Thursday, September 22, 2022

Living In A Psychiatric Police State

San Jose Homeless Sweep Creates New Dangers

^Care Courts will solve nothing, except to create a new class of drug addicts, to make people see why they have to avoid the shelters, as they are internment camps, and to give the Democrats more of these Mental Health and Social Workers to vote for them.

Rising homelessness is tearing California cities apart
Democrats are under pressure to fix the state’s most pervasive problem — or at least move it out of sight.

^ a good article!

San Diego has penalized people refusing shelter
Mayor Gloria’s push for homeless ‘progressive enforcement’ leads to eightfold spike in arrests (June 10, 2022)

Resistance needs to be organized, people need to know how to fight this on the ground, and in court.

I would say refuse to tell the cops anything which goes beyond the immediate situation. Say, "I've been instructed by a civil attorney to never talk about anything beyond the immediate situation, never to talk about anything which gets to constructing a biography on me, because I may be taking some actions in the civil court to redress historical wrongs."

This might infuriate police as they are not used to people standing up to them. But let them arrest you whatever. And same for a judge and same for any of these Social, Mental, and Behavioral Health Workers. Try to not even be in the same room with them.

So tell them nothing, and just face them down, and you should be able to avoid drugging, which is the the most important. And if they talk about shelter or any other programs, "I have been ordered to give no response at all."

They never really have anything on you unless you discuss your biography with them. And anyone who lives on the street has already had their biography nullified.

And when they try to put words into your mouth do not take the bait, just stick to your own line. If unhoused never affirm it, and resit any temptation to plead for pity. This is what talking to them really amounts to.

Anyway, this needs to be organized by lawyers. And we need to set up safe houses and an underground railroad.

Our jails are always full to capacity with all the Drug and Domestic Violence cases. What they can really do to people who defy the Care Court will be limited. We need to resist in mass, and we need to prepare people for this. And we need to shut down the Los Angeles County Street Drugging Team.

Newsom Signs Bill to Allow Homeless to Keep Emotional Support Dogs in Shelters, Hertzberg SB-774

Is Orange County Gutting Local Homeless Resources Needed by CARE Court? VOICE of OC

California’s CARE Court: A Step in the Right Direction or ‘Terrifying’ Step Backwards? VOICE of OC

Lawsuit demands San Francisco stop homeless camp sweeps
Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria in Netherlands studying bike lanes as homeless crisis grows

San Francisco sued by homeless demanding affordable housing

Cities can’t prohibit the homeless from using blankets or pillows on public property, court rules

Homeless San Franciscans Sue, Charge City of San Francisco and Mayor Harass Unhoused, Violate Their Civil Rights in Cover Up for Affordable Housing Failures

Homeless Advocates Sue San Francisco To End Homeless Encampment Sweeps

Crisis Intervention Teams have advantages over CARE courts

Debates about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s CARE Courts program have raged across the state in recent months. A major point of contention is whether Californians with mental health challenges will be helped or hurt by being pushed into the legal system.

In Portland, Oregon, there is a different approach that has proven successful for many years.

Crisis Intervention Teams (CITs) (Mobile Crisis Services) work with local crisis centers to “provide people in mental health crisis the care they need instead of incarceration” …. “Community Mental Health Programs in collaboration with local law enforcement agencies have established CIT programs across the state to de-escalate crisis situations involving individuals with serious mental illness.”

CITs Mobile Services respond to a mental health crisis in the community, with police normally already at the scene. The Mobile Services deescalates the situation–without using force–to get the person in crisis to agree to go to a crisis center and avoid being booked by the police.

CITs assure that most folks being dropped off in a mental health emergency don’t end immediately up in jail or in court because of their medical condition. CITs aren’t a panacea. The people helped often came back later in another crisis because their living circumstances hadn’t changed and homelessness is a permanent crisis if you’re homeless.

CARE Courts force people into a treatment program and apply penalties for non-compliance “…, the consequences for being found “non-compliant” with a CARE plan or not attending court hearings are serious: a possible referral to Lanterman- Petris-Short Act (conservatorship) proceedings with a presumption that there is no suitable community-based alternative for the person.

This creates a direct route to conservatorship – a legal determination that deprives a person of the right to choose where to reside, to make medical decisions, to vote, to decide social and sexual contacts and relationships, and other fundamental rights.

This is a strategy for assuring people comply with mental health treatment programs, but in my opinion, it is needlessly punitive and not based on proven effective treatment strategies.

The CARE Courts will throw Californians already suffering from several life crises into an unfriendly and intimidating system, when what people in crisis need is compassion and help.

It is remarkable the number of people that have gone along with Care Courts even though it is so obvious that it is just wrong.

Monday, September 12, 2022

Open Letter to CA Governor Gavin Newsom

Gavin,

So now that you've got Care Courts passed, have you decided on a Care Courts Internment Badge? These were from Dachau.

Be sure to let us know so that we can order cloth in the correct color.  And let us know when we should order rolls of barbed wire and canisters of Zyklon B crystals, and then when we should assemble in lines at the train stations.

Here is a full video of Gavin's signing event, with the speakers. Everyone behind this, except maybe for Gavin, has someone in their own family that they put into the mental health system, and whom they believe would benefit from this coercive treatment. This entire initiative is just a campaign against family scapegoats.

We Do Not Need CARE Court Aug 11, extensive list of signatories, 20 pages

Everyone behind Care Courts, everyone except Gavin, has a family member whom they have tracked into the mental health system. That is all the Mental Health System is, containment for the family scapegoats. And now this is being formalized as a legal trap for the unhoused. There was no homelessness in America 1940 - 1980. It is now because of legal and economic changes ushered in by President Reagan's Administration. Newsom, Steinberg, Umberg, and Eggman are shameless. Public housing is what contains private gentrification. Psychiatric drugging is about the worst thing you could do to someone. Legal resistance is being organized. After the election, Gavin will resign, or he will be recalled. Recalls draw a different portion of the electorate than regular elections.

Why housing advocates oppose a new California law designed to help the homeless A new California law ostensibly aimed at helping unhoused people shreds their autonomy, advocates say

” Already, unhoused people with severe mental health disorders can be involuntarily held in psychiatric care, but only for three days. They can leave only if they promise to take medications and make certain appointments. Using a court order, the CARE Act extends that period for up to a year, which can be extended to two years. ”

” Family members, service providers and first responders — including paramedics or police officers — are among those legally able to file a petition with CARE court. If facing criminal charges, the individual could avoid punishment by enrolling in a mental health treatment plan. A judge could then order someone into treatment, including housing and medications. ”

“This law violates a person’s right to self-determination and violates people’s right to choose how they want to and need to address their problems,” Sam Tsemberis told Salon."

" Newsom’s office is describing the program as a “paradigm shift” — but some advocates say that shift is in the wrong direction."

“This law violates a person’s right to self-determination and violates people’s right to choose how they want to and need to address their problems,” Sam Tsemberis told Salon in an email. Tsemberis is the founder and CEO of Pathways Housing First Institute, a non-profit founded in 1992 that originated the Housing First model for addressing housing access. He characterized the law as politically motivated, citing Newsom’s alleged bid for U.S. president, and designed to appeal to voters “tired of seeing homelessness.”

“Based on my clinical experience and research comparing voluntary and involuntary court-mandated treatment programs, it is very clear that better outcomes are achieved when treatment is voluntary, trauma-informed, and compassionate,” Tsemberis said, adding, “This law will not have any impact on reducing homelessness because it does not provide funding for housing.”

" But the fact that police can intervene in these situations has alarmed some advocates. “Law enforcement and outreach workers would have a new tool to threaten unhoused people with referral to the court to pressure them to move from a given area,” Human Rights Watch said in April."

“Newsom’s ‘CARE’ Courts bill will not stop homelessness and it will not stop our mental health crisis,” James Burch, deputy director of the Anti Police-Terror Project, said in a statement, citing statistics that people with untreated mental health disabilities are 16 times more likely to be killed by law enforcement. The San Francisco Chronicle recently reported that nearly 1,000 people have been killed by California police in six years"

Thursday, September 8, 2022

Psychiatric Police State

California is now a Psychiatric Police State. And lest you think this only applies to the unhoused, they are saying that they want to apply this "help" to people before mental illness makes them unhoused. So it applies to everyone.

We must resist and we must use all available means. We need the most militant kind of anti-psychiatry movement, and working at all levels. The majority of these CA legislators still believe that the psychiatric system is “helping” people, rather than seeing that these drugs are poisons and that they are the reason we have more and more psychiatric basket cases.

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker

California lawmakers approved CARE Court. What comes next? w/audio

Disability, Civil Rights, Racial Justice and Housing Advocacy Organizations Urge CA Governor Newsom to Veto ‘CARE Court’ Legislation

US: California Should Enact Housing, Treatment Options That Work, Deceptively Named ’CARE Court’ Legislation Will Undermine Effective Solutions

“The so-called ‘CARE Court’ is not about care at all – it plays on prejudices against people who are unhoused and living with mental health conditions to create a coercive system of court-ordered treatment when we know that involuntary treatment is ineffective and inhumane,” said Olivia Ensign, senior US program advocate at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of pouring millions of dollars into coercive measures that are set up to fail, lawmakers should invest in proven treatment and support programs.”

Governor Gavin Newsom proposed the CARE Court in March 2022. In the face of consistent opposition from a long list of disability, racial justice, peer-led, and other civil and human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, the California legislature passed the bill in August. The bill now heads to Newsom for his signature.

The involuntary referral to the court can result in an order from a judge, called a CARE plan. That plan may include an order exerting power over fundamental areas of a person’s life, including medication, housing, and other services and support. Failure to obey this CARE plan can result in additional intervention, including possible conservatorship, which can strip a person’s ability to make decisions over their own lives and deny them the right to autonomy over their own health.

The new law will divert resources away from existing behavioral health and housing initiatives, potentially including successful community-based voluntary treatment, housing programs, and other social supports. The CARE Act does not create any new behavioral health or housing resources. Instead, it redirects money already in the budget to programs required by a CARE plan, placing additional pressure on resources that are already in short supply.

“The politicians who have promoted the CARE Court have repeatedly and falsely claimed it provides ‘voluntary’ treatment, when, in fact, the entire system is based on coercion,” Ensign said. “A person’s ability to access critical services and housing should not hinge on court control.”

Friday, August 26, 2022

Using the Homeless as a Scapegoat

A defenseless woman was stabbed just for being homeless in California. Is this who we are?
w/ 10 min audio

Rosie Lander was living in a tent in Red Bluff when she was stabbed 41 times on August 9. Chuslum Buckskin, 18, was arrested by police and is the primary suspect in the attack. A 14-year-old was also arrested as an accomplice, according to police in Red Bluff.

Newsom, Steinberg, Eggman, and Insel with their Care Courts and trying to tar the homeless with "Mental Illness" are making this worse.

How would you feel if government started forming special committees on original sin? Well they aren't calling it that, but the California State Assembly has the Select Committee on Orange County Homelessness and Mental Health Services. The unhoused are today's new scapegoat, and we brand them so with the allegation of mental illness.

If we want to do something about homelessness we can't have internment camps. We need a Strong Public Housing Offering with no needs test and Universal Basic Income. Most everyone will want this. The main group which opposes it is of course the real estate industry. We can't try to further stigmatize the unhoused with internment and mental health. The main group which supports "Mental Health" is the people who have done it to a family member.

If we want to intercede and do something about the personal factors which increase the likelihood of homelessness, we have to do this before anyone finds themselves in the situation Darrell Steinberg's 13yo daughter found herself in, or before anyone finds themselves in the situation Susan Eggman's Aunt Barbara found herself in. We have to interdict the family scapegoating before it truncates one's life options.

Gavin is an idiot. Either he resigns shortly after the November election, or he gets recalled. Darrell Steinberg put his 13yo daughter into psychiatric internment. So he has made the idea of mental illness the cornerstone of his political career. Susan Eggman's family tared Susan's aunt Barbara with "Mental Illness", and Susan has spent her entire adult life persecuting family scapegoats, via "Mental Illness" and euthanasia, and having worked in a psychiatric clinic. Thomas Insel is just a monster.

When Darrell Steinberg's 13yo daughter had her first contact with the mental health system, that should have triggered a Child Protective Services investigation. Of what they might have found we can only guess. But it was highly likely that this was part of an ongoing family conflict. The girl should not have been branded with "Mental Illness" or subjected to any kind of treatment. There needed to have been intervention so that her life prospects were still being protected. And she should not be condemned today to believing the fallacy that she has a bad brain. The real truth of what happened is something far more serious.

With Susan Eggman's aunt Barbara we do not know how old Barbara was when the family decided to brand her. But very likely the family should have been held accountable and Barbara made whole and she set up with a path for continuing her education and building a career without having to endure further contact with the family.

Thomas Insel is an Evil Overlord wanna be.

SB-679 is the most important piece of legislation passed this term. And what's more, Republicans voted against it.

When Care Courts was in the House Appropriations Committee, Republicans opted not to vote. So if they hold to this in the final vote, when massive resistance at every level shows it to be unenforceable, ineffective, and unconstitutional, they will come out looking squeaky clean.

Care Courts SB-1338 must fail!

Protesters demonstrate in front of San Francisco Superior Court in opposition to the proposed CARE Court program.

Tuesday, August 23, 2022

Progressives versus NeoLiberals

Our economic system is broken. So many people are unhoused that laws become unenforceable. So I think driven by Michael Shellenberger, Gavin Newsom and Darrell Steinberg are trying to set up psychiatric internment to back up police, courts, and jails.

Remember Steinberg put his 13yo daughter into the psychiatric system. Steinberg says of the shelters he wants to set up, “There is a legal obligation to use it, and the government has a legal obligation to provide treatment.” And this means "mental health" treatment.

So with psychiatric interment most people know that their lives depend on being able to resist, and by any means necessary.

If instead they had Universal Basic Income and a Strong Public Housing Offering, the vast majority of people would voluntarily partake. And it would not be just the unhoused, it would be most people who are not super rich.

But Newsom and Steinberg are not progressives, they are neo-liberals. And this later is a repackaging of fascism. They don't want to make real economic changes, but they are willing to spend some serious money if they can make scapegoats out of some people who don't seem to fit in.

Darrell Steinberg wants the unhoused in Psychaitric Internment. Remember, he did the same thing to his 13yo daughter.

Monday, August 22, 2022

OPEN LETTER CALLING OUT SACRAMENTO MAYOR DARRELL STEINBERG

Mayor Steinberg, your daughter entered the mental health system at the age of 13. Everyone knows that this white coat trip always amounts to calling 911 to win a family fight. It couldn't have happened unless you went along with it. And it had to have originated with some kind of a familial identity conflict. The only people who don't seem to understand this are those like you, who have done it to one of their own family members.

Most compelling:
Sanity, Madness and the Family Paperback – January 1, 1973
by R. D. Laing and A. Esterson

Not to traffic in her name, pictures, or videos, it sounds like now in her 20's she still believes that she suffers from "mental illness".

How could this be good for her? And do you think with the gaslighting of talk therapy and the chemical attacks on her central nervous system that her life prospects could be diminished enough that she could some day end up unhoused?

And if she was unhoused, having little in the way of transportation or secure places to store things, do you think something like SB-1338 Care Courts could help her, mandatory court appearances, having to check in by cell phone with Thomas Insel's auditors, and her life being made into a Recovery Project?

You had an obviously staged picture taken with her at your religious community, with you holding her by her shoulders, like you were having hold her up. It also had your son and members of the community. Weren't you just using these people for political theater?

Did the members of this community know that there were family conflicts in play before you fed her into the mental health system? Did they know anything which should have been reported to Child Protective Services?

Will you concede that your entire political career and your affiliation with Susan Eggman and Thomas Insel has just been a quest to prove that "mental illness" has some objective reality, and that you need affirmation on this because of how things unfolded with your daughter when she was 13yo?

And will you concede that Care Courts SB-1338 is just an attempt to use California's unhoused as political scapegoats to help substantiate your theory of "mental illness", and that if we really want to do something to alleviate homelessness that we need public housing for all who want it, and that we need to intervene in families before anyone finds themselves in the situation your 13yo daughter was in, or in the situation Susan Eggman's aunt Barbara was in?

Saturday, August 20, 2022

Interceding Before Someone Is Unhoused

We don't need any new laws to subject the unhoused to involuntary psychiatric procedures, or to subject them to Thomas Insel's auditing center. To do something about homelessness we need to intercede before someone becomes unhoused. The way we do this is by making laws to protect people like the 13yo daughter of Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, and like the aunt of CA State Senator Susan Eggman.

The mental health system encourages child abuse. It lets a parent win a dispute just by dialing 911 and making one into the family scapegoat. Darrell Steinberg tracked his daughter into the mental health system at the age of 13. Today at age 27 she still believes that she has a bad brain. And Steinberg has built his entire political career on mental health. And he needs this to have objective reality because this fiction is what exonerates him.

Susan Eggman's family tracked Susan's aunt Barbara into the mental health system. Eggman says that mental health issues “drove her onto the street.” And Eggman laments that she “refused all of their efforts when they tried to help,” trying to legitimate forced treatment. Eggman has built her entire adult life out of targeting family scapegoats, via mental health, working in a mental hospital, and via euthanasia.

Steinberg and Eggman need the mental health system because it affirms for them that their family member was indeed the locus of original sin. And so this is the point where we need to have already intervened, to give someone an alternate basis for their identity, and to open up other life options. We need the law to be able to come in and to make it clear that the family is wrong.

Universal Basic Income and a Strong Public Housing Offering will take care of everyone's needs and people won't refuse it. It will apply to everyone and it will disolve the family scapegoating.