Given the strained and occasionally deadly nature of the overall relationship between psychiatric survivors and law enforcement agencies, it really begs the question: should the police even become involved in situations where someone is experiencing an emotional or mental crisis?

One group of humans get to decide, another is supposed to just follow orders, and trust that the other group will make the right decisions. One group gets heavily funded and carried aloft on the shoulders of the Status Quo and heralded everywhere as heroes, the other gets to remain passive, waiting in silenced trust to be served. One group gets to engage in "reputable" dialogue with each other, the other group gets to  "rant" and "rave" and can only be viewed in a very narrow, paternalistic way. All of these ways have a lot of bigoted assumptions within them and end up tooling all the otherwise beautiful human beings involved. 

Here's a video of Sascha at the Anarchist Book Fair in San Francisco April '08

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2152061687257398524

 

On Thursday, February 21 a committee of Toronto City Council heard from numerous deputants regarding the critical loss of shelter beds and other basic services for homeless persons in the downtown. Council opted to do nothing.

What It's Like When Two Mentally Ill People Date!

I've become embroiled in a discussion about how psychiatry is being utilized within the prison system as an additional means of punishment under the guise of 'penal reform'. No doubt psychiatry is inherently punitive when it functions in this capacity as partner to the judicial apparatus. But this is to say nothing of those innocents who find themselves incarcerated and punished in psychiatric prisons (euphemistically referred to as 'hospitals') without even having broken any laws. (This actually means the vast majority of psychiatric 'patients'.)

At the end of the day, 'partial equality' is not an option. What's important is for us to be able to figure out what is realistically achievable over the short, medium and long term.

Several years back, the City of Toronto initiated a 'pilot project' where a male psychiatric nurse would be teamed up with a plainclothes cop on patrol in the city's east downtown.

I've run into a situation of blatant discrimination in my own home city. While I'm not going to go into specifics about this case, the complicating factor is that it arises out of a situation that many would not consider 'politically correct', ergo, the person involved is considered by some as perhaps not deserving of support or protection.

This is the question I dread the most. It is also the query that is made of me in the initial stages of just about every acquaintanceship. And whenever it is asked, invariably said ship is sunk.

Three as in three AM. Three in the morning. Three hours past midnight.

To be honest, the concept of 'recovery' is being turned into just another buzzword from the 'mental health' industry. In reality, the only 'recovery' the system appears to promote or perceive as possible is within the context of the existing medical model, through aggressive lifelong tinkering with peoples' brain chemistry or genetic makeup, and with diagnosed people still expected to occupy the same narrow, oppressive social niche as has been the case all along.

My bullshit detector's been activated once again.

it's more obvious every day that this society is not working.

It angers me beyond all imagination that psychiatric incarceration, police brutality, forced drugging and complete negation of our humanity or worth is the best our supposedly 'enlightened' society can offer to distressed people.

Tuesday i began to pull myself to the surface

Seizures

"The index fingers of most straight men are shorter than their ring fingers" ?????!!!!!!!!!!