Welcome to the The Icarus Project journals. On this page you can find blogs by our members, co-coordinators, and local groups.

If you want to see all recent journal/blog entries by everyone, click here.


 

Icarus Member Journals

 

Click here on the main site and here on the forums to check out blogs by members of The Icarus Project's online community. Every registered Icarus member can create their own blog with the "my blog" link on the right hand navigation menu and starting to type! (Just make sure you're logged in first.) To find a member's blog, use the search box on the right.


 

Icarus Coordinator Personal Journals

 

Read entries from the personal blogs of our staff: Sascha, Will, Ashley, & Madigan.


 

Icarus Intergalactic Co-Coordinator Collective Journal

 

This blog, below, is the place to find organizational writing from Icarus Project collective as a whole. We'll keep you updated about what's happening with the project on a national level. Scroll down on this page to take a look at our blog entries, and feel free to post comments and feedback!


 

Summer Update from TIP

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 USSF Workshop attendees

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.

Crooked Beauty screening at the US Social Forum

Related topics:

  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

 

 

Icarus Forums Currently Down

Unpublished

The Icarus forums are currently down due to a glitch. We are working as hard as we can to fix the problems and have them back online soon.

We will post updates as we have them.

Interview with Clare Christina on Examiner.Com

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 Mentioned in New York Times: "Running The Asylum"

Related topics:

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

Article by Sascha - Unraveling the Biopsychiatric Knot: the Future History of the Radical Mental Health Movement

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.

 

Local Icarus Group Sponsors Firewalkers Event at Modern Times in San Francisco

Related topics:

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

Icarus Supports Human Rights for Mad Diverse-Abilities at United Nations

Longtime Icarus member and organizer Leah Harris, who is also the co-coordinator of the US Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry, writes

Please find below a link to the report put together by several psychiatric survivor, human rights, and disability rights organizations. It includes what we feel are the human rights issues most central to mad folks and people of "diverse-abilities" - including the right to make our own decisions, not to be institutionalized or medicated against our will, and to have access to the freedom and dignity that are the inherent rights of all people.

download draft UPR report

Crooked Beauty Film w/ Icarus Co-Founder Ashley McNamara Premieres!

Crooked Beauty is a documentary film on the experiences of Icarus co-founder Ashley McNamara set to powerful visual images. The documentary is premiering at San Francisco's Cinematheque on April 17, at 9pm! For more info, and to see the trailer online, go to www.crookedbeauty.com. Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=116462821701469

Icarus Joins Effort to Stop Forced Drugging in Wisconsin

 http://theicarusproject.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=19133&highlight=john+wood

Wisconsin Icarista Christin Light writes:

Last week, the Wisconsin State Supreme Court upheld a forced treatment order for a man named John Wood who is currently in Mendota Mental Health Institute.  His lawyer was questioning the constitutionality of a statute because "it violates due process by allowing involuntary medication without finding if a person is a danger and fails to require a periodic review."  2 justices agreed with this but ultimately, it was a 5/2 vote in maintaining his forced medication and the statute.

Spring Newsletter

 Spring is here and with it a bunch of announcements. A fundraising update, call for essays, member survey, recent local group events, and most importantly USSF organizing. Check out the full post and let us know what you think.

Icarus National Gathering at US Social Forum in Detroit This Summer

Icaristas from near and far will be gathering at the US Social Forum in Detroit this summer, June 22-26. Join in the planning  discussion on the forums! Also check out and join the monthly community call.

Icarus at Reelabilities Film Festival in NY

Reelabilities forumThe second annual Reelabilities film festival was held this past weekend in the NY metropolitan area. The festival’s mission statement cites “dedication to promoting awareness and appreciation of the lives, stories and artistic expressions of people with different disabilities.” In addition to award-winning films the weekend’s events included discussions and other special programs intended to “bring together the community to explore, discuss and celebrate the diversity of our shared human experience.”

Icarus on Twitter

Icarus Twitter IconIf you Twitter, follow Icarus at www.twitter.com/madgifts.

Our Twitter feed gets updated with all the new Icarus Organizational blog posts, the Links of Interest, latest Madness Radio shows, plus additional bits and pieces of data from the Icaristasphere.

 

 

Packed Crowd at Icarus Benefit in Brooklyn

Icarus-NYC local and Icarus intergalactic organized a showcase of creativity in Brooklyn to benefit Icarus efforts - more than 150 people showed up for a fun evening of poetry art and music. Check out the photos, video, and audio from this memorable occasion...

Michael Gennarelli spins >>

 

 

Icarus Needs You to Become a Sustainer! - Winter 2009 Membership Appeal

icarus fly heads graphic

To our supporters, collaborators and fellow visionaries!

We are asking our community to help keep us going into the future by becoming an Icarus sustainer. You can design a monthly donation package for yourself by clicking here.

 

 

 

 

Icarus at Student Coop Gathering NASCO

Angel Adeyoha writes: I was happy to attend the annual NASCO (North American Students of Cooperation) Institute as a representative of TIP. I presented a workshop on "Radical Mental Health on Campus and in the Community through an Anti-Oppression Lens" I have been considering so much lately how my work organizing in explicit anti-oppression circles around topics of race, gender and class converge with my work as a coordinator for TIP. This weekend and this workshop really merged those parallel lines for me.

Seeking Submissions for New Reader on Trauma


SCARSONGS
An Anthology Articulating the Terrain of Trauma and Resilience
 
Calling for submissions!
 
Our aim is to create a beautiful, creative, readable document about trauma and resilience, drawing from a diversity of communities and backgrounds and addressing a wide range of topics and experiences.
 
We believe it is time for a reader that tells our stories and gathers our poems, radiates with our art and speaks our thoughts. Understanding and being able to relate, calling out and hearing other voices can help us to find individual and collective strength in the face of ecological, social and personal trauma.
 
This project is a collaboration of the Icarus project, the Bay Area Radical Mental Health Collective, and Activist Trauma Support. 

Icarus at Rethinking Psychiatry INTAR Conference

INTAR conferenceIcaristas Sam Kendakur, Will Hall, and Bonfire Madigan Shive presented at the Rethinking Psychiatric Crisis: Alternative Responses to First Breaks conference in New York City. They joined more than 200 researchers, people with psychiatric diagnoses, policymakers, clinicians, advocates, and family members from several countries including Finland and the UK to discuss effective hospital, labeling, and force alternatives. Check out the slideshow here, and more info at the International Network Towards Alternatives for Recovery website.