1.   IT was the 1970s and I was getting to know the new ‘mental patients’ movement. What I saw surprised me, because most of the activists were competitive like yuppies. By then I had had experience as a successful community organizer from the 60s, using a ‘mental patients liberation’ model in actual fact, so I fancied I had some kind of judgment. Yet, today, it is still true that people who go to the movement with Vision and generosity are considered as money-objects not people, and that they are used heartlessly.
   
   The myth symbolized by the ‘reaching across’ paradigm represents a movement which never reached across to me nor treated me with respect. Here in California, anyway, they only did something they called ‘reaching across’ which meant, “Give up who you are and do things our way.” I watched from the vantage point of being a member of the Board of the Berkeley Drop-In Center as the architects of the ‘reaching across’ agenda got funded by a large federal grant. To manage that, they created the Alameda County Network of Mental Health Clients (ACNMHC) — a consortium of self-help groups NOT a network of county clients.
   
   So now I hear the rumblings of the falling off of the ‘reaching across’ agenda right here where it put its money down. ACNMHC leaders are worrying because they're under threat of being taken over by ‘peer recovery’ run by County M.H. When the leaders of the clients movement cut a deal with NAMI in 1991 (‘common agendas’), they trusted I guess that their thing was well-grounded. But they sold out the rank-and-file by making this decision in an exclusionary way, and — now it is starting to appear — they also sold out their own hard-won client institutions.
   
   Recently I was asked by an ACNMHC activist, “How did this happen and what can we do about it?” After some reflection, I said, “Do you know Steve Bischoff?” What I meant was that Alameda County NAMI turned the Mental Health Association into a vehicle for defining ‘madness’ in County politics, and the voice of the clients has been controlled. I remembered the choice not to make the ACNMNC into a regular client network, and the political choice NOT TO MAKE THE COALITIONS THAT COULD CHANGE THE WAY THE COUNTY DEALS WITH MADNESS.
   
   
2.   So back in the 70s I bit my lip and supported the myth agenda; in the 80s I stilled my own voice and worked for the myth with unstinting loyalty. In the 90s it caught up with me, and I got shot down for arguing with NAMI’s ‘medical model’ (TAC) agenda instead of accommodating it in favor of the ‘common agendas’ program. Since then I’ve met the many California activists whose work and dreams were equally dashed in deals related to the business of the ‘myth agenda’. In the 00s it looks like I am going to be doing what I can to re-network the clients around a ‘new tradition’ where people take responsibility for whom they hurt and how.
   
   Maybe this is just what the end of the year, all the hard work and frustration does to me. But I’m very clear that NAMI is going to keep pushing the AB 1800 direction and that I’ll stay involved in organizing the fight against it. And still I’m equally clear that the Network is NOT going to fight this battle in the trenches, intending instead to stick with their exclusionary methods and origin myth illusions and thus despite themselves assist NAMI in aiming the dagger. I have to consider, “What activity will change the terms of this fight so that we have a fighting chance?”
   
   
3.   We have new President, a man whose father was the head of the CIA and who represents that aggressive culture. Having been brought up in Washington circles, I know well how CIA uses psychiatric diagnosis for their personnel judgments. For his faction, the agenda of forced treatment is a given, his ‘compassion’ is the same ‘compassion’ that put me in the hospital against my will back in 1971. So the bottom line will not be John Burton who’s friendly to the ‘myth agenda’, it will be whether or not we finally make arguing with society about the nature of ‘madness’ the centerpiece of our effort.

Andrew Phelps