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

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 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

 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 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.

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.

The 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.”

If 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.

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 >>

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.

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.

Icaristas 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.

Annie Robinson's article "College Mental Health: A Different Diagnosis" is in Wiretap Magazine, a leading online youth activist website: School health providers are supposed to act in the best interests of the student. But who it is that gets to define these "best interests" is a subject for debate among students and counseling staff.

A new trailer is up now for the forthcoming indie documentary film Crooked Beauty following the powerful words, insights and narrative of TIP co-founder Ashley McNamara with the music of TIP founding collective member Bonfire Madigan (bmad)! 

The Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs, published by The Icarus Project and Freedom Center, is now available in German - thanks to the dedicated volunteer translation work of Inez Kochius.

Icarus co-coordinator Annie Robinson just had an essay published in the activist youth web magazine WireTap: Landing With Icarus: Navigating Madness On Campus:

I remember vividly the day I met my first psychiatrist.... She was going to help me find a way to deal with the raging voices that had been telling me to seek control of my life by abusing my body, to quell the debilitating sadness and lethargy that kept me sunken in my bed nearly every day. The fact that my best friend was dying of bone cancer came up, but had little to do with her treatment plan. Eventually she came up the answer: Seroquel. Over the following eight years I was subjected to an onslaught of chemical cocktails corresponding to a long list of diagnoses cast upon me...

River swimming, cross country touring, backyard (vegan) barbecuing,
bicycle rambling, gardening/ harvesting/ gleaning -- summer is here. Late summer, to be precise, which is the fifth season in chinese medicine, with a tempo and mood all its own. The Icarus Project has been spreading and connecting, swarming and flowing in multiple omni-directions over the past four months, gathering and connecting a community of radical-minded visionaries to change the world and nurture mental wellness. Here's a recap and some website art as we enter the last few weeks of glorious summer and welcome the coming fall...

In June and July, Leah Harris and Daniel Hazen of the U.S. Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry organized a "Human Rights for ALL" tour,  co-sponsored by many organizations include The Icarus Project, MindFreedom, CAFETY, and the Freedom Center. The tour was designed to raise awareness about human rights and particularly the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Read Leah's report here...