The KPFA management talks "healing" from their recent police incident. But more is required here, there's also gaining progressive understanding of the social forces involved.

There's a historic struggle to change the present objectification approach to madness/'mental illness' to a humanistic model based on community values and responsible self-expression, a struggle that falls within the framework of Kuhn's "paradigm shift" in science. Ignoring that is—politically—like ignoring gender role, ethnicity, or the exploitation of labor.

Some 15 years ago, Berkeley Mental Health came together around a "denial" strategy regarding "paradigm shift," and moved systematically to break every ongoing initiative in sync with the historic change process. Wendy Georges was fired from the Berkeley Food Project, sell-out deals were offered the prominent client/survivor activists (I refused mine and was personally threatened by BMH).

A general climate of stigma/discrimination promotes what activists call the "freedom train" problem. Are the `crazy people' invited; is there a role for our values in the progressive movement? Or do people practice what Martin Luther King, Jr. called the "behavioral science" that accommodates or embraces oppression, denying torture, when dealing with us?

KPFA has had programs related to this concern. Once a leader of the client/survivor movement helped run Youth Radio, for instance. Yet—like most progressives, KPFA managemeent and programming still does not take the stigma/discrimination process into account. Recently for instance Phil Zimbardo, a progressive social psychologist who is still confused about the "freedom train," was shamelessly praised on the Morning Show when interviewed about his new book (on the behavioral science of attitude management). I shuddered when I heard that.

The August 20 incident showed the face of racism, many say. It also showed the face of denial, what—by civil rights metaphor—is the "watermelon" approach to the movement to bring the client/survivor activists into the freedom train. Where is principle hiding?

In September, the American Psychological Association voted 60 percent by referendum ever to ban psychologists from involvement in torture in the service of national security. The questions implicit in King's advocacy for reforming "behavioral science" so as to promote "creative maladjustment" based on the values of freedom and dignity are now, at last, on the table: When does "treatment" mean "torture"?

Former Chair, Berkeley Mental Health Commission (1990-93)