A definition of insanity

The other night, I was watching a report on Frontline about what happens when mentally ill prisoners are released back into society. What happens, essentially, is that, unless they are really, really lucky and get into a special shelter program for homeless people with chronic mental illness, they eventually commit another crime and end up back in prison.
Which is probably for the best.
Mouth, the disability rights mag that I read, will surely scream bloody murder, but I am just about ready to say that these people should be forced, as they are when in prison, to take their meds.
Because they do just fine when they take their meds. It is when they forget or refuse to take their drugs, as is all too common, that they get paranoid, hear the demonic voices in their heads telling them to do stuff and start committing crimes.
It is probably not nearly this simple, and I am not big on drugs, but this seems a bit like me going out without my letter board or refusing to use my motorized wheelchair. Just a bit. It’s asking for a hard time, if not trouble.
This is a catch-22 and an old argument going back about 40 years. I don’t think anyone argues that it was a bad idea to close the big mental institutions in the 1960's and 1970's, in favor of having and treating the mentally ill out in the community. But nobody says it’s good that very few or no community programs - or the monies for them - were provided.
What this means is that, as I was shocked to read recently, Los Angeles County, where I live and one of the nation’s biggest and most populous, has 100 beds for the mentally ill homeless. What it means is that, as a social worker said on the Frontline program, these people are left to advocate for themselves when they’re out of prison. What a joke - when it takes everything I have to fight for what I need!
Also seen on the program was a good shelter for the mentally ill, one of the few. Not only is it not able to force residents to take their meds, if a resident is caught with alcohol on his/her breath, s/he is kicked out for 30 days. Isn’t this when shelter and support is most needed?
One person profiled in the report ended up back in prison for 10 years. Crazily enough, I couldn’t help but think that this is for the better. At least there, for a good long time, he’ll get the help he so desperately needs.

Victims of society all

I recently read an article about a guy being tried in Colorado for killing a MTF trans. The trial is a big deal, not only because it is not far from where Matthew Shepard was beaten and left to die but also because it is one of the first times someone has been charged with a hate crime for killing a transgender person.
Much progress has been made in the area of rights and justice for glbt folks, partly due to what happened to Shepard. Then again, some people, including the defense attorney, are at least implying that the trans woman more or less asked for it and contributed to her demise.
Here we go again. It is our fault. It is our problem. We get called "fag," get beat up, killed, because we are out and queer and not staying nicely in the closet.
Likewise, when a few steps stop me from going into a shop or restaurant, it’s my problem. I have to bring my own ramp - or raise a stink and be a big pain in the ass. And the smart guy rotting away in a nursing home instead of living and being productive in his own place, not to mention saving thousands of taxpayers’ dollars? Oh, well, that’s just a sad, little story, and maybe some donations will help.
Meanwhile, what do I, as a non-violent Quaker who believes there is "that of God in everyone" (and as a spoiled brat American), do when I see video taken recently in the Taliban-controlled Swat Valleys in Pakistan of women being buried to their necks and stoned with just the right sized rocks provided by the government and of boys, accused of "engaging in homosexual behavior," being flogged?

Getting on the bus - not!

The other day, I missed the bus - again.
There must be some sort of rule. Call it Pixley’s Law: If I’m at the bus stop on time, the bus is late. If I’m late, even a few seconds late, the bus is always right on time. Always!
It gets stranger. I once applied for a para-transit program. This is one of those deals where a wheelchair-accessible private taxi picks you up and takes you anywhere in the county - and this is a big county - for like a dollar. They denied me, saying I’m and too independent, not disabled enough - because I take the bus.
And stranger still. I was once waiting at a bus stop in Los Angeles - yes, I have balls! When the bus pulled up and the driver saw that I wanted on, she literally began jumping up and down in her seat in frustration and despair. It was a scene right out of my play, Jury by Trial - after I had written it.
So much for "Welcome Aboard!"

The Disabling Society

I saw an article in the Los Angeles Times a week or two ago about a group of high school alumni who discovered that a fellow graduate from over twenty years ago was not dead, like they had thought he was (they had even memorialized him at their 20-year reunion). Patrick Chawki, who had been a popular baseball player at Grant High School in Los Angeles, "lay paralyzed and nearly forgotten in a Canoga Park nursing home."
He may as well be dead.
For the last nine years, "Chawki has suffered from a rare disorder that renders him fully cognitive but unable to move or speak. Because he cannot talk or write, he was unable to tell his family how to reach his friends."
Why not? Why hadn’t anyone found a way for Chawki to communicate? And why was he in a nursing home?
There are all kinds of ways and all sorts of gadgets out there to enable someone like Chawki to express his wants and needs. Laurie Green, the Grant High alum who learned that Chawki was alive and in the nursing home, found a simple one - an alphabet poster and thumb up for yes, thumb down for no. Why hadn’t anybody come up with this before?
And in a photograph accompanying the article, Chawki is up in a wheelchair looking as alive as I am and like he can, with help, live in his own place, like I do.
This is classic. This is a perfect example of how our society makes the disabled more disabled, of how everything is set up for the able-bodied and how things that make life for the disabled have to be fought for or are granted as a big favor, usually out of pity or guilt. This makes it easy to see why we hear all those stories of disabled people, usually stuck wallowing in nursing homes, want to die. Why bother living when living is made so hard? (Saying that Chawki "suffered" from his disability and having a second picture of Chawki playing baseball, as the article does, feeds right into this better-dead-than-disabled notion.)
Green and her fellow alumni are raising money to pay for therapy that - surprise, surprise - Medicare and Medi-Cal won’t pay for. They also hope to get Chawki out of the nursing home. When Green told him of this ultimate goal, "his thumb shot straight up." I bet!

Not just sick - it's a crime

Last week, I was watching Now on P.B.S. The program was about healthcare in the U.S, and as I watched it, my health was in danger. My blood was boiling.
The program featured a couple with a very young son with a rare breathing disorder. Because of lack of funds, the child had to be sent house, hooked up to a complex breathing machine with all sorts of wires and tubes. Not only did the doctor have to give the parents detailed instructions, paramedics had to transport the son.
But that’s not all. There is no funding for a nurse. The husband works nights, so the mother, who has a day job, has to stay up all night to make sure the machine is working correctly. If she drifts off to sleep, even for a few minutes, her son could well die.
Something is very wrong with this. At the very least, no parents should be put in this situation.
I was reminded of when, years ago, I had an attendant who got very sick. He had no health insurance - par for the course for my state-funded attendants - and went around sick for weeks. Finally, he gave in, went to a clinic, paid big bucks and got, as he said, "a big shot in the butt." He was better the next day.
Yes, this is crazy and sad. Yes, this is sick. But more than that, it is criminal.
It is a crime when, because of money, a child can’t get the care they need and is in danger of dying. It is a crime when, again simply due to money, anyone is blocked from not being ill, from being decently healthy. America is the only developed country where this happens.
Meanwhile, as we’ve seen lately, "socialism" is a dirty word here. My blood is simmering...

Quaker homophobia

Next month, I'm taking part in a panel discussion on quaker homophobia. Yes, my monthly meeting and yearly meeting embraces LGBT folks and same-sex marriages, and I'm very grateful for this, but there are quakers in the world, including not far away, who are very anti-gay. What can/should we do about this? What if we don't do anything?
Here is my statement for the panel:

I have been carrying a concern.
I have been carrying this concern since hearing an epistle read a P.Y.M a couple years ago. The epistle was dated August 30, 2006, and stated, "Gay is contrary to scriptures and nature. Even the tiniest crawling creatures observe strictly God’s command...." and that "[We] shall not team up with any group that proclaims this immoral conduct."
The epistle was from East Africa Yearly Meeting. It was from Friends "to Friends everywhere."
This concern grew when I read reports of a man standing in a regional Quaker gathering in Africa and saying that homosexuals and their allies should be put to death. It was reported that no one, including Friends from the U.S who were present, stood to challenge the man.
When I heard last Fall that George Fox University, a Quaker school in Oregon, prohibits "homosexual behavior" in its students, faculty and staff, the concern only grew.
I am very well aware that Africa is on the other side of the world and that there are very different branches of Quakers/ism. I am also happy that Claremont Meeting and Pacific Yearly Meeting are on record supporting same-sex relationships and marriage.
But these feel like rationalizations - it is nice to say we are not like that and to feel good - and ones that are too easy. The fact still is that there are those among the "Friends Everywhere," including those not that far away, who condemn me as a gay man, saying that I am immoral and should be banned or even killed. (I find the distinction between "the sin" and "the sinner," as in "love the sinner, hate the sin," to be disingenuous, to say the least. I resent being called a "sinner," with its implication that I sin.)
What am I to think?
More importantly perhaps, what would my gay friend think if he saw the East Africa Yearly Meeting epistle (it is easily found on the Internet)? What do I tell him?
What do we tell the gay man who shows up at a Quaker Quest session with this question? Or would he show up?

A pawn in their game(s)

Perhaps there is one good thing about the recent budget crisis/debacle in California, in which a hole of something like $18-billion had to be plugged, and legislators bickered for weeks over how to do this while the state teetered on the edge of insolvency. Perhaps more people got an idea of what I go through almost every year.
California, one of only three states that requires lawmakers to approve a new budget (or any new tax) by a two-thirds super-majority vote, is notorious for not passing its budget on time, almost always due to Republicans standing in the way. So notorious that it isn’t news - at least news that people pay attention to. The only reason it was big news this time was that the budget that was passed in September after the July 1 deadline proved to be a bust.
Well, even when the budget not passing isn’t news, I read the stories. Because, always, always, always, one of the first things to be put on the chopping block or on hold are services for "the blind, aged and disabled."
That’s me. Yep - I’m in there!
Never mind what it says about a society that considers cutting such services. What am I to think when I read day after day that my independent, productive living is threatened? What do I do if I can’t pay my attendants who get me out of bed, help me go to the bathroom, dress me, feed me...?
Yes, it is true that years ago a judge ruled that attendant funds must be provided, budget or no budget, but I forget this or worry that it will change. I remember when, before the ruling, the money didn’t come until the state budget was passed, and I remember one year when I had to tell my attendants, who I rely on, that their pay was cut by ten percent. (None quit, but I sure worried that they would, and I felt bad asking for what I still needed.)
This is a horrible position to be in. Come to think of it, it is not unlike the position thousands of same-sex married couples are in, waiting for the California Supreme Court to decide if their marriages are valid. And the many more lesbians and gay men - that’s me, again! - also waiting to see if their lives are deemed valid, waiting for the outcome of the recent hearing on whether Proposition 8, which wrote discrimination into the state constitution for the first time in a amendment banning same-sex marriage, is unconstitutional.