Press Conference IV

Attorney Strickman at Press Conference

Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:16:28 -0700

From: target@batstar.net

Subject: [psysr-disc] press conference note

To: psysr-disc@yahoogroups.com

Sunday there was a press conference in front of the Univ. of CA football stadium, where the tree-sitters are under attack from the U.C. administration, their construction company and its cherry-pickers, and the U.C. police. The University is physically threatening the tree-sitters (like trying to shake them down from a tree perch 150' up!).

An attorney from the National Lawyers Guild spoke to the criminality of the U.C. enforcement behavior.

A former Mayor of Berkeley and current Member of the City Council spoke.

Two prominent Native American activists spoke to the spiritual issues related to these trees.

A former Pres. of the College of Emergency Room Physicians spoke to the dehydration of the tree-sitters, in 100 degree heat with their water supply being cut off.

He was introduced by the psychiatrist Neal Blumenfeld, known as "the psychiatrist of the Free Speech Movement." I provided Neal with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech to the APA in 1967. To the media he quoted from it and praised the "creative maladjustment" of the tree-sitters.

The dialogue on the failure of conventional clinical psychology to provide support for the values of "freedom and dignity" is way further back than the current discussion on "interrogation" torture. The idea that "treatment can be torture" is still 'underground' and .. needs attention.

Anybody want to work with me on that? PsySR could do an 'initiative', if there was sufficient interest.

Andrew Phelps