Here, if this works, is the infamous John Trudell speaking about being crazy and using our creative intelligence to escape the ways our minds are colonized. Deep and inspiring for those of us easily overwhelmed and uncertain about where to head now that we're starting to see the realities of our own situations! Enjoy!

Searching via scroogle.org today I stumbled across some excellent excerpts of two books which are VERY hard to find these days (unless, of course, you have the cash to buy from amazon or a bookstore's used-books search). First, a link to a real nice excerpt from Theodore Roszak on "the myth of objective consciousness"; second, a link to Aldous Huxley's especially interesting nonfiction book (in its ENTIRETY!) Brave New World--Revisited, excerpts which I'm providing here. The topic? The perils of "over-organization", suppressing symptoms, and the authoritarian attitudes that are making their way into many mind-sets these days regarding what it "is" to be "normal" and so forth.

This post takes on the curiously popularized notion--in Julie Cameron's book The Artist's Way--of the categorical 'badness' of people she (and her "expert" ilk) seek to reduce and label, and then promote that their fellows ignore them, until they get professional "help". Crucially, she (and the usual routine of "experts" "just doing their jobs") don't shed light on the reality that such "crazy-makers" are quite likely only exhibiting SYMPTOMS of their pain, even when their symptoms are INTENSE and not easy to be around. The popularized thing to do? IGNORE the most sensitive and go back to work doing what you can "only" do! DON'T try to look behind their pain and help them articulate themselves, say, via any truly meaningful community!! NO, THAT'S not for YOU laypersons/"non-experts" to "play" around with!! (BAD DOG!)

Yes!

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...

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?

As a mad activist with an analysis of collective trauma, it seems painfully clear to me that my people, who have been so oppressed throughout history and most recently under Nazi Germany, are acting out the role of oppressor in the same way a traumatized individual will lash out and perpetuate the cycle of violence with the people in their life. In the same way that I’ve come to believe that the hardest and scariest parts of ourselves hold the secret keys to our problems, I think that politically the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the equivalent of our darkest fears and secrets. It’s as ugly as it gets and we have to stare it in the face and take action or else in the long run it will destroy anything good and just we are working towards.