Update 4/6/2015: Craig Wanichek from Summit Bank is the newly – elected chair of the Board for Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce.

 

On Sunday, September 21, 2014, here in Eugene Oregon, I participated, with my wonderful wife Debra, in a local rally to support the major march in New York City for climate justice.

Everyone and every group working for mental health justice ought to make fighting global warming a priority right now. Of course, the whole disability movement, and in fact all sentient beings should be concerned about climate crisis, but those of us working for human rights and more choices for mental wellness have special reasons to make this planetary catastrophe a unifying theme for all of us.

Martin Luther King frequently talked about the importance of creative maladjustment as an answer to oppression, and many environmentalists are wondering where humanity’s creativity and maladjustment are right about now. The Mad Movement knows that the psychiatric industry has ground down the human spirit for centuries, but we never ever give up! MLK resisted the war in Vietnam toward the end of his life, and some civil rights activists were mystified that he seemed to be off topic. However, MLK knew that we are all in one big movement for the “beloved community,” as he put it.

But if you need something very specific to connect the Mad Movement to global warming, here it is: Those of us called psychotic are often coerced to take neuroleptic drugs (sometimes called antipsychotics), and these drugs are well known to suppress the temperature-regulatory part of the brain. During a heat wave, prison reformers have been talking about how horrible it is that those in non-air-conditioned prisons where people are forced to take these drugs often die. Well, most USA states have laws allowing citizens to be forcibly court-ordered to take these drugs while living at home out in the community.

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BELOW you will find my open letter that combines my  main identities and interests: I am a survivor of abuse in the mental health system, a disability activist (labeled quad), environmentalist focused on the climate crisis, and spirituality: I am a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Eugene, Oregon, USA.

Please comment here. Whether you comment or not, please forward this open letter for anyone far and wide. Help it go viral. Thanks. If you wish to send me a direct message, please use the contact form on the right to reach my office. Because of quantity, I cannot always respond to everything but I try to read your vision.

If you wish, you can use my tweet as a model:

Your mental health justice vision? I’m a psychiatric survivor disability UU activist. 5 tips take on climate crisis http://www.davidwoaks.com/mental-health-justice

Everyone everywhere is welcome to share your ideas about mental health justice.

Please post your public comments here on this blog entry. I especially would love to hear personally from other survivors of psychiatric abuse, people with disabilities and Unitarian Universalists. You may also email me by using the Contact My Office form on the right of this blog.

Please forward this post to others. If you would like to print out my open letter you may find a PDF of it here.

To read the text of my open letter, simply click “More” below. Thanks.

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The Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, Register-Guard daily newspaper ran a huge piece by journalist Randi Bjornstad about me, my fall, my broken neck, activism, our supportive community, changing the mental health system, and even the Chamber of Commerce protest on climate crisis. There are two great photos by professional photographer Paul Carter, plus how to give to my irrevocable trust fund.

You can read, download, print a PDF of the article here: R-G-DavidWOaks-1-5-2014

You may wish to write a letter to the editor about this excellent article, contact information is here:  http://registerguard.com/rg/opinion/#letter

For news about the protest of the Chamber of Commerce, see the next blog entry below:

 

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On December 5, 2013, about 5 groups united together to hold a nonviolent protest about the pivotal role of the Chamber of Commerce blocking progress addressing the climate crisis. For several years, I held an email dialogue with the director of the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce, Dave Hauser. This last summer several of us held a street theater event at the Eugene Saturday Market and together we nominated the local Chamber for a Golden Ostrich Award.

We used humor to point out that our local Chamber should join 56 other local Chambers that have said “No” to the horribly Earth-damaging U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. We gave the award plaque to our local Chamber just before weird lingering snowy weather in Eugene, which scientists predict will be an indicator of the climate crisis.

Below is a brief 5 minute video of our award presentation, in which I become a bit emotional. Below that is more info about our campaign.

Our Golden Ostrich Award to the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce because of the climate crisis.

Action you can take from anywhere in the world to help our campaign:

1. Please contact our local Chamber by email or phone (541-484-1314) with your peaceful, civil, but strong message. Your sample message: “Please say ‘No!’ to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is one of the main blockades to addressing the climate crisis.”

2. For extra credit, you may contact the Eugene Chamber Board: http://www.eugenechamber.com/contact/leadership.aspx

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Recently I commented on a new, important book on this very subject. A tenured professor at the University of Oregon, Kari Norgaard, has written a book about what is considered “normal.” She explored a small, prosperous, well-educated Norwegian town, and teased out why the population was not taking sufficient actions to discuss and address the climate crisis. For her leadership, she was attacked on national radio by the extremist, Rush Limbaugh.

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There we were on 14 July 2012, walking down the winding path of the Oregon Country Fair, where tens of thousands every July have filled crowded paths through a woods full of music, crafts and food booths, lovingly stewarding the spirit of the 60’s since 1969. I was ushering Patch with a bullhorn, calling out, “Here comes Patch Adams, to accept an award for lunacy promotion!”

Dr. Adams was in his clown regalia for the walk: Pants pulled up to his armpits, strange grimace on his face, holding a big fake fish in front of his face to help motivate himself for his slow strange walk.

For those too young to know, Patch is a psychiatric survivor, physician and clown, who was the subject of an Academy Award winning film named after him and inspired by his life, starring comedian Robin Williams. Patch is the most famous leader in our MindFreedom International community, and has a network of thousands who seek truly deep change throughout our health care system.

Patch and I were headed down the Oregon Country Fair path to a gathering to give Patch an award (see photo on left) for his leadership of a vision created by Martin Luther King, Jr. that few people seem to have heard about:

MLK, in many speeches and essays, said the world may be in dire need of a new organization that MLK called, “The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment” or IAACM. It was an laugh-line, but like many good jokes had logic and truth behind it. MLK said we all ought to be maladjusted to oppression, the question is can we be creative in our maladjustment, rather than self-destructive? Repeatedly, MLK said in a variety of ways, “the salvation of the world lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”

Well, in Patch’s hands that day was a fish.

Accompanying us on our walk through the Oregon Country Fair was Patch’s main leader for changing the mental health system, Carl Hammerschlag, a psychiatrist/author from Arizona. Carl called out occasionally on the path, “How many six-foot-six psychiatrists do you see in a pink ballerina outfit?” Because that is what Carl was wearing from head to foot, tutu included.

Does this kind of positive celebration of mental and emotional differences necessarily mean opposing rationality? As a leader for 36 years in what is often called the “mad movement,” I know some seem to assume that we are largely celebrating illogic and irrationality. I do not agree.

As a psychiatric survivor who has been through five institutionalizations, and quite a number of diagnoses, I can tell you that one of the tools for my own recovery was the use of logic, evidence, and rationality.

Today, here is a very simple and undeniable logic to consider: What is generally called “normal” by just about any common definition, is in fact causing a climate crisis, and countless other environmental disasters. I’m not saying all that is called “normal,” is bad, just that one of the worst spiritual illnesses to ever visit our planet Earth has that name: Normal.

Throughout human history, respected thought leaders such as Socrates have said the pursuit of wisdom begins by recognizing that none of us has a grip on reality, that we all know nothing with certainty. And now, the scientific jury is back, the evidence has been rationally considered, and the logic is irrefutable: Socrates was right. What is called “normal” may be guilty of Gaia-cide, the shredding of our precious planet’s web of life.

That’s why I have been saying that the slogan of the mad movement ought to be, “We are the 100 percent.”

So yes, when Patch and Carl and I navigate a crowded path of the Oregon Country Fair, bullhorn in hand, with Patch following his fish, and Carl prancing around in his pink tutu… Yes, it may look a tiny bit irrational. But logic is one of the strands motivating us, the logic that MLK brought to us all many times when he called for the International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment. (IAACM).

Please take the next logical step, and ask yourself: “How can I best exercise my own leadership in the IAACM?

David W. Oaks
Eugene, OR

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