Froma Harrop, in her Progressive Populist November 1 article, “Bring Back Locked Mental Health Facilities” describes the ’60’s Community Mental Health Act as “the most dreadful piece of legislation in American history!” Really?!
A progressive/populist commentator should be able to identify dozens of racist and discriminatory legislation in America that was far more “dreadful” than this Community Mental Health Center (CMHC) effort.
Froma copies from the right-wing playbook: 1) Cite violent acts by individuals as if they are the routine behavior of members of the group to be vilified. 2) Dehumanize and stigmatize all members of this minority group as disproportionally dangerous. 3) Then blame federal activism or “liberal” legislation as the root cause for fear of this group. 4) Then advocate for reactionary curtailment of the human rights or community resources extended to this minority group. 5) Finally, urge policy and practices that punish members of the group with involuntary confinement, without regard to their civil rights.
Then it’s easy for Froma to assert that, for our safety, remand these folks to involuntary care in “clean and well-staffed hospitals.”
A progressive/populist commentator should rely on accurate history, meaningful facts and constructive policy suggestions before any thoughtful assignment of blame.
Froma misleads us to think that Thomas Szasz, the “Close-all-the-Hospitals” proponents and ’60’s anti-institution advocates ever had the numbers or political clout to create the CMH Act.
In fact, it was compassionate media coverage of conditions in state hospitals, new anti-psychotic medications, advocacy by family members and professionals and bipartisan efforts by elected officials, with family members with mental health problems, that resulted in the CMH Act.
The federal funding was to build CMH centers and provide federal funding to address severe shortages of mental illness and substance abuse services for our most- at-risk and least-able-to-pay neighbors.
The legislation gave each CMHC seven years to secure creative local or state level funding through health insurance or public and private sources. Clearly hate for this kind of federal activism opposes any government effort to eliminate discrimination toward a minority group or improve access to services for a marginalized group.
Expanded community mental health services addressed needs in courts, schools, public health, counseling and psychiatry, emergency services, long term care, and child and family services.
However, it was, in fact, the Reagan administration that stopped CMHC construction and CMHC funding in 1981. Federal dollars were reallocated to the states in the form of Block Grants.
As we went from county to county, as part of our consultations, you could see how well or how poorly states reformed their mental health services, reduced discrimination and anticipated the support needs of those with the most disabling mental illnesses.
One can’t rely on the mainstream media to educate the public on: continuing stigma and discrimination, the “root causes” of homelessness, the successes when communities use mental health “best practices” or the huge impact when Medicaid funding increases or shrinks. There continue to be enormous disparities and wide state- to- state differences in mental health resources.
In several large urban areas, there are legitimate concerns when a group of homeless people create a negative impact on commerce, tourism or public safety.
Ironically, Froma is from Rhode Island, and so are we.
A populist commentator should do homework on services that work in her home state, and those developed in other states with Rhode Island advocacy. She would have discovered numerous examples of successful services that minimize the debilitating use of involuntary institutionalization.
The Progressive Populist could promote the notion that people who have been historically marginalized, denied reasonable accommodations and involuntarily remanded to detention facilities can be expected to appreciate and accept useful services only when they are provided in a respectful, accessible, competent and compassionate manner.
KATHRYN POWER and CHRISTIAN L. STEPHENS
(Ms. Power is the former director of the Rhode Island Council of CMHCs, former director of the R.I. Department of Behavioral Health, and a former director at the federal department of Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration. Mr. Stephens is the former president/CEO of Northern RI CMHC, Blackstone Valley Mental Health Realty Corp. and Horizon Healthcare Partners)
A relative, John Ertz, enlisted in the Navy in 1941. He was assigned to the carrier Enterprise, and kept a diary. Through the summer and into fall his entries were unremarkable: meals and movies. In late November his carrier group put to sea.
They steered into the north Pacific, charting course changes that puzzled the sailors.
I’m convinced FDR had intelligence of the Pearl Harbor attack. He ordered the carrier fleets to vanish in the vasts. The obsolete battlewagons, relics of WWI naval tactics, were sacrificed to convince the enemy of their victory. They were manned, of course, so our leaders could “wave the bloody shirt” the duration of the war. (Never doubt leadership counts everyone else as pawns.)
Benjamin Netanyahu knew the abominable Oct. 7 attack was coming. Small price, however, to launch his Palestinian solution. You could call it final.
Gaza will be reduced to rubble and glass. Two million Palestinians will be exposed to thirst, famine and diseases of sanitary failure. Four million of the West Bank will be eliminated along the present model of gradual encroachment—the constriction of an anaconda. This real estate, unlike Gaza, is valued by Bibi for cultural significance.
The Palestinians will endure a decimation. I’m using the word strictly: One in 10 dead. Survivors will be expelled from the Holy Land — refugees to reluctant hosts, or “evacuated” to the pre-existing hellscape of Sinai — with no chance of return. Indeed, this is how the Jewish state came into being.
You cannot declare a “Jewish state” without conceding unequal citizenship. That is apartheid. The just solution is One-State: a single government with proportional representation, exactly equal rights and benefits, and constitutional minority protections (which might one day protect the Jews) for all of the people “from the river to the sea.”
Hamas must be obliterated. But the US focus should be Likud; we have pull with Israel. Our absolute priority must be withholding munitions from Likud.
There is no qualitative difference between a Chosen People and a Master Race. Likud is Nazism with the absolute perfect camouflage.
M. WARNER, Minneapolis Minn.
Trying to respond to your bevy of unnuanced anti-Israel commentators is like trying to plug a hole in a dam with one’s finger. But now I am compelled to do that with Wayne O’Leary, someone I have always respected for thoughtfulness and accuracy -- until now. (“Reaping What’s Been Sown,” 12/1/23 TPP)
First, O’Leary attributes the decision of President Truman to support the establishment of Israel to a myth that he was primarily influenced by an old friend named Eddie Jacobson. Reality was far more nuanced than that. Truman was concerned that the Soviet Union might establish a sympathetic foothold in the region, in supporting Israel as a progressive outpost in the Near East. Indeed, Andrei Gromyko made one of the most moving speeches on behalf of a Jewish state at the UN. Truman was probably also moved by the reports he had received on the plight of Jewish refugees in need of a homeland. He had to be influenced by the vote of the UN General Assembly in 1947 advocating partition of Palestine into two states. And further, he was surely sensitive to the thinking of Jewish, and yes, progressive, voters in the 1948 election year, with Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace strongly supporting the establishment of a Jewish state and criticizing Truman for waffling. (Of course the untutored new-generation leftists have no idea that Israel was actually a progressive cause at its outset.)
O’Leary is also incorrect that America has “had its backs” in every Arab-Israeli conflict since 1948. The Eisenhower-Dulles administration was quite hostile to the British-French-Israeli invasion of the Suez and Sinai of 1956, and put tremendous pressure on Israel to withdraw after its military success. America refused to provide any significant military equipment to Israel until 1962 with the Kennedy sale of Hawk missiles to Israel. The Bush-Baker administration, rightly or wrongly, was very hostile to the Israeli government of the early 90s.
Further points of refutation: The Jewish community did not settle in Palestine with consistent British support. Look at the White Paper of 1939, which sharply limited immigration and banned land sales to Jews. The Arab Legion, which attacked the new state, was headed by a British general, John Bagot Glubb. O’Leary is not aware that Arab flight from the land in 1948 was due to a myriad of factors, not just some expulsion by some Jewish forces. He refuses to acknowledge the Jew-hatred of Arabs like the Mufti of Jerusalem, who broadcast hate propaganda from Nazi Germany during the war. He sees only Arabs as the rightful historic occupants of the land and not Jews who were there in some presence for thousands of years.
Finally, and maybe worst: O’Leary minimizes the savagery and treachery of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and, at best, equates the Israeli response with the willful killing and kidnapping of members all ethnic groups, ages, religions, and refugee background, by Hamas. For shame!
STEPHEN APPELL, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Cecelia Delambre’s Letter to the Editor (“Jill Stein Comes Off the Bench”) in the12/15/23 TPP would make sense if only Democrats and Republicans were permitted to run for office. Fortunately, in a country like ours, anyone can give it a try, but the myth endures that third party and independent candidates only muck it up for the “serious” candidates.
Perhaps Ms. Delambre’s Democrats should be offering us better policies that we progressives can vote for, like Medicare For All, a living minimum wage, or an end to the wasteful wars instead of worrying so much about Donald Trump.
GARY CRONIN, West Babylon, N.Y.
From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2024
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