Public Education & Policy :: Writings and Presentations

THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY by Dave Hosseini

(The CNMHC held a Rally and Information Sharing event on the capitol steps on April 26, 2001. Dave Hosseini was a keynote speaker at the event. The following is his speech. It was published in the Cal Net Gazette, Volume 4, Issue 3, June 2001.)

I'm glad to be here today and to be part of this day where we have come together to stand up for our rights, Last year the Little Hoover Commission concluded that involuntary treatment should be a last and final resort, only appropriate when no other form of treatment is effective. This year Helen Thompson and her small band of followers have decided to assault the mental health community again with another attack on basic rights and civil liberties.

Last year the entire mental health community, consumers, professionals. and friends came together to join in a chorus of a resounding "No" to these ideas. It is a tragedy that we are forced to revisit this issue rather than to go forward with all that we know needs to be done in the mental health arena. Sad as it may be that we have to do it, we must.. When we are confronted with this bad unproven idea we must do as we did last year, just as loud, and just as strong - we have to tell Thompson NO!

Less than a generation ago many here today would not have had the opportunity to be here. Less than a generation ago the net of involuntary commitment was far and wide reaching and the whole notion that persons with mental illness could live in the community was unknown. Not only was the net wide it ran deep as well .... I have friends here today who spent years in State hospitals with no hope of release until the law makers in this very building decided to give them a chance. A very important part of that chance are the safeguards of the LPS system which can be a part of helping individuals to recover and live lives of quality. The LPS safeguards exist for a reason; prior to 1967 mental health consumers had no rights, the process of involuntary commitment was arbitrary and lives were shattered because of it. When we hear that there is an attempt to return to the brutality of that time, to go back toward the slippery slope of easier commitment, when we hear that hard earned rights may be taken away, we have to do just what we did last year, we have to do it loudly, we have to do it strongly, we have to tell Thompson NO!

All of us know that for years the mental health system has been under-funded, the wonderful model programs that have been developed were created piecemeal and have not been replicated. We know that a part of the system that is lacking is the system of voluntary supports. So, therefore, it makes no sense to expand involuntary treatment. Think of it, we do not have enough voluntary services, so we create a system that is the antithesis of voluntary services, a system which can only suck away dollars from voluntary services. When we hear of such an assault, when we hear of these ideas which would take away hope and turn up the level of fear in mental health treatment there is only one thing we can do and we have to do it strongly, just like we did last year, we have to tell Thompson NO!

Part of the weak argument for AB 1421 comes from people who believe that if the law were more punitive tragedies involving a few might have been averted. I do not know where these people got their crystal balls from, but I do know there are other stories, not stories based in conjecture of what might have been, but stories based on the truth of what has happened. We know the price of unfettered involuntary commitment. We agree with all of the real experts in the State who say that involuntary treatment should be a last resort. We know the cost of the way things used to be and when there are efforts that will cause more harm than any good, we have to do what we did last year, we have to do it loud, we have to tell Thompson NO!

I have here a bottle of Elmer's glue. Even the supporters of this bill, a small faction who have managed to temporarily take over a California Alliance for the Mentally III, when confronted by the truth of this issue in their own magazine, fired the editor, discontinued the magazine and tried to glue the offending pages shut.

Well, I have news for you, you can't glue the truth shut.

You can distort the truth as Assembly Person Thompson did last year by issuing a bogus report purported to be from the joint commission on mental health reform, you can stretch the truth as Assembly Thompson has tried to do by saying that the Rand Commission has called for a pilot study of outpatient commitment, you can bruise the truth-as Assembly Person Thompson does by using the violence card to support her bill but we are here today to say that you cannot glue the truth shut. If there is an attempt to glue the truth shut, to distort the truth. to stretch the truth and to bruise the truth we are going to do just what we did last year. and we are going to do it loudly and we are going to do it strongly and we are going to tell Thompson NO!

Finally I spoke a few minutes ago about all the lives that have been lost due to indiscriminate use of involuntary commitment. As I said there are many in this crowd whose lives were almost lost because of the fear and anguish that this barbaric practice causes. Before I close I would like us to take a moment and silently remember those whose spirits were crushed, those whose possibilities were never realized, those who could not be with us today to fight this fight.

I believe that together we can defeat this bill but if for some reason we lose the battle now we can know that we are on the side of RIGHT. Someday historians will look back on this movement just as they now look back on other great struggles of history, the struggle for liberation by African Americans. Gays, Lesbians and other groups .... I think we will win but if we don't we are on the right side of history and history will record that. For today, though, let us stand up to the challenge, let's go in and tell the legislators that we are not afraid of drug company money, or fear mongering, let us go in and tell the legislators just what we told them last year, let's do it loudly, lets do it strongly and lets ask the legislators to join the entire mental health community and to tell Thompson NO!