| ||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
In 1992 I shared a shuttle ride to the MCI (Kansas City)
Airport with Darby Penney, the Consumer Liaison for the State
of NY. She mentioned that in the last few months she’d had
the same experience “six times,” where a NAMI person had come
up to her at a conference or public event and talked about
‘common agendas’. She said it was eerie how they all used the
very same words, like they’d been pre-programmed. This helped
me to understand/recognize a ‘sea change’ in the clients
movement, based on a deal cut with NAMI. At that period Sally Zinman (with whom I was then associated) summarised this as, “We hate their guts, they hate our guts, we are going to pursue common agendas.” What a shock: I have never been against genuinely working together with other people, but this deal was cut top-down in a most compromising way. I thought, “The leaders of the clients movement should have brought this proposal back to the mass of client activists, and worked to develop a consensus.” I’ve written an elaboration of the history behind this, entitled behaviorism. Of course NAMI made this deal with malice aforethought, since they had a clear insight into the fragility of the clients movement and knew this was a great divide-and-rule arrangement. They saw that the clients movement was copping out on really standing up to Torrey and the treatment advocacy movement — and they used this ‘insight’ to gain the upper hand in national mental health politics. Meanwhile anyone who was taking risks trying to stand up to NAMI, :-( such as myself, was hung out to dry, left unsupported by the client leadership, and severely battered. I have spent much of the ensuing eight (8) years nursing the wounded and trying to come to grips with this political disaster. Now we have finally come together over the fight against AB 1800 and the TAC attack. But there is still no remedy offered for the exclusionary organizing and the dissing of the people who take the risks. The 2000 Forum was advertised as a continuation of the work on ‘common agendas’ fortified by the top-down ‘partnership’ that governs California mental health politics. The question is, “When are we going to go back to the legitimate business of the clients movement, the construction of an authentic dialogue around the ‘trauma of treatment’?” Respectfully Andrew Phelps | ||||||||||
|
Re:
Common Agendas [response] | ||||||||||
Alaska Wildlife Refuge |