Ken Kesey's "Cookoo's Nest" | Sit through films like the "Snake Pit" or "Titticut Follies" or meander through the small but growing number of websites that chronicle what life was like in abandoned asylums | If you can find copies, read the mimeographed and photocopied protest newsletters that abounded in the late 1970s and into the 1980s [Alice Earl's Peer Advocate for one] which documented CIA funded projects like MK Ultra and the McGill University sensory deprivation experiments of Ewan Cameron long before the mainstream publishing houses wanted to touch the stories | And take the time to look for more obscure tones like Edward Pinnell's The Witnesses [England 1940s] or Barbara O'Brien's "Operators and Things" | The latter two books witnessing abuse or ethical breaches written by people who were not connected with movements yet who spoke in hauntingly true tones of situations before drugs, and equally barbaric and morally corrupt |
     What I'm getting at here is that the social injustices that Elizabeth's "70%" have been exposed to has been going on for ~ not just decades, but centuries | I can assure you, once you read our history, you will walk away with the knowledge that there has NEVER been much of any
     >"... real attempt to identify the social and familial issues
     > underlying an emotional crisis, merely a superficial
     > focus on behavior..."
Perhaps the only difference between then and now is that adverse effects of
massive dosings of modern day psyche drugs are less visible than, say, insulin shock wards, camisoles, ice baths and body bags | Not much of a difference, really, I'm afraid to say |
     And I would be careful about being
     >"...far more concerned about these people whose lives are being destroyed
     > and mangled than I am about the minority who actually might be said to
     > have some differences that make it extremely difficult for them to
     > fit in socially..."
The other 30 % ~ that minority ~ also have feelings, experience pain and suffering and are just as ~ hell, even MORE susceptible to mistreatment, abuse and, yes, at times, torture, than the remaining majority | Perhaps, perversely, exposing that other 70% to the horrors of the coercive and destructive power of the psychiatric / mind control industry, is actually a good thing; if nothing else, those who survive it have gone away and been damned angry about what happened to them, and speak out |
     I'll caution the newbie psyche survivor activist, however, that for every one or two you meet who has been fighting this fight for decades, there are LEGION who start out as activists and once settled in and away from the immediacy of their ordeals, fade into the woodwork of the larger culture, and stop speaking out directly | I can't say I blame them | Life is much less complicated that way | Being an activist in this kind of movement takes a toll on you physically, spiritually and psychially | Friends and family who don't have like experiences seldom put up with our "obsessions" and are every bit as likely to dismiss or disparage our anger and ire as those who KNOW the message about psychiatric oppression is a true one, a valid one | And, I ask you, how many people honestly would remain dedicated to fighting a battle that is, at times, as elusive as the sources of unseen voices that some here but no one else recognizes |
     It is disappointing ~ disappointing and hurtful ~ to read someone who actually writes a statement that they are less concerned
     >"...about the minority who actually might be said to have some
     > differences that make it extremely difficult for them to fit in socially."
My point was not about having difficulty "fitting in" | My point was that we measure the quality of the entire society by how the society treats its most ignored, it's most reviled, it's most pitied |
     A little personal point here | I work as a human rights activist in a locale where ~ daily ~ I enter into a maximum security psychiatric facility | There are many folks there who, given the present political and social climate in the USA ~ even in a "blue state" are unlikely to ever be released from the place unless being transferred to one of a similar nature | Some are there simply for the "crime" of attempting suicide or who had too many brushes with the law concerning street drug activities | Some suffer from the social maladies of illiteracy or
life long institutionalization [and yet, still under the age of 35] The facility
where I spend a greater part of my time arguing for basic rights to be recognized
is but one of many | They are only the more restrictive end of the spectrum of
"services" provided to society by the mental illness industry | Do-gooders and
angry activists outside of these kinds of places, rarely, if ever, step into
them, much less ask about the goings on of such places |
     In context, when listening to others, relatively new in the movement for fighting for human rights in the psychiatric / mind control microcosm, I want to be clear that my earlier rant today was not just a "...concern about fragmentation of the movement..." | It's much broader than that, much broader | See, I've watched the folks come and go, earnest and angry, critical and disparaging and uncomfortable being seen with the "low functioning droolers" who hang outside psycho-social club houses or in hospital day rooms | And later on, they go away, perhaps having secured some position in a cushy non-profit who hires them on as their token crazy person staffer ~ serving as a gadfly and keeping the rest of the staff at
least minimally honest ...but they never got it | They never, ever saw that ~
once they were away from their "unnecessary suffering" ~ that their walking away
didn't eliminate the suffering machine | And without simultaneously creating real
alternatives for the folks who truly do suffer [yet who DO NOT LACK UNDERSTANDING
OF THIS FACT] while railing against the larger social injustices that allow that
suffering machine to remain in toto, then it will always be there, dark,
brooding, lurking in the background, ever ready to take you again, only the next
time, maybe to never spit you out like it did the last time |
     Dismissing the suffering of those who were suffering before they ever went into such a system, is as bad as thinking the plantation system was alright, because the fair skinned negroes got to read and write and stay in the big house | As long as the system exists, we are all low functioning individuals |
     Welcome to the real world of social justice activism in the 21st Century | Get used to it | We have a LOT of work to do, and it's possible we might not see it all done within our own lifetimes | I hope that we will, but we have to be prepared to pass the torch along to other valiant souls 30 years from now |

posted by Will Brady @ 22:36