Hola to our friends and comrades near and far -- Here's what's happening across the rad madlands. Please feel free to forward to allies, comrades, friends, and family.

Updates on the USSF, our current financial status, art shows in the northeast, books we're reading, forum moderation changes, and more behind the link.

Local group updates on the way.

Thanks to all of our workshop attendees for "Our radical mental health as activists" this morning at the USSF. We were so excited for your thoughts and energy and passion around creating mutual aid support systems for mental and emotional health.

  Wednesday, July 23, 2010 at 1PM

AFSCME Building (basement of the Walker-Roehrig Building) 600 West Lafayette at Third Detroit, Michigan 

Event Info: http://organize.ussf2010.org/film-festival (scroll down to Crooked Beauty) Google Map:

http://maps.google.com/?q=42.329055+-83.054629+%28600+West+Lafayette%2C+Detroit%2C+MI%2C+%2C+us%29

With the numbers of “diagnosable” mental illnesses being so high, it isn’t any wonder activists are questioning just how much sense these diagnoses make.  Where is the line drawn between illnesses and gifts, between insanity and individuality? 

Icarus was mentioned in a small article in the New York Times, 04-12-2010...  

RUNNING THE ASYLUM
Don’t really want to get “better”? Rather be yourself? With nerve and seriousness, the Icarus Project investigates the turbulent “space between brilliance and madness.”theicarusproject.net

Hey check out this article I just wrote and please tell me what you think!

Mad Love, Sascha

More and more, the acceptance of the idea that our dissatisfaction and disease is a result of “brain chemistry” is desensitizing us to the notion that our feelings and experiences might have their roots in social and political problems. 0 0 0 Fundamentally, if we are going to shift the current mental health paradigm we are going to need a movement that both has the political savvy to understand how to fight the system, and the tools to be able to take care of each other as the world gets even crazier.

In recent months some of the old time Icarus Project organizers became aware of this book called Firewalkers: Radically Rethinking Mental Illness put out by a group in Virginia called VOCAL. Firewalkers tells the story of a bunch of people who’ve all struggled with serious mental health issues and, in different ways, learned to see their struggles as sacred quests of transformation. - from sascha