Remembering Memphis, Rejecting Murphy, Marching Toward the Dream Deferred

By Iden D. Campbell McCollum, HTTPS://WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/THECAMPBELLCENTER

I am still thinking about the inaugural Destination Dignity March. As the recovery movement heads to Memphis, TN, for its annual Alternatives conference, it is important that I also remember the movement that helped birth modern civil rights/social justice movements.

However, as I look back on the civil rights movement and all that my ancestors marched for, I sometimes feel as if the civil rights movement has been a dream deferred.  We have come far but still have a long road ahead.  The intersection of civil rights, poverty and the psychiatric survivors movement has played out now for four generations.  As in 1963, the need for equal economic access still exists. Affordable housing and affordable healthcare are more accessible than ever, but much more is needed. On August 24, 2015, I marched for these issues similar to those in 1963.  I marched along with other psychiatric survivors asking for dignity and respect to affirm that lived experience matters in the conversation around developing and revamping the mental health system.  Having organizations like Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association (PRA) march and voice their support gives us the hope and affirmation that we can work together cohesively to develop a system that offers dignity, hope and respect. PRA understands what we have been saying ourselves for decades: ”people can and do regain their lives.”

In the later 1960s, the targets of Dr. King's activism were starting to focus more often on the underlying poverty, unemployment, lack of education, and blocked avenues of economic opportunity confronting black Americans. Like so many of us today who are fighting for social justice, dignity and respect for the psychiatrist survivor community.  We are faced with the highest unemployment rate among those with disabilities, our poverty level as a group is among the highest of the disability community.  In 2015, we are still being told that we can never get better, marry or become educated.  Dr. King believed that all people had the right to be treated by the content of their character and not their skin color or economic status.

Dr. King went to Memphis in April of 1968 to march with the cities striking sanitation workers.  The march had not gone as planned and the city placed an injunction against the marchers.  Julian Bond, one of Dr. King’s protégés and an up and coming young leader, was charged with negotiating with the city to come up with a plan that would allow the next march to move forward.  Mr. Bond was successful in getting the city to lift the injunction, and the march was back on.  Mr. Bond relayed this information to Dr. King on April 4, 1968.  To celebrate, they decided to head out to dinner.  As Dr. King joined his colleagues for dinner, they stepped out of the door and he was assassinated.  A dream deferred for generations of black Americans.

Now the psychiatric movement faces it biggest hurdle in 2015.  We are asking our allies, representatives and members of our community to stand up. We urge you to not endorse The Murphy Bill.  We ask you to work with representation to create an alternative that won’t strip the rights of those with psychiatric disabilities. The bill calls for the defunding of SAMSHA, it tries to define what Peer Support is, but Peer Support should only be defined by those who created this para-profession and that consist of folks who provide and live within the culture of true support.  Someone who has no interest other than to hamper how we support each other should not define it.  Peer support was never meant to be a replacement for clinicians, we are and have always been complementary and non clinical.  No one gets to define my personal recovery story. My reality and my narrative come from my lived experience -- not a clinical handbook of supervision.

This is our fight today. For those going to Memphis, go with a renewed vision of what we want for our community: dignity, respect, economic opportunities, and the decriminalization of those with mental health issues. Remember Dr. King, Fannie Lou Hammer and Julian Bond and the hundreds of thousands folks who walked, marched and sang ‘We Shall Overcome.’

Our struggle involves brutality, the denial of basic human rights such as voting, affordable housing, equal and affordableassess to medication and treatment. Access to treatment that is not physically forced and/or judicially forced is a basic human right we should all have. None of us should fear that our privacy would no longer be between us, our treatment teams and whoever else we give permission to. An act from Congress should not open our privacy door wide open for all to bear and witness.

Make your calls today to your representatives and let them know why you do not approve of them signing on to the Murphy Bill.  Create the future you want by being the change you want to see in the world.

Introducing eAltCon2015

Marching Our Voices Out of Memphis

Wednesday October 14th - Sunday October 18th

Welcome to eAltCon2015!  We welcome you to join us as we march the conversation forward. We live in a time where human beings are beyond frustrated - with ourselves, each other and the world we have created.  We have also becoming increasingly coercive, controlling and violent in the solutions our culture as a group is proposing.

But is this getting us anywhere?  Or is it just perpetuating the viciousness of a cycle that had far too much of that already? Equally important, what can we do about it and where do we go from here?

Over the next several days we will ask ourselves these questions.  We will speak for ourselves, from our own experience.  We will listen deeply - both to ourselves and each other.  There is a vast wealth of experience that has been lived among us. Together we will make sense of what we know.

And together, we will figure out where to march from here.  We are ordinary people with a deep belief in the power of the ordinary.   We believe that has value. We believe that is enough.  We are tired of a world of experts speaking about us, without us, making careers from of our suffering and leaving us on empty.

We are peer-organized, peer-run, peer-funded. That makes for certain challenges, but it also buys us freedom.  We say things others won't.  We do things others don't.

We speak for ourselves, and we want to hear from you.  We honor your right to voice.  We are committed to building communities with the capacity to honor all our voices.

BTW, to us, all means all: Every voice.  Without exception.  Because every voice is living experience.  Because every voice is living conscience.

This is especially true of voices that are marginalized or othered.  These are the voices we simply must learn to listen to.  We cannot afford the price of continuing to stick our heads in the sand and pretend that business as usual is still okay.

Think about it.  If you're a marginalized Voice, everyone, everywhere sees you as a nuisance.  You are a problem - they want you dead.

As such a Voice, who would risk talking, dare talking, keep talking?  Who would keep trying and trying to speak?  

Unless there were something that Living Conscience urgently knew that the human community needed to know.

Suffice it to say, we need to speak -- and also to hear and respond to the message.   

Accordingly, over then next few days, we will bring our ordinary selves and our ordinary lives. We will use ordinary telephones, ordinary computers and free/ freely available technologies.  All told, it will take us less than $5 to put on this event.

If we each play our part, however, the conversation we create will be everything but ordinary.  

Here, we will reclaim authorship and agency.  We will take back our stories, we take back our knowing. We will make our own connections, draw our own conclusions, generate our own wisdom.

From there, we will take back our power to act and take back our lives.  We will reclaim our right to participate and support each other to exercise it.  We will do this in every place and every way that human beings affect each other.  We will reclaim our rightful roles in families, neighborhoods, communities and as citizens of nations.  The fate of our planet and the fate of living beings depends us and our willingness to do this.

We can't do this without you.  The trauma has cut all of us deeply.  Our collective blood flows like rivers.

We need you to take the risk to show up.  We need your energy, your effort, your willingness to try.  We need your honest authentic voice.  We need to you say what is working and what isn't.

We can't get conscious without each other. 

We have to get conscious or we will all die. 

Conference schedule developing at:

 https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/105692952348711825426

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