Carmen wrote:

Andrew, that was/is a thought-provoking idea. It’s certainly something to consider and an approach to seriously think about, isn’t it? Can we, however, organize adequately to be a political voice? I don’t know. All we do now, it seems, is to challenge legislation rather than to influence legislation with our own political view/stand.

Well we should have done this long ago. In some times and places locally some of us have done some things like this. But globally that has not been the clients agenda; developmentally I think the AB 1800 fight for us amounted to a ‘breakthrough’ into the ‘political voice’ realm.

The problem now is not, “Can we?” It’s that we must. Survival requires it of us, that’s the meaning of NAMI’s current attack. If we only block this ‘pilot’ study, we will be creamed in terms of the whole spectrum of forced treatment, for a LONG TIME to come. Not to speak of the system abuse which I’ve been calling, ‘trauma of treatment’.

In terms of your issue, it is time to move from teaching about stigma to changing the law on discrimination.

Respectfully