BERKELEY LAND REFORM PROJECT
On Sunday, April 20, at 1:00 PM the south east part of the lot east of the 2400 block of Telegraph (between Haste and Dwight) will be made into a People Park and Meeting Place. This torn-up desolate area will be made green and alive again; ground will be smoothed, grass planted, benches put in, and sculptures erected. Help make this happen. Bring yourselves, your shovels, your hoes, rakes, hose, grass, ideas, instruments, anything. Everyone in the community has something to offer; what we need is a place to get together and give to each other. Only a place we make together can serve our own interests. | ||||||||
|
||||||||
Hi
On Thursday the Accountability Caucus represented by myself and Jose Rangel, and joined by Walter Shwe, met with Paul Gerowitz the Public Affairs person for PAI. We sought to open up a dialogue with PAI Public Affairs regarding the broader strategy of opposing the NAMI ‘reform’ agenda. The questions are like, “What may be done to oppose PACT?” and “Who might be interested in pursuing this agenda in the public/legislative arena?” We had a substantial discussion to this general effect. I wish I could say that Mr. G. ‘got it’ and understood the nature of our inquiry, but I really can’t. It is plain that he is loyally and vigorously working on the fight against AB 1421. He is a sensitive sort of person with a reputation for bending over backwards to be responsive to the clients. What I also found was that he’d worked previously for Tom Bates and therefore has a political background that makes him a kind of political cousin to me. What we sought to raise was that ‘trauma of treatment’ is the key issue that is not being spoken to. That PACT is based on REINFORCING ‘trauma of treatment’ by intensifying the control process. That this results in a climate of systematic and continual low-grade discrimination that puts us as clients in a ‘second-class’ social condition. As Jose pointed out to me afterwards, his response was that of a ‘bureaucrat’ trying to perform his duties well; it lacked, I’d say, .. insight. Nevertheless the quest will continue and we will keep working on the political underbelly of PACT. I don’t personally think that the strategy of cataloguing ‘trauma of treatment’ atrocities, analogous to Torrey’s catalogue of ‘client violence incidents’, is a match in the way of form v. content. Be that as it may, this general NAMI intention of ratcheting up the process of managing us simply must be stopped. And I intend to keep searching for the way to do this effectively. Any ideas/suggestions are welcome. If you want to address them directly to the Accountability Caucus, the address is accountability_caucus@yahoo.com. Andrew Phelps | ||||||||
 |
This is to report on
the status of the quest. To oppose
NAMI’s ‘reform’ agenda it seems
necessary to outflank their
head-on attack via AB 1421 and pull them off the PACT pedestal
whereon they sit. Many of us, I believe, are quite worried
that with PACT becoming more and more the agenda for mental
health service delivery in CA, we will lose EVEN
IF we stop
AB 1421. So some of us have blended our madness with Don
Quixote and gone searching.