Community Rights Movement: ending forced psychiatry from the ground up

This is an email that Tina Minkowitz from the Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry has sent out. Please share far and wide.

Cindi Fisher is planning to lead a class in the fall on the Community Rights Movement, with particular attention to how it might be an avenue to abolish forced psychiatry.  It will be conducted by teleconferences, and participants would be expected to listen to segments of a three-hour talk by Paul Cienfuegos, and also to my short videos on the CRPD (totaling half an hour).  Links to these and related materials can be found below.

Beginning in Pennsylvania, and now stretching across nine states from Maine to New Mexico, 160 communities have passed legally binding, locally enforceable Community Rights laws that for the first time in U.S. history enshrine the inherent right of a local majority of residents to protect the health and welfare of their local places. Each of these new-paradigm laws defines what the community wants, and  reins in corporate so-called “rights”,  stopping legal but harmful practices dead in their tracks.

By utilizing the Community Rights legal strategy, and by blending our voices with others, we actually CAN empower ourselves as citizens to achieve goals regarding water, air, energy, or… the abolition of  forced psychiatry.  Please take just 12 minutes to watch the  first intro video below and see if you are not inspired about reclaiming our voice and regaining our power through the Community Rights movement.

The abolition of forced psychiatry might be more feasible to accomplish at a local level, where face to face interactions make it possible to talk about real issues, rather than as part of conventional politics.  It may also present unique challenges given that forced psychiatry is upheld by state power as well as corporate (or industry) power.  Still, community rights holds promise because it both empowers communities to make necessary legal changes, and can also strengthen them to work with psychiatrically-labeled people to create the supports and welcoming environment needed to complement legal freedom and equality.

Cindi and I want to encourage people to review the materials over the summer and to ask us questions by email if so moved.  Also, if you take a look at some or all of the 160 ordinances that have been passed, we welcome submissions of ideas to include using the human rights framework to advocate for the abolition of forced psychiatry, and the requirements of alternatives.

Cindi’s email is cindipacha@gmail.com.

Please forward this to your networks of people who may be interested.  We think it is important to have a strong component of user/survivor leadership in making this work.

All the best,

Tina Minkowitz
Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry

 

Paul’s 2 12 minute  intro videos

Part One:

Part Two:

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Here’s a link to Paul’s 3-hour audio online workshop:

Paul’s Online Introductory Workshop Audio

 

Here is a link to Tina’s videos

Here is a  link to the Portland Community Rights group which has more videos.

Some folks have asked for a way to explore more in depth the founding organization  of the Community Rights Movement CELDF.  So here is a link which includes the names and content of all of the Community Rights Ordinances they have helped to author.

For more information on forced psychiatry and why we want this changed see here:  Coercion, subtle or otherwise, is the rule in psychiatric care…

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