EDITOR’S CORNER
I’ve been Mad in America’s Family Resources Editor for more than three years now, but except for a brief mention in my bio, I haven’t shared much about my lived experience with psychiatry. I wanted to maintain a proper journalistic distance from the content I manage and focus on amplifying others’ voices. But I have a story, too, so that’s about to change.
This blog will be the first in a regular series of “Editor’s Corner” columns for the Family Resources page, in which I’ll write about relevant trends from my perspective not just as a journalist but also as a mental health consumer/survivor/ex-patient. I hope they will stimulate discussion and, where appropriate, spur organizing around shared experiences and goals.
Here, I take a look at a new short film in the growing “mental health awareness” genre from my perspective as someone who’s experienced the very “disorders” it portrays.
Just Like Me?
I receive a fair number of press releases about new research, books, and multimedia initiatives designed to address the perceived youth mental health crisis. These efforts are designed to encourage kids to normalize talking about emotional distress, help them feel less alone, urge help-seeking, and above all “end the stigma!” One from a few weeks ago piqued my interest:
“In ‘Just Like You: Anxiety and Depression,’ 10 brave kids, 2 Emmy-award-winning journalists, 1 determined parent and 1 clinical psychologist at Columbia University take on the fear and stigma plaguing the mental health community by immersing us in life with an anxiety disorder and depression in a way that leaves us enlightened, empowered and equipped to … support people living with an anxiety disorder and depression and prevent death by suicide….”
I was interested in screening JLY because, well, I’ve lived it. In my junior year of high school in 1975, I entered psychotherapy for what would now be labeled panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. Despite often paralyzing emotional pain and scary symptoms, I pretty much hid my struggles except for telling my few friends that I was “seeing a shrink.” Then, in my sophomore year of college, the end of my first romance and a transfer to a new school flipped me back into panic mode, accompanied by inconsolable sadness and insomnia diagnosed as “reactive depression.”
I got better, though. And though I’ve had a few of what some would call relapses, I’ve never let them define me (despite the best efforts of some prescription-pad-wielding psychiatrists). So I hoped the film would characterize the experience accurately and provide wisdom I and those around me could have benefited from along the way. However, after screening it I fear that despite its good intentions, it may stoke the very stigma it seeks to stop.
Grand Goals
Just Like You: Anxiety and Depression (now available for rent or purchase on iTunes) is the latest and longest in the Just Like You series of short educational videos, an anti-bullying effort started by a Kansas documentary filmmaker for an audience of youth, their families, and teachers, among others. They feature portraits of real kids with various differences and disabilities such as autism, diabetes, Down Syndrome, food allergies, and more. The videos follow a template in which the youth, their best friends, and some of the caring adults in their lives take turns explaining their condition, what it’s like to live with it, and how others can best support them. The take-home: We have challenges others might not, but we are more similar to than different from our peers.
But the feature-length JLY:A&D has a grander goal behind its didactic mission: to “save lives.” Less documentary than info-mercial, the tightly scripted film is built around specific messages delivered in phrases recited and reiterated by endearing kids and relatable adults with lived experience of anxiety and depression.
What are those messages? The usual outdated, pathologizing myths from the APA/NAMI playbook, dressed up in new, kid-friendly metaphors with a few welcome nods to more humanistic and holistic concepts such as peer support and self-care. Let’s take a look.
Stigma and Suicide
The first message is as grim as it is familiar: Anxiety and depression among youth are at crisis level, leading kids (and adults) to suffer in silence and even die by suicide. But stigma, it’s said, prevents them from getting help. Families and peers thus have a responsibility to “know better” so they can “do better,” say the parents of Pierson, a 15-year-old mental health activist who died by suicide. We then meet those “10 brave kids” from Kansas—Morgan, Allie, Jana, Roshaun, and Dylan and each of their best friends or close family members—learning a bit about their different talents and passions. We also meet the two adult journalists (Fox network broadcasters Abby Eden and Ryan LeFebvre). All of them have one thing in common: “I live with depression and an anxiety disorder.” “So do I.” “Me, too.”
Here and throughout the film, they tell us what their suffering feels like, from spiraling worries to inconsolable tears, and the pressure to remain stoic and silent, along with the desperation that sometimes leads to hospitalization or a plan for self-harm. Their stories, and later medical information, are sometimes illustrated with cartoons and offset by the stories of those who love them but sometimes labor to understand their moods. I strongly identified when, about halfway through, Ryan recalls, “So many times, I wanted to sleep, but my anxious mind wouldn’t let me. And I wanted to do something, but my depressed mind wouldn’t let me.”
Pushing the Medical Model
Ryan also delivers the second and overarching message, repeated multiple times from many mouths: “Anxiety and depression are real medical conditions….” And so begins the promotion of the biological model of “mental illness,” which research has shown actually increases stigma. The medical myth is further muddied by a novel analogy I’d never heard before. According to JLY, anxiety disorders and depression are not exactly “chemical imbalances” but malfunctions in how our body reacts to emotions, “no different from being attacked by a virus or an allergen.”
The film’s chipper Columbia psychologist, Dr. Ali Mattu, explains that the “right,” or “normal” amounts of fear and sadness are natural reflexes, reactions to stress akin to coughing or hunger pangs. But “too much” fear or sadness constitutes a disorder that can harm us, he claims. “Just like asthma or flu,” says Abby, they can become “extremely severe, even life-threatening.” In this telling, emotional distress is not only a problem innate to the individual, but also somehow an outside invader like a virus.
Fatalism and Helplessness
Worse, we’re told the prognosis is poor. JLY’s third message is that anxiety and depression aren’t just a dangerous “real medical condition” but an incurable one. These kids and adults tell us that not only can’t they “just get over it,” but are also helpless to control it. Ryan recommends “surrendering” to this fact and recognizing that “we need other people to help us.” After this fatalistic take, we learn we’re not to blame them nor make a big deal of it. (Jana: “It’s not my fault, just like it’s not my fault if my stomach growls.” Dylan: “It’s just how my body works.”) Dr. Mattu explains that this horrible disease can be managed with cognitive behavioral therapy, medication (likened inaccurately to an asthma rescue inhaler), and self-care including diet and exercise.
You Can (Must) Help
This leads to the fourth message, which may be the best aspect of the film: Peer support really helps. The emphasis is on what friends can—and, it’s implied, have a duty to—do on a daily basis to engage and support their fellow youth.
To its credit, the film emphasizes that talking about suicide won’t make it happen and shows through often touching scenes how, say, songwriter Allie’s best friend, Michael, has learned how to read when she is in the throes and finds ways to just be with her, listening and responding to what she says helps her feel better. At one point, Roshaun (whose champion is big brother Breydon and who uses journaling as an outlet for his struggles) shares his vision for ending mental health stigma. But it sounds like a recipe for healing human pain: “[…Come] together as a community and help people…to feel loved and heard.”
Other recommendations also sound sensible but have risky downsides. For example, teens are encouraged to steer overanxious or depressed friends and family members toward professional help. (We’re reassured that that won’t lead to being locked away or ruin one’s future job prospects, but as MIA has documented, both of these outcomes happen too often.) The film even urges teens to report friends to the authorities if they have a hunch the person might be suicidal. But that can lead to further trauma when one is hauled away in handcuffs.
Besides being paternalistic, taking it upon oneself to monitor others and potentially save their lives is a lot of responsibility to put on youth. I worry that adolescents, who can sometimes be self-absorbed, may want to steer clear of rather than befriend peers portrayed as fragile or “high maintenance.”
Inaccuracies and Omissions
The film ends by reassuring viewers that kids with anxiety and depression are, in the end, “just like you.” This seems to conflict with the medical model of mental illness, which is othering by definition. Mixed messages aside, I’m concerned about the inaccuracies and omissions that reveal the filmmakers’ lack of awareness of recent research and social movements.
For example, the film uses this statistic: “Depression and anxiety disorders are one of the leading factors for death by suicide.” Yet according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, while about 60% of people who died by suicide had a diagnosed “mood disorder,” only 2% of those ever treated for depression will die of suicide. A recent meta-analysis on the link between anxiety disorders and suicide (estimated in one 2010 review to be as high as 70%) found that “anxiety is a statistically significant, yet weak predictor of suicide ideation…and attempts.” This suggests we need to focus less on someone’s diagnosis and more on what’s going on in their lives—not just if they’re suicidal but if they’re depressed or anxious in the first place.
Take JLY’s Morgan, an equestrian, who couldn’t get out of bed when her favorite horse died. This event prompted her diagnosis. But grief isn’t a pathology. Similarly, Roshaun (whose mother, featured in the film, mistook his meltdowns for misbehavior) tells of being repeatedly called the N-word in school. Racism—a cultural and structural problem—has repeatedly been linked to poor mental health in youth of color and exists outside the individual. So has discrimination against LGBT+ youth of all races. As MIA Science News reported recently, suicide is inherently cultural and political, yet activism around righting social injustices isn’t mentioned as an intervention.
More important, in its desire to “teach” viewers about anxiety and depression as simply as possible, the film’s adherence to standard DSM definitions, explanations, and treatments overlooks newer, empirically validated, and more optimistic approaches to the feelings and behaviors labeled mental illness. These include everything from trauma-informed care (which focuses on adverse childhood experiences such as abuse), the recovery model, and the Power-Threat-Meaning framework to neuroplasticity, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and even the Mad Movement. Perhaps that’s too much to ask of a film like this. (Information on all of these ideas can be found in MIA’s Family Resources pages and elsewhere on this site.)
Hope and Empowerment
So what should parents, loved ones, and friends of kids who are struggling with debilitating worry, fear, sadness, and/or hopelessness do? I’d like to offer some alternative messages.
In my experience, episodes of anxiety and depression dwindle in the face of hope and empowerment. Let’s loop back to adolescent Miranda, plagued with insecurity and dread. When I first came into my therapist Marilynn’s office, I was convinced that I was physically ill due to frequent symptoms such as rapid heartbeat, de-realization, sweating, and trembling – and I wanted medication, stat!
Marilynn never told me I was “mentally ill.” She explained that my physical sensations were psychological in origin and not dangerous per se. She eschewed drugs, viewing them as a cop-out from dealing with underlying issues. And she reassured me that if I worked hard to change, I could recover. This framing saw me as anything but helpless against a supposedly permanent disease, helping me envision a future I could look forward to.
And we did that work, getting to the root of my emotional problems, which back then were viewed as primarily environmentally driven and person-specific. She helped me to get in touch with conflicting and often unconscious emotions, identify better ways to cope with my current situation, and understand and undo some toxic family dynamics—of which my admittedly loving family had plenty. “You,” she told 16-year-old me, “are being born.”
If anyone had told me that there was something fundamentally wrong inside of me that could never be healed, only managed—and just might kill me unless I let others steer me from its clutches—it would have tipped me into deeper despair. So I worry that JLY: A&D may do the same for today’s kids and their families. Indeed, research confirms that the disease model of conceptualizing distress not only increases stigma, but also leads to more prescriptions for antidepressants, which science has linked to suicidality in children and youth. This link led the U.S. FDA to include a “black box” warning on the drugs.
So if we want to be a supportive friend, teacher, or parent (rather than a savior), then we need to help the kid that’s hurting to discover the underlying driver(s) of the intense fear and sadness that manifest as a “disorder.” To quote trauma-informed child psychiatrist Dr. Bruce Perry, we want to help them articulate “Not what’s wrong with you; what happened to you?” If, as the film says, fear and sadness help keep us alive, what threats or unfulfilled needs are the anxiety and depression screaming at us to address? No doubt some of these concerns are very real, and global: the climate crisis, the pandemic, and possibly nuclear war.
As for suicidality, former therapist and hotline worker Steve McCrea wrote recently that youth “considering suicide almost always see ending their life as a solution to a problem they are experiencing” because they are often “trapped by the actions of adults who have power over them.” Sometimes we need to hold space for these taboo feelings so we can help them figure out a different solution. Not blame a broken brain.
. . .
Resources
“Rethinking Suicide Prevention: An Interview on Critical Suicide Studies with Jennifer White”
“Jodi Amen: Anxiety, I Am So Done with You!”
“Emotional CPR: Heart-Centered Peer Support”
Is stigma more like magma? And if you cemented it, is there a possibility the mountain will explode while trying to realize a release? For lights gets in and out through the cracks? Though for a Bell to have been cracked can be linked to a flow in the casting? Humans though are not cast nor set in stone but I tend to think We are trying to figure the way our Being can be realized through some level of Becoming? But all these people who have lost their lives, can push one over the edge, as the systems are trying to realize “Outcomes” as if that is the Key to Training? Seemingly, to me the words that go along with quantity are all over the verbiage. As a result of what? See WHO event from this morning!
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Why are things like low magnesium, low zinc and unstable blood sugar coming to mind? Why am I thinking about niacinamide? Why am I curious about perceptual instability? I’m supposed to radiate reassurance and puff the skills of shrinks.
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Sending the kids to a therapist without the parents also going and without CPS oversight should be illegal.
And those psychiatric neurotoxins should not even exist.
Joshua
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Hi Miranda,
thank you for writing this insightful review, and also, thank you for sharing some of your story with the rest of us. Personally, I’ve struggled with suicide ideation and depression/despair/despondency most of my adult life, and I do agree with you that hope and strong relationships are some of the best ways I fight against these overwhelming feelings. Hope is also part of the reason I work so hard to be a good healing companion for my wife, since our ‘fortunes’ are inextricably linked to each other’s, and her ‘win’ will be mine, too.
But as for empowerment. I often thought about the categorical difference between my older sister being raped in her 20’s and my wife’s experience of being molested as a 2-year old and her childhood growing up with emotionally distant and at times abusive parents. My sister quickly moved thru the healing process as she fought to get back to healthy and a few years later she was speaking to other women about her experience and how she had healed.
But my wife? When we first started our journey together, she told me repeatedly that she didn’t even know what ‘healthy’ looked like. She had no goal to fight for like my sister because she had never known what it was in the first place. On top of that, we spent 5 years of continuous extreme states, where she was literally, constantly overwhelmed, and I had to be there with her ‘in the emotional hurricane waters”…holding her up from drowning, being the calm in her storm. I was her lifeguard, her ‘savior,’ in a very real sense…until I got her stabilized, and we moved out of that phase.
15 years later she is in a much different place and I rarely have to ‘rescue’ her and yet I still have to help her heal in a way that my sister never needed. It’s been a struggle for me so that I don’t infringe upon her agency in any way, and yet be willing to provide her the support and help that she needs as she still is moving toward the goal of becoming healthy…having never experienced it.
And so each person’s experience of suicide ideation, depression or any other mental distress and what each needs to heal from it and move past it will depend on their own history. Empowerment can feel overwhelming and almost like the same abandonment s/he experienced during childhood to someone who has never known ‘healthy’ like my wife until s/he has healed and stabilized enough. That doesn’t give the helper license to transgress someone’s agency, but it does mean basing the help and depth of involvement according to the needs of the sufferer and realizing much more help may be needed at the start of the healing journey.
Sam
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The prevalence of anxiety and depression can be easily explained if one is not promoting psychiatry and its toxic drugs and brutal treatment of those who come under its power.
Our society(and of course, many families) is full of events that anyone would be anxious and depressed about. But it works better for those who run our society to keep people in line and prevent them from doing something about these events. Thus, the cult of psychiatry and its lies help our oppressive “leaders” to stay in power. Are you poor? Have you been sexually abused as a child? Worst of all, as I was, have you been under the power of psychiatry since you were a child? Of course you feel anxious and depressed.
I have a wonderful new friend, fifty years younger than me, who was almost literally born under the power of psychiatry. And so we have a lot in common. She is really an admirable person, intelligent, ethical, helpful and nurturing toward other people, and a young woman of many talents. I love her, and it is heartbreaking for me to see all the self-blame and lack of self respect she has, that I instantly recognize as the result of what the psychiatrists did to her.. I have had fifty more years than she to heal from psychiatry, but how can one heal from a childhood under the power of a “helping profession” that spends so much of that power telling you over and over that you’re a subhuman mental case?
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Miranda,
Thank you for calling attention to Just Like You. I only watched the trailer and some of the interviews, but your assessment seems spot on.
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I want to look for any update on CA Governor Gavin Newsom’s attempt to target the homeless and create mental health courts, and to have forced mental health procedures.
March 3rd:
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/03/03/governor-newsom-launches-new-plan-to-help-californians-struggling-with-mental-health-challenges-homelessness/
12 hours ago:
https://www.highlandernews.org/84173/californias-mental-health-bill-for-youth-is-too-little-too-late/
^ Says that what Newsom proposes is not enough, but they still seem to support the idea of Mental Health.
4/13:
In governor’s race, challengers attack Newsom’s record on homelessness
Two of Newsom’s most vocal challengers — Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle of Bieber in Lassen County and Bay Area energy and homeless policy activist Michael Shellenberger, a Democrat turned independent.
They have accused the governor of being beholden to the failed housing and homelessness policies of the far left. While ideologically different, both men are calling for a crackdown on homeless encampments and greater incentives for drug users and the mentally ill to receive treatment when provided housing.
March 22:
Newsom’s new push for homeless mental health treatment lacks details. That has some worried
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-22/newsom-homeless-plan-court-ordered-treatment
^^
All of this does seem predicated on the idea that the homeless are a pitiful lot who best be herded into internment camps and the concepts of drug addiction and mental illness are central to this.
Joshua
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“Newsom’s administration believes that 7,000 to 12,000 people could qualify for the court-ordered care, a fraction of the estimated 161,000 people experiencing homelessness in California. Those who would qualify are characterized by experts as the hardest to reach and most difficult to treat, largely because they have a variety of complex needs and are often hesitant to trust government intervention.”
March 22
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-22/newsom-homeless-plan-court-ordered-treatment
Holy Shit!
https://www.chhs.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/CARE-Court-Stakeholder-Slides-20220314.pdf
This stuff looks like Frank Jordan’s Martix Plan, from when former police chief Frank Jordan got elected mayor of San Francisco. His Matrix was just more cops, criminalizing homelessness.
And then when Newsom got elected mayor his first act was an initiative Care Not Cash, making it so that the homeless were not eligible to receive the full GA allotment.
Joshua
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This stuff looks like Frank Jordan’s Martix Plan, from when former police chief Frank Jordan got elected mayor of San Francisco. His Matrix was just more cops, criminalizing homelessness.
http://www.jaipurcallgirl.org/
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I just heard on NPR that a new panel on the mental health of children is conveying (headed by a (psychiatrist?) from Georgetown U. The working recommendation is that all children over 8 be screened for anxiety, and all 12 year olds for depression, so as to get them the mental health care “they need” ASAP. This 60 second report acknowledged the pandemics affect on children’s mental health, as well as the increase in the percentage of children affected (of which I missed). Well…perhaps the first recommendation from this panel will be the type of psychotherapy Miranda received in 1975? If not, 2050 should be, to cynically borrow from Ted’s wise post, a real boom for psychiatry.
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The problem with this “reasoning” is that there is no evidence that “treatment” makes things any better. In fact, the more “treatment” is passed around, the more chronically “mentally ill” people seem to be appearing. So more and more of what doesn’t work is the answer?
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Well, Steve, treatments that do work are likely to be frowned upon by our “professional” classes as forms of black magic, or maybe hypnotism, that are likely to direct youthful patients into subversive antisocial activities instead of leaving them bland vegetables.
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Besides, we can’t be curing people, or we’ll have to find more patients to bilk!
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“But stigma, it’s said, prevents them from getting help.” Well, there’s something to be said for avoiding being defamed with a so called “life long, incurable, genetic illness” – especially since none of the DSM disorders is even a valid diagnosis.
http://psychrights.org/2013/130429NIMHTransformingDiagnosis.htm
“anxiety disorders and depression are not exactly ‘chemical imbalances’ but malfunctions in how our body reacts to emotions, ‘no different from being attacked by a virus or an allergen.’ This seems to imply our efforts in debunking the fraud of the ‘chemical imbalance’ theory have possibly made some progress. And if the “mental illnesses” are ‘no different from being attacked by a virus or an allergen,’ that would imply the “mental health” industry may have gotten rid of their “genetic” theory of etiology?
“JLY’s third message is that anxiety and depression aren’t just a dangerous ‘real medical condition’ but an incurable one.” Yet they’ve maintained the “incurable” aspect of their DSM disorders, despite the fact that “viruses” don’t tend to cause “life long, incurable” illnesses?
“I’m concerned about the inaccuracies and omissions that reveal the filmmakers’ lack of awareness of recent research and social movements.” Indeed, by chance were the filmmakers funded by big Pharma, the APA, and/or NAMI?
“In my experience, episodes of anxiety and depression dwindle in the face of hope and empowerment.” I agree, but all the current “medical model” has to offer is “life long, incurable,” “invalid,” “mental illnesses” and forced neurotoxic poisonings … which rob individuals of hope and empowerment.
Honestly, it is past time to stop blaming “a broken brain,” and actually admit to the scientific fraud of the “medical model” and the DSM stigmatizations. And, let’s be realistic, coerced and forced drugging people is the epitome of stealing one’s power and rights.
“Human rights” and “forced treatment” are mutually exclusive concepts. So if the “mental health professions” ever want to claim to be about “human rights,” their “right” to force “treat” people needs to end.
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Thank you for your comment. I did check out the funding of the “Just Like You” series, and it’s mainly from a Kansas-based family foundation. But that is all they list on their website; who knows where else it might have come from?
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Jean, what Gavin Newsom is trying to do is just like Frank Jordan’s Matrix Plan, except for maybe the fact that it can put a roof over people’s heads. So Gavin’s plan is much more expensive.
But that roof is a room in a Mental Health Internment Camp. What Gavin is trying to do is what Donald Trump tried to do after he came to San Francisco.
Joshua
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Opposition mounts against Newsom’s plan for court-ordered treatment of homeless people
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-04-19/homeless-advocates-lash-out-at-newsom-homeless-plan-court-ordered-treatment
Calif. lawmakers rollout Newsom’s homeless mental illness court plan
https://sjvsun.com/california/calif-lawmakers-rollout-newsoms-homeless-mental-illness-court-plan/
California’s New CARE Court Is Justice Option for People Addicted, Mentally Ill
https://sacobserver.com/2022/04/californias-new-care-court-is-justice-option-for-people-addicted-mentally-ill/
Gov. Gavin Newsom Discusses Mental Health Court Plan In Napa Visit
https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/566589725/gov-gavin-newsom-discusses-mental-health-court-plan-in-napa-visit
Joshua
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Looks like we get one free view per day:
Opposition mounts against Newsom’s plan for court-ordered treatment of homeless people
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-04-19/homeless-advocates-lash-out-at-newsom-homeless-plan-court-ordered-treatment
Joshua
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Miranda, thank you for sharing a part of your story and for your thoughtful review and critique of the film Just Like You. My heart aches every time I hear someone on the news talk about the “teen mental health” crisis, and they act like problems with anxiety and depression come out of nowhere. There’s always a reason why someone becomes anxious or feels depressed and instead of offering compassion, careful listening, and support, our society tells people there is something wrong with their brains. At the rate this “brain disease” is sweeping across our country, it’s a wonder anyone is surviving.
I experienced a traumatic event when I was a young teen and managed to push my way through the dense fog of depression and anxiety and move on with my life. As a teen, I would hear been devastated if a doctor had told me there was something wrong with my brain.
Thanks for your continuing advocacy for kids and families and for your insightful and thoughtful writing.
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Yeah, Gavin’s plan has got Republicans calling for Mental Health. Gavin is a dangerous man.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article260557137.html
“The letter references Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to fund “CARE Courts” to move thousands of mentally ill and addicted people into mandatory treatment plans, but says it doesn’t go far enough.”
“Success of Gavin Newsom’s plan to tackle severe mental illness could hinge on California’s housing efforts”
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Gavin-Newsom-homeless-care-court-17084367.php
Joshua
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Opposition mounts against Newsom’s plan for court-ordered treatment of homeless people
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-04-19/homeless-advocates-lash-out-at-newsom-homeless-plan-court-ordered-treatment
”
More than three dozen organizations and individuals, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Disability Rights California and the Western Center on Law and Poverty, signed an April 12 opposition letter raising serious concerns with Assembly Bill 2830, one of two nearly identical measures moving through the Legislature to implement Newsom’s Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Court. The groups often have significant sway among liberal legislative Democrats, the kind of influence that could hinder Newsom’s hopes for a new law to be in place by July 1.
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Cynthia Castillo, a policy advocate for the Western Center on Law and Poverty, said Newsom’s plan “seems to be expanding the bureaucracy of homelessness services.”
“We are adding judges and attorneys into the mix in hopes of better connecting unhoused individuals with housing and medical care, but nothing else really changes,” she said.
Castillo said the anti-poverty group will remain opposed to the CARE Court framework unless lawmakers address the concerns outlined in the letter, especially the plan’s failure to address access to housing and its insistence on empowering judges to mandate care.
“We vehemently oppose the proposal because it has this coercive court process implemented, and no right to housing,” Castillo said.
AB 2830 was originally scheduled to be heard this week by the Assembly Judiciary Committee, but the hearing is now set for next week, similar to plans for its companion measure, Senate Bill 1338.
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4/25
California mental health court won’t help homeless, advocates say. ‘This idea is broken’
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article260398172.html
The policy is moving through the Legislature in the form of two bills — Assembly Bill 2830 from Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, and Senate Bill 1338 from Sen. Susan Eggman, D-Stockton, and Sen. Thomas Umberg, D-Santa Ana.
AB-2830 The Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Court Program.(2021-2022)
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2830
SB-1338 Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Court Program.(2021-2022)
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Introduced by Senators Umberg and Eggman
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The bill is getting push-back from disability rights advocates, who say CARE Court forces treatment on mentally ill people with little regard for their civil rights. They also argue it wastes money that would be better spent on public education, early intervention and programming that doesn’t involve coercion. “We are neglected throughout the whole process, up until the point our condition is so severe that we can’t control it and we start doing things like breaking the law,” said John Vanover, legislative committee chair for the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance of California. “And at that point, now, the governor wants to step in and make us criminals. So fundamentally, this idea is broken, just from that.”
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HOW WOULD CARE COURT WORK? CARE Court would effectively create a new wing of the civil court system in all 58 of California’s counties that would allow a judge to order a mental “care plan” for those dealing with severe untreated mental illness. The program would apply to everyone who meets the criteria, but Newsom has repeatedly referenced it as a tool to help the homeless population. A person qualifies for CARE Court if they’re at least 18, diagnosed with “schizophrenia spectrum or other psychotic disorder,” are not receiving treatment, and lack “medical decision-making capacity,” according to SB 1338. California was home to nearly 162,000 homeless people in 2020, according to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data. Nearly 38,000 people from that population — about 23% — were considered “severely mentally ill.”
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Disability rights advocates say the CARE Court system won’t help the homeless in the way Newsom wants. They also argue it perpetuates stigmas around mental illness and does little to help those suffering. A group of organizations — including Disability Rights California and the California Association of Mental Health Peer Run Organizations — wrote a letter to the Assembly judiciary committee considering AB 2830 that says CARE Court is “antithetical to recovery principles, which are based on self-determination and self-direction.”
”
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Instead, the letter urges a housing-first approach that guarantees a place to live and investment in “intensive voluntary outpatient treatment.” That approach, the authors say, has better outcomes than involuntary treatment. The letter also points out that those who qualify for CARE Court are supposed to be incapable of making medical decisions. However, someone found to be in need of a care plan is also meant to participate in developing and adhering to it. “If an individual lacks medical decision-making capacity, why are they not being served in the LPS system or Laura’s Law?” asked Matt Gallagher, assistant director of Cal Voices. “Why do we need to create a new $1 billion system in all California counties, when these individuals presumably meet the criteria to be served in other existing systems?” In addition, Vanover, from the Depression and Bipolar Alliance, said that linking homelessness and mental illness is not helpful and perpetuates stereotypes. He wants to see early intervention to help people with mental illnesses stabilize before they need CARE Court, as well as public education to help people better understand those who are struggling.
”
”
“That’s the gross stigma that is involved in this legislation and the governor’s messaging — stigma that says all homeless are mentally ill, and, therefore, mental illness is responsible for homelessness,” Vanover said. “And stigma that says mentally ill are criminals. We are statistically way more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators.”
”
”
NEWSOM’S OFFICE SAYS CARE COURT IS NEEDED California needs an entirely new way to help care for those suffering from psychosis, as current systems aren’t sufficient, said Elliott, Newsom’s senior counselor. CARE Court provides a way for those people to remain in the community while receiving mental health treatment, Elliott said. He disagreed with assertions that CARE Court represents involuntary treatment.
”
Joshua
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So continuing to track Gavin’s proposal and to identify the people who are behind it:
Assembly Bill 2830 from Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, and Senate Bill 1338 from Sen. Susan Eggman, D-Stockton, and Sen. Thomas Umberg, D-Santa Ana
HRW Opposition to CARE Court, California AB 2830
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/12/hrw-opposition-care-court-california-ab-2830
Assembly Member Mark Stone
Chair, Judiciary Committee
California State Assembly
https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2022/04/HRW%20Opposition%20%28CARE%29%20Court%20AB%202830.pdf
Richard Bloom
https://a50.asmdc.org/
https://a50.asmdc.org/press-releases/20220407-assemblymember-richard-bloom-releases-statement-ab-2830-bloom-community
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/12/hrw-opposition-care-court-california-sb-1338
Senator Tom Umberg
Senator Susan Talamantes Eggman
California State Senate
Joshua
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https://calmatters.org/legislator-tracker/home/?gclid=CjwKCAjwsJ6TBhAIEiwAfl4TWKJ_Vw_-bDT3bVRw-S3WHYoW4e7-SIS0KXd_e-hwlV6WDTbE8Gj62RoC9WAQAvD_BwE
CA Legislative Info
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billSearchClient.xhtml
^ maybe this only lists bills which have already passed?
This is the State Assembly
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/
This is the Judiciary Committee
https://ajud.assembly.ca.gov/
says to look here for bills
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/
AB2830, right here
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2830
okay, so 4.22 there was a hearing and it was cancelled at the request of the author
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2830
status:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2830
and here is SB1338
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Says it is set for hearing April 26
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Status, and it says it is in the Senate Judiciary Committee
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
CA State Senate
https://www.senate.ca.gov/
So this is the Senate Judiciary Committee
https://sjud.senate.ca.gov/
Senator Thomas J. Umberg (Chair)
Senator Andreas Borgeas (Vice Chair)
Senator Anna M. Caballero
Senator María Elena Durazo
Senator Lena A. Gonzalez
Senator Robert M. Hertzberg
Senator Brian W. Jones
Senator John Laird
Senator Henry I. Stern
Senator Bob Wieckowski
Senator Scott D. Wiener
Hearings
https://sjud.senate.ca.gov/content/2022-bill-hearings
Yes, April 26, it lists SB1338
https://sjud.senate.ca.gov/content/april-26-2022-hearing
41 page PDF, I guess written by the Chair and Co-sponsor Umberg
https://sjud.senate.ca.gov/sites/sjud.senate.ca.gov/files/sb_1338_eggman_sjud_analysis.pdf
here, 6 hours ago. Looks like we only get one free view perday
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-04-26/newsom-care-court-homelessness-plan-faces-new-questions-before-first-hearing
here:
California Governor Gavin Newsom Convenes Growing Coalition in Support of CARE Court
https://goldrushcam.com/sierrasuntimes/index.php/news/local-news/38162-california-governor-gavin-newsom-convenes-growing-coalition-in-support-of-care-court
It comes across that this is mainly gov’t employees behind this. No different from Newsom’s hysterical COVID response.
Joshua
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Still waiting to see what comes of SB 1338, in the Senate Judiciary Committee and set for 10am
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Joshua
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More resistance to Gavin’s Psychiatric Internment Camp Plan
DISABILITY, CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS SAY FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS MUST BE ANSWERED REGARDING ‘CARE COURT’ PROPOSAL
https://www.aclusocal.org/en/press-releases/disability-civil-rights-groups-say-fundamental-questions-must-be-answered-regarding
Newsom’s ‘CARE Court’ homelessness plan faces new questions before first hearing
https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/570058972/newsom-s-care-court-homelessness-plan-faces-new-questions-before-first-hearing
Joshua
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News update after today’s CA Senate Committee Hearing, people talked about their experiences with the mental health system.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-04-26/newsom-care-court-homelessness-plan-faces-new-questions-before-first-hearing
That is not going far enough though, not a outright condemnation of the mental health system.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-04-26/newsom-care-court-homelessness-plan-faces-new-questions-before-first-hearing
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have to give these guys an email address to be able to read for free. I did not.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/newsoms-court-ordered-care-for-homeless-advances_4431433.html
From Newsom’s Office
Governor Newsom’s CARE Court Proposal Cleared First Legislative Hurdle with Broad Support
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/04/27/governor-newsoms-care-court-proposal-cleared-first-legislative-hurdle-with-broad-support/
Governor Newsom Convenes Growing Coalition in Support of CARE Court
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/04/25/governor-newsom-convenes-growing-coalition-in-support-of-care-court/
CARE Court
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/04/27/governor-newsoms-care-court-proposal-cleared-first-legislative-hurdle-with-broad-support/
4/27
Newsom’s CARE Court framework clears first hurdle but skeptics linger
https://www.kpvi.com/news/national_news/newsoms-care-court-framework-clears-first-hurdle-but-skeptics-linger/article_06389a67-303c-51d4-a6ea-d05f79a96b31.html
4/15
Extended Interview: Dr. Ghaly discusses CARE Court
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9iF8hUi1d4
This situation is bleak. Newsom makes all Liberals look like Fascists, and he makes all Democrats look like Idiots.
Joshua
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It is important that those subject to this Care Court System be educated that they must remain silent and refuse to cooperate in any way at all. And since this is tied to some free housing plan, it is going to be hard to get people to stand up for themselves.
These type of housing plans are always anti-chambers for the mental health system, and the primary function of the mental health system is to convince people that they are “mentally ill”.
We must drop Gavin. From his COVID Gaslighting and Grandstanding he has been trying to turn CA into a 40 million bed mental hospital.
Joshua
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Trying to find the CA State Senate Judiciary Committe Vote Count. Seems like they are very slow to update. And I compare with other bills, and it does not make sense. I want to know who vote and how so I know who to further focus on as this continues to unfold.
More news:
Disability Rights Opposition to Gavin’s Care Courts:
https://www.disabilityrightsca.org/latest-news/disability-rights-california-coalitions-letter-in-opposition-to-care-court
and just yesterday:
https://www.disabilityrightsca.org/press-release/disability-civil-rights-groups-say-fundamental-questions-must-be-answered-regarding
Joshua
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Lawmakers move CARE Court proposal forward to next committee, has video
https://fox40.com/inside-california-politics/lawmakers-to-decide-whether-care-court-moves-forward/
Fox, has video
https://fox40.com/inside-california-politics/lawmakers-to-decide-whether-care-court-moves-forward/
Newsom’s Care Court, Santa Cruz Paper, but need to give email to be able to read it
https://lookout.co/santacruz/civic-life/story/2022-04-26/homelessness-newsoms-care-court-homelessness-plan-faces-new-questions-before-first-hearing
From committee: Do pass and re-refer to Com. on HEALTH. (Ayes 10. Noes 0.) (April 26). Re-referred to Com. on HEALTH.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
State Senate Health Committee, seems to have goin at 3pm 4/27
https://shea.senate.ca.gov/
Senator Richard Pan (Chair)
Senator Melissa A. Melendez (Vice Chair)
Senator Susan Talamantes Eggman (one of the two sponsors of this SB1338)
Senator Lena A. Gonzalez
Senator Shannon Grove
Senator Melissa Hurtado
Senator Connie M. Leyva
Senator Monique Limón
Senator Richard D. Roth
Senator Susan Rubio
Senator Scott D. Wiener
This is from Newsom’s office. Can’t find any other record. Seems to be all coming out behind the curve.
Governor Newsom’s CARE Court Proposal Cleared First Legislative Hurdle with Broad Support
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/04/27/governor-newsoms-care-court-proposal-cleared-first-legislative-hurdle-with-broad-support/
Seems that these two committees were both rigged, unanimous votes. The supporters are all gov’t employees, This was pretty much how it was with Gavin’s COVID hysteria too.
Here:
State Senate Committee Votes On Homeless Mental Health Bill
https://www.ksro.com/2022/04/27/state-senate-committee-votes-on-homeless-mental-health-bill/
The reason that we have this Mental Health Industry and the Autism – Aspergers Industry is because we live in a society of advanced industrial and information technology, and so to uphold the Work Ethic and to keep the securities and real estate ponzi schemes going, we have to designate some of the population as scapegoats and pubic symbols and put them into medical internment camps.
The alternative would just be to have Universal Basic Income, Public Housing, and Medicare for All.
Joshua
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Joshua, thanks for all your work following this proposed law, which seems very misguided. If you ever decide to compile it all into an article, I’d love to see it and consider publishing it here.
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Thanks Miranda.
CA Senate Judiciary Members
Senator Thomas J. Umberg (Chair and Care Court Bill co-author)
Senator Andreas Borgeas (Vice Chair)
Senator Anna M. Caballero
Senator María Elena Durazo
Senator Lena A. Gonzalez
Senator Robert M. Hertzberg
Senator Brian W. Jones
Senator John Laird
Senator Henry I. Stern
Senator Bob Wieckowski
Senator Scott D. Wiener
CA Senate Health Members
Senator Richard Pan (Chair)
Senator Melissa A. Melendez (Vice Chair)
Senator Susan Talamantes Eggman (one of the co-authors of this SB1338)
Senator Lena A. Gonzalez
Senator Shannon Grove
Senator Melissa Hurtado
Senator Connie M. Leyva
Senator Monique Limón
Senator Richard D. Roth
Senator Susan Rubio
Senator Scott D. Wiener
Dated 4/28 it says now:
From committee: Do pass and re-refer to Com. on APPR. (Ayes 9. Noes 0.) (April 27). Re-referred to Com. on APPR.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
So I guess it goes to a third committee now. The first two committees passed it unanimously, and these have bipartisan membership. To me this sees rigged. There was much testimony against it, but no one voted against it, and on one tried to amend it.
It was first scheduled for the State Assembly Judiciary Committee, but the bill’s author pulled it, letting it go to these Senate ones first. Curious.
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/
Members
Senator Anthony J. Portantino (Chair)
Senator Patricia C. Bates (Vice Chair)
Senator Steven Bradford
Senator Brian W. Jones
Senator Sydney Kamlager
Senator John Laird
Senator Bob Wieckowski
Looks like May 2nd is the next hearing, and this pdf doesn’t list SB1338
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/sites/sapro.senate.ca.gov/files/Agenda%205-2-22%20Hearing.pdf
I’m not finding any new news about it.
Joshua
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CA State Senate Roster, with party affiliations and region they represent:
https://www.senate.ca.gov/sites/senate.ca.gov/files/2021-22_senate_counties_represented.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Senate
Joshua
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okay I just found this 4/28 video. This is the newest news I could find.
Care Court: Gov. Newsom’s plan for care courts as one solution for homelessness faces challenges
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKcI_9T1wpA
This video makes it sound like passage is not a done deal, and that if it passes it will be amended.
As I look at it though, it got through the first two State Senate Committees by unanimous votes.
I am not a fan or Republicans at all. But I also see the importance of having some organized opposition. During the worst of the COVID hysteria, one newspaper was saying that California had become a Parliamentary System. That is, the Chief Executive is also the leader of his party in the legislature. I see Gavin’s plan as getting through the first two Senate committees by unanimous vote as demonstrating that.
So there are 31 Democrats and 9 Republicans. Going through 2 committees and slated for a 3rd, that could commit enough senators to guarantee passage.
If people start amending it, that could give some cover for changing their vote.
Current Bill Status, SB1338
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
set for May 9th hearing, a week from Monday
CA Senate Committees
https://www.senate.ca.gov/committees
Appropriations
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/
Senator Anthony J. Portantino (Chair)
Senator Patricia C. Bates (Vice Chair)
Senator Steven Bradford
Senator Brian W. Jones
Senator Sydney Kamlager
Senator John Laird
Senator Bob Wieckowski
They don’t show the schedule yet for May 9th. IMHO, all of this official reporting is running too far behind the curve.
Joshua
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Current Bill Status, SB1338
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Says set for May 9th in State Senate Appropriations Committee
They say they will post the May 9th Agenda on May 6th.
Looks like we get one free LA Times view per day. This article title is the best I have seen yet, a letter to the editor. May 2nd.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/story/2022-05-02/care-courts-homeless-autonomy
”
To the editor: As a worker in the mental health field and incoming therapist, I am beyond horrified at the “CARE Court” proposal. (“Newsom’s ‘CARE Court’ homelessness plan faces new questions from lawmakers,” April 26)
It blatantly ignores scientific evidence on the causes of homelessness as well as best practices in therapy. Not only that, but it amplifies the potential effects of medication, something that is not always effective nor a universal panacea. It also assumes that somehow people can be forced to get “better.”
It would be far better and more effective to combat the causes of homelessness rather than the symptoms. The root cause is nearly always trauma related. For suggestions on how to handle this, I recommend Dr. Gabor Maté’s work, particularly “In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts.”
The CARE Court proposal will not help anything. It will create more work for the courts, create trauma for many, and make those who actually could benefit from the supports offered far less likely to seek them.
I urge state leaders not to take people’s autonomy from them in the name of helping them.
”
[ Gabor Mate’s book is really good, Holocaust Survivor ]
Opposition mounts as Newsom’s mental health care overhaul clears first hurdles, May 2nd
https://www.record-bee.com/2022/05/02/opposition-mounts-as-newsoms-mental-health-care-overhaul-clears-first-hurdles/
Governor Gavin Newsom, right, confers with California Health & Human Services secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly before a media event announcing the CARE Court program, Thursday, March 3, 2022, in San Jose, Calif.
”
But supporters argue some people will never accept desperately needed assistance without a court’s intervention.
“
The alternative is to say, ‘you know what, I’m going to let you live under a bridge because I want to respect your autonomy,’” said the bill’s co-author, Sen. Thomas Umberg, D-Santa Ana. “I’m going to let you languish under a bridge in your own feces and I hope you make the right decisions.”
”
”
“People are fed up and they want something done,” said Mike Herald, director of policy advocacy for the Western Center on Law & Poverty, which opposes the bill. “It’s just that what we’re proposing to do is highly unlikely to work.”
”
”
If SB 1338 is approved, people with severe mental illness could be referred to CARE Court by family members, first responders, county mental health officials, hospitals or clinicians. The court would then order a clinical evaluation of the patient. If a judge decides they are eligible for the program, the patient would be ordered to work with a trained “supporter” to develop a care plan. Participants, who would be represented by a public defender, would be required to follow a plan for their mental health and substance abuse treatment, medication and housing.
To make this work, the state would have to come up with new funding for the courts, public defenders and “supporters.”
Care plans would last one year, and could be extended for an additional year. If a participant does not comply, they could be placed in a more restrictive conservatorship in a locked facility, or jail if they have a pending criminal case. But participants cannot be forcibly medicated or jailed solely for noncompliance.
It’s estimated between 7,000 and 12,000 Californians would be eligible.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness, the California Medical Association and California’s Big City Mayors — led by Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf — all support CARE Court. But the ACLU and other opponents argue it won’t give people what they need most — housing. Though the bill says participants should be offered a housing plan, it doesn’t hold anyone accountable for actually providing that housing.
”
Newsom has big plans to get rid of California’s homeless camps. Will they work?
https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/01/20/newsom-has-big-plans-to-get-rid-of-californias-homeless-camps-will-they-work/
His Oakland neighbors tried to save Kenyon Graham. But the system was too broken
https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/04/17/his-neighbors-tried-to-save-him-but-the-system-was-too-broken/
Homicide victim in Oakland’s Temescal district is identified
Police are still trying to determine a motive and have not made any arrests yet
https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2021/12/16/homicide-victim-in-oaklands-temescal-district-is-identified/
This Kenyon Graham was a product of the Mental Health System.
Joshua
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Why Forced Addiction Treatment Fails
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/opinion/forced-addiction-treatment.html
Joshua
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Gavin started talking about a Police State with his COVID response. He said there was going to be “an army of 10,000 contact tracers”, and that he was going to do “targeted testing into marginalized population groups”. Well that is a Police State right there, and this was always the real danger in COVID. Gavin was taking his cues from Fauci, but Fauci’s experience was with AIDS. AIDS does not transmit by casual contact, it has a long incubation period which could be over a year, and it has an extremely high mortality rate. On all three of these points, it is the exact opposite with COVID. So what Gavin was saying was just grandstanding and muscle flexing. But there was in it a threat of really harming people’s lives. Gavin was fostering superstitious irrational fear, and prejudice.
And the COVID precautions hit the lowest income people the hardest, and this is why it put more people into encampments.
This concept of Mental Health is just a way of taking someone’s liberty away without due process and when they have broken no law. It also attacks one of the most basic principles in our system of justice, the Right to Remain Silent.
Anyone who is living on the street has at some point had their life shattered. How this happened, or when, will vary. And many have been so beaten down that they do not know. But trying to force them to talk will always be very harmful. For most, privacy is the only thing in this world they have left. Trying to make people talk is another version of what is known as Second Rape. And usually the idea that someone is “Mentally Ill” has started within the family.
Looks like we get one free LA Times view per day. This May 2 letter to them is the most succinct analysis I have seen.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/story/2022-05-02/care-courts-homeless-autonomy
”
To the editor: As a worker in the mental health field and incoming therapist, I am beyond horrified at the “CARE Court” proposal. (“Newsom’s ‘CARE Court’ homelessness plan faces new questions from lawmakers,” April 26)
It blatantly ignores scientific evidence on the causes of homelessness as well as best practices in therapy. Not only that, but it amplifies the potential effects of medication, something that is not always effective nor a universal panacea. It also assumes that somehow people can be forced to get “better.”
It would be far better and more effective to combat the causes of homelessness rather than the symptoms. The root cause is nearly always trauma related. For suggestions on how to handle this, I recommend Dr. Gabor Maté’s work, particularly “In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts.”
The CARE Court proposal will not help anything. It will create more work for the courts, create trauma for many, and make those who actually could benefit from the supports offered far less likely to seek them.
I urge state leaders not to take people’s autonomy from them in the name of helping them.
”
[ Gabor Mate’s book is really good, Holocaust Survivor ]
Gavin is targeting the homeless right now, but once such scapegoating starts, it knows know bounds.
https://www.amazon.com/Pink-Triangle-Nazi-Against-Homosexuals/dp/0805006001
Joshua
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Sacramento
City Mayors Address Unhoused ‘Fiscal Cliff’
https://sacobserver.com/2022/05/city-mayors-address-unhoused-fiscal-cliff/
”
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, and other mayors of the Big City Mayors coalition, call on Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state legislature to approve $3 billion over three years in the state budget for flexible homeless funding to go directly to the cities, during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif., Monday, April 25, 2022. The mayor’s said flexible homeless funding is approved annually and are asking for a three-year commitment from lawmakers and the governor.
”
Current Bill Status, SB1338
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Set for May 9th, but schedule not published yet
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/node/59
Joshua
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Opposition to Gavin’s plan builds
https://www.record-bee.com/2022/05/02/opposition-mounts-as-newsoms-mental-health-care-overhaul-clears-first-hurdles/
Joshua
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Current Bill Status, SB1338
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Set for appropriations committee Monday May 9th
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/node/59
But schedule not to be posted until May 6th.
These storied don’t directly pertain to Gavin, but they do pertain to CA Homelessness, and I find the stuff they are reporting to be highly suspect.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-04/la-county-board-of-supervisors-to-overhaul-top-homeless-agency
https://abc7.com/california-online-sports-betting-helping-the-homeless-southern-ca/11815280/
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/politics-elections/3475949-california-group-qualifies-ballot-measure-to-direct-sports-betting-revenue-to-homeless-mental-health-services/
THIS LOOKS EXTREMELY SUSPECT
https://casolutions.org/
Joshua
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CA SB1338 Current Status
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Now it says, “May 9 hearing postponed by committee.”
!!!
Still no appropriations committee schedule posted for May 9th. That is expected Friday.
Not able to find any newer news.
Joshua
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Again, thanks to Joshua for all this information –you should start a webpage about it!
YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME about the proposal to raise funds to alleviate homelessness and support mental health programs through online betting. Is this The Onion? Let’s raise funds by encouraging gambling addiction! Of course, we already raise funds for education through selling lottery tickets, but that is next-level ridiculous. It doesn’t matter how much money is raised it it goes to the wrong solutions.
We need to interview unhoused people for their take on what would help–nothing about us without us and so on. If anyone wants to learn more about the LA area homeless situation, I recommend the podcast ‘We the Unhoused.’ It is produced by unhoused people there.
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Raising money for education by selling CA lottery tickets always was a scam. Focus groups were held and that looked like the combination the voters would most likely go for. But the net increase in education funding has always been zero, because right off Governor Pete Wilson started raiding the money out the back door.
The budgeting in CA has long been really tough because of 3 strikes and other mandatory minimum prison laws, and because of Jarvis-Gann, separating property prices from property taxes. We incarcerate a greater percentage of our people than any other state, and that costs money. And then Jarvis-Gann has led to wild real estate inflation, while gutting tax revenue. Property taxes are actually a better way to fund the government than income tax, because it can be more progressive and it is much harder to evade, and it is more stable.
Ideas about raising money for homeless needs by gambling are equally suspect. And there should never be any kind of mental health programs. So these proposals are a gimmick, running in the confusion generated by Gavin.
What we need are Universal Basic Income and a Strong Public Housing Offering. Universal programs taking the place of needs tested programs.
Thanks Miranda
SB1338, Gavin’s Care Courts, current status unchanged, Appropriations Committee hearing postponed.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
So here is the May 9 schedule for the CA Senate Appropriations Committee, and SB1338 is absent from it, as expected. They do not say when the next hearing will be, or what is instore for SB1338, or why its hearing was postponed.
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/sites/sapro.senate.ca.gov/files/Agenda%205-9-22%20Hearing.pdf
News
20 hours ago
HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS
Bill Would Put Homeless Courts Near Where The Unhoused Live
https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/bill-would-put-homeless-courts-near-where-the-unhoused-live
AB-2220 Homeless Courts Pilot Program
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2220
https://calmatters.org/legislator-tracker/al-muratsuchi-1964/
I had not heard of this AB2220 bill before. It has not yet passed and it still seems highly suspect, criminalizing homelessness in order to get people under court authority.
And most of these programs to house the homeless are already internment camps and are designed to funnel people into the mental health system.
AB2220 was re-referred to the Assembly Committee, but it is not here on the list for Wed May, 11.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
I think that with Democratic super majorities in both houses they probably just keep everything tabled until they decide there is something they are ready to proceed with, as this avoids open debate.
So I am not seeing any more recent news on Gavin’s SB1338
Joshua
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So here is more about this AB2220
https://openstates.org/ca/bills/20212022/AB2220/
https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB2220/2021
Here is the first news I have found on AB2220
Board of Supervisors Support Muratsuchi Homeless Court Legislation
”
“Homeless courts in Los Angeles County have been successful in helping the homeless,” said Assemblymember Muratsuchi, the lead author of AB 2220. “Rather than criminalizing poverty and mental illness, homeless courts provide pretrial diversion programs for minor criminal offenses with one-stop, wraparound services like housing assistance, mental health treatment and addiction treatment. The California Supreme Court Chief Justice’s Work Group on Homelessness recommends more homeless court programs. The Governor and Legislature should support this bill to establish a grant pilot program administered by the Judicial Council to provide funding for more homeless courts throughout the state.”
”
What the Assembly Member does not tell you is that he is getting people into court by issuing citations for minor things, and then forcing them into services, which are already designed to funnel people into the mental health system.
”
A bill sponsored by Torrance Democrat Al Muratsuchi, AB 2220, would create a homeless courts pilot program, offering grants to counties that can tailor programs to their own communities. Outdoor court in Sacramento in August may be less appealing than a spring beach day in Los Angeles County.
”
None of this sounds good at all. And of course if anyone tries to resist, then they are of course ~Mentally Ill~.
This started when Donald Trump came to San Francisco and started talking about internment camps, and that was when Gavin Newsom started talking about involuntary psychiatric procedures. This AB2220 is just another angel on the whole thing.
Joshua
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The first objective of the mental health system is to make people believe that there is such a thing as Mental Illness, and then to make people believe that they have it.
These homeless housing and support services already try to do that and to funnel people into mental health and on to drugs.
The test for whether one should be on drugs is whether or not they are angry or agitated.
Joshua
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Mental Illness and needing treatment, therapy, or recovery, are the new Original Sin.
People who believe in Original Sin won’t stand up for themselves, they insead become compliant with authority.
Joshua
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This is worst than I had thought. It isn’t just Gavin.
Al Muratsuchi
April 22, 2021
The Lookout: Cal Bill Aims to End Homelessness; Make Housing a Basic Human Right
https://lasentinel.net/the-lookout-cal-bill-aims-to-end-homelessness-make-housing-a-basic-human-right.html
Assembly Bill (AB) 1372
would “require every city, or every county in the case of unincorporated areas, to provide every person who is homeless, as defined, with temporary shelter, mental health treatment, resources for job placement, and job training — until the person obtains permanent housing, if the person has actively sought temporary shelter in the jurisdiction for at least three consecutive days and has been unable to gain entry into all temporary shelters they sought for specified reasons,” according to the language of the bill.
So this is Muratsuchi’s earlier bill. It still is clearly using court authority and criminal enforcement to put the homeless into some kind of case management and to break down their privacy, and to put them into internment camps, where mental health is a central component.
AB2220, not passed yet, but being implemented:
https://www.redding.com/story/news/2022/05/06/southern-california-beach-city-took-its-homeless-court-outside-near-food-donation-centers-and-attend/9675344002/
This is an attempt to force people into these housing programs which may be very disruptive to their on going affairs of life because of the location. And it all seems intended to break down people’s privacy, which is a way to delegitimate them and to make them vulnerable to the mental health system.
SB1338
no more recent news
Joshua
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Current Bill Status
CA SB1338 Care Courts
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
says set for hearing Set for hearing May 16, Appropriations Committee
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/node/59
doesn’t actually list May 16 schedule yet
AB2830 Care Courts Companion Bill
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2830
04/26/22 In committee: Set, first hearing. Hearing canceled at the request of author.
AB2220 Homeless Courts, Al Muratsuchi
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2220
From committee: Do pass and re-refer to Com. on APPR. (Ayes 12. Noes 1.) (April 26). Re-referred to Com. on APPR.
Most recent news:
Letter to California Senate Appropriations Committee
Human Rights Watch’s Opposition to CARE Court (SB 1338)
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/05/05/letter-california-senate-appropriations-committee#
”
CARE Court Denies Due Process
The CARE Court proposal authorizes family members, first responders, including police officers or outreach workers, the public guardian, service providers, and the director of the county behavioral health agency, to initiate the process of imposing involuntary treatment by filing a petition with the court.[21] These expansive categories of people with the power to embroil another person in court processes and potential loss of autonomy, many of whom lack any expertise in recognition and treatment of mental health conditions, reveals the extreme danger of abuse inherent in this proposal. For example, interpersonal conflicts between family members could result in abusive parents, children, spouses, and siblings using the referral process to expose their relatives to court hearings and potential coerced treatment, housing, and medication.
Law enforcement and outreach workers would have a new tool to threaten unhoused people with referral to the court to pressure them to move from a given area. These state actors could place those who disobeyed their commands into the CARE Court process and under the control of courts. Given the long history of law enforcement using its authority to drive unhoused people from public spaces, a practice that re-traumatizes those people and does nothing to solve homelessness, it is dangerous to provide them with additional powers to do so.[22]
The legislation does not set meaningful standards to guide judicial discretion and does not delineate procedures for those decisions.[23] It establishes a contradictory and unworkable procedure by which a petition may be made on an allegation that a person “lacks medical decision making capacity”[24] On a mere showing of “prima facie” evidence that the petition is true, the person is then required to enter into settlement discussions with the county behavioral health agency.[25] If someone lacks decision-making capacity, they would not be able to enter a settlement agreement voluntarily. Unless the parties stipulate otherwise, failure to enter a settlement agreement results in an evaluation by that same behavioral health agency, which is used to impose a mandatory, court-ordered course of treatment.[26] This process is entirely involuntary and coercive. The role of the behavioral health agency poses a great potential for conflicts of interest, as they will presumably be funded to carry out the Care Plans that result from their negotiations and their evaluations.
The CARE Court plan threatens to create a separate legal track for people perceived to have mental health conditions, without adequate process, negatively implicating basic rights.[27] Even with stronger judicial procedures and required clinical diagnoses by mental health professionals, this program would remain objectionable because it expands the ability of the state to coerce people into involuntary treatment.
CARE Court will harm Black, brown, and Unhoused people
The CARE Court directly targets unhoused people to be placed under court-ordered treatment, thus denying their rights and self-determination. Governor Newsom, in pitching this plan, called it a response to seeing homeless encampments throughout the state of California.[28] CARE Court will empower police and homeless outreach workers to refer people to the courts and allow judges to order them into treatment against their will, including medication plans. Despite allusions to “housing plans,” CARE Court does not increase access to permanent supportive housing and, indeed, the bill prohibits the court from requiring the county to provide actual housing.[29]
Due to a long history of racial discrimination in housing, employment, access to health care, policing and the criminal legal system, Black and brown people have much higher rates of homelessness than their overall share of the population.[30] The CARE Court plan in no way addresses the conditions that have led to these high rates of homelessness in Black and brown communities. Instead, it proposes a system of state control over individuals that will compound the harms of homelessness.
Further, much research shows that mental health professionals diagnose Black and Latino populations at much higher rates than they do white people.[31] One meta-analysis of over 50 separate studies found that Black people are diagnosed with schizophrenia at a rate nearly 2.5 times greater than white people.[32] A 2014 review of empirical literature on the subject found that Black people were diagnosed with psychotic disorders three to four times more frequently than white people.[33] This review found large disparities for Latino people as well. CARE Court may place a disproportionate number of Black and Latino people under involuntary court control.
”
AB2220, the other attempt to criminalize homelessness and make the homeless submit to social services and shelter programs.
https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2022/05/06/southern-california-beach-city-took-its-homeless-court-outside-near-food-donation-centers-and-attend/9675344002/
Joshua
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Current Bill Status
CA SB1338 Gavin’s Care Courts
Set for Appropriations Committee Hearing May 16
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/node/59
May 16th schedule not to be posted until May 13th
AB2830 Gavin’s Care Courts Companion Bill
Looks to have been tabled on April 26
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2830
AB2220 Homeless Courts Pilot Program, Al Muratsuchi
Seems to have been pending in Assembly Appropriations Since April 26
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2220
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/
today’s hearing
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
AB2220 not listed
Recent News
repeat of AB2220 news in Desert Sun
https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2022/05/06/southern-california-beach-city-took-its-homeless-court-outside-near-food-donation-centers-and-attend/9675344002/?utm_source=ourcommunitynow&utm_medium=web
May 9th
Can CARE Court curb CA’s homelessness and mental health crises?
https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/homelessness-criminal-justice/care-courts
Of course what they think is indicative of mental illness will just be someone who refuses to discuss their affairs with a therapist and listen to lectures on self-reliance and forgiveness. And indicative of severe mental illness and warranting forced treatment will be someone who refuses to listen to their doctor at all and to take their meds
Joshua
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Current Status
SB1338, Gavin’s Care Courts
set for May 16th, Appropriations Committee
May 16th hearing announced, but no schedule yet
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/node/59
AB2830, Gavin’s companion bill, tabled for now.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2830
AB2220 Homeless Courts Pilot Program. Tabled for now
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2220
Homeless Courts Pilot Program.
A.B.No. 2220 Muratsuch
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
They don’t seem to have a specific schedule. So I cannot guarantee from the above that it is tabled.
Can’t find any more recent news
Joshua
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SB1338 set for appropriations committee hearing May 16.
Senate appropriations committee has suspense hearing May 19. Don’t know that that means.
AB2830, tabled since 4/26
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2830
AB-2220 Homeless Courts Pilot Program
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2220
says ” In committee: Set, first hearing. Referred to suspense file.”
I think that means the Appropriations Committee, but I don’t know what the suspense file is.
Assembly Appropriations, nothing today
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/todaysevents
Yesterday “Board of Supervisors Support Muratsuchi Homeless Court Legislation”
https://www.randomlengthsnews.com/archives/2022/05/11/homeless-courts/39421?v=7516fd43adaa
”
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, led by Supervisor Janice Hahn and Chair Holly Mitchell, May 3, threw their support behind AB 2220, legislation that would provide state funding for local Homeless Court programs. Homeless courts, like those that already exist in Redondo Beach and Long Beach and will soon be launched in Torrance, are proving effective in helping the hardest-to-reach individuals get connected with services and housing.
”
http://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/bos/supdocs/168613.pdf?utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_name=&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term=
They are just using the concept of Mental Health and the associated idea of moral defect to criminalize a group of people that is already vulnerable and to take away their autonomy and bread down what little dignity they may have left.
Joshua
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Current Status:
SB1338 set for appropriations committee hearing May 16.
SB 1338 Umberg Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Court
Program.
Schedule shown for the first time ^
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/sites/sapro.senate.ca.gov/files/Agenda 5-16-22 Hearing.pdf
May 19, 2022 – Suspense Hearing, schedule to be posted May 18. Don’t know what Suspense Hearing means.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
AB2380 still tabled. AB2220 set for suspense file ( does this mean they are maybe suspending it, and does this mean that Gavin’s bills are taking its place? )
More recent news:
Washington Post
Forcing homeless people into treatment can backfire. What about a firm nudge?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/05/11/care-courts-california-homeless-coercion/
^ this has a 9min audio, but seems to be just a reading of the article text.
”
The state has an astonishing 160,000 unhoused people. In Los Angeles, an estimated 20 percent of them have a formal diagnosis of serious mental illness, and the county jail claims the dubious distinction of being the country’s largest de facto psychiatric facility. In San Francisco, homeless deaths last year more than doubled — mostly because of overdoses. In response to the crisis and voters’ restlessness on the issue, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) proposed in March tackling the problem with a sweeping new plan involving something called Care Courts that could push people with psychosis into treatment.
”
.
.
.
”
One side sees the homelessness problem largely as a result of civil rights protections that make it too difficult to force treatment on people who desperately need it; the other asserts that there simply aren’t enough care and housing resources available and that the argument about “excessive” civil rights is at best a distraction.
”
[ This is stupid article. The authorities always want to cast poverty and homelessness as mental health issues, and they always want to keep the homeless doped, especially the women. It makes it easier for cops when they have to deal with them.
There are civil rights voices in this, but there are no anti-psychiatry voices.
And the people behind this just want the streets cleared, they want the homeless in internment camps. And of course mental illness will always mean someone who refuses the internment camp. And severe mental illness will always mean someone who defends and upholds their privacy and refuses to take their meds.]
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SB1338 set for appropriations committee May 16
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/
Listed here, 10am Monday May 16.
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/sites/sapro.senate.ca.gov/files/Agenda%205-16-22%20Hearing.pdf
No more recent news.
Joshua
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We do have this May 14th news:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-14/newsom-new-california-budget-offers-little-on-costs-for-court-ordered-homeless-help
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-04-26/newsom-care-court-homelessness-plan-faces-new-questions-before-first-hearing
https://www.capradio.org/articles/2022/05/13/newsom-california-budget-proposal-may-2022/
‘We have to do more.’ Newsom wants $65 million to set up California mental health courts
Shows someone who has been beaten into submission and compliance.
San Jose wins $25 million to turn downtown hotel into homeless housing
And Newsom wants to ramp up statewide funding for homeless housing
https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/05/11/san-jose-wins-25-million-to-turn-downtown-hotel-into-homeless-housing/
Joshua
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SB1338, still says set for hearing May 16. But the schedule for appropriations said it was set at 10am. So IMHO, the reporting is a bit slow.
May 16th agenda
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/sites/sapro.senate.ca.gov/files/Agenda%205-16-22%20Hearing.pdf
even the hearing results file is not available yet.
Recent News, May 14
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-14/newsom-new-california-budget-offers-little-on-costs-for-court-ordered-homeless-help
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article261397642.html
This Newsom is something else.
https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/qm01ow/picture261431467/alternates/FREE_1140/LS_BudgetRevise_270.jpg
Joshua
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So SB1338 says now:
“May 16 hearing: Placed on APPR suspense file.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Now as to what that actually means:
Their hearing results document does not seem to list 1338
Suspense hearing will be on the 19th, and they don’t allow public comment. The schedule should be up on the 18th. But what does Suspense really mean?
”
What is Suspense?
The Suspense File process has been a part of the Committee Rules since the mid-1980s as a way to consider the fiscal impacts to the state of legislation as a whole. The committee analysis indicates whether a bill’s fiscal impacts meet the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bills that meet the Committee’s Suspense threshold will be placed on the Suspense File after testimony is taken at a regular-order hearing. A vote-only Suspense Hearing will be held prior to the deadlines for fiscal committees to hear and report bills to the Senate Floor. Bills will either move on to the Senate Floor for further consideration or be in held in committee and under submission.
”
Not sure if this is really new, but it is the most recent I can find:
A dramatic new idea for addressing homelessness | Vince Bzdek
https://gazette.com/mental-health-crisis/a-dramatic-new-idea-for-addressing-homelessness-vince-bzdek/article_778e5c4c-d24f-11ec-a250-8b1601887332.html
”
Newsom’s plan is to create an entirely new legal process to compel the mentally ill into treatment.
The idea, known as Care Courts, would be to create a new branch within the civil court system where those suffering from severe mental illness and substance abuse disorders could be brought before a judge. Rather than face forced commitment or imprisonment, they would receive a treatment plan and be a appointed a “Supporter” to oversee their care.
”
This is simply a way of breaking down people’s privacy and autonomy. For someone who is surviving abuses it is Second Rape.
Things like this are already going on in Colorado.
Joshua
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I strongly disagree with this editorial, and with Gavin’s positions. I want the Democratic party to dump Gavin.
https://www.marinij.com/2022/05/15/editorial-gov-gavin-newsom-deserves-four-more-years-in-office/
Can’t find any more recent news.
Joshua
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Says SB1338 is set for hearing May 19th. I assume this means APPR Suspense.
Nothing says how the committee senators voted to make this happen.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
State Senate Appropiations
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/
This 10 page PDF is the schedule for Wed May 19th Suspense Hearing, and 1338 is on it.
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/sites/sapro.senate.ca.gov/files/Agenda%205-19-22%20Suspense%20Author.pdf
Not sure what is likely to happen. It is a very long list. Are they looking for when they feel they are clear to allocate the money, looking at all the other things on the list? No public hearing.
More Recent News?
Can’t find any.
Joshua
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Don’t know about this guy:
Michael Shellenberger’s number one issue: Homelessness, housing and the drug crisis. He’s hoping that even as a long-shot candidate, by running on these issues he’ll be able to break through.
https://news.yahoo.com/meet-san-fransicko-author-hoping-201651055.html
https://secure.shellenbergerforgovernor.com/list/ad/donation1/?InitiativeKey=LOWFBSNJJI7S&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=CPD&utm_campaign=search-D&gclid=EAIaIQobChMItfnr84rq9wIVKwytBh29MAxAEAAYASAAEgLiPvD_BwE
Michael Shellenberger’s narrative of California homelessness is seductive. It’s also dangerous
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Michael-Shellenberger-s-narrative-of-California-17172493.php
”
Shellenberger’s agenda is downright menacing.
”
”
As governor, Shellenberger would create an agency he calls “Cal-Psych,” a bizarre Big Brother-style structure of mass institutionalization run by the state whose mission would be to round up the unhoused and coerce them into a system of shelters and “treatment.”
And people who don’t want to enter his benevolent Cal-Psych program? They can go straight to jail.
”
DOES NOT SOUND GOOD!
Joshua
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Michael Shellenberger’s ideas are exteme. But in essence they are the same as what Newsom is trying to do. Newsom just seems to have some more procedural red tape.
MIA should be educating the entire society against the Mental Health System.
Joshua
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This is the official Care Court web site:
https://www.chhs.ca.gov/care-court/
SB1338, set for hearing 19th, but no further info yet
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Senate APPR
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/
SB1338 is on this 10 page list.
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/sites/sapro.senate.ca.gov/files/Agenda%205-19-22%20Suspense%20Author.pdf
Recent News yesterday:
Forced treatment provision of California mental health initiative draws support from patient families
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/forced-treatment-provision-of-california-mental-health-initiative-draws-support-from-patient-families/ar-AAXoGgP
“Disability rights groups say that’s a violation of civil liberty. But some family members of the severely mentally ill say it may be the only way for them to survive.”
has interesting TV news video
In my observation the idea that someone is “Mentally Ill” is usually coming from the family, even if it were not spoken or if there were never any white coats involved. Some adults had so internalized this they they were primed for the shrinks.
Joshua
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Disability Rights California’s Response to Governor Newsom’s Framework for CARE Courts
https://www.disabilityrightsca.org/latest-news/disability-rights-californias-response-to-governor-newsoms-framework-for-care-courts
And an hour and 25 min town hall meeting video:
https://www.disabilityrightsca.org/post/disability-rights-california-town-hall-on-governor-newsoms-framework-for-care-courts-in
Gavin is just trying to use the Mental Health System to enforce laws, because the laws have become otherwise unenforceable.
Joshua
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This town hall meeting is really interesting. They speak to this Care Courts Plan, not with Psychotherapists, and not with Psychology Journalists, but with Attorneys.
Josua
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CA SB1338
So it says:
“From committee: Do pass as amended. (Ayes 7. Noes 0.) (May 19).”
and then the last entry says:
“Read second time and amended. Ordered to second reading.”
I don’t know that that really means, and when it is supposed to be happening.
IMHO, one problem with this is that so many State Senators have committed themselves to this in these committee, that it is very hard to block.
But if it is getting amended that means there is some dissent, and it could give people cover for changing their position.
Amendment history:
AMENDED IN SENATE MAY 19, 2022
AMENDED IN SENATE APRIL 07, 2022
AMENDED IN SENATE MARCH 16, 2022
We should have a plan in place for opposing this, and for resisting it should it pass. Most of the time the psychiatric system runs because most of its victims cooperate with it.
And this CARE COURT plan is just a means of using the psychiatric system because their being so many unhoused people, people with little to lose, that many laws have become unenforceable. This is a blatant attempt to use Psychiatric Procedures and Courts, to modify people’s behavior and to make them compliant.
Recent News?
Gavin Newsom’s CARE Court plan for mentally ill is controversial — and long overdue
Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/article261620232.html#storylink=cpy
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/article261620232.html
This has a 19min video, but warning, Gavin is infuriating to listen to. It was like this with his daily COVID briefings.
THEY ARE TRYING TO TURN THE POVERTY AND HOMELESSNESS CREATED BY ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, INTO A MENTAL HEALTH ISSUE.
Here is an interesting article:
Helping mentally ill people: The debate over ‘involuntary treatment’
https://capitolweekly.net/helping-mentally-ill-people-the-debate-over-involuntary-treatment/
Lamentable that this author supports involuntary treatment.
Joshua
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CA SB1338
“Read second time and amended. Ordered to second reading.”
This means the Appropriations Committee. Still not sure where it stands or what the amendment means. Previously it had zero cosponsors. Now it has a whole bunch.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
has the voting history
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVotesClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
analysis
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billAnalysisClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
So here their are the 4 versions
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVersionsCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
sponsorship:
Introduced by Senators Umberg and Eggman
(Coauthors: Senators Allen, Archuleta, Caballero, Cortese, Dodd, Hertzberg, Newman, Portantino, Stern, and Wiener)
(Coauthors: Assembly Members Gipson, Irwin, O’Donnell, Petrie-Norris, and Villapudua)
February 18, 2022
Comparsison showing most recent modification
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVersionsCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338&cversion=20210SB133897AMD
I don’t feel pleased with this, or qualified to fully analyze it.
Need to look to the human rights groups.
Opinion: Gavin Newsom’s CARE Court plan for mentally ill is controversial — and long overdue
https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/573342363/opinion-gavin-newsom-s-care-court-plan-for-mentally-ill-is-controversial-and-long-overdue
Very negative that this has gotten this far, and with the number of Senate Co-Sponsors, it seems like it is impossible to stop it.
Need to start organizing resistance, Safe Houses, Underground Railroad, and Legal. Need to prepare people for how to stand up to this.
Advanced industrial and information technology has made an economy of gross surplus and the middle-class family creates scapegoats, and so you have a huge number of people on the margins. So many are unhoused and so large areas of the law have become unenforceable, so they are turning homelessness into a ~mental illness~.
Joshua
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CA SB1338
still says
“Read second time and amended. Ordered to second reading.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
from March 7, still the same
https://www.disabilityrightsca.org/latest-news/disability-rights-californias-response-to-governor-newsoms-framework-for-care-courts
AAPR
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/
Says, “No Hearings Currently Scheduled”
So I don’t really know what to expect.
Joshua
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Looking here at the full CA State Senate
https://www.senate.ca.gov/
calendar
https://www.senate.ca.gov/calendar
Joshua
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^ So I find on the full senate’s schedule for SB 1338
“May 19
From committee: Do pass as amended. (Ayes 7. Noes 0.) (May 19). Read second time and amended. Ordered to second reading.”
I still don’t really know what that means.
Of Recent News:
‘NIMBYism is destroying the state.’ Gavin Newsom ups pressure on cities to build more housing
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/newsom-housing-17188515.php
This isn’t going to end homelessness, but perhaps it is a shift away from the mental health perspective. But the danger of Gavin is not over yet.
This candidate is challenging Gavin Newsom in California — and he has Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson’s support
https://www.deseret.com/2022/5/20/23100404/michael-shellenberger-california-governor-candidate-gavin-newsom-culture-wars-tucker-rogan
Seems to be it for now.
Joshua
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SB1338, not it says:
“05/23/22 Read second time. Ordered to third reading.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
I still don’t really understand what this means.
Appropriations, still nothing scheduled.
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/
Version history
Recent News:
a curious case, but it seems specific
https://www.manisteenews.com/news/article/Freed-California-siblings-feared-opposing-rundown-17188261.php
Calif. ‘CARE Courts’ Spark Concerns Over Forced Treatment
https://www.law360.com/articles/1487625/calif-care-courts-spark-concerns-over-forced-treatment
”
On the other side, CARE courts are opposed by more 50 advocacy organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union California Action, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the California Psychological Association, Disability Rights Advocates, Human Rights Watch, Mental Health America of California, the National Homelessness Law Center, Psychologists for Social Responsibility and the Racial and Ethnic Mental Health Disparities Coalition.
”
”
“The [CARE court] process is you either enter into an agreement to have the treatment that we want you to have, or the judge will order you to do the treatment that we want you to have, so it’s coerced care, and that’s highly problematic from a civil and human rights perspective,” Raphling said.
“The [CARE court] process is you either enter into an agreement to have the treatment that we want you to have, or the judge will order you to do the treatment that we want you to have, so it’s coerced care, and that’s highly problematic from a civil and human rights perspective,” Raphling said.
”
”
Kevin Baker, director of government relations at ACLU California Action, said in a recent interview with Law360 that the CARE court plan is also flawed because people who are homeless and severely mentally ill are unlikely to come to court to respond to a petition against them.
“This model assumes that the person who needs services is sort of the bad guy who needs to get hauled into court,” Baker said.
”
”
Shonique Williams, a statewide organizer for Dignity and Power Now, a Los Angeles-based grassroots organization that advocates for people who are incarcerated and their families, said she experienced firsthand how Black people are misdiagnosed with severe mental illness by behavioral health specialists.
Williams, now 30, said that when she was 15 she was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder after her best friend was murdered, even though she was experiencing normal grief and loss at the time.
According to Williams, her best friend was the only person she confided to about family abuse, and after her friend was murdered, she became depressed and attempted suicide. She was hospitalized for her suicide attempt.
”
”
Mental health advocates say a better alternative to CARE courts would be more affordable housing and voluntary, community-based mental health services.
According to a 2001 study conducted by the RAND Institute and commissioned by the California Senate Committee on Rules, court-ordered treatment in itself is not more effective than voluntary treatment. Instead, an outpatient treatment program’s success is determined by its resources and ability to deliver services.
Gallagher said that California will not be able to build out its voluntary mental health services if the state keeps funneling funding into involuntary treatment programs.
“There will never be enough services to meet the need in the voluntary sphere as long as we continue to divert voluntary funds away from that,” he said.
”
Joshua
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SB1338 history
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Nothing scheduled for appropriations.
https://sapro.senate.ca.gov/
Recent News:
this is 5 days ago, but still interesting. Looks like we get one free LA Times read per day
“Given a chance to avoid jail and criminal charges, mentally ill, addicted and homeless people in L.A. pass”
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-20/given-chance-to-avoid-jail-and-criminal-charges-mentally-ill-addicted-and-homeless-people-in-l-a-pass
It looks to me like the only reason for Gavin’s Care Courts is to be able to force people into these programs via court authority. And then of course “Severe Mental Illness” will always mean anyone who refuses to submit.
Joshua
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Now the history says
“Read third time. Passed. (Ayes 38. Noes 0.) Ordered to the Assembly.’
I guess this means it has passed the State Senate
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Our local government always tries to turn poverty and homelessness into mental health issues, so that they can further subjugate people.
Resistance needs to be organized, Underground Railroad, Safe Houses, and strategies to resist the authorities f2f. And of course the problem is compounded because some of the targets will go along with all of this.
Recent News:
California Senate Votes to Support CARE Court, as Leading State Business Organizations Join Expanding Coalition
https://tdpelmedia.com/california-senate-votes-to-support-care-court-as-leading-state-business-organizations-join-expanding-coalition
”
Prior to today’s affirmative Senate floor vote, the CARE Court bill – SB 1338 by Senators Tom Umberg and Susan Eggman – passed the Senate Appropriations committee in a 7-0 vote last week. This means that CARE Court has been considered by three separate committees and has passed every single one without any opposing votes, and has now cleared the Senate with bipartisan support.
”
Joshua
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Now it says,
” In Assembly. Read first time. Held at Desk.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
I guess that means Full State Assembly.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/
Joshua
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Gavin’s News
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/05/25/california-senate-votes-to-support-care-court-as-leading-state-business-organizations-join-expanding-coalition/
LA Times Reply
Op-Ed: ‘CARE Court’ is no solution for unhoused people in California
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-05-27/care-court-california-mental-illness-homeless-treatment
https://www.kqed.org/news/11914873/newsoms-care-court-faces-foe-shortage-of-treatment-beds-housing
Joshua
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This is Saturday. It still says
“In Assembly. Read first time. Held at Desk.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Recent News
we still have these:
Op-Ed: ‘CARE Court’ is no solution for unhoused people in California
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-05-27/care-court-california-mental-illness-homeless-treatment
Opinion: Can Newsom’s ‘Care Courts’ actually help?
https://www.sfexaminer.com/the_fs/forum/opinion-can-newsom-s-care-courts-actually-help/article_da59890f-818a-512c-8efc-dcf13f13921c.html
Joshua
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“05/26/22 In Assembly. Read first time. Held at Desk.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
this was 3 days ago, I think the reporting is too slow:
https://www.oc-breeze.com/2022/05/27/213692_umberg-eggman-care-court-legislation-passes-senate/
Newest News:
https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2022-05-31/california-has-billions-why-is-homelessness-still-a-problem-essential-california
“The state government’s surplus is expected to balloon to $97.5 billion by next summer under the budget plan recently unveiled by Gov. Gavin Newsom. “No other state in American history has ever experienced a surplus as large as this,” Newsom said at a news conference.”
Joshua
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Challengers to Newsom:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-31/california-primary-governor-candidates-gavin-newsom
Joshua
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Still says,
“05/26/22 In Assembly. Read first time. Held at Desk.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
I interpret this as meaning it is for now, tabled. But for how long? Tabled forever means until the end of the year’s legislative session. After that, if anyone wants to revive it, they need to submit a new one.
But as of now I fear that this tabling could evaporate at any moment.
Recent News
Without funding, governor’s CARE Court plan is just an empty gesture
https://calmatters.org/commentary/2022/06/without-funding-governors-care-court-plan-is-just-an-empty-gesture/
( this whole thing is just Gavin’s Grandstanding, but it would still be extremely dangerous for many people.)
Business groups get behind Newsom’s plan for behavioral health care for homeless people
https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2022/06/01/care-court-calchamber-newsom-homeless.html
(when Gavin was elected Mayor of San Francisco he out spent his Green Party Opposition, Matt Gonzalez, 11 to 1. But it was still a close election. The Business Community just decided that they wanted Gavin. This today seems to be more of the same)
Joshua
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Still says:
“05/26/22 In Assembly. Read first time. Held at Desk.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Maybe they are waiting for the June 7th election day to pass.
Recent News:
1 hour ago
Gimme Shelter: A breakdown of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s CARE Court proposal
https://calmatters.org/housing/2022/06/california-housing-podcast-care-court/
this has a 36 min audio
Joshua
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Now it says, “06/02/22 Referred to Coms. on JUD. and HEALTH.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
These committees should take public testimony.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/
https://ajud.assembly.ca.gov/
https://ahea.assembly.ca.gov/
https://ahea.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
I’m not seeing this on the schedule for either yet.
Recent News
this is old news, but it was just published yesterday
https://www.theriverbanknews.com/news/proposed-care-court-legislation-passes-senate/
Joshua
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Still Says:
“06/02/22 Referred to Coms. on JUD. and HEALTH.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Here is some news, though maybe not completely relevant:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/06/california-governor-race-shellenberger-homelessness-san-francisco/661164/
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/sf-mayor-london-breed-proposes-6-5-million-program-to-end-transgender-homelessness/
https://www.kron4.com/news/california/gubernatorial-candidate-michael-shellenberger-discusses-homelessness-mental-health-through-streets-of-san-francisco/
This is good:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/homelessness-California-17203211.php
Joshua
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Still says
“06/02/22 Referred to Coms. on JUD. and HEALTH.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
https://ajud.assembly.ca.gov/
https://ahea.assembly.ca.gov/
Not seeing SB1338 on either of the committee hearings lists
Recent News:
we have this:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/06/california-governor-race-shellenberger-homelessness-san-francisco/661164/
Opinion: There Are Proven Solutions to Homelessness — California Must Consider Them
https://timesofsandiego.com/opinion/2022/06/04/there-are-proven-solutions-to-homelessness-california-must-consider-them/
https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2022-06-02/gimme-shelter-will-california-governor-gavin-newsom-homelessness-plan-work
Joshua
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Still says:
“06/02/22 Referred to Coms. on JUD. and HEALTH.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Does not show in schedule for either committee
Recent News:
THis was written 3 days ago by State Assembly Member Marie Waldron. Probably the highest ranking Republican.
https://ad75.asmrc.org/
https://timesofsandiego.com/opinion/2022/06/04/there-are-proven-solutions-to-homelessness-california-must-consider-them/
She also references these two:
https://saintjohnsprogram.org/
https://solutionsforchange.org/
Yeah, the stuff Waldron is endorsing are for those who want to live by the rules. Gavin’t stuff is just internment camps, and that is why it gets into mental health.
Waldron is not directly opposing the mental health and care courts dimension.
More Recent News? Can’t find any, and today is election day.
I don’t agree with this guy, but I still like to be able to respond to the other side’s arguments.
https://www.amazon.com/San-Fransicko-Progressives-Ruin-Cities/dp/B08V3DV718/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2296EP9UVCNMY&keywords=Michael+Shellenberger&qid=1654630214&s=books&sprefix=michael+shellenberger%2Cstripbooks%2C108&sr=1-1
Joshua
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still says the same.
Marie Waldron
Waldron is serving as the minority leader emeritus of the California State Assembly. Waldron is a Republican member of California State Assembly from District 75, encompassing parts of inland northern San Diego and southwestern Riverside counties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Waldron
https://www.marieforcalifornia.com/
https://www.marieforcalifornia.com/issues
I look at her because she is a high ranking State Republican, and because of her article seeming to oppose Newsom’s Care Courts:
https://timesofsandiego.com/opinion/2022/06/04/there-are-proven-solutions-to-homelessness-california-must-consider-them/
The programs which she supports require sobriety first. And probably the government cannot subsidize things like that. So those programs are only for those who want to live by a set of rules.
But as such, there is no Psychiatric Policing or Internment Camp dimension to them. They probably don’t house that many of the homeless, and they probably don’t cost that much either. That is just the way it goes.
Gavin is on a power and ego trip. And he is completely reckless in what he is trying to do, having no sense of the consequences, and it was exactly like this in his COVID response.
Joshua
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Recent News:
California has failed the homeless and the mentally ill. It’s time for change.
https://www.ocregister.com/2022/06/04/california-has-failed-the-homeless-and-the-mentally-ill-its-time-for-change/
Talking about mental illness pertaining to the homeless, it is being packaged as compassion, but really it is just pity. They are just using this to scapegoat an already marginalized group.
https://wehotimes.com/california-awards-west-hollywood-6007661-towards-homeless-housing-at-holloway-motel/
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/rohnert-park-breaks-ground-on-60-unit-homeless-housing-site/
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-06-06/homelessness-housing-crime-a-guide-to-issues-dominating-2022-l-a-elections
Joshua
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SB1338, still says
“06/02/22 Referred to Coms. on JUD. and HEALTH.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Recent News:
Gimme Shelter Pod Casts, but now new episodes
https://soundcloud.com/matt-levin-4
California’s mental health ‘Warm Line’ faces uncertain future
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/california-s-mental-health-warm-line-faces-uncertain-future/article_8f6eac6e-e1ee-11ec-82cd-f7fd49d335d5.html
Mental Health Awareness: Here’s a list of resources in NorCal
https://www.kcra.com/article/mental-health-resources-northern-california-counties/39863911
Probably the election has frozen things up for a while.
Joshua
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4 days ago
Will ‘CARE Court’ Help People Dealing with Mental Illness and Homelessness?
https://www.kqed.org/news/11916040/will-care-court-help-people-dealing-with-homelessness-and-mental-illness
Has KQED Radio Audio
California’s Homelessness Magnates
https://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2022/06/08/californias-homelessness-magnates-n2608452
(this is far right wing news)
Joshua
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We need to get people to voluntarily reject the mental health system. I listen to the above, and I can see that it runs because a lot of people go along with it and seek it.
Joshua
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CA SB 1338
Still Says “06/02/22 Referred to Coms. on JUD. and HEALTH.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
6/14 Health Committee Agenda, SB 1338 is not on it.
https://ahea.assembly.ca.gov/sites/ahea.assembly.ca.gov/files/June%2014%202022%20Agenda.pdf
Here, Judiciary Committee for June 21
https://ajud.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Bicyclists Riding to Promote Mental Health System and Recovery
https://abc30.com/tour-de-recovery-cyclists-mental-health-travel-600-miles-california/11938954/
Here is a 24min audio from 2018, Most Violence is not Caused by Mental Illness.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/podcasts/the-daily/most-violence-is-not-caused-by-mental-illness-from-the-archive.html
Joshua
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Still Says, “06/02/22 Referred to Coms. on JUD. and HEALTH.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Judiciary Committee
https://ajud.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Slated for June 21
Health Committee
https://ahea.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
looking out to June 28th, still not on schedule.
Recent News:
an endorsement of care courts, its really just a move towards containment of the poor and unhoused.
In hand now
https://www.amazon.com/San-Fransicko-Progressives-Ruin-Cities/dp/0063093626
A bigger book than I expected, but it seems to be the same idea. And Gavin Newsom, with the spine of a jellyfish, he goes along with it.
Joshua
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So SB1338 status remains the same. Set for State Assembly Juidicary Commitee June 21st.
But they have changed it so that this is a special order of business set to go first, at 10:30am
https://ajud.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Recent News and Commentary:
LA Progressive
Unhoused Deserve Permanent Housing, with Voluntary, Dignified Care
Why we vehemently oppose the Governor Newsom’s “CARE Court” proposal — and so should you.
EVE GARROW AND KATH ROGERS16 HOURS AGO
https://www.laprogressive.com/political-issues/unhoused-deserve-permanent-housing
Excellent Article!
Joshua
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Full ACLU and Partners Opposition Letter
https://www.aclusocal.org/sites/default/files/opposition_letter_to_care_court.pdf
Joshua
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The ACLU argument make a lot of sense. It is rather like the David Smail argument. Not remembering his exact words I try to explain it myself, that what looks like mental illness is just the results of a compromise social and civil stanidng.
So their example of the guy unhoused and in his motorhome is subject to stress.
He has been taught to see this as Bipolar Disorder.
Joshua
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Continuing:
He has been taught to see this as Bipolar Disorder. But there is no medical or moral remedy needed. Instead what is important is to see how this social status degradation came to be. His response to that delegitimation is completely rational.
And so the worst will be courts and involuntary mental health procedures. The best is stable housing and whatever voluntary services are needed.
People who try to live in motor vehicles are a great risk. They are not that reliable, and they are subject to all kinds of laws. So most of the time people cannot keep them working and compliant. Most of the time their up keep is beyond the resources of most people, without being able to park them lawfully off of the street at some times, and having reserve funds for towing and all. So all of this creates great stress.
And then being unhoused always creates social delegitimation and this is the kind of extreme stress which David Smail is referring too. I think in their letter the ACLU has picked up on this very well.
From my vantage point I can say that the authorities always try to keep the homeless drugged, and even more so the women. It is not coercive, unless they get taken in on a psychiatric hold. Most of the time it is a sell job. Chemical mood alterants bought on the street are bad for you, but the ones you get through the doctor’s prescription pad are good for you and you owe it to society to keep taking them regularly.
The same kind of social delegitimation which creates the illusion of mental illness happens when the poor have to deal with social service agencies and be put through ritual humiliations, like making so many employment applications per week, and going through demeaning case worker interviews.
And then I would say that I don’t think people need voluntary mental health services or psychotherapy. But these people believe that they need these things, so then in effect they do need them, or they believe they need them. So until the come to see otherwise, they really do need them.
And of Michael Shellenberger
https://www.amazon.com/San-Fransicko-Progressives-Ruin-Cities/dp/0063093626
This is a stupid book. Everything wrong is because of Benjamin Spock. Well a lot of people do believe things like that. But it is not everyone.
Problem now is that Gavin is reinforcing these Republican views just so he can lever off of them.
Joshua
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So looking at the CA 6/7 Primary results, Gavin came out the highest, followed the leading Republican challenger, Brian Dahle. Dahle is a credible candidate, but he has no chance.
Michael Shellenberger got 4%, and not in run off. So ballot wise he is not a factor. So Gavin is pretty much guaranteed to win. I have never said that it would be possible to stop him from being re-elected, or that that was ever my objective.
Even though I was infuriated day after day by Gavin and his COVID response, I stayed silent in the recall because the Governor will still have many appointments to make, and Gavin does make good appointments because he knows how to follow orders. I would not want his seat to go to a Republican, and recall elections draw a different kind of voter than do regular elections.
What I want is for Gavin to resign, as there will be another recall campaign if he does not.
Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis (D incumbent and a Newsom appointee) is clearly going to win the election, and that is just fine with me.
So SB 1338 status remains the same.
Set to go as a Special Order of Business in the Assembly Judiciary Committee at 10:30am June 21.
https://ajud.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Recent News:
Human Rights Watch’s Opposition to CARE Court (SB 1338)
Letter to California State Assembly Judiciary Committee
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/14/human-rights-watchs-opposition-care-court-sb-1338
a pro-care courts opinion
The real solution to homelessness is the CARE Court proposal: Acquanetta Warren
https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2022/06/12/the-real-solution-to-homelessness-is-the-care-court-proposal-acquanetta-warren/
I strongly disagree with Michael Shellenberger’s book, but it still makes for fascinating reading. It gets back into the history, like Gavin’s Care Not Cash initiative, making it so the homeless could no longer receive the full GA allotment.
And it gets back to Dan White’s assassination of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. And Shellenberger ties it to a progressive take over, which is not how I have ever seen it.
I can see now that the homeless are the biggest issue in CA’s politics, and a lot of that is because of the COVID response and economic crash, unhousing a lot more people. The real danger in COVID was in the hysteria and superstitious fear that was being released. And Gavin was saying that he was going to do “targeted testing into marginalized population groups.” That COVID hysteria would be used against marginalized groups was always the greatest risk. In 2020 that did not happen. But it is happening now in targeting those who got hit the worst in the COVID economic crash, the poorest of the poor, the homeless. And again, Gavin is being part of the problem!
And Shellenberger’s main thing is to make it into a mental health issue. And it is groups like the ACLU and Human Rights Watch which are the most adamantly against this. And then Gavin is really trying to carry out Shellenberger’s plan, though just presenting it in a softer way.
There is a huge amount of public support for this idea of mental health, and for involuntary treatment, and against the homeless.
Joshua
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The NGO’s try to provide housing, but they know they can only house but a few. So they only accept those that seriously want to play by their rules, and that means clean and sober.
But Gavin, with public coffers and a big boost from CA progressive income tax and the rich doing well with COVID, he says he can house everyone. But this is why his plan centers around mental health, and coercive mental health.
Joshua
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So SB1338 still slated for 10:30 am June 21, State Assembly Judiciary Committee
https://ajud.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Recent News:
6/16
The Lookout: Five Bills Addressing Homelessness Moving Through California’s Legislature
https://sacobserver.com/2022/06/the-lookout-five-bills-addressing-homelessness-moving-through-californias-legislature/
Del Norte Supervisors: State’s Proposed CARE Court Mental Health Framework Onerous for Rural Communities
https://wildrivers.lostcoastoutpost.com/2022/jun/15/del-norte-supervisors-states-proposed-care-court-m/
June 14
Human Rights Watch’s Opposition to CARE Court (SB 1338)
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/14/human-rights-watchs-opposition-care-court-sb-1338
Joshua
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So SB1338 still slated for 10:30 am June 21, State Assembly Judiciary Committee
https://ajud.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Recent News:
The Democrats’ New Spokesman in the Culture Wars
The left desperately needs someone to stand up to Republicans’ rights rollback. Is Gavin Newsom up to the task?
Michael Shellenberger’s book is just completely wrong. But it still makes for interesting reading. He says that Thomas Insel is Gavin Newsom’s Mental Health Advisor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_R._Insel
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/us/thomas-insel-book.html
https://www.thomasinselmd.com/about
” In 2017 he co-founded Mindstrong Health, a Silicon Valley start-up building tools for people with serious mental illness. ”
https://mindstrong.com/
303 Bryant Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
How it works:
https://mindstrong.com/how-it-works/
Yes this does sound pretty scary. And it does sound like this what Gavin has been listening to.
California may require labels on pot products to warn of mental health risks
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/06/17/1105494283/california-pot-warning-labels
So thinking about how best to succinctly express this:
NGO’s will try to house people, but they have no illusion that they could ever house everyone. So they only offer it to those who really do want to live by their rules, which means staying clean and sober. And there is no mental health component.
Gavin, on the other hand, is eyeing the windfall tax revenues from the COVID upwards wealth siphon. So his approach is not just housing, it is internment, and this is why it is built first and foremost around courts and mental health. Trump had talked about internment camps, but Gavin is the one who actually believes that he can do it.
We all want to see that everyone is always housed, and we need a strong public housing offering to contain private real estate gentrification. But before we can get there, broad based public understanding will have to build.
And people have to understand how the mental health system is what enforces the dictates of capitalism, and how people are tracked into it by the family.
Joshua
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Now it says something different:
“06/16/22 From committee with author’s amendments. Read second time and amended. Re-referred to Com. on JUD.”
https://ajud.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Special Order of Business 10:30am 6/21/2022
As they have amended it, if it passes it will have to go back to the State Senate.
This has been changed quite a bit, but not sure about what they changed this last time:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVersionsCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338&cversion=20210SB133895AMD
Even the first line is ridiculous:
”
Thousands of Californians are suffering from untreated schizophrenia spectrum and psychotic disorders, leading to risks to their health and safety and increased homelessness, incarceration, hospitalization, conservatorship, and premature death. These individuals, families, and communities deserve a path to care and wellness.
”
Recent News and Commentary:
a pro care courts opinion:
https://wildrivers.lostcoastoutpost.com/2022/jun/17/sen-mcguire-endorses-care-court-mental-health-fram/
Joshua
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So SB 1338 should be in the Assembly Judiciary Committee now!
https://ajud.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Still says
06/16/22 From committee with author’s amendments. Read second time and amended. Re-referred to Com. on JUD.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Recent News:
We have somethings Gavin has signed 6/20, and one of them pertains to ~mental health~
https://tdpelmedia.com/governor-newsom-signs-legislation-6-20-22
AB 2288 by Assemblymember Steven Choi (R-Irvine) – Advance health care directives: mental health treatment.
LAProgressive, opposition to Care Courts
https://www.laprogressive.com/homelessness/why-we-oppose-care-court
June 27th Webinar
https://aclu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_R3tv75j9Tp26iXjojaojPQ
$518.5 million in funding will add treatment beds for more than 1,000 people at a time in California
https://tdpelmedia.com/518-5-million-in-funding-will-add-treatment-beds-for-more-than-1000-people-at-a-time-in-california
MENDO AND HUMBOLDT COUNTIES GRANTED MILLIONS FOR HOUSING AND SERVICES SLATED FOR PEOPLE EXPERIENCING SEVERE MENTAL ILLNESS AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE
https://kymkemp.com/2022/06/21/mendo-and-humboldt-counties-granted-millions-for-housing-and-services-slated-for-people-experiencing-severe-mental-illness-and-substance-abuse/
So we don’t yet know what happened with SB1338 today in the Judiciary Committee.
Here, we have a live video feed. It looks like they are talking about SB-1338, and Umberg, bill author and committee chair is speaking.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/437-video
Joshua
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Its actually Assembly Member Matt Hanley and some others who are talking, including this CA Health and Human Services Dr. Mark Ghaly, basically speaking for Gavin.
What they are taking about is entire unconstitutional and illegal.
Joshua
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So these are the members of the CA Assembly Judiciary Committee
https://ajud.assembly.ca.gov/membersstaff
I pulled the video back to the start
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/437-video
One of the people who talked is Matt Hanley, he lives in the S.F. Tenderloin.
Another who is doing a lot of talking is Ash Kalra, and I like what he is saying. He had been a public defender.
https://a27.asmdc.org/
State Senator Umberg is the author if the bill and so he is there, masked, in this assembly committee, he represents Orange County
https://sd34.senate.ca.gov/
Eloise Gomez Reyes, Assembly Majority Leader, is also talking and she is getting critical of it.
https://a47.asmdc.org/
Laurie Davies, also getting critical.
https://ad73.asmrc.org/
https://www.daviesforca.com/
She looks like a Republican, she is a Republican
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurie_Davies_(politician)
She is calling for a Pilot Program, which means that she opposed the big program presently on the table!
Joshua
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This is nasty. Legislators still see homelessness, an economic problem, as a mental health problem, best solved by medications. And this has always been the problem.
And this Mark Ghaly is Gavin’s medical justification, just as he was for the COVID hysteria
Continuing video:
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/437-video
Joshua
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With the beard and the mustache, Committee Chair Matt Stone. He is raising issues about these referals coming from families. 1:21 pm
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/437-video
maybe the video ran out, or maybe it continues here?
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/437-video
I mean really, that’s the way it is now. Families pawn the designated scapegoat off on the mental health system. Always been like that.
Either that or they send them to the homeless shelter or to the street. This is what Chair Matt Stone was getting at, then the video cut off.
Higher Education committee to start at 1:30pm
Joshua
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I mean really, everyone who is homeless has family of some sort somewhere. And where did the idea that they are mentally ill start, or that they are hyperactive and should be on Ritalin, or that they are just wrong in trying to develop and apply their abilities?
In a Taco Bell a woman who worked their expressed concern about her son, living on the street, ~mentally ill~, did the police arrest him?
I said no, they just had a talk with him. I told here their is no such thing as mental illness. She wouldn’t go for that. Mental Illness has long been built into the family mythology.
Joshua
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1 hour ago news:
this news is not much though
https://www.goshennews.com/news/national_news/california-homeless-mental-health/image_f4f90dad-5c48-57b9-9418-0b2f2a146dd1.html
https://kdhnews.com/living/health/california-homeless-mental-health/image_ecd2ed81-6bbe-54fa-b915-230497dbf241.html
This is right wing news
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/75-tons-human-waste-removed-homeless-camps-berkeley
Joshua
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No new information yet:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
https://kymkemp.com/2022/06/21/mendo-and-humboldt-counties-granted-millions-for-housing-and-services-slated-for-people-experiencing-severe-mental-illness-and-substance-abuse/
so no other new news yet, and no reporting on how things settled in the Assembly Judiciary Committee
Joshua
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So now it says. And this is the first time it has gotten even a single No vote.
“06/21/22 From committee: Do pass and re-refer to Com. on HEALTH. (Ayes 9. Noes 1.) (June 21). Re-referred to Com. on HEALTH.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
So now it is going to the health committee
Health Committee
https://ahea.assembly.ca.gov/
Does not list on 6/28 hearing list.
Recent News
Gavin’s Office
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/06/21/governor-newsoms-care-court-proposal-moves-forward/
6/22
Groups Are Uniting to Oppose Landmark California Mental Health Legislation
https://eurweb.com/2022/06/22/groups-are-uniting-to-oppose-landmark-california-mental-health-legislation/
*Senate Bill (SB) 1338, also known as the CARE Court Program, is attracting growing resistance as it makes its way through the legislative process. Some legal advocacy and civil rights groups say the law would negatively Blacks and other minorities.
Opponents of the legislation say, SB 1338 dangerously expands judicial power and empowers the criminal justice system to commit people to mental health treatment that is sub-par – and often against their will. There is also the potential for misdiagnosis, they warn.
Gavin on 3/3/22
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u24waZcEWI
Laura’s Law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura%27s_Law#:~:text=Laura's%20Law%20is%20a%20California,behavior%20towards%20self%20or%20others.
Disability Rights California (DRC) is also voicing its opposition to SB 1338.
“CARE Court is antithetical to recovery principles, which are based on self-determination and self-direction,” read the DRC’s opposition letter. “The CARE Court proposal is based on the stigma and stereotypes of people living with mental health disabilities and experiencing homelessness.”
“The right framework allows people with disabilities to retain autonomy over their own lives by providing them with meaningful and reliable access to affordable, accessible, integrated housing combined with voluntary service,” read the letter.
The HRW expressed concern about how the program might impact personal rights.
“In fact, the bill creates a new pathway for government officials and family members to place people under state control and take away their autonomy and liberty,” HRW warns.
“We are leaning into conservatorships this year,” the governor said. “What’s happening on the streets and sidewalks in our state is unacceptable. I don’t want to see any more people die on the streets and call that compassion.”
”
Nearly a quarter of California’s estimated 161,000 unhoused residents have a severe mental illness. They pinball among jails, emergency rooms, temporary psychiatric holds and the streets until they’re arrested for a minor crime and brought before a judge who can order them into a long-term treatment plan.
”
https://www.elpasoinc.com/ca-governors-mental-health-court-plan-advances-amid-worries/article_63e3b088-29dc-53e3-95d4-bedc609db87d.html
”
Newsom said his proposal allows family members, emergency dispatchers and others to refer the person for help, and preferably before the person commits a crime. He has said it’s not compassionate to let distressed people deteriorate on the streets. The goal is to get the person to voluntarily accept services and participate in their treatment, he said.
But the legislation could result in forced treatment, which alarms civil liberties advocates. It does not guarantee housing or provide dedicated funding, and comes at a time when psychologists and other behavioral health specialists are in high demand. Critics of the legislation also say that forced treatment will fail.
”
”
Newsom said his proposal allows family members, emergency dispatchers and others to refer the person for help, and preferably before the person commits a crime. He has said it’s not compassionate to let distressed people deteriorate on the streets. The goal is to get the person to voluntarily accept services and participate in their treatment, he said.
But the legislation could result in forced treatment, which alarms civil liberties advocates. It does not guarantee housing or provide dedicated funding, and comes at a time when psychologists and other behavioral health specialists are in high demand. Critics of the legislation also say that forced treatment will fail.
“In no way should there be a forced situation where you’re shoving needles into people or forcing them to take medication, that’s where you get into people who resent it and regret it and they go down a spiral of self-medication or any other number of issues,” said Eric Harris, public policy director at Disability Rights California, which opposes the bill.
Assemblymember Ash Kalra, a Democrat from San Jose, voted against the proposal on Tuesday, agreeing with critics who say judicial courts are a scary place for unhoused people and that more money should go to the organizations already doing the hard, intensive and slow-moving work of convincing people to accept services.
A legislative analysis provided to the Judiciary committee raised serious concerns with the proposal.
It strongly recommended that people not be ordered into the court program until housing and services can be guaranteed and that counties not implement the program until the infrastructure is in place. Counties should not be sanctioned or fined by the state until it has resources in place and funding for voluntary, community-based programs should not be reduced to support the new program, according to the analysis.
”
Okay, so this was the No vote, Ash Kalra, former Public Defender and former San Jose City Council. This is the first Democratic Opposition to Gavin and Care Courts.
https://kdhnews.com/news/politics/ca-governors-mental-health-court-plan-advances-amid-worries/article_57b190af-7bb0-5036-950e-c1fb92ffdf48.html
Joshua
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Here is the CA State Assembly Media Archives
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media-archive
So we have
06/21/2022 Assembly Judiciary Committee
5 hours 12 min long
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/assembly-judiciary-committee-20220621/video
So it looks like it is just like youtube, I can share a video link starting at a time.
Okay so this is the beginning of SB 1338, Umberg and Mark Ghaly
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/assembly-judiciary-committee-20220621/video?time%5Bassembly-judiciary-committee-20220621%5D=8757.995603
And Senator Thomas Umberg says he has family members there, or they are listening. Meaning family members of the afflicted of course.
Umberg said that there is no involuntary care and that police will not arrest people who do not show up in court. I would though take this with a huge grain of salt.
Hey, advanced industrial and information technology continues to squeeze down the jobs market. So now, we are taking those that have been forced out and putting them into the mental health system.
And if you don’t find this scary, its just a few years ago that it was found that kids were getting psych meds in the foster care system.
https://extras.mercurynews.com/druggedkids/
And it was Gavin Newsom and Mark Ghaly who brought us COVID hysteria and mandatory needling for school children.
This anti-care courts witness is pretty snappy, directing her comments to Umberg. She refutes Umberg’s statement that it is not involuntary treatment.
Joshua
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I missed the name of the first witness. But the second is by telephone, Kim Peterson, attorney with Disability Rights California. She refutes Umberg’s statement that this is voluntary.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/assembly-judiciary-committee-20220621/video?time%5Bassembly-judiciary-committee-20220621%5D=10039.480329
https://www.disabilityrightsca.org/latest-news/disability-rights-california-advocates-urge-assembly-judiciary-committee-to-vote-no-on
Joshua
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The opposition to this bill is immense, yet it still passed 9 : 1
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/assembly-judiciary-committee-20220621/video?time%5Bassembly-judiciary-committee-20220621%5D=11862.751819
Joshua
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This Richard Bloom is the author of the Assembly version of the bill. Someone who is completely pro-Mental Health, and an idiot.
https://a50.asmdc.org/
This BRIAN MAIENSCHEIN is a Democrat, but before 2019 he was a Republican, and he represents the San Diego area.
Assemblymember, District 77 who will speak later is a real piece of work.
Joshua
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The bill’s author, Umberg, and Gavin’s representative, Mark Ghaly, don’t even seem to know how the bill works. Seems that it puts people into conservatorship if they don’t cooperate with the court.
All of this is in complete violation of due process and completely unconstitutional.
3:41 in video
Joshua
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Listening to them talk, it seems like there are a lot of Committee Members who want to oppose this, at least as it now stands. But only Kalra did vote against it, and he said that he would.
Seems like there is some external pressure on them.
Joshua
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So to make this player work, seems like the best way is to download the player and the video by clicking on this link to the start of the video:
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/assembly-judiciary-committee-20220621/video
Then click on the link to get to the place you want, like this is where the Ash Kalra questions start:
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/assembly-judiciary-committee-20220621/video?time%5Bassembly-judiciary-committee-20220621%5D=12779.718974
Kalra is the only one who voted against this, but listening to them it seems like many of hte Assemblymembers would have wanted to vote no. There must be some kind of external pressure, like the mental health system itself.
It does seem like even the author, Thomas Umberg, and Gavin’s spokes person, Mark Ghaly, do not know what this bill really does.
It does seem like the real intent is to get them into housing, voluntarily or not, and that that housing means psychiatric supervision. And if they don’t cooperate, they don’t get cited for illegal camping, they get put into conservatorship.
Joshua
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(Duplicate comment)
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So to make this player work, seems like the best way is to download the player and the video by clicking on this link to the start of the video, and then press play on it:
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/assembly-judiciary-committee-20220621/video
Then you’ve just go to move it forward:
4:22
Brian Maienschein is really a piece of work. Republican until 2019, then a Democrat. Talks about having case workers to “make sure people take their medications”.
What this really seems to be about is just criminalizing homelessness. They just don’t want to call it that, so they call it Mental Health.
So once they get someone into this Care Court, then it is like they are on probation and they get housing, but it is Psychiatric Policing. Only by staying in that housing can they “Graduate from Care Court”.
Any one unhoused will be suspected of “Extreme Mental Illness” and likely to end up in the Care Court, and on psychiatric medications.
Joshua
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So, it still says:
“06/21/22 From committee: Do pass and re-refer to Com. on HEALTH. (Ayes 9. Noes 1.) (June 21). Re-referred to Com. on HEALTH.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
CA Assembly Health Committee
https://ahea.assembly.ca.gov/
Now SB1338 is on as a 3pm Special Order of Business for Tues June 28.
https://ahea.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Recent News:
California Governor’s CARE Court Proposal Moves Forward
https://www.stl.news/california-governors-care-court-proposal-moves-forward/527333/
Groups Uniting to Oppose Landmark California Mental Health Legislation
Los Angeles Sentinel
https://lasentinel.net/groups-uniting-to-oppose-landmark-california-mental-health-legislation.html
”
“With broad support from California’s state Senate, CARE Court is one step closer to becoming a reality in California,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom, “I am also grateful to have the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Downtown Association, and 21 local chambers of commerce join our ever-expanding CARE Court coalition, which includes a diverse group of supporters focused on tackling the challenge of severe mental illness that too often leaves individuals on our streets without hope.”
”
”
Disability Rights California (DRC) is also voicing its opposition to SB 1338.
“CARE Court is antithetical to recovery principles, which are based on self-determination and self-direction,” read the DRC’s opposition letter. “The CARE Court proposal is based on the stigma and stereotypes of people living with mental health disabilities and experiencing homelessness.”
DRC proposes an alternative solution to the problems CARE Court is attempting to address.
“The right framework allows people with disabilities to retain autonomy over their own lives by providing them with meaningful and reliable access to affordable, accessible, integrated housing combined with voluntary service,” read the letter.
The HRW expressed concern about how the program might impact personal rights.
“In fact, the bill creates a new pathway for government officials and family members to place people under state control and take away their autonomy and liberty,” HRW warns.
About a month before Umberg and Eggman introduced SB 1338, Gov. Newsom foreshadowed the bill’s arrival in his January budget proposal.
“We are leaning into conservatorships this year,” the governor said. “What’s happening on the streets and sidewalks in our state is unacceptable. I don’t want to see any more people die on the streets and call that compassion.”
”
California governor’s mental health court plan advances amid worries, KCRA
https://www.kcra.com/article/ca-governors-mental-health-court-plan-advances/40369801#
”
Assemblymember Ash Kalra, a Democrat from San Jose, voted against the proposal on Tuesday, agreeing with critics who say judicial courts are a scary place for unhoused people and that more money should go to the organizations already doing the hard, intensive and slow-moving work of convincing people to accept services.
A legislative analysis provided to the Judiciary committee raised serious concerns with the proposal.
”
Joshua
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Now SB1338 is on as a 3pm Special Order of Business for Tues June 28.
https://ahea.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Recent News:
Human Rights Watch’s Opposition to CARE Court (SB 1338) as amended June 16, 2022
Set for Hearing Before the CA Assembly Health Committee on June 28, 2022
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/24/opposition-care-court-sb-1338-amended-june-16-2022
Groups Are Uniting to Oppose Landmark California Mental Health Legislation
https://sacobserver.com/2022/06/groups-are-uniting-to-oppose-landmark-california-mental-health-legislation/
It’s ironic that with over 200 years of advancing industrial technology and so much money having been put into weaponry, that at this time when we have now the ability to convert that technology and to take care of every single person better than even royalty had lived in past centuries, and where everyone could have a life of comparative leisure, that we still allow free floating real estate prices to keep the noses of most fixed to the grindstone, and that we have now come so see a large portion of the population as completely expendable and suitable for internment and psychiatric drugging.
Mark Ghaly and Tom Umberg are presenting SB1338 before committees. But they are not being straight about what it does or how much power it gives to its courts and to others who can refer someone to the court. The homeless are already a target, and this just makes it that much worse. Ghaly and Umberg seem to want people to trust them, but there is no basis for this trust when they continually try to avoid admitting what this legislation would do. Trying to turn poverty and homelessness into mental illness is nothing new. This is why many in need of shelters and transitional housing will decline them when they are available. They recognize that they can’t put themselves into positions where they could become targets for Social Services. Ghaly and Umberg have no credibility and their deceptive role in this is shameless.
Joshua
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Still SB1338 is on as a 3pm Special Order of Business for Tues June 28.
https://ahea.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
June 24, 2022 11:00AM EDT
Opposition to CARE Court (SB 1338) as Amended June 16, 2022
Set for Hearing Before the CA Assembly Health Committee on June 28, 2022
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/24/opposition-care-court-sb-1338-amended-june-16-2022
Human Rights Watch has carefully reviewed SB 1338,[1] the amendments to SB 1338, and the proposed framework for the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) Court created by CalHHS,[2] and must respectfully voice our strong opposition. CARE Court promotes a system of involuntary, coerced treatment, enforced by an expanded judicial infrastructure, that will, in practice, simply remove unhoused people with perceived mental health conditions from the public eye without effectively addressing those mental health conditions and without meeting the urgent need for housing. We urge you to reject this bill and instead to take a more holistic, rights-respecting approach to address the lack of resources for autonomy-affirming treatment options and affordable housing.
CARE Court proponents claim it will increase up-stream diversion from the criminal legal and conservatorship systems by allowing a wide range of actors to refer people with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders to the jurisdiction of the courts without an arrest or hospitalization. In fact, the bill creates a new pathway for government officials and family members to place people under state control and take away their autonomy and liberty.[3] It applies generally to those the bill describes as having a “schizophrenia spectrum or other psychotic disorder” and specifically targets unhoused people.[4] It seems aimed at facilitating removing unhoused people from public view without actually providing housing and services that will help to resolve homelessness. Given the racial demographics of California’s homeless population,[5] and the historic over-diagnosing of Black and Latino people with schizophrenia,[6] this plan is likely to place many, disproportionately Black and brown, people under state control.
CARE Court is Coerced Treatment
Proponents of the plan describe CARE Court in misleading ways as “preserving self-determination” and “self-sufficiency,” and “empower[ing].”[7] But CARE Court creates a state-imposed system of coerced, involuntary treatment. The proposed legislation authorizes judges to order a person to submit to treatment under a CARE plan.[8] That treatment may include an order to take a given medication, including anti-psychotic medications, housing, and other enumerated services.[9] Housing must be provided through a designated list of existing program that includes interim housing or shelter options that may be unacceptable to an individual and unsuited to their unique needs.[10] The CARE Court proposal does not provide additional housing and does not envision enforcement of long-term prioritization of housing for its graduates.
A person who fails to obey the court ordered treatment plan may be referred to conservatorship, which would potentially strip that person of their legal capacity and personal autonomy, subjecting them to forcible medical treatment and medication, loss of personal liberty, and removal of power to make decisions over the conduct of their own lives.[11] Indeed, the court may use failure to comply with their court-ordered treatment as “a presumption at that hearing that the respondent needs additional intervention beyond the supports and services provided by the CARE plan” paving the way for detention and conservatorship.[12] In practical effect, the mandatory care plans are simply pathways to the even stricter system of control through conservatorship.
This approach not only robs individuals of dignity and autonomy but is also coercive and likely ineffective.[13] Studies of coercive mental health treatment have generally not shown positive outcomes.[14] Evidence does not support the conclusion that involuntary outpatient treatment is more effective than intensive voluntary outpatient treatment and, indeed, shows that involuntary, coercive treatment is harmful.[15]
Coerced Treatment Violates Human Rights
Under international human rights law, all people have the right to “the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”[16] Free and informed consent, including the right to refuse treatment, is a core element of that right to health.[17] Having a “substitute” decision-maker, including a judge, or even a “supporter,” make orders for health care can deny a person with disabilities their right to legal capacity and infringe on their personal autonomy.[18]
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities establishes the obligation to “holistically examine all areas of law to ensure that the right of persons with disabilities to legal capacity is not restricted on an unequal basis with others. Historically, persons with disabilities have been denied their right to legal capacity in many areas in a discriminatory manner under substitute decision-making regimes such as guardianship, conservatorship and mental health laws that permit forced treatment.”[19] The US has signed but not yet ratified this treaty, which means it is obligated to refrain from establishing policies and legislation that will undermine the object and purpose of the treaty,[20] like creating provisions that mandate long-term substitute decision-making schemes like conservatorship or court-ordered treatment plans.
The World Health Organization has developed a new model that harmonizes mental health services and practices with international human rights law and has criticized practices promoting involuntary mental health treatments as leading to violence and abuse, rather than recovery, which should be the core basis of mental health services.[21] Recovery means different things for different people but one of its key elements is having control over one´s own mental health treatment, including the possibility of refusing treatment.
To comport with human rights, treatment should be based on the will and preferences of the person concerned. Housing or disability status does not rob a person of their right to legal capacity or their personal autonomy. Expansive measures for imposing mental health treatment like the process envisioned by the CARE Court plan infringe on it and discriminate on the basis of disability. As discussed below they also run the risk of being abused by self-interested actors. This coerced process leading to “treatment” undermines any healing aim of the proposal.
CARE Court Denies Due Process
The CARE Court proposal authorizes family members, first responders, including police officers or outreach workers, the public guardian, service providers, conservators, and the director of the county behavioral health agency, to initiate the process of imposing involuntary treatment by filing a petition with the court.[22] These expansive categories of people with the power to embroil another person in court processes and potential loss of autonomy, many of whom lack any expertise in recognition and treatment of mental health conditions, reveals the extreme danger of abuse inherent in this proposal. For example, interpersonal conflicts between family members could result in abusive parents, children, spouses, and siblings using the referral process to expose their relatives to court hearings and potential coerced treatment, housing, and medication.
Law enforcement and outreach workers would have a new tool to threaten unhoused people with referral to the court to pressure them to move from a given area. These state actors could funnel those who disobeyed their commands into the CARE Court process and potentially under the control of courts. Given the long history of law enforcement using its authority to drive unhoused people from public spaces, a practice that re-traumatizes those people and does nothing to solve homelessness, it is dangerous to provide them with additional powers to do so.[23]
The legislation does not set meaningful standards to guide judicial discretion and does not delineate procedures for those decisions.[24] It establishes a contradictory and unworkable procedure that allows certain people diagnosed with schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders to be ordered into treatment if, among other criteria, a judge believes that they are unlikely to survive safely in the community without supervision, or that they are at risk of relapse or deterioration into grave disability or serious harm. [25] These criteria are extremely subjective and speculative and subject to bias.
The court commences the process of engagement if a petition merely asserts facts supporting eligibility and attaches documentation of either contact or attempted contact with a behavioral health professional or of prior intensive treatment.[26] If the court finds the person meets or “likely meets the criteria,” then the court orders a hearing, which may be conducted in the person’s absence.[27] At the hearing, if the court examines the “prima facie” evidence presented by the petitioner and finds “reason to believe the facts stated in the petition appear to be true,” the person is then required to enter into negotiations with the county behavioral health agency to come up with a purportedly voluntary treatment plan.[28] The role of the behavioral health agency poses a great potential for conflicts of interest, as they will presumably be funded to carry out the Care Plans that result from their negotiations and their evaluations.
However, failure to agree to that supposedly voluntary plan results in a court-ordered evaluation by that same behavioral health agency, which can be used to impose a mandatory, court-ordered course of treatment if the court finds the person meets the criteria following a hearing.[29] Once ordered, if a person does not complete the CARE program, they may be “involuntarily reappointed” to the program for an additional year.[30]
This process is entirely coercive, despite procedures that claim to be voluntary. Welfare and Institutions Code section 5801(b)(5), as amended by SB 1338, makes this coercion clear: “The client should be fully informed and volunteer for all treatment provided, unless… the client is under a court order for CARE pursuant to Part 8 (commencing with Section 5970) and, prior to the court-ordered CARE plan, the client has been offered an opportunity to enter into a CARE agreement on a voluntary basis and has declined to do so.”[31]
The CARE Court plan threatens to create a separate legal track for people perceived to have mental health conditions, without adequate process, negatively implicating basic rights.[32] Even with stronger judicial procedures, this program would remain objectionable because it expands the ability of the state to coerce people into involuntary treatment.
CARE Court will harm Black, brown, and Unhoused people
The CARE Court directly targets unhoused people to be placed under court-ordered treatment, thus denying their rights and self-determination. Governor Newsom, in pitching this plan, called it a response to seeing homeless encampments throughout the state of California.[33] CARE Court will empower police and homeless outreach workers to refer people to the courts and allow judges to order them into treatment against their will, including medication plans. CARE Court does not increase access to permanent supportive housing or mental health care and instead relies on existing programs and service providers that already struggle to meet the needs of the unhoused.[34]
Due to a long history of racial discrimination in housing, employment, access to health care, policing and the criminal legal system, Black and brown people have much higher rates of homelessness than their overall share of the population.[35] The CARE Court plan in no way addresses the conditions that have led to these high rates of homelessness in Black and brown communities. Instead, it proposes a system of state control over individuals that will compound the harms of homelessness.
Further, much research shows that mental health professionals diagnose Black and Latino populations at much higher rates than they do white people.[36] One meta-analysis of over 50 separate studies found that Black people are diagnosed with schizophrenia at a rate nearly 2.5 times greater than white people.[37] A 2014 review of empirical literature on the subject found that Black people were diagnosed with psychotic disorders three to four times more frequently than white people.[38] This review found large disparities for Latino people as well. CARE Court may place a disproportionate number of Black and Latino people under involuntary court control.
CARE Court Does Not Increase Access to Mental Health Care
The CARE plan would establish a new judicial infrastructure focused on identifying people with mental health conditions and placing them under state control for up to 24 months. While touted as an unprecedented investment in support and treatment for people with mental health conditions, in reality, the program provides no new funding for behavioral health care, instead re-directing money already in the budget for treatment to programs required by CARE Court.[39] According to the DHHS presentation on the proposal, the only new money allocated for the program will go to the courts themselves to administer this system of control.[40]
The court-ordered plans include housing, but not necessarily permanent supportive housing.[41] The proposal seems to anticipate allowing shelter and interim housing to suffice if available, without recognizing the vast shortage of affordable housing, especially supportive housing, throughout most of California.[42] To the extent the proposal relies on state investment in housing already in existence, it will prioritize availability of that housing for people under this program, meaning others in need would have reduced access to that housing.
California Should Invest in Voluntary Treatment and Supportive Services
CARE Court shifts the blame for homelessness onto individuals and their vulnerabilities, rather than recognizing and addressing the root causes of homelessness such as poverty, affordable housing shortages, barriers to access to voluntary mental health care, and racial discrimination. CARE Courts are designed to force unhoused people with mental health conditions into coerced treatment that will not comprehensively and compassionately address their needs.
Californians lack adequate access to supportive mental health care and treatment.[43] However, this program does not increase that access. Instead, it depends on money already earmarked for behavioral health initiatives and layers harmful and expensive court involvement onto an already inadequate system. Similarly, the “Care plans” mandated by the CARE Courts do not address the shortage of housing.
Investing in involuntary treatment ties up resources that could otherwise be invested in voluntary treatment and the services necessary to make that treatment effective.[44] California should provide well-resourced holistic community-based voluntary options and remove barriers to evidence-based treatment to support people with mental health conditions who might be facing other forms of social exclusion. Such options should be coupled with investment in other social supports and especially housing, not tied to court-supervision.
Rather than co-opting the language used by movements supporting housing and disability rights and cynically parading the trauma of family members let down by the state mental health system, as proponents of CARE Courts have done, we instead ask that you reject the CARE Court proposal entirely and direct resources towards making voluntary treatment and other necessary services accessible to all who need it.
Sincerely,
Olivia Ensign John Raphling
Senior Advocate, US Program Senior Researcher, US Program
Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch
******
Mark Ghaly and Tom Umberg are lying before these committees!
Joshua
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March 4th 2022
Under the plan, which requires approval by the Legislature, all counties would have to set up a mental health branch in civil court and provide comprehensive and community-based treatment to those suffering from debilitating psychosis. People need not be homeless to be evaluated by a court.
https://krcrtv.com/news/local/cas-governor-wants-mental-health-courts-for-homeless-people
Setting precedents for for forced treatments is extremely dangerous, especially as our economic system expels some people and when this precedent is targeting people considered a nuisance.
Joshua
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Still SB1338 is on as a 3pm Special Order of Business for Tues June 28.
https://ahea.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Recent News
California’s Fight Against Homelessness Has Turned Desperate and Dangerous
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/27/opinion/california-homeless-mental-illness.html
^This is interesting but I only partially agree. I think this current push to medicalize homelessness is partly because of public pressure and frustration, but this has happened in CA before. I think it is also just because of how Gavin Newsom thinks, Medical Police State, Internment Camp, Psychiatric Hospital. And we saw this in his COVID response. I think it is probably because of the people he surrounds himself with. Worthy of high suspicion being Mark Ghaly and Thomas Insel.
How brother of a 9/11 firefighter is helping house West L.A. homeless veterans
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-06-26/brother-9-11-firefighter-help-homeless-veterans-los-angeles
Oakland, Livermore Among California Cities Receiving Millions to Combat Family Homelessness
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/oakland-livermore-among-california-cities-receiving-millions-to-combat-family-homelessness/2929265/
Mathews: Homelessness is California’s most durable hobby horse
Residents rank homelessness as our state’s biggest problem. But it’s not too big to be solved
https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/06/25/mathews-homelessness-is-californias-hobby-horse/
Crews pick up trash at Chico homeless camps
https://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/local/crews-pick-up-trash-at-chico-homeless-camps/article_719b904a-f34a-11ec-a1c4-3b6602d5c949.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10942849/City-Berkeley-removed-75-tons-trash-human-waste-homeless-camps-9-months.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10942849/City-Berkeley-removed-75-tons-trash-human-waste-homeless-camps-9-months.html
How California Emboldens Criminal Elements Within the Homeless | Robert Pequeno
https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-california-emboldens-criminal-elements-within-the-homeless-robert-pequeno_4545537.html
In My Humble Opinion one of the things which is driving this contentiousness about homelessness in CA is this idea that there is free housing available, but the homeless will not take it. And so they then try to make it into a mental health issue.
Well I don’t know that whe real status on this are. I doubt there is that much such housing really available, and some people will take it.
But I think there is another problem, many unhoused persons already know that such housing is already set up to work like a psychiatric internment camp, and that they place themselves at risk by talking to the authorities.
And then with this Tiny House idea, that violates building codes. Bathrooms too small, bathroom door open onto kitchens. Recreational Vehicles can be like that, but permanent buildings cannot, and for good reason. So people know that if they let themselves be shoved into that, it is internment. They are being made into a public spectacle and object of pity.
And then I hear increasingly of stories of police in some cities harassing the homeless by trying to get biographical information out of them. “How long have you been homeless? Don’t you have relatives around here?”
This kind of info has nothing to do with any present situation which police could have a reasonable interest in finding out about. They are just trying to build a biography, and that will always be for building a mental health case and for internment.
So I think many know that they must stay away from police, social workers, and anything related to this Housing First idea.
So like tents on sidewalks, riverways, or anyplace else, are always much safer. What will really solve the problem is just to first of all admit that by advanced industrial and information technology we have spawned a large underclass that has had to learn to live on the margins. Until we instead go to Universal Basic Income and a Strong Public Housing Offering, and fire from public service anyone trying to medicalize this, there will be no improvement.
Joshua
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Still SB1338 is on as a 3pm Special Order of Business for Tues June 28.
https://ahea.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Should have video feed at 3pm.
Groups Unite to Oppose Landmark California Mental Health Legislation
https://www.postnewsgroup.com/groups-unite-to-oppose-landmark-california-mental-health-legislation/
Opponents of the legislation say SB 1338 dangerously expands judicial power and empowers the criminal justice system to commit people to mental health treatment that is sub-par – and often against their will. There is also the potential for misdiagnosis, they warn.
“CARE Court promotes a system of involuntary, coerced treatment, enforced by an expanded judicial infrastructure, that will, in practice, simply remove unhoused people with perceived mental health conditions from the public eye without effectively addressing those mental health conditions and without meeting the urgent need for housing,” read the Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) opposition letter.
“We urge you to reject this bill and instead to take a more holistic, rights-respecting approach to address the lack of resources for autonomy-affirming treatment options and affordable housing,” the letter said.
“Given the racial demographics of California’s homeless population, and the historic over-diagnosing of Black and Latino people with schizophrenia, this plan is likely to place many, disproportionately Black and Brown, people under state control,” HRW’s letter continued.
Some members of the California Association of Mental Health Peer Run Organizations share HRW’s opinion, claiming that the program would “disproportionately affect people of color by imposing another unnecessary court process on an already overloaded and biased system.”
“CARE Court is antithetical to recovery principles, which are based on self-determination and self-direction,” read the DRC’s opposition letter. “The CARE Court proposal is based on the stigma and stereotypes of people living with mental health disabilities and experiencing homelessness.”
“In fact, the bill creates a new pathway for government officials and family members to place people under state control and take away their autonomy and liberty,” HRW warns.
About a month before Umberg and Eggman introduced SB 1338, Gov. Newsom foreshadowed the bill’s arrival in his January budget proposal.
“We are leaning into conservatorships this year,” the governor said. “What’s happening on the streets and sidewalks in our state is unacceptable. I don’t want to see any more people die on the streets and call that compassion.”
”
But homelessness is also incredibly useful for anyone who wants to complain about California. It allows us to say anything and everything we want about our state.
Especially right now. Politicians, journalists, authors, professors, and social media trolls will tell you that California’s homelessness shows the utter failure of, well, take your pick: Democrats, Republicans, new progressive policies, old conservative policies, police, prosecutors, judges, the health system, the housing market, the drug war, rent control, Prop 13, developers, NIMBYs, socialism, capitalism.
The critics may think they are making novel arguments, but making homelessness a hobbyhorse is one of California’s most durable traditions, at least as old as the state itself.
”
https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2022/06/28/stop-using-homelessness-to-hate-on-california/ideas/connecting-california/
”
ichael Shellenberger, a progressive turned right-wing darling. Shellenberger used homelessness and public drug use to argue—in his book San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities and a campaign for governor—that Democrats had caused nothing less than “the breakdown of civilization” on the West Coast.
“It was Democrats, not Republicans, who played the primary role in creating the dominant neoliberal model of government contracting to fragmented and often unaccountable non-profit service providers that have proven financially, structurally and legally incapable of addressing the crisis,” Shellenberger wrote in San Fransicko.
”
Joshua
Special Session of Jan 6th Committee, live now!
https://www.democracynow.org/live/watch_live_surprise_hearing_of_the
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”
Even as it is now, many who are experiencing homelessness know that they have to stay away from what sheter and transitional housing space is available, lest Social Services be given a chance to construct a biography on them and then this be used to support a mental health case agaisnt them.
In municipalities across California now, there are more and more accounts of the unhoused being targetted for police harrassment. Officers are asking them personal things, things which have no possible relation to anything presently at hand which the officer could be concerned about. Officers will ask things like, “How long have you been homeless?” or “Don’t you have relatives around here?” These officers are trying to build a biography on the party, as that is the beginnings of making a mental health case against them. Not all of the unhoused necessarily know right now how important it is to draw a privacy line with police. And not all police take well to someone who does that.
We all want to see that everyone is always housed, and we need a strong public housing offering to contain private real estate gentrification. But before we can get there, broad based public understanding will have to built, so that we are ready for deeper changes in the presumptions upon which our economic system is predicated. Only when we have these changes in understanding can we have universal housing, instead of pscychaitric internment and forced drugging.
And people have to understand how the mental health system is what enforces the dictates of capitalism, and how people are tracked into it by the family.
”
Joshua
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Should be video feed for CA Assembly Health Committee
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/1100-video/video
SB 1338 is slated for 3pm, but they already seem to be in session and they seem to be talking about SB 1014
Anecdotally this seems like a more relaxed committee meeting than the other State Legislature stuff I have watched.
But, now I see that Mark Ghaly sitting in the audience.
They seem to have made some sort of schedule change over this SB1014. But I find any record of this change.
Joshua
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Okay, so now they are talking about Care Courts SB1338
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/1100-video/video
And they have got the same liars as before, Tom Umberg and Mark Ghaly. And it looks like they’ve also got Eggman there today.
Umberg is talking about this from the perspective of the family. And we know that the idea that someone is mentally ill usually starts within the family.
Sounds like Umberg has a family member they have fed into the mental health system.
So Umber explaining the recent amendments:
July 1 2023 for the first cohort of counties. July 1 2024 for the remaining counties. Used to be the accused would get a Public Defender. Now they are to get Legal Aide.
( so in my observation then this is a wretched piece of legislation, but they have pushed the start date out. )
So it sounds like it is Eggman who talks after Eggman.
Yeah, there is some kind of a jump cut in the video, even though they say it is live. They jump from Eggman to Ghaly, then to this guy is the homeless coordinator for West Sacramento. And it is this social worker who pushes the hardest on this idea of “Severe Mental Illness”.
Witnesses are on now making an intense attack against the legislation and its spokes persons!
Joshua
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This Chad Mayes, talks about a family member who was “schizophrenic”, and so this is why the world need coercive treatment. Everything was fine until he stopped taking his meds. So Mayes talks about a balance between civil liberties and a job which has to be done.
Wendy Carrillo,
Joshua
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Chad Mayes is a Republican. He thinks it the right balance, when the ACLU and the Ella Bakker Center are voicing the strongest objection which they can.
Wendy Carrillo, grew up in Los Angeles, read a 1987 LA Times article. The mental health load and the encampments continue to grow. She still seems to support the bill. Seems to object to Reagan closing the mental hospitals.
Chair Jim Wood still seems to support this.
It is as Human Rights Watch says, it is just about removing some people from public view.
Jim Wood wants to accelerate the implementation. Not piecemeal.
This is like Gavin’s Army of 10,000 Contact Tracers and Targeted Testing Into Marginalized Population Groups, but shown naked as it really was intended from before COVID. This was the original idea, the reason he selected Mark Ghaly.
Eggman says that people might be able to “come home”, because of “medication and care”.
Jim Wood talks about 5150’s.
So this passed 9 to 0.
There were a few Assemblymembers who were not present to vote. There was also some kind of disturbance, I think those opposed to Care Courts.
So now it goes to Appropriations. No one has voted against this except Ash Kalra in Judiciary.
So many people go along with this Mental Health, Drugs, Social Workers, Courts, Conservatorship, and people being pressed to give up biographies.
Need to fight this on the ground!
Joshua
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This is unbelievable, they don’t talk about Universal Basic Income or Public Housing, but the people running California are committed to Social Workers, Psychiatrists and Drugging and Psychotherapists, a Mental Hygiene State.
The ACLU, the Ella Baker Center and a long list of civil and disability rights groups giving an impassioned objection to this, but the people running California do not care. They are just tired of the encampments. And they are tired of dealing with people that are products of the mental health system. So the solution then is to expand the mental health system and create special courts to enforce it.
Gavin and Mark Ghaly’s Care Courts is not law but it is close. The only hope now is that it will prove to be unenforceable and will be blocked by higher courts. But how many people will be fed psychiatric neurotoxins before that happens.?
Joshua
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SB1338 status says: “06/21/22 From committee: Do pass and re-refer to Com. on HEALTH. (Ayes 9. Noes 1.) (June 21). Re-referred to Com. on HEALTH.”
But I know that it was passed by Health, 9:0 and referred to appropriations
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Assembly Appropriations
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/
June 29 hearing, but not listed on this
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Chair Chris R. Holden (D)
Vice Chair Frank Bigelow (R)
Recent News:
Governor Newsom’s CARE Court Clears Another Legislative Committee
https://tdpelmedia.com/governor-newsoms-care-court-clears-another-legislative-committee
Washington Post is Right Wing Nonsense News:
https://nypost.com/2022/06/25/californians-start-to-reject-progressive-policiesbut-not-fast-enough/
Joshua
This MIA interview audio is very interesting:
https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/06/jessica-taylor-sexy-but-psycho/
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Listened for the first time to this Susan Eggman before the Assembly Health Committee.
I feel now that she is one of the CA architects trying to build a society where everyone has a case worker, a social worker, and a psychotherapist. The idea is just to break down people’s autonomy and privacy.
It seems to be tied to this cluster of ideas central to NeoLiberalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Eggman
https://www.susaneggman.com/
http://www.joincalifornia.com/candidate/13918
VIDEO
Senator Eggman: Behavioral Health Package Press Conference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDXUkGh1nH8
^ and this video also has the mayors of San Diego and San Francisco.
She speaks for some kind of a movement, and I think it important to understand it to be able to fight it.
Joshua
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Now here, this Senator Kamlager
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZE9GifqRcc
She clearly supports Care Courts and believes in Mental Illness, but I think she is just in error.
Eggman on the other hand, she knows that she is using the idea of mental illness to wage a war.
Here they talk more about Care Courts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjAMey1KIVE
Joshua
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SB1338 Current Status
06/29/22 From committee: Do pass as amended and re-refer to Com. on APPR. (Ayes 14. Noes 0.) (June 28).
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Assembly APPR
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/
Does not list any coming hearings. They seem to be on Wednesdays. There was one on the 29th.
Recent News:
Controversial CARE Court bill gaining momentum in California state Legislature
https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/controversial-care-court-bill-gaining-momentum-in-california-state-legislature/article_7084a9d8-f801-11ec-b161-d382d2b056ab.html
(quite good)
Advocates Argue against the Governor’s Proposed CARE Court
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/06/advocates-argue-against-the-governors-proposed-care-court/
Really Interesting:
No to CARE Court: Meet the Advocate – May 16, 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjAMey1KIVE
And take note, these people are not Psychotherapists, they are Attorneys.
Western Center on Law & Poverty
https://wclp.org/
and then:
Extended Interview: Dr. Ghaly discusses CARE Court
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9iF8hUi1d4
and this:
Senator Kamlager Remarks on SB 1338 CARE Court
clearly she has very strong and very legitimate reservations about Care Court. But why is she still voting for it, what is making these people afraid to oppose it. The only one who has voted against it so far has been Assembly Member Ash Kalra.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZE9GifqRcc
Joshua
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Susan Eggman
Jan 2020, running for the State Senate, and this was before the COVID response.
Seems to be one of her main themes, that homelessness is mental illness. And multiple accounts of her family members who accepted the concept of mental illness for themselves. Usually the unhoused are those who have been cast into the role of family scapegoat. Hearing other things she has said about being a social worker would suggest that she feels that this scapegoating is warranted, and that it is the scapegoats themselves who are at fault, and that this is what underlies her zeal to intern and medicate today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=227f4j0bVHk
Joshua
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“06/30/22 Read second time and amended. Re-referred to Com. on APPR.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
^ now this is new, different from what Health passed. Who read it and where, and who amended it?
So this shows that there is now yet a 5th version:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVersionsCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Assembly APPR
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/
The next hearing they list is Aug 3, and SB1338 Umberg is on it, and it is a very long list.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
What we want is for the clock to run out on.
They made substantial wording changes, and this is not the first time.
Recent News:
Marin allocates $500K for Care Court proposal
https://www.marinij.com/2022/06/30/marin-allocates-500k-for-care-court-proposal/
Controversial CARE Court bill gaining momentum in California state Legislature
https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/controversial-care-court-bill-gaining-momentum-in-california-state-legislature/article_7084a9d8-f801-11ec-b161-d382d2b056ab.html
Newsom’s California Capitol Homelessness Population Doubles; First Time In State’s History: Report
https://www.dailywire.com/news/newsoms-california-capital-homelessness-population-doubles-first-time-in-states-history-report
‘Frustrating and disappointing’: Businesses fed up with Rohnert Park’s response to sanctioned homeless camp
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/frustrating-and-disappointing-businesses-fed-up-with-rohnert-parks-resp/
^ Curious article and pictures
Sept 2021
Capitol Weekly Interview: Susan Talamantes Eggman
https://capitolweekly.net/capitol-weekly-interview-susan-talamantes-eggman/
“and her first job that wasn’t on the family farm started her on a path to working in health care and mental health throughout her life.”
https://sd05.senate.ca.gov/biography
Sen. Eggman’s Legislation Removing Safeguards in California Assisted Suicide Law
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/sen-eggmans-legislation-removing-safeguards-in-california-assisted-suicide-law/
In opposition in the bill analysis is Disability Rights California:
”
Disability Rights California focuses on two issues in its letter of opposition. First, it objects to the removal of the 15-day waiting period to obtain a prescription on the basis that, “Many people requesting assisted suicide have changed their minds—some living decades beyond their prognosis, having achieved a cure for the supposedly “terminal” illness.” Second, they object to the elimination of the final attestation, in which the patient affirms that they are voluntarily taking the lethal drugs at the time of ingestion. According to Disability Rights California, “This removal puts patient autonomy at risk, opening the door to abuse by greedy heirs or abusive caregivers. No reporting, no 3rd party witnesses at time of death make it so no one would ever know if the person changed their mind or if there was coercion.” They also add that, “It is premature and dangerous to make the End of Life Act permanent in the absence of data that would help us better understand the impact of assisted suicide on Californians.”
”
CSU Sacramento
Susan Eggman
Associate Professor
Email: e****@csus.edu
Phone:(916) 278-****
Location:Mariposa Hall 4010
https://catalog.csus.edu/colleges/health-human-services/social-work/
Department:Division of Social Work
Division:College of Health & Human Services
https://catalog.csus.edu/colleges/health-human-services/social-work/
EGGMAN, SUSAN T. (1973), Associate Professor of Social Work, SWRK,B.A., M.S.W., California State University, Stanislaus; Ph.D., Portland State University
My personal take on Eggman is that she is someone who believes that the Family Scapegoats are a social menace, and so they should be persecuted. Being a Social Worker has suited her well because it gives her a platform for telling other people how they should live. And she wants vindication, proof that it is these Family Scapegoats who are in the wrong. So she wants them to be tangled up in courts, to be subjected to gaslighting, and disclosing their affairs to therapists, to be getting neurotoxins induced into their blood stream, and to be put into conservatorship.
If she lived someplace else and was not lesbian, then she would be a Republican.
Joshua
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Among the major new initiatives is Gov. Newsom’s controversial “CARE Court,” a new civil court system to compel treatment of homeless people suffering from mental illness. The courts are part of a broader $2.2 billion approach “for encampment resolutions around the state and new bridge housing to support people going through CARE Court,” according to Newsom’s office.
Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article263070623.html#storylink=cpy
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article263070623.html
Joshua
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So Newsom has signed the CA budget and it sounds like he has money in there for Care Courts, even though it has not yet been passed. But his budget can’t authorize Care Courts. With whatever does pass, that determines what money it gets, not the budget, and that determines how it is to be used and what authority these new courts have.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article263070623.html
”
Among the major new initiatives is Gov. Newsom’s controversial “CARE Court,” a new civil court system to compel treatment of homeless people suffering from mental illness. The courts are part of a broader $2.2 billion approach “for encampment resolutions around the state and new bridge housing to support people going through CARE Court,” according to Newsom’s office.
”
SB-1338
“06/30/22 Read second time and amended. Re-referred to Com. on APPR.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Assembly APPR Aug 3, a very long list
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Recent News:
July 1, Davis Vanguard:
Guest Commentary: Why We Vehemently Oppose the Governor’s ‘CARE Court’ Proposal – and So Should You
”
Sean Geary, a resident of Pacifica, is one of the 161,548 unhoused Californians. When Sean lost his housing, he decided to live in his RV. Since that time, he’s faced daily trauma and indignity — whether from law enforcement discrimination, local elected officials passing anti-unhoused legislation, harassment from housed Pacifica residents, and anxiety over how to meet his basic survival needs. With all this comes stress, which Sean believes has exacerbated his bipolar disorder and has made it harder to get his life back.
As in Sean’s case, people with serious disabilities are living and dying on our streets because real housing and community-based services are unavailable to them — not because they need to be forced into treatment.
The ACLU of Southern California has partnered with other civil rights and disability rights organizations in its vehement opposition to the governor’s “CARE Court” proposal and related Senate Bill 1338 (Umberg and Eggman). This misguided forced-treatment plan would create a system of civil courts in every county in the state. A wide range of individuals, including family members, health care providers, county workers, and law enforcement officers, could refer unhoused people with serious mental health conditions to the courts. People could also be referred after a short-term involuntary hold or an arrest.
Once in court, an unhoused person would face a hearing at which they would be represented by counsel and expected to present evidence, call and cross-examine witnesses, and appeal decisions. A ruling in favor of the person making the referral would subject an unhoused person to court-ordered treatment, including forced medication. The court order would strip people with disabilities of fundamental rights, such as the ability to determine what medications go into one’s body.
The harms of the “CARE Court” framework will inevitably fall hardest on Black, brown, and Indigenous people, who are routinely misdiagnosed with serious mental health disabilities. Entangling people in the legal system would traumatize those who are most heavily impacted by our failed systems. The plan would perpetuate racial disparities though an adversarial court process that does nothing to address the underlying structural conditions that lead to houselessness.
Further, the “CARE Court” framework would divert vital resources away from the state’s responsibility to expand investments in the housing and care people need to get off the streets. It could reduce voluntary service utilization, as many unhoused people would likely avoid service providers who could refer them to a traumatic court proceeding. It is also a pipeline to even more coercive interventions. For example, under the plan, judges could refer people who do not comply with the court-order to conservatorship, a draconian legal status that strips people of the right to make decisions about almost every aspect of their lives.
Proponents of SB 1338 frame this plan as innovative and forward-looking. They’re wrong. A proposal that ties treatment to courts is retrograde. It harks back to a dark era when forced treatment of people with serious mental health conditions was the norm. It would unravel decades of hard-won progress by the disability rights movement to secure self-determination, equality, and dignity for people with disabilities.
California has an affordable housing crisis and unhoused people are paying the consequences of inaction by the state and deference to corporate developers. The people who need help the most can’t afford to wait as the state chases an idea that has failed before. Unhoused community members deserve a plan that is proven to meet their housing and service needs and that truly helps them to heal. That plan is called “Housing First,” and it is the state’s official strategy for addressing houselessness. Housing First principles, as an evidence-based model, require offering safe, permanent housing and services as needed and requested on a voluntary basis, and not making housing contingent on participation in services.
We urge state legislators to invest in what works: housing and voluntary, dignified care — not more courts.
”
Full Opposition Letter w/ signatures (AB2830 was the identical Assembly version of SB1338)
https://www.aclusocal.org/sites/default/files/opposition_letter_to_care_court.pdf
Merced mayor: CARE Court idea will help people with mental illness, drug challenges
https://www.aol.com/news/merced-mayor-care-court-idea-120000541.html
LA City Council Votes to Ban Homeless Encampments Near Schools
https://patch.com/california/los-angeles/la-city-council-votes-ban-homeless-encampments-near-schools-0
Santa Clara County Makes ‘Dramatic’ Investment In Homeless Housing
https://patch.com/california/campbell/santa-clara-county-makes-dramatic-investment-homeless-housing
Livermore Gets State Grant To Help Homeless Students, Their Families
https://patch.com/california/livermore/livermore-gets-state-grant-help-homeless-students-their-families
And what have we here:
Take Some Time to Look Inside Their Hearts
Hospice Social Workers Contemplate Physician Assisted Suicide
Susan T. Eggman 2001
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J010v35n03_04
Eggman did her doctorate in Oregon, then she got such a law passed in CA, over the objections of Disability Rights California and the Catholic Church.
LIFE SUPPORT WITHDRAWAL:
COMMUNICATION AND CONFLICT
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sally-Norton-2/publication/9008064_Life_Support_Withdrawal_Communication_and_Conflict/links/0fcfd50bfab7dbe390000000/Life-Support-Withdrawal-Communication-and-Conflict.pdf
Joshua
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I think this is Eggman at her best:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDXUkGh1nH8
Joshua
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“06/30/22 Read second time and amended. Re-referred to Com. on APPR.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
The next hearing they list is Aug 3, and SB1338 Umberg is on it, and it is a very long list.
S.B.No. 1338Umberg.Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Court Program.
Recent News:
https://patch.com/california/san-diego/morning-report-cleanup-program-gave-homeless-residents-something-rare-hope
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-07-04/vietnamese-homeless-outcasts
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sacramento-homeless-population-17280421.php
And how about Newsom and the budget?
‘Join us in California’: Newsom runs ad in Florida, targets GOP
https://www.kron4.com/news/join-us-in-california-newsom-runs-ad-in-florida-targets-gop/
Newsom’s COVID response was essentially a campaign against Florida’s Ron DeSantis.
video 3:32
California Politics: Newsom signs state’s budget, additions made to November ballots
https://www.abc10.com/video/news/local/california/calmatters/california-politics-newsom-signs-states-budget-additions-made-to-november-ballots/103-99278722-01d8-4430-8dff-08c5358e1adf
Budget
https://www.ebudget.ca.gov/
Approved by Legislature and Signed by Governor, 152 pages, and this is just summary
https://www.ebudget.ca.gov/FullBudgetSummary.pdf
page 82 and 83
• Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) Court—$64.7 million
General Fund in 2022-23 and roughly $49 million General Fund ongoing for the
Department of Health Care Services, the Judicial Branch, and the Department of
Aging to administer CARE Court, contingent on adoption of statutory changes. The
Administration continues to work with Judicial Council and counties to estimate
costs associated with this new court process. See the Judicial Branch Chapter for
more information.
^ so this is vague, but it sounds like $49 million, but contingent on passing statutory changes.
Judicial Branch, page 107 – 111
on page 109
”
• Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Court—$39.5 million
General Fund in 2022-23 and $37.7 million ongoing for the Judicial Branch to
conduct CARE court hearings and provide resources for self-help centers,
contingent on adoption of statutory changes. The Administration continues to work
with the Judicial Council and counties to estimate costs associated with this new
court process. See the Health and Human Services Chapter for more information.
”
So they don’t seem to have subverted the need to pass something, as this is contingent on statutory changes. But this is only the budget summary.
Joshua
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“06/30/22 Read second time and amended. Re-referred to Com. on APPR.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/#:~:text=Welcome%20to%20Committee%20on%20Appropriations,-Committee%20Jurisdiction%3A%20Primary&text=The%20Appropriations%20Committee%20is%20located,(916)%20319%2D2081.
The next hearing they list is Aug 3, and SB1338 Umberg is on it, and it is a very long list.
S.B.No. 1338Umberg.Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Court Program.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
set for Aug 3rd hearing.
Recent News:
San Diego launches homeless resources website
https://statescoop.com/san-diego-homeless-resources-website/
Morning Report: Cleanup Program Gave Homeless Residents Something Rare — Hope
https://patch.com/california/san-diego/morning-report-cleanup-program-gave-homeless-residents-something-rare-hope
Davis Vanguard
Sunday Commentary: The Homelessness Issue – Housing First Versus Mental Health and Addiction First
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/07/sunday-commentary-the-homelessness-issue-housing-first-versus-mental-health-and-addiction-first/
”
By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
Twice now in the past two years we have seen major efforts at coerced treatment in California raised as a solution or at least part of a solution to homelessness. Last year and earlier this year, we saw a Yolo County pilot project sponsored by the DA to create a coerced treatment for drug addiction.
This year, perhaps more insidious because it is statewide and backed by the governor, there is CARE Court, which provides administrative funding but not treatment funding for mental health court and coerced services in that realm.
The problem is not only will the legislative not come with proper funding that is in great need for mental health services, most experts do not believe that forced treatment is the answer.
Susan Mizner, Executive Director and Founder of the ACLU Disability Rights Program, said, “We know what works. We know that Housing First works. We know that patient and persistent outreach works. We know that harm reduction works and we know that we currently don’t have nearly enough money for any of those things in the system.”
She argued, “We can’t afford to spend money on this incredibly ridiculous bureaucracy that is just going to add more hoops that is just going to stigmatize and criminalize more people.”
Jay Caspian Kang this week had a brilliant op-ed in the NY Times – “California’s Fight Against Homelessness Has Turned Desperate and Dangerous.”
He argues there is an “emerging ideological battle line in the homelessness crisis, not only in California, but also throughout the country.”
One the one side, “There are housing-first advocates who believe that a greater supply of subsidized, supportive and affordable housing is necessary to end homelessness not only for the people on the streets but, perhaps more important, also for the people who are about to be short on a rent payment and will soon be living in their cars, in motels or in shelters.”
The other side, which he calls “mental health and addiction first,” believes “that a liberal and permissive culture around homelessness in California’s cities has opened the floodgates for mentally ill and drug addicted people from around the country to set up camp in San Francisco and Los Angeles.”
Until now, “the housing-first people have largely won the significant battles in both the federal government and the state of California, which both adopted their policies in the mid-2010s. But there are signs that some of this might be changing, in large part because of people’s frustrations with the lack of visible change.”
Just like Jeff Reisig’s various iterations of the drug treatment plan, CARE Court seems destined to pass, because the politicians overwhelmingly like it.
However, there has been considerable pushback from legal, human rights and disabilities rights groups.
Kang cites a joint letter from 40 organizations that advocate for homeless people, in which they called the bill a “system of coerced, court-ordered treatment that strips people with mental health disabilities of their right to make their own decisions about their lives” and pointed out that the bill “wouldn’t even guarantee housing for its graduates.”
“It’s not voluntary,” Eve Garrow of the A.C.L.U. told Kang. “The governor’s administration is shrouding or cloaking this in language that makes it seem empowering and voluntary, but in reality, you’re hauled into court.”
Human Rights Watch was a leading opponent of the drug plan as well, and they called this process “convoluted” and argued that “highly subjective” criteria could get someone trapped into the CARE Court system.
As Kang put it, “The CARE Court bill can wrap itself in the language of help and empathy, but, at its core, it is a way to force people who have not committed any crime, nor have proved themselves to be an imminent threat to the public, to be coerced into a court proceeding that will place many of them on powerful medications under the threat of a conservatorship that would take away many of their freedoms.”
Moreover, he notes, “If California cannot handle the current number of mentally ill homeless people, what will it do when the 7,000 to 12,000 more…”
Senator Thomas Umberg who along with Senator Susan Eggman has sponsored SB 1338 to authorize the CARE Court, seemingly acknowledges the problem.
Kang writes, “Umberg, for his part, acknowledges that finding those workers, whether psychiatrists or social workers, will be one of the biggest challenges facing the CARE Court system. He says the governor is investing in training new workers, but given the current shortage of civic workers, especially when it comes to homeless services, it’s difficult to imagine there would be anything close to enough trained professionals to fill the role. The state’s continuing conundrum is that everyone wants to do something about the homeless so long as the person carrying out that work is someone else.”
He adds, “The other major challenge Umberg noted was around the CARE Court’s housing plan for people in the system. Much of the criticism over the bill, especially from the A.C.L.U., comes from the fact that there would be no real guarantee that a CARE Court graduate would receive any form of housing.”
As Kang points out, “If the state cannot guarantee a homeless, mentally ill person a place to stay, how can it really compel that person to seek regular treatments or check in with a counselor and the court, especially when the state agrees that homelessness, itself, is a main driver of the symptoms of mental illness?”
Kang adds, “This is the question that CARE Courts put in front of Californians: How much are you willing to play fast and loose with the civil liberties of chronically homeless, mentally ill people?”
Kang is also not sold on housing-first either: “The billions of dollars the state spends per year on homelessness solutions includes significant investments in housing. But while housing-first policies can provide relief for many people who are about to lose their homes or fall in and out of homelessness, they are not a panacea that will keep chronically unhoused, mentally ill people off the streets. (To be fair, no serious housing-first advocates would ever say that their approach could solve every problem.) “
He argues, “This is why the political mood in the state has swung so quickly toward a type of desperation that says something — anything — must be done.”
In my view CARE Court is not the answer, but while I can sympathize with the frustrations around the intractability of homelessness, locking people into a secure facility is not the answer. Unfortunately, everyone wants the problem to go away and no one wants to pay for the solution.
The truth is we have both a housing crisis and a mental health care shortage. Until we deal with both, homelessness is going to continue to be a huge and intractable problem. But neither the public nor the politicians want to be honest about this.
”
Joshua
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This shows how dangerous this “mental health” idea has gotten.
Merced mayor: CARE Court idea will help people with mental illness, drug challenges
https://www.aol.com/news/merced-mayor-care-court-idea-120000541.html
Joshua
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Set for Assembly Appropriations Committee, in a very long list, Aug 3.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
I kind of suspect that this is already fixed, as the entire list is to be approved.
Recent News:
Groups Unite To Oppose Landmark California Mental Health Legislation
https://texasmetronews.com/36125/groups-unite-to-oppose-landmark-california-mental-health-legislation%EF%BF%BC/
published 8 hours ago, but it seems to be a repeat story
Joshua
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More Recent News:
Newsom running ads in Florida, I guess attacking Ron DeSantis and the far right agenda. Newsom is a curious one, but it is also because he cannot be defeated here.
https://www.cltampa.com/news/california-gov-gavin-newsom-urges-florida-residents-to-move-to-his-state-where-we-still-believe-in-freedom-13756063
Gavin says that if they believe in freedom they have to fight DeSantis and his ilk, or move to California. Okay, but Gavin is doing everything he can to make California into a medical police state.
North Coast Journal Homelessness Blog
https://www.northcoastjournal.com/NewsBlog/archives/homelessness/
https://www.northcoastjournal.com/NewsBlog/archives/2022/03/04/newsom-unveils-completely-new-strategy-for-californias-mental-health-crisis#readerComments
Joshua
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Set for CA Assembly Appropriations Committee, for Aug 3. A very long list.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearing
I have a feeling that this is basically rigged. Being nearly a one party legislature, the real debates are done off camera and this is the list of what they have already decided to pass without debate or dissent.
Noting that, Care Courts has been heavily amended 4 times, and always off camera so you never hear what debate their may have been. So all hope is not lost, as things could still change between now and Aug 3.
No Recent News
Joshua
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Set for CA Assembly Appropriations Committee, for Aug 3. A very long list.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
No Recent News
https://stateofreform.com/featured/2022/04/sen-eggman-qa-behavioral-health-bills-conservatorships/
Q&A: Sen. Eggman discusses new behavioral health bill package and mental health conservatorships
Sen. Susan Eggman: “My priority for this legislative session has really been a focus on mental health and seeing what we can do to repair the mental health care system. In the Budget Subcommittee on Health and Human Services … we’re working hard to get the budget out. As the crisis that we’ve seen on our streets has continued to increase … I really try to focus this year on … [really looking] across the entire continuum of care at the spectrum of all the places where people can fall out of our system, and see if we can make repairs to really improve outcomes for people’s lives.
…
SOR: You’ve been an advocate for the treatment of unhoused individuals with severe mental illnesses and addiction. There’s been opposition to the bill regarding court-ordered treatment for these individuals–how have you responded and how will you continue to respond to the opposition to this bill?
SE: “We are going to continue to work with the opposition. We have always had some pushback with those who are very concerned about civil liberties, as we all are. And that is why, especially in the CARE court, it is to try to keep people in the lowest level of care and to have earlier intervention with psychotic behavior. Any clinician or any service provider will tell you that the earlier that you can intervene, the more likely it is to be able to help that person return to a higher level of stability and functioning. So the longer people languish without care on the streets, the worse their chances for positive outcomes are. We want to get people out of jails–our jails and our prisons should not be our biggest psychiatric facilities. So I think part of it is just kind of being able to talk about this as it is one more tool in the toolbox.”
SOR: Why is it so important to address behavioral health in California right now?
SE: “I think for everything there is a season. We created our [mental health conservatorship] laws in the 1960s. A lot has changed since then. We know a lot more now, our treatments are a lot better now. We shouldn’t be trying to deal with the problems of today with laws and rules that haven’t haven’t had much update since the 1960s. We’re facing an unprecedented amount of funds coming into our system, and I think there’s only so long you can send … billions of dollars down to the service providers without trying different things to be able to impact people’s lives in a more positive way. I think any Californian you talk to right now would say we have a crisis on our hands as it relates to mental health issues. And again, that small nexus that exists around homelessness and mental health, they are two separate issues a lot of times, but there is a Venn diagram on which those things intersect. The time is now, our resources are ready, our laws are ready to be updated. I think advocates realize that hospital systems are asking for it, law enforcement is asking for it, and families are asking for it.”
Joshua
David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart denounce the notion that these spree shootings are caused by “Mental Illness”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_qFeFgmKf8
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Set for CA Assembly Appropriations Committee, for Aug 3. A very long list.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Recent News:
Column: ‘No treatment until tragedy’ is our mental health system. CARE Court could change that
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-07-11/california-mental-health-newsom-care-courts
^ If we are going to start incarcerating people for the future crimes they might commit, then all hope is lost, and this is what the Mental Health System means.
Bee readers respond to Sacramento homelessness, Rocklin Unified teacher, CARE Court
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article263270473.html
To help the homeless, we need CARE courts. Urge your representatives to vote yes on SB 1338
https://www.desertsun.com/story/opinion/contributors/valley-voice/2022/07/10/care-courts-help-californias-homeless-support-sb-1338/7827566001/
Not enough work is being done to show people how harmful the mental health system is, and to protect people from it.
Joshua
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Set for CA Assembly Appropriations Committee, for Aug 3. A very long list.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Recent News:
Sacramento Homeless Grows As City/County Spend Million$ More on Accommodating Them
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/sacramento-homeless-grows-as-city-county-spend-million-more-on-accommodating-them/
Oakland homeless encampment goes up in flames again
https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-homeless-encampment-goes-up-in-flames-again
California Democratic Party Opposes Online Sports Betting Amendment Measure Prop. 27
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/california-democratic-party-opposes-online-sports-betting-amendment-measure-prop-27/
7/12 but originally 3/7
What we’re reading: California legislature proposes forcing some homeless people into care facilities
https://tcu360.com/2022/03/07/what-were-reading-california-legislature-proposes-forcing-some-homeless-people-into-care-facilities/
Joshua
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Set for CA Assembly Appropriations Committee, for Aug 3. A very long list.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Recent News:
https://www.kron4.com/news/police-find-underground-bunker-full-of-stolen-goods/
Underground bunker full of stolen goods found at homeless camp: photos
SAN JOSE, Calif. (KRON) — San Jose Police officers recovered stolen firearms, tools, and equipment from an underground bunker at a homeless encampment in San Jose on Tuesday, according to a tweet from SJPD.
San Jose Police patrol officers continued to follow up on a commercial burglary that happened Monday. The investigation took police to a homeless encampment near Coyote Creek and Wool Creek Drive.
Warning FOX News:
2 viral videos paint disturbing picture of California’s homeless crisis
https://www.ktvu.com/news/2-viral-videos-paint-disturbing-picture-of-californias-homeless-crisis
IF WE ARE GOING TO START POLICING PEOPLE PSYCHIATRICLY AND THEN INCARCERATING PEOPLE FOR WHAT THEY MIGHT DO, THEN ALL HOPE IS LOST!
Joshua
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Set for Assembly Appropriations Committee, Aug 3, alphabetical by author, Umberg SB1338
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
CARE Court: Can California counties make it work?
https://calmatters.org/health/2022/07/care-court-california/
^ This is a good article, not hardcore anti-mental health, but it raises the questions the counties are, no resources but mandates.
Reservations from Counties
https://www.counties.org/sites/main/files/file-attachments/sb_1338_joint_concerns_asm_approps_letter_7-13-22.pdf?1657743565
“We’re going to release them back into the streets but we expect them to continue to adhere to the care plan and continue to be taking medication,” said Shonique Williams, a statewide organizer for Dignity and Power Now, who opposes the proposal. “But they’re going back into survival mode.”
Joshua
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SB-1338 status remains unchanged.
Recent News:
Local Service Organizations Tapped For Statewide Homelessness Initiative
https://www.mymotherlode.com/news/local/2675417/local-service-organizations-tapped-for-statewide-homelessness-initiative.html
looks like we get one free LA Times view per day
Mental Health Money
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-07-10/california-proposition-63-mental-health-money
Grand jury: Mental health failures are making Alameda County’s homeless crisis worse
https://www.sfchronicle.com/eastbay/article/Alameda-mental-health-homelessness-17293790.php
Causes of Homelessness
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-07-11/new-book-links-homelessness-city-prosperity
Less Housing for Mentally Ill Homeless
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-07-12/board-and-cares-closing-amid-homelessness-crisis-los-angeles-county
California considering mandatory mental treatment
Courts would decide whether to order medication and housing for the severely mentally ill
https://wng.org/roundups/california-considering-mandatory-mental-treatment-1657733513
“The pandemic and the introduction of fentanyl into the drug scene has just wiped out people’s mental health”
I know very little about fentanyl. But I can’t see that “mental health” treatment or conservatorship would be appropriate. Seems like those would be just ways of discarding due process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl
“California’s CARE Court bill aims to provide preemptive treatment before an involuntary hospital stay, an arrest, or guardianship, which restricts a person’s right to make decisions such as consenting to medical treatments, owning property, marrying, voting, or choosing where to live.”
”
Under the CARE Court program, a concerned party could ask a county court to order a clinical evaluation of a person struggling with a severe psychotic disorder. Concerned parties might include family members, licensed behavioral health providers, charity workers, or first responders. If the court agreed that the person needed treatment, the county and the participant would establish a one-year care plan for providing medicine and housing with the help of a support person.
Opponents of the proposal do not like that the court could order “involuntary treatment” such as medication for severely ill patients who are resistant to care. Human Rights Watch said the system would “rob individuals of dignity and autonomy” through “a system of involuntary, coerced treatment.”
”
Human Rights Watch Opposition
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/12/hrw-opposition-care-court-california-sb-1338
Union Rescue Mission
https://urm.org/
”
Under the CARE Court program, a concerned party could ask a county court to order a clinical evaluation of a person struggling with a severe psychotic disorder. Concerned parties might include family members, licensed behavioral health providers, charity workers, or first responders. If the court agreed that the person needed treatment, the county and the participant would establish a one-year care plan for providing medicine and housing with the help of a support person.
Opponents of the proposal do not like that the court could order “involuntary treatment” such as medication for severely ill patients who are resistant to care. Human Rights Watch said the system would “rob individuals of dignity and autonomy” through “a system of involuntary, coerced treatment.”
”
”
Bram Begonia, president of the Bay Area Rescue Mission, said he doesn’t believe involuntary treatment will be as effective as his organization’s holistic approach, which emphasizes helping people voluntarily transform their mind, body, and soul. Begonia said recovery has two basic steps: the person struggling with mental health issues must admit there is a problem and want a solution.
“Those two things seem to be very overlooked from a human rights standpoint in this bill,” Begonia said.
”
https://www.bayarearescue.org/
This is very true minor legal problems often derail the lives of those with limited resources and social backup!
https://www.glide.org/bridging-the-civil-justice-gap/
Joshua
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SB-1338 status remains unchanged.
Recent News:
FORMER NASCAR DRIVER ALLEGEDLY MURDERED BY CALIFORNIA HOMELESS MAN
https://www.outkick.com/former-nascar-driver-allegedly-murdered-by-california-homeless-man/
More housing isn’t the solution to homelessness — it’s treatment
https://nypost.com/2022/07/15/more-housing-isnt-the-solution-to-homelessness-its-treatment/
”
In a new paper, two University of California researchers claim that addiction and mental illness are not the cause of homelessness. Rather, the increasing number of people sleeping on the streets and in parks is merely due to a lack of affordable housing.
”
but this author disputes that:
”
Having spent 13 years on the front lines running one of California’s largest programs for homeless women and children, and in five years of research since, I have found that the “Housing solves homelessness” myth has unequivocally devastated lives and communities and has squandered billions in annual taxpayer funding.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development rolled out Housing First — more aptly titled “Housing Only” — in 2013, promising it would eliminate homelessness within a decade. But HUD’s Annual Homeless Assessment Report paints a very different picture. Under Housing First, the nation’s unsheltered homeless population — largely those living on the streets — rose by 20.5%, despite a 200% increase in federal homelessness assistance spending in the decade leading up to 2019 and despite a 42.7% increase in the number of permanent housing units dedicated to the homeless during the 2014–2019 period.
”
City of Lakeport clears homeless camp from Clear Lake shoreline
https://www.lakeconews.com/news/73125-city-of-lakeport-clears-homeless-camp-from-clear-lake-shoreline
How California Politicians Created a Homelessness Crisis
Cumbersome regulations make housing in California too expensive to build.
https://fee.org/articles/how-california-politicians-created-a-homelessness-crisis/
^ Warning, the above connects with the Washington Examiner, which is owned by the Unification Church. It is a mouth piece for the far Right.
Subscription only:
https://www.dailybreeze.com/2022/07/15/the-botched-promise-of-proposition-63/
Joshua
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Wait, are you saying that HOMELESSNESS could be caused by LACK OF AFFORDABLE HOMES? Woah, dude, that’s CRAZY TALK!
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I would say that it is also caused by people being made into the family scapegoat. And that is also the reason that we don’t take action to fix the economic problems which cause homelessness. There is a moral dimension, besides the economic dimension. And it is because of the moral dimension that we don’t remedy the economic dimension.
And this State Senator Susan Eggman ( D Stockton) seems to have made a career for herself by targeting family scapegoats, both the unhoused, and those reaching the end of life.
SB-1338 Umberg status remains unchanged.
Recent News:
As police crack down on homelessness, unhoused end up in Mojave desert
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/18/california-homelessness-crisis-mojave-desert
Move thousands of homeless people into landmark L.A. Sears building? Some say no way
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-07-18/thousands-homeless-sears-boyle-heights-opposition
Federal Judge Agrees to Disqualify Herself after Husband’s Verbal Attack on Unhoused – Petition Remains Demanding City and County of Sacramento Protect Homeless from Extreme Heat
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/07/federal-judge-agrees-to-disqualify-herself-after-husbands-verbal-attack-on-unhoused-petition-remains-demanding-city-and-county-of-sacramento-protect-homeless-from-extreme-heat/
Eggman:
Q&A: Sen. Eggman discusses new behavioral health bill package and mental health conservatorships
https://stateofreform.com/featured/2022/04/sen-eggman-qa-behavioral-health-bills-conservatorships/
SOR: Why is it so important to address behavioral health in California right now?
SE: “I think for everything there is a season. We created our [mental health conservatorship] laws in the 1960s. A lot has changed since then. We know a lot more now, our treatments are a lot better now. We shouldn’t be trying to deal with the problems of today with laws and rules that haven’t haven’t had much update since the 1960s. We’re facing an unprecedented amount of funds coming into our system, and I think there’s only so long you can send … billions of dollars down to the service providers without trying different things to be able to impact people’s lives in a more positive way. I think any Californian you talk to right now would say we have a crisis on our hands as it relates to mental health issues. And again, that small nexus that exists around homelessness and mental health, they are two separate issues a lot of times, but there is a Venn diagram on which those things intersect. The time is now, our resources are ready, our laws are ready to be updated. I think advocates realize that hospital systems are asking for it, law enforcement is asking for it, and families are asking for it.”
Joshua
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Umberg SB-1338 status remains unchanged.
Recent News:
County Officials Are Skeptical Over Gov. Newsom’s CARE Court Program (seems to be a reprint)
https://www.kqed.org/news/11919816/county-officials-are-skeptical-over-gov-newsoms-care-court-program
Sacramento’s homeless population soars by 67% in three years and is now HIGHER than San Francisco while robbery rockets 42% and rapes nearly double amid drug taking epidemic
Sacramento has a little over 5,000 homeless in the city limits living in vehicles and tents. That’s slightly higher than the 4,400 in San Francisco
However, the number becomes more stark when factoring in the city’s population numbers – only 525,000 people live in Sacramento versus San Francisco’s 874,000
Local Democrats blame the surge on a lack of affordable housing, but other experts say it’s down to drugs
Sacramento DA Anne Marie Schubert says the problem is on drug abuse and a mental health crisis
She is running as an independent for California Attorney General
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11026705/Sacramento-homeless-population-67-higher-San-Fran-activists-blame-surging-rents.html
1 Killed, 1 Injured In Shooting At Homeless Camp In Solano County
https://patch.com/california/benicia/1-killed-1-injured-shooting-homeless-camp-solano-county
California Right-to-Repair bill quietly killed in committee (Susan Eggman)
https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/01/california_repair_bill/
(an unusual idea and hard to implement, but other states have done this)
**********************************************
About Mental Health and Economics
As I see it:
There is no such thing as Mental Illness, but we are turning lots of other things into Mental Illness.
For one thing, drug addiction is not Mental Illness. But we are acting like it is, particularly with this Care Courts homelessness program. And Care Courts can involve court ordered drugging!
We have a broken economic system, broken since the 1870’s, and becoming more and more unworkable each decade. The COVID crash was the last straw. This is not Individual Mental Illness, but it is mass hysteria. We are treating poverty and homelessness as Mental Illness.
And then we have the abuses and scapegoating of the middle class family. This is not Mental Illness, but we are treating the survivors as though they suffer from Mental Illness.
Joshua
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California Umberg SB-1338 status remains unchanged, alphabetical by author, Aug 3.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Recent News:
Sacramento Mayor Does Bait-and-Switch on Remote City Homeless Shelter
‘The Mayor is pushing this culture next to the Children’s Receiving Home’
By Katy Grimes, July 20, 2022 8:21 am
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/sacramento-mayor-does-bait-and-switch-on-remote-city-homeless-shelter/
Welcome to the Hotel California
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2022/07/20/685943/The-homeless-population-in-Long-Beach-California-has-increased-62-pcnt-since-2020
(We need a strong public housing offering, to buffet private gentrification. We don’t allow market forces to control agricultural land, we can’t let them control housing either.)
Sacramento sees record rise in homelessness with ‘majority’ in tents
By Lee Brown
July 19, 2022 8:56am
Joshua
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California Umberg SB-1338 status remains unchanged, alphabetical by author, Aug 3.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Recent News:
7/21
New Study: Despite Billions Spent, Project Homekey Providing No Way Home for State’s Homeless
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-despite-billions-spent-project-homekey-providing-no-way-home-for-states-homeless-301590660.html
( long before Care Courts was on the table, I had always felt that these kind of programs were intended to funnel people into the mental health system )
https://www.pacificresearch.org/
the study
https://www.pacificresearch.org/new-study-despite-billions-spent-project-homekey-providing-no-way-home-for-states-homeless/
27 page pdf
https://www.pacificresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Homekey_Final.pdf
^ page 16, the above study supports Care Courts because of course Care Courts is about internment and using the concept of Mental Health to delegitimate people.
Joshua
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California Umberg SB-1338 status remains unchanged, alphabetical by author, Aug 3.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Recent News:
Judge: Homeless Oakland camp tenants can’t be evicted without relocation plan
Temporary restraining order against Caltrans extended to late August
https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/07/22/judge-homeless-oakland-camp-tenants-cant-be-evicted-without-relocation-plan/
Woman, 23, Arrested After Death Of Her Newborn At Lodi Homeless Camp
https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2022/07/21/woman-23-arrested-after-death-of-newborn-at-lodi-homeless-camp/
Hate crime charge in fatal LA shooting of homeless person
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/hate-crime-charge-fatal-la-shooting-homeless-person-87202437
Bay Briefing: Where are the homeless people in this wealthy East Bay town?
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Briefing-Where-are-the-homeless-in-wealthy-17318559.php
Joshua
Joshua
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California Umberg SB-1338 status remains unchanged, alphabetical by author, Aug 3.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Recent News:
Gavin is a loose cannon!
Gavin Newsom’s plan to save the Constitution by trolling the Supreme Court
https://www.vox.com/2022/7/25/23277211/supreme-court-gavin-newsom-sb-8-abortion-guns-california-assault-rifle-law
Human Rights Watch’s Opposition to CARE Court (CA SB 1338) after careful review of most recent amendments
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/07/22/human-rights-watchs-opposition-care-court-ca-sb-1338
City Residents Refuse to Press Charges Against Homeless Criminals
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/city-residents-refuse-to-press-charges-against-homeless-criminals/
Homeless people wait as Los Angeles lets thousands of federal housing vouchers go unused
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-07-25/emergency-housing-vouchers-story
Homeless in California: Americans forced to camp in the desert – podcast | NewFGN News
https://freshgooglenews.com/homeless-in-california-americans-forced-to-camp-in-the-desert-podcast-new-fgn-news/
28 min audio
Homeless in California: the Americans forced to camp in the desert
https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2022/jul/25/homeless-in-california-the-americans-forced-to-camp-in-the-desert-podcast
5 unhoused people die everyday in Los Angeles County
Lancaster CA, use zoom outs to see where this is, 10 miles east of Santa Clarita, getting close to Barstow.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lancaster, CA/@34.7000205,-118.2018308,12z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x80c25ab168e88041:0x58c472cf7d0b3e07!8m2!3d34.6867846!4d-118.1541632
Johsua
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California Umberg SB-1338 status remains unchanged, alphabetical by author, Aug 3.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
Editorial: The false promise of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s CARE courts
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-07-26/newsom-care-courts-false-promise
Governor Newsom calls for large Oakland encampment to be cleared
https://news.yahoo.com/governor-newsom-calls-large-oakland-131704240.html
Is San Francisco’s homeless plan on the right path? Civil liberties may stand in the way
https://www.sfexaminer.com/our_sections/forum/opinion/is-san-franciscos-homeless-plan-on-the-right-path-civil-liberties-may-stand-in-the/article_24a74000-f7d1-11ec-97e8-7f653bc39f99.html
Civil liberties concerns poised to kill proposals to get people with mental illness off the street
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/mental-health-bills-california-17262216.php
THERE IS NOT ENOUGH OF AN ANTI-MENTAL HEALTH MOVEMENT
Joshua
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California Umberg SB-1338 status remains unchanged, alphabetical by author, Aug 3.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
No New News
Joshua
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California Umberg SB-1338 status remains unchanged, alphabetical by author, Aug 3.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Recent News
California Supreme Court Chief Justice Doesn’t Want a Second Term
https://www.thebharatexpressnews.com/california-supreme-court-chief-justice-doesnt-want-a-second-term-2/
LA Council Defers Final Vote On Homeless Encampment Ban Near Schools
https://patch.com/california/los-angeles/la-council-defers-final-vote-homeless-encampment-ban-near-schools
430 New Homeless Shelter Beds Open In San Francisco
https://patch.com/california/san-francisco/430-new-homeless-shelter-beds-open-san-francisco
Joshua
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California Umberg SB-1338 status remains unchanged, alphabetical by author, Aug 3.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Baby boomers facing spike in homelessness: “As much as we try, we might be stuck”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/baby-boomers-homelessness/
Joshua
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There is this guy they say is Gavin’s Mental Health Advisor, and he has some Online Mental Health Startup. Though your phone I think they audit you, kind a like Scientology. This seems to be part of where Care Courts came from.
I posted some about this before. Now trying to find it again.
Might be related
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/nov/07/the-dawn-of-tappigraphy-does-your-smartphone-know-how-you-feel-before-you-do
also
https://www.talkspace.com/
”
Talkspace is an online and mobile therapy company based in New York City. It was founded by Oren and Roni Frank in 2012. Talkspace users have access to licensed therapists through the website or mobile app on iOS and Android.
”
^ these are different founders.
Mental-health monitoring goes mobile
Startup Ginger.io analyzes smartphone data to remotely predict when patients with mental illnesses are symptomatic
This Startup Wants To Track Your Smartphone — To Improve Your Mental Health
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/mindstrong-health-launch
https://journalbipolardisorders.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40345-019-0164-x
https://www.ableto.com/
https://psychcentral.com/news/mobile-phone-based-interventions-in-mental-health
Mental Health Apps Are Exploding in Popularity, but Are They Effective?
https://news.mit.edu/2014/mental-health-monitoring-goes-mobile-0716
This stuff is like Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and 1984 combined.
But not sure how to find the one that specifically connect to Gavin and to show this.
THis is based in San Francisco, but not sure it is the right one.
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ginger-io
Governor Newsom Promotes Physical Fitness and Mental Well-Being with Advisory Council
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/01/31/governor-newsom-promotes-physical-fitness-and-mental-well-being-with-advisory-council/
I am sure that this kind of stuff is all very similar to Scientology Auditing.
This could be the guy, Bill Resnick, Aspen Institute, very much a Gates – Walton affair.
https://www.aspeninstitute.org/our-people/william-resnick/
– and on the advisory board of UCLA’s Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital.
Michael J. Stubbs
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-j-stubbs-esq-327a643
InsightLA
https://insightla.org/teacher/bill-resnick-md-mba/
Rick Warren is where the Recovery Movement and UC Irvine’s Integrative Psychiatry Program fuse together with the Born Again Movement.
Gavin Newsom seem attracted to the place where the New Age Movement joins with Mental Health and Recovery.
And what these two conjunctures have in common is that they both prey on the poor and on the survivors of abuse.
Gavin has always presented himself as Liberal Democrat. But his first wife was a Far Right Republican.
Joshua
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Bill Resnick
https://insightla.org/teacher/bill-resnick-md-mba/
Gavin’s Advisory Board, also includes
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/01/31/governor-newsom-promotes-physical-fitness-and-mental-well-being-with-advisory-council/
Dr. Dan Siegel, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding Co-Director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center
https://drdansiegel.com/
https://drdansiegel.com/mindsight/
”
What’s Mindsight?
“Mindsight” is a term coined by Dr. Dan Siegel to describe our human capacity to perceive the mind of the self and others. It is a powerful lens through which we can understand our inner lives with more clarity, integrate the brain, and enhance our relationships with others. Mindsight is a kind of focused attention that allows us to see the internal workings of our own minds. It helps us get ourselves off of the autopilot of ingrained behaviors and habitual responses. It lets us “name and tame” the emotions we are experiencing, rather than being overwhelmed by them.
”
What’s Interpersonal Neurobiology?
Interpersonal neurobiology, a term coined by Dr. Siegel in The Developing Mind, 1999, is an interdisciplinary field which seeks to understand the mind and mental health. This field is based on science but is not constrained by science. What this means is that we attempt to construct a picture of the “whole elephant” of human reality. We build on the research of different disciplines to reveal the details of individual components, while also assembling these pieces to create a coherent view of the whole.
The Mindsight Institute
Through the Mindsight Institute, Dr. Siegel offers a scientifically-based way of understanding human development. The Mindsight Institute serves as the organization from which interpersonal neurobiology first developed and it continues to be a key source for learning in this area. The Mindsight Institute links science, clinical practice, education, the arts, and contemplation, serving as an educational hub from which these various domains of knowing and practice can enrich their individual efforts. Through the Mindsight Institute’s online program, people from six continents participate weekly in our global conversation about the ways to create more health and compassion in the world.
https://www.mindsightinstitute.com/
There is still another shrink that is influencing Gavin that I have not located yet.
Joshua
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California Umberg SB-1338 status remains unchanged, alphabetical by author, Aug 3.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Editorial: Don’t count on Newsom’s CARE Courts to save San Francisco
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Newsom-CARE-court-California-SF-17339651.php
Monkeypox, CARE court, social media accountability: What to watch as California lawmakers return
https://www.kcra.com/article/monkeypox-care-court-social-media-accountability-what-to-watch-as-california-lawmakers-return/40758656#
”
Gov. Newsom’s CARE Court push
Governor Gavin Newsom’s proposal to get the severely mentally ill off the streets or out of jail and into treatment has just a couple of obstacles left in the legislative process. CARE Court would establish a new judicial branch in all California counties to provide court-ordered care to an estimated 7,000 to 12,000 people. Opponents have raised concerns that a lack of housing and workforce could falter the plan.
”
Human Rights Watch’s Opposition to CARE Court
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/07/22/human-rights-watchs-opposition-care-court-ca-sb-1338
Skid row homeless shelter pleads for water donations amid heat
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-08-01/midnight-mission-running-out-of-water-drought-story
Looks like we get one free LA Times view per day
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-07-18/jails-mental-health-los-angeles-county-diversion
More housing isn’t the solution to homelessness — it’s treatment
https://nypost.com/2022/07/15/more-housing-isnt-the-solution-to-homelessness-its-treatment/
This idea of “mental illness” is always used to delegitimate and attack those who have the least power in our society.
What Michael Shellenberger is saying in his book is just plain wrong. I only post about it because I see the problem with Gavin and his mental health police state:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/06/california-governor-race-shellenberger-homelessness-san-francisco/661164/
https://twitter.com/shellenbergermd/status/1501260576617480193
Tom Insel, that was the name I’d gotten from Shellenberger
Joshua
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Thomas Insel, cofounder of Mindstrong.
States of Mind by Mindstrong: Episode 2
https://mindstrong.com/
Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health
On the rear flap of the dust jacket of Insel’s book it says,
“Since May 2019, Dr. Insel has been a special advisor to California Governor Gavin Newsom and chair of the Steinberg Institute in Sacramento, California.”
“He has also co-founded Humanest Care, NeuraWell Therapeutics, and MindSite News and is a member of the scientific advisory board for Compass Pathways, a company that is developing the psychedelic drug psilocybin to treat depression and other mental health disorders. His book, Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health was published by Penguin Random House in February, 2022.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_R._Insel
“Thomas Roland Insel (born October 19, 1951) is an American neuroscientist, psychiatrist, entrepreneur, and author who led the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) from 2002 until November 2015.[2] Prior to becoming Director of NIMH, he was the founding Director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.[3][4] He is best known for research on oxytocin and vasopressin, two peptide hormones implicated in complex social behaviors, such as parental care and attachment.[5][6] He announced on Sept. 15, 2015, that he was resigning as the director of the NIMH to join the Life Science division of Google X (now Verily Life Sciences).
”
This Thomas Insel is a nightmare come to life!
Joshua
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California Umberg SB-1338 status remains unchanged, alphabetical by author, Aug 3, tommorow.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
The idea that someone is ~Mentally Ill~ usually does start within the family:
Letters to the Editor: Families of mentally ill Californians need Newsom’s CARE Courts
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/story/2022-08-02/families-of-mentally-ill-californians-newsom-care-courts
Clock ticking for legislature to pass controversial Care Court proposal
Major concerns persist over how Care Court would be funded and whether it would infringe on the civil liberties of those it is designed to help.
https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/california/clock-ticking-for-legislature-to-pass-care-court-proposal/509-1e7d0068-2069-4fbd-ab75-f520db3d39dd
*********************************
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_R._Insel
So this Thomas Insel is a special advisor to Gavin Newsom, he says.
His book: Healing our path from mental illness to mental health.
https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Insel-MD/e/B09PZKG4V1?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1659468726&sr=8-1
He describes a “mental health crisis.” He lists Pscychiatrists, Psychologists, Licensed Clinical Social Workers and a few other categories and how many of them there are in the entire country. And he totals them up to get 693,000, or 213.2 per 100,000 population.
And he describes them as, “The Mental Health Work Force”.
These are tasked with addressing the “mental health crisis”.
And then he explains that ~mental illness~ causes 47,000 suicide deaths in the US each year, or one every 11 minutes.
And then I agree with him that these shootings really have to be interpreted as suicides.
But that is all I agree with. The rest of what he says horrifies me. The only ~mental health crisis~ we have is because of these 693,000 ~mental health workers~ spreading the fraud that their is such a thing as ~mental illness~
Insel is in favor of all drugging. And he is in favor of Electro Convulsive Therapy (electro shock), and the Transcrainial Magnet (inducing neural currents with a high energy magnetic pulse.) He seems to want involuntary treatment, though I still have to read that section.
And his company Mindstrong is to have people talking with their therapist through their cell phone regularly.
Everybody needs to be continually monitored for the onset of ~mental illness~ in Insel’s world.
he also has these:
Numan, Michael, 1946-
The neurobiology of parental behavior / Michael Numan, Thomas R. Insel. (2003)
The Psychobiology of obsessive-compulsive disorder / Joseph Zohar, Thomas R. Insel, Steven A. Rasmussen, editors (1991)
So in 2015 he left the directorship of NIMH to go to the Life Sciences Division of Google, now Verily Life Sciences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verily
South San Francsico
Projects include:
The Baseline Study, a project to collect genetic, molecular, and wearable device information from enough people to create a picture of what a healthy human should be.
Baseline Study:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseline_Study
https://www.projectbaseline.com/
of Insel
“He has also co-founded Humanest Care, NeuraWell Therapeutics, and MindSite News and is a member of the scientific advisory board for Compass Pathways, a company that is developing the psychedelic drug psilocybin to treat depression and other mental health disorders.”
And he also writes that he is the chairman of the Steinberg Institute in Sacramento.
And Mindstrong also includes co-founders Richard Klausner and Paul Dagum.
Steinberg Institute
Steinberg Institute – Advancing Brain Health Policy & Inspiring …https://steinberginstitute.org
The Steinberg Institute. We are an independent, nonprofit public policy institute dedicated to advancing sound public policy and inspiring leadership on issues …
https://steinberginstitute.org/
they are claiming a legislative package which runs over the last 4 years, and always about ~mental health~
https://steinberginstitute.org/legislation/
OUR MISSION
Dedicated to advancing sound public policy and inspiring leadership on issues of brain health
https://steinberginstitute.org/our-mission/
”
There are three indisputable facts about mental health in California.
First, everyone knows someone who suffers from brain illness, though it is rarely discussed.
Second, brain health affects virtually every major budget and policy issue addressed by government: criminal justice, housing and homelessness, the plight of veterans, children and education, and more.
Third, with rare exception, few governors, legislators, or other elected officials choose to prioritize or work substantially on brain health issues. What’s more, advocacy organizations have collectively struggled to develop and articulate a comprehensive legislative agenda to elevate mental health as a state priority.
The Steinberg Institute was created to upend the status quo and dramatically raise the profile and increase the effectiveness of mental health policy-making in California. Founded by Sacramento Mayor and former state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, the institute is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing sound public policy and inspiring leadership on issues of brain health.
”
”
Our founder, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg delivers a passionate TEDx talk. He sheds light on the most under attended issue of our time – mental illness.
”
Feb 2016
The future of mental health | Darrell Steinberg | TEDxSacramento
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ3_gzSbXKc&t=7s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Steinberg
”
Mental Healthcare Advocate
Throughout his legislative career, Steinberg has been a strong advocate for mental health care. He has called it “the under-attended issue in our time and in our society.” He is known within the mental health community as a long time champion.[16]
Steinberg became passionate about mental health during his time on the Sacramento City Council. In 1997, the City of Sacramento engaged in a lawsuit against Loaves and Fishes, a private charity providing food to the homeless. The free lunches began to draw thousands of homeless people which had become a nuisance to local business near the shelter in North Sacramento.[17] Former Mayor Joe Serna and then Councilmember Steinberg were the only two members to vote against the lawsuit. Upon further investigation into the rapidly increasing homeless population, Steinberg discovered that an overwhelming portion of homeless suffered from mental illness and did not have access to proper mental health care. He took up working on ways to help solve this issue.[18]
”
”
AB 34 Pilot Projects
During his first year in the State Assembly, Steinberg authored AB 34, which began three pilot projects that provided integrated services to the homeless in Stanislaus, Los Angeles and Sacramento counties. The pilot was so successful in lowering hospitalization, incarceration and homeless episodes the program was expanded to more than 30 counties in late 2000 as AB 2034. Data collection by the pilot programs demonstrated the success of the services being provided.[19]
”
”
Mental Health Services Act
Steinberg authored Proposition 63, the California Mental Health Services Act, approved by California voters on the November 2004 statewide ballot. The act imposes a 1% tax on incomes of $1,000,000 or more for mental health funding.[20] He co-authored “Prop 63″ with advocate Sherman Russell Selix, Jr.[21] In the first five years, the program has provided mental health care to 400,000 Californians.[22]
The Mental Health Services Act includes a “whatever-it-takes” approach to support services for people with severe mental illness and is the first of its kind in the United States. Services can include providing a safe place to live, a job, help in school, physical health care, clothing, food, or treatment when a mental illness and a substances abuse disorder are combined. These are examples of full service partnerships which have been proven to be effective in helping people with severe mental illness transition successfully to independent living situations.[22]
The Act also provides Prevention and Early Intervention services (PEI). PEI improves mental health care treatment by creating programs in places where mental health services are not traditionally given, such as schools, community centers and faith-based organizations.[23] The intent of PEI programs is to engage individuals before the development of serious mental illness or serious emotional disturbance or to alleviate the need for additional or extended mental health treatment.
The Mental Health Services Act has proven to be a cost-effective way to address mental health care. A 2012 report found that every dollar spent of mental health services in California saved roughly $0.88 in costs to criminal justice and health, and housing services by reducing the number of arrests, incarcerations, ER visits, and hospitalizations.[24]
”
http://www.cityofsacramento.org/mayor-council/districts/mayor/biography
Prop 63
https://steinberginstitute.org/tag/prop-63/
I guess this was 2004
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Mental_Health_Services_Act
Curious, about 1.5 years ago I met a woman who was telling me how Reagan had closed the mental hospitals. I said, “Good, we should not have such, and we should eradicate the entire mental health system.”
She was enraged by my position. But I also couldn’t fathom her position, supporting the mental health system.
I guess she saw it as providing for the needs of the vulnerable. Maybe like a homeless shelter. But why organize it around ~Mental Health~? That is just a way to delegitimate people.
This is about Skid Row in Los Angeles. Used to be that Skid Row as were the poor people went. Now they are making it all about ~mental illness~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jUZPtsIEGI
I am surprised that someone who talks like this Darrel Steinberg could have gotten elected to anything, let alone mayor of a big city.
The more I look at this the more it blows my mind. People should be calling a general strike and blockading the streets to bring an end to this.
Joshua
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I guess I’ve always known that there is a mental health system, and known that it is something one must stay out of.
The movie, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” convinced most people of this.
But the mental health system has expanded, especially with the drugging, and with it becoming more and more an extension of law enforcement.
And then I guess with the 2008 economic crash, a lot more people had their lives turned upside down and ended up destitute, and that makes them targets for Mental Health.
And then this has continued as they talk about doing things for the homeless, but they never really do, it is just psychiatric policing.
And then in the 80’s and 90’s, the big boom in 12 step recovery groups, and courts sending people to these, which they should not. That I think has corresponded to a boom in psychotherapy.
Gavin Newsom has always been a twit. I remember the first time I heard his name and voice, when he was just elected San Francisco Supervisor.
And then this Susan Eggman. And then this Thomas Insel. And then the hardest to fathom, that this Darrel Steinberg could get himself elected Mayor of Sacramento. And that was back in 2016.
COVID made it worse, got our public health officials used to having dictatorial power. Got people like Gavin Newsom used to grand standing. Took another permanent chunk out of the jobs market as firms were opening back up leaner.
But I see now that Care Courts is only the tip of a huge iceberg of ~Mental Health~ stuff.
It is rather like we are instituting a new kind of slavery, a new system where much of the the population is delegitimated, and where we have a new master class to rule over them.
The employment market has been degraded decade by decade because of advancing industrial and information technology. But rather than celebrating that as giving us a leisure state. We still keep most people in harness feeding the free floating real estate market.
Out advanced industrial and information technology will let us take care of every single person better than even royalty had live in past centuries. But instead we are trying to set up a new two tier society, something like slavery, and using this idea of ~Mental Health~ to organize it.
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I guess this Thomas Insel is really committed to chemical mood alternants:
humanest
Unlock the neuroscience of the ‘humanest high’
https://humanestcare.com/self-help/blog/unlock-the-neuroscience-of-the-humanest-high
He really is committed to chemical escape!
“Tools that are effective at improving mental health exist, but 90% of people do not have access to them.”
He has defined “mental health” as dissociation, the purple beyond, and endorphin rush.
https://humanestcare.com/
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/humanest-care/people
Neura Well
https://neurawell.com/
https://neurawell.com/patient-needs/
Thomas Insel, M.D.
Tom lnsel, M.D., a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, has been a national leader in mental health research, policy, and technology. From 2002-2015, Dr. Insel served as Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). More recently (2015 – 2017), he led the Mental Health Team at Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences) in South San Francisco, CA. In 2020, he co-founded Humanest Care, a therapeutic online community for recovery. Since May of 2019, Dr. Insel has been a special advisor to California Governor Gavin Newsom and Chair of the Board of the Steinberg Institute in Sacramento, California. He is the author of the forthcoming book Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health, to be published by Penguin Random House. He is currently developing MindSite, a non-profit digital publication focused on mental health issues. Dr. Insel is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has received numerous national and international awards including honorary degrees in the U.S. and Europe.
https://mindsitenews.org/
Compass Pathways
COMPASS Pathways: our vision is a world of mental wellbeinghttps://compasspathways.com
COMPASS is a mental health care company dedicated to accelerating patient access and experience to evidence-based innovation in mental health care.
https://compasspathways.com/
Our vision is a world of mental wellbeing.
COMPASS is a mental health care company dedicated to accelerating patient access to evidence-based innovation in mental health. Our first programme is researching how COMP360 psilocybin therapy could help people with treatment-resistant depression.
We want to transform the patient experience in mental health care.
I don’t agree with Michael Shellenberger. But I do want to understand what he is saying about Thomas Insel and Gavin Newsom
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/10/27/former-soros-activist-explains-how-progressive-policies-ruined-san-francisco/
This stuff in this video, its rather like Oliver Stone’s mini-series, Wild Palms. They want to use LSD to control people’s dreams, and they are using the fallacy of ~Mental Illness~ to jusify this.
https://compasspathways.com/
Allen: Now, I know that you have spoken with leaders in California and other West Coast cities that are experiencing these issues. Do they recognize that there is an issue? And if so, why aren’t they taking steps to actually bring change?
Shellenberger: This is the craziest thing. I found a lot of agreement from both liberals and conservatives for the program that I’m advocating, which is just a modified Dutch model, a modified European model.
I interviewed California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s top adviser on mental health, homelessness, and addiction. His name is Thomas Insel. He worked at the National Institute of Mental Health for 12 years. He was the director of the National Institute of Mental Health. The man and I had a Zoom conversation for over an hour. He’s got his own book coming out. And we were finishing each other’s sentences. We didn’t disagree on anything, literally zero. We had zero disagreements.
And I just asked him, I was like, “Tom, can you go talk to the governor? What’s going on? Why is this not happening?” He just was like, “Well, the people in Sacramento, they say you have to modify the Constitution.” OK, so let’s modify the Constitution. That’s actually not as hard as it may sound. We pass ballot initiatives all the time in California to modify the Constitution. We love to do that in California.
He finally said, and he said it six times in our interview, “It’s a leadership problem. It’s a leadership problem. It’s a leadership problem,” which is as close as he would come to basically saying Gavin Newsom is not the leader that we need, because obviously Tom Insel has to be a political person. He’s a very good person, by the way. It’s not a criticism at all.
We’ve got a problem with our political leadership. Obviously, I think you need new leadership in California. Can someone beat Gavin Newsom next year in the run for governor? Very hard. Gavin Newsom has so much money. So to some extent, what I’m talking about here is the need for significant political change. I think that Democrats certainly need to change, but I think Republicans need to contest Democrats and Democratic rule on these issues.
I’ll tell you something that really I found inspiring, is that the way that in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, it took political change, it took, really, a political revolution whereby the center-right defeated the left-wing parties on this issue, on this issue of open drug scenes, and that is why … the Dutch government has been a center-right government. If it were translated into American context, it might be more like center-left. I don’t know. But in the Netherlands, it was center-right. They defeated the left on this issue.
So what I would say to my Republican friends, and I’m an independent, is, I would say, start competing with Democrats on this issue. Have a proper agenda. I think that that’s not just what it’s been to date. I think what it’s been to date is, I hear Republicans and conservatives talk a lot about the need for the churches and the charities and private-sector solutions. That’s not good enough. There has to be a governmental response.
For me, if the center-right is going to be the change that we need in the world, then they need to change, I think, the agenda that they’re offering. And we’re starting to see some of that.
I did see Republican candidates in the recall that just failed attempt to offer that. But I think much more should be done both at the state and the federal level by conservatives and Republicans to offer a proper agenda to deal with this problem, because in California it’s the No. 1 issue. It’s not the No. 1 issue nationwide, but it’s the No. 1 issue in California. And it’s also now a big issue in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, other big cities where conservatives, Republicans, center-right candidates want to start contesting Democratic rule.
Allen: In the model that you have created, taking pieces from the Netherlands, what they do there, and how to address homelessness, drug addiction, mental health, what is step one? What is the action that progressive cities need to take today to start fixing this problem?
Shellenberger: Yeah, the first thing is, shut down the open-air drug dealing. There’s no need for that. Build emergency shelters. Require people to use them. Do triage. If you want to earn housing, then make progress on your personal plan. I think the issue needs to be handled statewide so that people that are arrested in the open drug scene in San Francisco can get treatment in Fresno, can get treatment a couple hundred miles away, away from where the temptations of drugs are.
I’m completely practical when it comes to dealing with addiction. Some addicts need opioid substitutes. They might need methadone or Suboxone as a substitute. That’s fine. I think that there’s something more heroic about becoming completely sober and abstinent, but I think we’re dealing with a massive drug epidemic and we can’t be perfectionist about this or we can’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.
So shelter first, treatment first, housing earned, make psychiatric and addiction care a statewide function, create Cal-Psych, and then we probably need to—I’m not totally sure. It was funny, because I would get to this place with this book where I go, “Gosh, is the problem the liberal laws, is it the liberal judges, or is it the politicians and the public?” It’s kind of all three.
One question is, how much can be done under existing laws? The short answer is a lot. Do we need to change some of the laws too? Probably, but again, that’s what you have leadership for. …
For example, if we had a truly great governor, the governor would come in and would do as much as you could through executive order. You would then put forward a big legislative package or separate legislative vehicles, it depends, in front of the legislature, and then you would also put a bunch of initiatives on the ballot.
The thing is, the great thing about having an emergency, a true crisis like this one, is that you have the will of the people to want to solve this. The public in California are just—we’re fed up. People are fleeing the state. We’re desperate. Honestly, it’s gotten so bad that the real issue, I think, is just the cynicism, that people believe that nothing can be done, and we ended up losing some of our best and brightest people to New York and Miami and other states.
Allen: Yeah. Well, you’ve been living in this world for so long. Are you able to kind of walk out the other side of all this research optimistic? Do you think that there can actually be real change?
Shellenberger: I do. I find hope in a couple of different areas. First of all, I think that the culture is changing. I think that we are in the midst or we’re at the beginning of a backlash against cancel culture, against woke religion and woke ideology.
It’s interesting, there are even some liberals and leftists that are expressing support for my position on drugs as well as on energy. They’re starting to do so on Twitter. They get shouted down by other progressives, but they’re starting to kind of poke their head up out of the tunnels to say, “Hey, I think Shellenberger is making a good point about this. It’s not moral to have people with schizophrenia on the street.” So that’s starting to happen in the culture.
I love these long-form podcasts because one of the problems that this issue has had is that people go, “Well, it’s really complex,” and that’s been a way to dismiss having the conversation about what to do about it. Long-form podcasts are a way to talk about the complexity in a way that it’s just much harder to do on television and sound bites. So I’m excited about what’s happening in the culture.
Then I just think there is a big opportunity politically for somebody to offer—honestly, I genuinely believe it could come from either the center-right or the center-left. California has an open primary system, so you could have a Democrat run on this agenda against Gavin Newsom next year, you could have a Republican run, or you could have an independent run. It seems to me that there’s a big amount of space for some political entrepreneur who picks up this agenda.
I and my organization have helped to create a new statewide coalition called the California Peace Coalition, because we don’t have peace in the streets, we don’t have peace in people’s minds. And we’ve attracted support from parents of kids killed by fentanyl, parents of kids addicted to fentanyl, recovering addicts, community leaders, and just interested citizens like myself. I do think that it’s created a kind of opportunity for a different approach than the one that’s been pursued either by the left or the right on these questions for the last 30 years.
Allen: The book is “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.” You can follow Michael on Twitter, @ShellenbergerMD. You can get a copy of the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble. You can listen to it on Audible.
Michael, we could keep going, but want to let you go. Thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate your insight.
Shellenberger: It was a pleasure speaking with you. Thanks for having me on.
Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email [email protected] and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.
Joshua
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Paul Summergrad & Thomas Insel: Future of Psychedelic Psychiatry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oZ_v3QFQDE
And Insel writes in all his startup company bios that special advisor to California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Joshua
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Can Smartphones Solve the Mental Health Crisis? | Tom Insel | TEDxVeniceBeach
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VLoMX3saOc
Joshua
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Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j-NdtUKEn4
Joshua
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California Umberg SB-1338 status remains unchanged, alphabetical by author, Aug 3, tommorow.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Live Video of Appropriations Committee
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/1100-video/video
the person speaking just listed Umberg 1338 (Care Courts), in a very long list.
They are talking about suspense file, which I read about once and tried to understand
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/content/2022-suspense-documents
Okay, they just approved the “suspense calendar” and Care Courts was on it. Not really clear what that means.
Now members of the public can speak.
Man speaking against Care Courts SB-1338. Others as well, and more on the telephone.
PRESS RELEASE: Disability, Civil Rights Groups Say Fundamental Questions Must Be Answered Regarding ‘CARE Court’ Proposal
https://wclp.org/press-release-disability-civil-rights-groups-say-fundamental-questions-must-be-answered-regarding-care-court-proposal/
Lined up against Care Courts
http://remhdco.org/
https://www.mhac.org/
It tends to the the families who support Care Courts. The idea that someone is ~mentally ill~ usually starts within the family.
Joshua
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San Fransicko
by Michael Shellenberger
I have read some of this and strongly disagree with the author.
But I also know that this is some of the thinking which is behind Newsom and his Care Courts Psychiatric Police State.
Now Thomas Insel says that nationwide there are 47,000 suicides annually, over 3x the firearm killings annually. And that is a huge number. But there are other ways of interpreting this besides mental illness.
This Darrel Steinberg, Mayor of Sacramento is also big player in this. Insel and Steinberg both wanting to get around ACLU opposition and change laws to get more conservatorships.
Shellenberger also wants all of this too, but he also wants to crack down on the homeless more.
I see how Newsom is able to stand in the middle of this and make himself look like a liberal, where as Newsom and the rest of them are all totalitarians, as also are Susan Eggman and Tom Umberg and Richard Bloom.
Shellenberger is just a loud mouthed idiot. He wants to define the unhoused as criminal deviants and crack down on them. So it sound like SF Mayor Frank Jordan’s Matrix Program, Police writing citations for sleeping. But Shellenberger wants to couch it is for the good of the unhoused, so it is about mental health.
Shellenberger got 4% of the primary vote.
What I find more dangerous are Newsom, Insel, Steinberg, Eggman, Umberg, and Bloom. They are trying to set up a mental health dystopia, as if we were not already living in that.
Shellenberger has also written:
https://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Never-Environmental-Alarmism-Hurts/dp/0063001691
https://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Never-Environmental-Alarmism-Hurts/dp/0063001691?asin=0063001691&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1
Joshua
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Probably have to wait ’til tomorrow or beyond to get news about where Care Courts SB-1338 is at now.
Shellenberger is a guy writing from a position of outrage. He sees the unhoused as bringing about complete anarchy, as many laws have become unenforceable. And this is simply because there were big up ticks in homelessness with the 2008 crash, and with the COVID crash.
As far as open air drug dealing, maybe the authorities see it as not worth enforcing the law, not worth taking up jail space.
I think that is a lot of what is driving this. The unhoused are getting impossible to control, but that is mostly because there are so many of them.
And it was after 2008 that they first started talking about giving the unhoused housing. And some of this has been done.
But my concern is more about how they are intent on making this into a mental health issue.
Joshua
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I noticed during the COVID shut down that people had tents set up in lots of places where they wouldn’t have been able to before. Retail businesses closed, why not. But then after the shutdown lifted, they had to move.
San Francisco is just a lot more wild and wooly.
I know from having worked in a group to try and offset the effects of the Born Again Groups on the poor and the homeless, that drugs are endemic with the unhoused. And so any thing you try to do will be constrained by drug effects. And this is a big part of what is being used to rationalize a mental health approach. It will be the selling and the using. Your just engaging with a contingent that has for so long lived outside of the law and without much above ground income. But a Mental Health approach will not help.
Now of course Universal Basic Income and a strong public housing offering goes a long way. You don’t want any needs tested programs because that always makes the recipients the scapegoats, and then you are halfway there to having it be a mental health program already. UBI, everyone gets it. And Public Housing, available to whom ever wants it.
I am seeing the main players in this as not being Richard Bloom or Tom Umberg. I am seeing them as Gavin Newsom, Thomas Insel, Darrel Steinberg, and Susan Eggman, and each one of these four is very strange and very much a problem.
I think Insel and Steinberg are the most strange.
Insel is committed to chemical mode alteration, like all prescription drugs, drugs that give you the euphoic high of sex, LSD, and then to regular Scientology like Auditing over the cell phone.
Steinberg I had not know about. He is probably the source of an idea now found among liberals that Mental Health treatment is more humane than criminal prosecution and more humane than poverty.
But in fact they use mental health treatment to get into things that would be impractical to prosecute criminally because there are so many unhoused. And as far as being more humane than poverty, it is social marginalization which causes poverty. Mental Health treatment is just more abuse and marginalization.
Joshua
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SB-1338 Care Courts 08/03/22 August 3 set for first hearing. Placed on suspense file.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Column: These families are flaming the ACLU as California debates mental health care
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-08-04/mental-health-california-newsom-proposal-care-courts-aclu
”
The ACLU is a leading opponent of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to establish civil courts to help treat people with severe mental illnesses. The group says it will lead to “forced treatment” of unhoused people, with police and others given far too much leeway to trample on the autonomy of those who refuse aid.
”
(the idea that someone is ~mentally ill~ usually starts within the family and is sustained within the family. This is one of the reasons why Care Courts is so dangerous)
https://netionaldastak.com/gov-newsom-courts-touts-california-as-freedom-state/
Clock ticking for legislature to pass controversial Care Court proposal
Major concerns persist over how Care Court would be funded and whether it would infringe on the civil liberties of those it is designed to help.
2 Killed as Fleeing Car Hits Tents at LA Homeless Encampment
Authorities say a driver who was fleeing police crashed into a homeless encampment in South Los Angeles, killing a man and a woman.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/california/articles/2022-08-03/2-killed-as-fleeing-car-hits-tents-at-la-homeless-encampment
Transcript: Ezra Klein Interviews Thomas Insel
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-thomas-insel.html
^ audio
Not sure what the real status of care courts is right now.
One of the more enigmatic people in this, as I am seeing it, is Sacramento Mayor Darrel Steinberg.
Joshua
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Thomas Insel interview audio
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-thomas-insel.html
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, one of our more enigmatic figures
https://www.cityofsacramento.org/mayor/
WATCH: Mayor Darrell Steinberg to deliver 2022 State of the City address
https://engagesac.org/blog-civic-engagement/2022/6/10/t8b0kf66l2dawfzi86coq4wr85ouxv
Sacramento Mass Shooting | Mayor Darrell Steinberg answers questions following the shooting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbPeyFg3iqY
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg addresses homeless encampment cleanup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g3iQ7Lxuxc
Full interview: Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg talks about his reaction to mass shooting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3pe_qzt0lM
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg explains ‘Right to Housing’ proposal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3CD5AcPWEg
Sacramento business owners asking Mayor Darrell Steinberg to make city safer, cleaner from homeless
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTUKvFO3prk
The future of mental health | Darrell Steinberg | TEDxSacramento
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ3_gzSbXKc
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg speaks after 12 separate shootings over the past few days
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbBE1HiGYs0
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg Unveils His Master Plan To Address Homelessness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9T562M99Rg
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg reacts to the death of a homeless person during winter storm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbqMoApz8Oo
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg wants 24/7 homeless respite center
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqa0DMl9DZ0
Joshua
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So this WellSpace is in Sacramento and it is celebrated by Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg.
https://www.wellspacehealth.org/
https://engagesac.org/blog-civic-engagement/2022/6/10/t8b0kf66l2dawfzi86coq4wr85ouxv
While there may be some interesting things there, it is all based on breaking down people’s privacy so that they can be made subject to that Recovery, Therapy, Healing model. And that is extreme manipulation and abuse.
And it sounds like this Steinberg got prop 63 passed which really mushroomed this Youth Mental Health System.
Joshua
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Steinberg, widely known as an advocate for the expansion of California’s mental health care…
https://jweekly.com/2017/01/11/sacramento-mayor-darrell-steinberg-rooted-in-jewish-values/
https://engagesac.org/blog-civic-engagement/2022/6/10/t8b0kf66l2dawfzi86coq4wr85ouxv
Joshua
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https://engagesac.org/blog-civic-engagement/2022/6/10/t8b0kf66l2dawfzi86coq4wr85ouxv
at 45 sec:
“Imagine the outcome of the COVID pandemic if 30 years ago our country had really invested in public health as a national priority, hot different that would be. In our state and in our city there are historic example of wish we would have, and on the other side of thank God we did.
On the former I think about 50 years ago when the state shut the mental hospitals and promised a decent system of community health care. How different would homelessness be today if our predecessors had followed through on that promise and made mental health care a right, and not just a governmental option.
”
This guy is a slick talker, and I do agree with most of what he says, but there is a central flaw in it, this commitment to “mental health”.
Joshua
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“08/03/22 August 3 set for first hearing. Placed on suspense file.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
The suspense file is a very long list. I think somehow, behind closed doors, they decide what they have money to afford. But I fear that the fix is already in on this, that they have earmarked money for it.
Recent News:
Tell Governor Newsom: We Do Not Need CARE Court (SB 1338)
Join us in signing this open letter to OPPOSE the Governor’s “Care Court” Proposal by August 5, 2022.
https://www.disabilityrightsca.org/latest-news/tell-governor-newsom-we-do-not-need-care-court-sb-1338
Joshua
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Trying to understand this Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, as he seems to be one of the architects of Newsom’s Care Courts Psychiatrics Police State.
Sacramento Mass Shooting | Mayor Darrell Steinberg answers questions following the shooting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbPeyFg3iqY
That ~Mental Health System~ should not even exist. And it is completely unacceptable that anyone would ever be subjected to involuntary psychiatric procedures.
The only reason the Mental Health System and Psychotherapy exist is to try to make people accept a life that is without public honor, and where one is to live with only the legitimacy which is offered as pity.
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg addresses homeless encampment cleanup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g3iQ7Lxuxc
Full interview: Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg talks about his reaction to mass shooting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3pe_qzt0lM
Joshua
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Trying to assimilate Steinberg’s reality:
Full interview: Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg talks about his reaction to mass shooting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3pe_qzt0lM
Joshua
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My take on this Darrell Steinberg is starting to take shape. He has learned to talk to people in a very relaxing manner.
He wants people to believe that he is a Progressive, and that he is not a NeoLiberal trying to set up a Police State.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3CD5AcPWEg
His thinking does have much in common with Michael Shellenberger’s.
Shellenberger is just completely wrong, but his ideas seem to be a big influence on Newsom, and Steinberger seems to have played a big role in this.
Joshua
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Sacramento business owners asking Mayor Darrell Steinberg to make city safer, cleaner from homeless
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTUKvFO3prk
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg speaks after 12 separate shootings over the past few days (Oct 5, 2020)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbBE1HiGYs0
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg Unveils His Master Plan To Address Homelessness (Aug 9, 2021)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9T562M99Rg
The future of mental health | Darrell Steinberg | TEDxSacramento April 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ3_gzSbXKc
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg reacts to the death of a homeless person during winter storm (Jan 2021)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbqMoApz8Oo
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg wants 24/7 homeless respite center (June 2022)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqa0DMl9DZ0
I think Darrell Steinberg is a very slick manipulator and he is presiding over a city which is in meltdown, and nothing he is talking about will improve this, but rather will make it worse.
Joshua
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We need to organize and fight back against this ever expanding mental health system.
A lot of this talk about homelessness and gun violence are really irrelevant to this. But these things are being used to advance the concept of mental health, and this we must fight by what ever means are necessary.
Joshua
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Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s daughter Jordana (Age 20, 7 years ago)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOPgdNRjS1g
So she would have been born 1984.
Designated as ~Mentally Ill~ at age 13, and this would have been 1997.
Now the one who gets designated as *Mentally Ill* is the family scapegoat, the one who cannot live the lies, the who is undeniable proof that the king has no clothes.
And so of course Darrell Steinberg wants to promote the concept of Mental Illness, because that leaves him smelling like a rose, and as a picture perfect religious family man. And of course he wants to apply this to the unhoused, because usually the people who end up unhoused are those who have been the designated as family scapegoats since before adolescence, and so unless you can somehow brand them, they are evidence that something is seriously wrong.
Margaret Attwood shows this so well in her semi-autobiographical novel “Cat’s Eye” in the girl they named Cordellia. The protagonist laments that it was unfair to give her a name like that. She ends up in a psychiatric hospital.
The talk therapy and the drugging are all abusive, as is just convincing the party that they have *Mental Illness*, and that they are somehow different from other people and that the abusers should be exonerated.
Jordana Steinberg has been cast into having Bipolar Illness. Usually it is bipolar 2.
I say the first time she had contact with any facet of the Mental Health System that should have triggered mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse and an investigation by Child Protective Services. Jordana should not have been alone in any kind of therapy, the parents should have also been in it. And so no, she should not have been sent to any psychiatric facility in Oregon, as that could interfer with the investigation. And those drugs should not even exist. And if there were evidence, a case should have been started in the dependency court. And always, even if it were just to be financial, the parents should have been held accountable.
As I know Emil Kraepelin defined dementia praecox, as the often precursor of full blown madness, or dementia, or what we are now calling schizophrenia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Kraepelin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dementia_praecox
Not having read this anywhere, it seems that what we are now calling bipolar was what Kraepelin was calling dementia praecox. And the system needs this, because the way schizophrenia has been conceived, it is stretching things to imagine a schizophrenic adolescent. And likewise the system needs autism, because it is hard to conceive of bipolar or schizophrenia before adolescence.
And then we know how the supposed illness will progress:
https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Epidemic-Bullets-Psychiatric-Astonishing-ebook/dp/B0036S4EGE
And so today, after the government’s social services and mental health people, the ones clamoring the loudest for Newsom’s Care Courts are the families of those who have been designated as mentally ill. They need this to have an objective reality, seemingly just as Darrell Steinberg does.
And so usually the Democratic Party cannot just take over. About half of the voters will be more receptive to the ways Republicans frame issues. But in CA right now, at the state level, it is very close to a one party system. I suggest that this has been accomplished though the concept of Mental Health.
Republicans can scare people about crime and immigration. Democrats can scare people about mental illness.
I mean, we have a huge number of unhoused throughout the state. Part of this is just the weather and the high housing cost. When there are so many, the criminal laws become impractical to enforce. Our jails are already full.
So rather than set up public housing and Universal Basic Income and be subject to Republican accusations of liberalism. The Democrats have decided that internment and regulation is the way. Giving people free housing costs much less than incarceration, maybe only 25%. And then psychiatric drugging costs next to nothing, as does having people submit to Scientology like Auding, except drug enhanced, through their cell phones via Thomas Insel’s Mindstrong startup.
And of course none of this is going to end homelessness or do anything about the epidemic of spree shootings. Likely it will make both of these things worse.
Joshua
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Status of SB-1338 remains unchanged. Not sure when there will be any indications of movement, being in “suspense”.
At a synagogue service in 2008, Sen. Darrell Steinberg holds his daughter Jordana, then 14, while his son Ari, then 11, stands behind him.
https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/diaz/article/Darrell-Steinberg-s-daughter-fights-mental-5736914.php
They say that Jordana had a “years long journey to a heartening recovery.”
All that means is that with therapists talking her out and neurotoxins being injected into her blood, she eventually caved in and decided to accept that her parents and their religious congregation where right and she was wrong. And all the more important since she had access to no one who was not in league with them and was not prepared to make a total financial break, and her parents were making such a big public display of how good they were, so she had to stuff her feelings and insights. Her parents have a lot of social power.
https://s.hdnux.com/photos/31/77/26/6813100/12/1200×0.jpg
Here in 2020 Steinberg talks about his own commitment to Mental Health.
https://steinberginstitute.org/qa-darrell-steinbergs-longtime-focus-on-mental-health/
”
As Sacramento faces an increasingly serious crisis in homelessness and mental illness, with thousands of citizens wandering the streets, many pitching tents in front of City Hall, Steinberg has continued to press for major local and state mental-health reforms.
”
Steinberg references his May 2020 LA Times Op-Ed
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-05-11/second-pandemic-mental-health-issues
Discussion of CA’s Mental Health Law and specifically Laura’s Law, 8/2000
https://capitolweekly.net/auditor-slams-state-mental-health-system-revives-lauras-law/
“The original 2002 law enables families with severely mentally ill relatives to access a program known as Assisted Outpatient Treatment — AOT, or “Laura’s Law ” in California.
The bill, which gives family members legal recourse to get mentally ill relatives into treatment, easily passed 8-0.
“We were dead in the water,” said Randall Hagar, legislative advocate for the bill’s sponsor, the California Psychiatric Association, “and all of a sudden [the bill] was ‘pending’. It was the only bill added to the committee hearing.”
The Senate Health Committee’s required bill analysis was also expedited and it was joined with the Senate Judiciary Committee analysis. The measure, AB 1976 by Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton), now goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee and, if approved, to the Senate floor.
The original 2002 law enables families with severely mentally ill relatives to access a program known as Assisted Outpatient Treatment — AOT, or “Laura’s Law ” in California. Experts say AOT has been successful in California and other states in reducing hospitalizations, incarceration and homelessness.
But California allows counties to decide whether they want to “opt-in” to the program of intensive treatment, and only 20 of California’s 58 counties have agreed to start Laura’s Law programs.
Eggman’s bill would require counties to publicly state, in writing, why they choose to “opt out” of the program, would add judges to the list of those who can request treatment, and end a “sunset” provision which required renewal hearings every five years.
Many of Howle’s recommendations are not new. They have been addressed by legislation, reports and recommendations spanning decades.
Eggman agreed to extend the bill’s implementation for six months until July 2021 to give counties time to prepare.
Laura’s Law is named for Laura Wilcox, a 19-year-old college student who was working in a Nevada County mental-health clinic in 2001, when she and two others were shot and killed by a deranged clinic client whose family had repeatedly tried to get help for him, but were rebuffed by a clinic psychiatrist.
Laura Wilcox
“Laura Wilcox might be alive today if this program had existed then,” Eggman told the committee.
Laura’s parents, Nick and Amanda Wilcox, tirelessly lobbied state and local government for Laura’s Law and tougher gun legislation. Nick Wilcox testified at the Aug. 1 Health Committee hearing that the county programs have saved lives and reduced costly institutionalization.
“We’ve been approached many times by people who have told us that Laura’s Law saved the lives of their family members,” he said, by getting them into intensive treatment.
Most people voluntarily enter the program, but the law also provides for court oversight and intervention to ensure treatment.
Disability rights groups have long opposed the law, saying it infringes on civil rights, and county mental health directors – while supporting the concept of the law – dislike adopting it without more funding, and they say it places additional burdens on already strapped local programs.
Decades of bills, reports, recommendations
Many of Howle’s recommendations are not new. They have been addressed by legislation, reports and recommendations spanning decades. But an increasing number of mentally ill Californians wander the streets, recycle through overwhelmed hospital emergency rooms, or end up in jails and prisons that have become de facto mental institutions ill-equipped to house, much less help them.
In the detailed, 120-page audit, in the works since last summer, Howle specifically addressed the 1967 Lanterman-Petris-Short (LPS) Act , the landmark law that has governed mental-health care in California with few changes for more than half a century.
The auditor did an in-depth analysis of involuntary mental health treatment procedures (LPS “holds” and conservatorships) in three California counties – Los Angeles, San Francisco and Shasta. Howle was particularly critical of state oversight of programs primarily run by California counties, which receive billions in federal and state funds for mental health, with little statewide coordination or comprehensive data collection.
Those detained on LPS “holds” frequently end up in overcrowded hospital emergency rooms, where they too often languish without substantive – or any – treatment.
Howle recommended no changes in the basic LPS criteria for involuntary treatment – originally designed to prevent the grotesque civil-rights abuses of mentally ill Californians who were confined, often for years and against their will, in aging state mental hospitals.
But her report slams the lack of follow-up care for those who are detained under LPS holds, usually no more than 72 hours. The auditor also studied people placed in conservatorships – the most restrictive and long-term commitment under LPS – and concluded they receive little or no community care after leaving conservatorships.
California’s mental hospitals, which also housed developmentally disabled residents, including children, often for decades, were largely closed in the 1960s and 1970s, with only a few facilities remaining, mainly for those judged criminally insane.
”
““Mental illness is a disease of the brain” – Dr. Steve Seager”
We have turned into a brain chemistry police state. Darrell Steinberg and Susan Eggman are big parts of this.
”
Laura’s Law is named for Laura Wilcox, a 19-year-old college student who was working in a Nevada County mental-health clinic in 2001, when she and two others were shot and killed by a deranged clinic client whose family had repeatedly tried to get help for him, but were rebuffed by a clinic psychiatrist.
”
Joshua
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Who is working to stop this psychiatric police state in California?
Joshua
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So then here is Steinberg presenting his master plan for addressing homelessness in Aug 2021.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9T562M99Rg
But I think this was envisioned as being just a Sacramento ordinance.
So it is not explained in the above video, it is elsewhere. Steinberg explains that the offering of shelter space is not optional. It must be accepted.
Well what does that mean? It means that they will no allow people to sleep outside anymore. But how do they enforce this? The jails are always full. Police have to adopt a harm reduction approach. Not all laws are equally important.
If a property owner wants someone removed, police remove them. But otherwise just let them stay if they are not causing some other problem. Rousting them just makes them go somewhere else.
And then jail space they save for someone who is getting belligerent with police. Jail is used to back up the police.
So with this new shelter system if someone refuses the shelter, Steinberg says that the penalties are not criminal, they are civil.
Well what does that mean? It seems to mean the psychiatric system. They have figured out a way of having something which is like the criminal system, but does not have the same standards of proof and due process.
So then Steinberg explains that they will have housing. But it is only available to people who can prove that they were a housed resident for 1 year.
Well what about people who refuse to talk, or people who cannot prove that? Mental Health System? Run out of town?
This is why they want it to be state wide.
They are using this Mental Health System as a way to enforce things which are not otherwise enforceable.
Now all of this sounds similar to the reactionary
Michael Shellenberger
So where is the break? Well Shellenberger talks much more in a tone of outrage against “progressives”. But I think he wants to only give people housing when they are performing on the court ordered mental health plan. Which I think means cooperating with therapists, talking their meds, but no street drugs. He said shelter is free, or something like that, but housing is earned.
And in my opinion it makes no difference if any of this works out. It is just how the Democrats insulate themselves from the criticism of someone like Shellenberger and the Republicans. It is how the Democrats have been able to get something very rare, near monopoly power at the state level.
The whole thing is very reckless as of course the mental health system is a mind destroying death trap. And this is all just targeting the scapegoats of the family and making public examples of them.
And the whole thing is silly really. If they feel that they have the funds and the public mandate to build all of this shelter space just build it. Most of the unhoused will take it, so long as it is not some kind of a funnel into mental health.
It will be a long time before we can worry about those who refuse it. The shelter will cost lots of money. But if we can build it, especially real housing, it will help.
I still say we need instead a strong public housing offering and Universal Basic Income, so this is for everyone. But our society is not there yet, we are still trying to advance the idea of Mental Health.
Joshua
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SB-1338 stal health disabilities, experiencing houselessness, and involved in the criminal legal system. Respectfully, we oppose SB 1338. The CARE Court framework that SB 1338 seeks to establish is unacceptable for a number of reasons:
It perpetuates institutional racism through a system of coerced treatment and worsens health disparities, directly harming Black and Brown community members;
It denies a person’s right to choose and have autonomy over personal healthcare decisions;
It does not guarantee affordable permanent housing provided with fidelity to principles that prioritize voluntary services, an approach that is backed by evidence;
Community evidence-based practices and scientific studies show that adequately-resourced intensive voluntary outpatient treatment is more effective than court-ordered treatment; and
Use of the terms “Supportive Decision-Making” and “Supporter” disregards the importance of voluntary decisions in mental health treatment and does not mask the involuntary nature of CARE Court; and
Because CARE Court will harm Californians with mental health disabilities, we strongly oppose this bill. Instead, we would welcome a proposal developed with input from the people CARE Court seeks to help. We believe a community-based approach would be far more likely to succeed. This approach would expand resources for permanent affordable housing with voluntary support and increase early access to voluntary, community-based treatment based on principles of trauma-informed care and the complete removal of law enforcement and the courts from the process.
tatus remains unchanged:
08/03/22 August 3 set for first hearing. Placed on suspense file.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Recent News:
Advocates Oppose California CARE Court Legislation Aug 7, 2022
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/08/letter-advocates-oppose-california-care-court-legislation/
Shonique Williams (she/her) is the Founder of the Ezekiel’s Project and No CARE Court Coalition, Asantewaa Boykin (she/her) R.N MICN, is an Emergency RN and the co-founder of APTP (Anti Police – Terror Project), Andreya Garcia-Ponce De Leon (she/her) is the Executive Director of San Bernardino Free Them All and Project Amiga and they are all Unapologetically Black Unicorns. They discuss Senate Bill 1338 – CARE Court and all of its shortcomings. They talk about how they all got involved in the No CARE Court Coalition, their experiences speaking during the hearings and reactions from some assembly members and holding our elected officials accountable.
California. Why We Oppose CARE Court—and You Should Too!
https://wraphome.org/2022/06/20/california-why-we-oppose-care-court-and-you-should-too/
Volunteers assemble 10,000 school supply kits for homeless students
https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/volunteers-assemble-10-000-school-supply-kits-for-homeless-students
Rep. Issa to Newsmax: California, a ‘Safe’ and ‘Legal’ Place to be Homeless
https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/gavin-newsom-california-homeless/2022/08/06/id/1082043/
(Darrell Issa is a Right Wing nut)
Joshua
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SB-1338 Status remains unchanged:
08/03/22 August 3 set for first hearing. Placed on suspense file.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
They’ve got it on a Suspense List for Thusday Aug 11.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings#
No Recent News
Joshua
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SB-1338 Status remains unchanged:
08/03/22 August 3 set for first hearing. Placed on suspense file.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
They’ve got it on a Suspense List for Thusday Aug 11.
https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/hearings#
This could be the last chance of it being voted down.
Recent News:
Los Angeles OKs Sweeping Ban on Homeless Camps Near Schools
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/california/articles/2022-08-09/los-angeles-oks-sweeping-ban-on-homeless-camps-near-schools
1 Arrested, 3 Cops Hurt As LA Council OKs Homeless Camp Restrictions (quite a melee)
https://patch.com/california/los-angeles/la-city-council-vote-ban-homeless-camps-near-schools-daycare
And here, promoting the concepts of mental illness, drugging, electro convulsive therapy, and forced treatment is Gavin Newsom’s special advisor on mental health, Thomas Insel.
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/healing-our-path-from-mental-illness-to-mental-health
Joshua
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The California Democratic Party has found its own way to create fear and bring people out to the polls. Just as the Republicans talk about crime, immigration, and abortion, the California Democrats are now running entirely on mental health. A large slice of our population is to be sacrificed for drugging, internment, and regular check ins with their therapist for auditing via cell phone. And another large population slice is to be designated as carers for those deemed unable to help themselves. This not only soaks up a lot of surplus labor, these mental health and social workers will show up to vote. Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing through his Care Courts legislation, Umberg SB-1338, special courts to subject the unhoused to involuntary psychiatric procedures and internment, and to subject them to conservatorship if they do not cooperate with a “treatment plan”.
This focus on mental health and coercion has been spearheaded by Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who himself designated his 13yo daughter as scapegoat and put her into the psychiatric system and into an out of state institution.
So today at the age of 27, she believes that she has a mental illness, bipolar. And the system needs bipolar because with the way schizophrenia has been conceived, it is hard to imagine it in an adolescent. And the system also needs autism too, because with the way bipolar and schizophrenia are conceived, it is hard to imagine them in a pre-adolescent child.
Care Courts is also being championed by State Senator and co-author Susan Eggman, whose family also designated someone as scapegoat, Susan’s Aunt Barbara, and they put her into the psychiatric system leaving her to die either unhouse or institutionalized.
Darrel Steinberg has centered his entire political career on mental health and he has set up a mental health institute, headed by Thomas Insel. Insel always explains that he is Gavin Newsom’s mental health advisor. Insel seems to want everyone to be regulated by chemical mood alterants. And he has medications which produce the euphoria of sex, and he promotes LSD, all in the name of mental health. He also has a startup company, Mindstrong, which will have people using their cell phones to, while medicated, check in with their therapist for auditing.
And no one seems to know how to answer this neoliberal Democrat message, because the pitch is that they are helping the helpless. And so at the state level now, California has come very close to being a one party state.
As advanced industrial and information technology has decimated the demand for labor, we have designated a large slice of the population as suitable for internment and drugging, turning poverty and homelessness into mental illness. And we have designated another slice as the caretakers, mental health and social workers. And as these vote, the Democratic Party and its mental health doctrine goes unchallenged.
Joshua
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So Care Courts Umberg SB-1338 is slated to be in a suspense hearing in the appropriations committee of the State Assembly right now.
They did something on the main floor, about adjoining in memory of. They they adjourned until Monday.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/chamber-video
So in the appropriations room it should be going on, audio only.
Maybe they are just starting the audio. I think they go alphabetical by author name. Not sure if they deliberate at all. No testimony.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/1100-video/audio
no sound yet.
I can’t find anything. Checked all their meeting rooms. Maybe the whole state assembly is adjourned until Monday morning. Good. The more time, the better than chances of arguing Care Courts down.
Joshua
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Moving some material here which I inadvertently posted on a wrong thread:
Things are happening now, they are reading off the list, alphabetical by author:
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/1100-video/video
They are proceeding bill by bill.
Some seem to be getting put into Roll Call A or Roll Call B. I think that means they they will almost certainly be based, in one of these two big blocks. I guess a member could pull something out and have it voted on individually.
A few are designated as “hold in committee”. And for some they say “Republicans not voting.” I think this is just symbolic as it is only about 5 % Republicans.
Susan Eggman has a lot of stuff in there, much about mental health. They passed some mental health data collection. Something else was hold in committee.
And they held in committee something I had now been aware of:
S.B.No. 1427Ochoa Bogh.Homeless and Mental Health Court and Transitioning Home Grant Programs.
The Chair said he needed to take a break and he is talking to people at the desk and has not been back in his chair for at least 30min.
”
California Democratic Party
Our party has found its own way to create fear and bring people out to the polls. Just as the Republicans talk about crime, immigration, and abortion, the California Democrats are now running entirely on mental health. A large slice of our population is to be sacrificed for drugging, internment, and regular check ins with their therapist via cell phone. And another large population slice is to be designated as carers for those deemed unable to help themselves and unworthy of living autonomus lives. This not only soaks up a lot of surplus labor, these mental health and social workers will show up to vote.
Governor Gavin Newsom is pushing through his Care Courts legislation, Umberg SB-1338, special courts to subject the unhoused to involuntary psychiatric procedures and internment, and to subject them to conservatorship if they do not cooperate with a “treatment plan”.
This focus on mental health and coercion has been spearheaded by Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who himself designated his 13yo daughter as scapegoat and put her into the psychiatric system and into an out of state institution. Now as soon as the juvenile had contact with the mental health system this should have triggered mandatory reporting and a Child Protective Services intestigation. The doctors in public practice do adhere to mandatory reporting.
But with the doctors in private practice it is a different story. A judge would have authority over the parents. A mental health therapist will have no authority over the parents. He or she has been hired by the parents. So they take the postion that they know what is best and that if there is any problem they will mediate with the parents. So if you hire these kinds of doctors, they know their position and they know who they are working for. They are indeed a Fix My Kid Service even though this is in complete defiance of Mandatory Reporting.
Now we don’t know that happened with Darrell Steinberg’s daughter, but we do know that today at the age of 27, the girl believes that she has a mental illness, bipolar. And the system needs bipolar to have objective reality, and her father Darrell Steinberg needs it, because with the way schizophrenia has been conceived, it is hard to imagine it in an adolescent. And the system also needs autism, because with the way bipolar and schizophrenia are conceived, it is hard to imagine them in a pre-adolescent child. What really seems to drive these cases are identity conflicts between parent and child, and it is also just because some parents need to find in their child the locus of Original Sin. And in some cases the parents will have a religious community backing them up.
Care Courts is also being championed by State Senator and co-author Susan Eggman, whose family also designated someone as scapegoat, Susan’s Aunt Barbara. Eggman says that Barbara’s mental health issues “drove her onto the street.” Well this just about has to be over family conflict issues. And Eggman says that she “refused all of their efforts when they tried to help.” Well this again is over family identity conflict. The idea of “mental health issues” is just how they wrote her off and then seemingly leaving her to die either unhoused or institutionalized.
Darrel Steinberg has centered his entire political career on mental health, and he has set up a mental health institute, headed by Thomas Insel. Insel always explains that he is Gavin Newsom’s mental health advisor. Insel seems to want everyone to be regulated by chemical mood alterants. And he has medications which produce the euphoria of sex, and he promotes LSD, all in the name of mental health. He also has a startup company, Mindstrong, which will have people using their cell phones to, while medicated, check in with their therapist for auditing.
And no one seems to know how to answer this neoliberal Democrat message, because the pitch is that they are helping the helpless. And so at the state level now, California has come very close to being a one party state, even though our California Democratic Party is siding with medical child abusers.
As advanced industrial and information technology has decimated the demand for labor, we have designated a large slice of the population as suitable for internment and drugging, turning poverty and homelessness into mental illness. And we have designated another slice as the caretakers, mental health and social workers. And as these vote, the Democratic Party and its pro-medical child abuse mental health doctrine goes unchallenged.
”
This unscheduled break has gone on well over an hour. The Chair is obviously there, not not in his seat. He is talking to people.
I hope that they realize that the state Democratic Party has sided with child abusers, in pushing for care courts and Darrell Steinberg, Susan Eggman, and Thomas Insel.
Okay, so they said SB-1338 “Do Pass, Republicans Not Voting” and I think then it is in either the A or B roll call. And they talked about amendments.
If really Republicans did not vote, that would be the biggest group of decenters from it yet.
I will follow this. I think it still has to pass the full assembly and then go back for the full senate.
Protesters trigger chaos during LA City Council vote on banning homeless encampments near schools
https://abc7.com/homeless-encampments-schools-los-angeles-city-council/12112640/
video
Okay, so they have adjourned now. SB-1338 and the others are moved to the floor, with the recommendation of Do Pass. Not sure how soon they will vote.
Joshua
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Okay, so they said SB-1338 “Do Pass, Republicans Not Voting” and I think then it is in either the A or B roll call. And they talked about amendments.
If really Republicans did not vote, that would be the biggest group of decenters from it yet.
I will follow this. I think it still has to pass the full assembly and then go back for the full senate.
Bill Status, not updated for today yet.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Joshua
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CARE COURTS sb-1338 is Medical Enslavement!
08/11/22 From committee: Do pass as amended. (Ayes 13. Noes 0.) (August 11).
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
So the Republicans declined to vote. There are not that many of them, it will still pass. But this is the largest group which has dissent, and it does open the door to future dissent.
Should go before the full Assembly, and then I think back to the full Senate since it has been amended.
But RESISTANCE BEGINS NOW!
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/todaysevents
Looks to be item 109, for Monday Aug 15th.
Recent News:
Letters to the Editor: The ACLU is right to oppose Newsom’s CARE Courts (Aug 12)
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/story/2022-08-12/aclu-oppose-newsom-care-court
California Needs to Think Outside the Box on Homelessness (Nation)
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/los-angeles-homelessness/
Joshua
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Care Courts Recent News:
Newsom’s CARE Court proposal nears passage, controversy continues over ‘mandatory commitment’ of program
https://stateofreform.com/featured/2022/08/california-newsom-care-court-controversy-mandatory-commitment/
https://www.kcra.com/article/which-bills-have-survived-californias-legislative-session-so-far/40883863
CARE Court
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to get the most severely mentally ill off the streets or out of jail and into court-ordered treatment will be heard on the Senate floor. The Assembly Appropriations passed the bill, SB 1338, with technical changes made by Newsom’s administration. As of Friday, it was not clear what those amendments are.
https://milwaukeecourieronline.com/index.php/2022/08/13/dont-look-to-california-for-ideas-on-addressing-homelessness/
Joshua
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Care Courts SB-1338 before full CA Assembly right now. Item #109
They amended it today Aug 15th. These amendments known to have come from Newsom Admin. Unlikely many have been able to seriously consider the amendment
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/chamber-video
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338.
Newest Amending
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVersionsCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
So right now I do not know what any status or vote count on SB-1338 is, and the reporting is always too slow.
Not updated yet:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Recent News:
Human Rights Watch Urges a No Vote on CARE Court (SB 1338)
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/08/15/human-rights-watch-urges-no-vote-care-court-sb-1338
video
LA Times: Wrong on CARE Court, Wrong Again on ACLU
It is a central focus of civil rights groups like the ACLU to actually address this civic shame, rather than playing yet another political shell game.
https://www.laprogressive.com/homelessness/wrong-on-care-court
Forced Treatment Isn’t What Unhoused People Need
California will use CARE Courts to coerce people living on the streets who are perceived to have a mental illness into involuntary care.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/california-care-courts-homelessness/
And it seems like always, the idea that someone is mentally ill starts within the family, and it is the families who are most insistent upon getting official endorsement of the concept of mental illness
Column: These families are flaming the ACLU as California debates mental health care
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-08-04/mental-health-california-newsom-proposal-care-courts-aclu
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/todaysevents
Joshua
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So it looks like Care Courts SB-1338 was amended, highly amended, Monday morning. So today, Tues Aug 16 it is on again before the full Assembly, I guess to be reread and then voted on.
Again it is item number 109.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/todaysevents
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
I have never seen anything amended as many times and as extensively as this has been.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/todaysevents
It starts off with:
”
(a) Thousands of Californians are suffering from untreated schizophrenia spectrum and psychotic disorders, leading to risks to their health and safety and increased homelessness, incarceration, hospitalization, conservatorship, and premature death. These individuals, families, and communities deserve a path to care and wellness.
”
This still comes up and it is still really good:
https://www.laprogressive.com/homelessness/wrong-on-care-court
Letters to the Editor: The ACLU is right to oppose Newsom’s CARE Courts
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/story/2022-08-12/aclu-oppose-newsom-care-court
”
To the Editor: As a mental health professional and a mom of two adopted boys who have had their share of struggles, I commend the ACLU opposition to the CARE courts that Anita Chabria wrote about in her recent column. I currently work with parents of challenging teens and have an upward battle with California’s deeply flawed mental health system. Gov. Newsom’s bill would only make it worse.
”
”
Anita Chabria is a California columnist for the Los Angeles Times, based in Sacramento. Before joining The Times, she worked for the Sacramento Bee as a member of its statewide investigative team and previously covered criminal justice and City Hall.
”
https://www.latimes.com/people/anita-chabria
This SacBee article from yesterday, it makes no sense. It is a hard story of a man who lost his eyes at the age of 24 and now lives on the street and has “schizophrenia”.
But consider, he should have been hospitalized right away and then in assisted living facilities from then on.
But he sets fire to trailers, so they took his housing voucher away.
Well if he does that he should be in prison.
And if he is out, he shouldn’t need a housing voucher, he should just be put in a convalescent home.
But all of this is happening, he is a product of the mental health system, Psychotherapists and their talk therapy, and Psychiatrists and their drugs.
So this was written by someone who clearly supports Care Courts and the real estate industry, Newsom, Steinberg, Eggman, Insel. They are acting like Care Courts means you don’t need prisons.
It was like Gavin during the heights of the COVID hysteria. I said that Gavin with his Grandstanding and Gaslighting, he is trying to make California into a 40 million bed mental hospital.
Now with Care Courts they are indeed saying that our entire society is to be both prison and mental hospital. It is with the drugs, and with the cell phone checkins with Thomas Insel’s therapist call center.
Joshua
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Care Courts SB-1338, ordered to third reading.
“08/16/22 Read second time. Ordered to third reading.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
So for the Assembly it says:
“The Assembly has adjourned until Thursday, August 18th at 9:00 a.m.”
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/todaysevents
Now SB-1338 listed as item 340.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/todaysevents
Aug 11, Human Rights Watch
Open Letter to Governor Newsom in Opposition to CARE Court
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/08/16/open-letter-governor-newsom-opposition-care-court
A large L.A. homeless camp gets swept away. The big question is what comes next
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-08-14/in-a-vacant-lot-in-watts-a-homeless-camp-gets-swept-away-by-l-a-along-with-the-brush
“Workers with the Los Angeles Fire Department’s heavy equipment unit clear debris from a homeless encampment Friday in Watts.”
Aug 1, video and an audio and an audio, California cities could create safe drug injection site programs — if Newsom signs new bill. SB-57
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article264064531.html
Passed Senate by the min 21 votes.
So again I do not know what the current status of SB-1338 is.
Joshua
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So Care Courts SB-1338, status still not completely clear.
“08/16/22 Read second time. Ordered to third reading.”
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
And so the Assembly site has it listed for 8/18 as item 338
It says:
“Thursday, August 18, 2022
The Assembly has adjourned until Thursday, August 18th at 9:00 a.m.”
I don’t really understand this. I try the audio and video link and they don’t work.
They also have the Rep Mike Gipson slated to carry this on the floor. He was not someone who was on my radar in connection with this.
https://a64.asmdc.org/
Current Version:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338&showamends=false
Recent News:
”
1. CARE Court legislation nears passage
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s CARE Court proposal is approaching passage in the legislature, having passed its second reading on the Assembly floor on Tuesday. The initiative would provide treatment and support services to individuals with complex behavioral health needs by requiring them—if they’re deemed applicable for the program—to complete a 12-month court-ordered recovery plan. Supporters say the program will help individuals transition out of homelessness and deter them from incarceration.
The bill’s mandatory aspect has led some advocacy organizations like the ACLU of California to oppose the bill. Kevin Baker, Director of Governmental Relations at ACLU California Action, said the bill doesn’t actually have specific provisions guaranteeing the provision of services and housing. “I don’t know of any policy expert that believes the way to fund and deliver health care services is by simply giving a bunch of new money to the courts and nothing for the providers,” he said.
”
https://stateofreform.com/5-things/2022/08/5-things-california-care-court-legislation-feedback-on-calaim-implementation-nurse-practitioners-abortion/
https://www.pasadenaweekly.com/opinion/don-t-look-to-california-for-ideas-on-homelessness/article_91fc31e4-1e58-11ed-9774-8ffb77be655e.html
Joshua
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So SB-1338 Umberg, Care Courts is now item #327, and Mike Gipson is slated to carry it on the floor.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/dailyfile
But, “The Assembly has adjourned until Monday, August 22nd at 1:00 p.m.”
08/16/22 Read second time. Ordered to third reading.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
So I don’t really know much about what is going on.
Recent News:
7hrs ago, w/ audio
Newsom’s CARE Court mental health plan is flawed but has merit. California needs it to work BY THE SACRAMENTO BEE EDITORIAL BOARD AUGUST 19, 2022 5:00 AM
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article264628501.html
Gov. Newsom’s Office Blasts Oakland Over Handling Of Wood St. Homeless Encampment; Loss Of Funding Threatened
If Oakland maintains its position, the state may redirect funds away from Oakland to local governments that will provide services.
https://patch.com/california/rockridge/gov-newsoms-office-blasts-oakland-over-handling-wood-st-homeless-encampment
Joshua
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No change in the status of SB-1338, and the Assembly has adjourned until Monday, August 22nd at 1:00 p.m.
In this age of Internet audio and video, I find the window we have into the Assembly to still be inadequate.
Recent News
CARE Court Plan Rightly Targets Newsom’s Responsibilities On Homelessness
The attention surrounding Gov. Gavin Newsom’s CARE Court proposal focuses on the decades-long debate over involuntary care.
https://patch.com/california/across-ca/care-court-plan-rightly-targets-newsoms-responsibilities-homelessness
”
The governor’s Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Court plan has the potential to transform how we address homelessness in California — by requiring the government to act. (Shutterstock)
”
By Darrell Steinberg, Special to CalMatters
Darrell Steinberg is the mayor of Sacramento, former president of the state Senate, author of California’s Mental Health Services Act and founder of the Steinberg Institute.
Darrell Steinberg previously has written about housing as a human right. Aug 2019
https://calmatters.org/commentary/2019/08/california-should-make-clear-there-is-a-right-to-housing-not-simply-shelter/
Other Views: Housing First programs aren’t working ( w/audio)
https://www.bakersfield.com/opinion/other-views-housing-first-programs-arent-working/article_d396a4e6-1e5c-11ed-95a4-7bc8dd674dad.html
^ listening to this guy from Bakersfield, it is pretty clear that they want to use Mental Health to regulate drug use, and to criminalize homelessness.
Joshua
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We don’t need any new laws to subject the unhoused to involuntary psychiatric procedures, or to subject them to Thomas Insel’s auditing center. To do something about homelessness we need to intercede before someone becomes unhoused. The way we do this is by making laws to protect people like the 13yo daughter of Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, and like the aunt of CA State Senator Susan Eggman.
The mental health system encourages child abuse. It lets a parent win a dispute just by dialing 911 and making one into the family scapegoat. Darrell Steinberg tracked his daughter into the mental health system at the age of 13. Today at age 27 she still believes that she has a bad brain. And Steinberg has built his entire political career on mental health. And he needs this to have objective reality because this fiction is what exonerates him.
Susan Eggman’s family tracked Susan’s aunt Barbara into the mental health system. Eggman says that mental health issues “drove her onto the street.” And Eggman laments that she “refused all of their efforts when they tried to help,” trying to legitimate forced treatment. Eggman has built her entire adult life out of targeting family scapegoats, via mental health, working in a mental hospital, and via euthanasia.
Steinberg and Eggman need the mental health system because it affirms for them that their family member was indeed the locus of original sin. And so this is the point where we need to have already intervened, to give someone an alternate basis for their identity, and to open up other life options. We need the law to be able to come in and to make it clear that the family is wrong.
LA Times Critique of Mental Heath and Thomas Insel.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-06-14/mental-health-awareness-dsm-diagnoses
om
Joshua
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CA State Assembly live, “Call of the House”
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/chamber-video
Item 327 is:
S.B.No. 1338 —Umberg et al. (Gipson)*
Talking about Native American Day, Item 52.
Now on Item 3.
Item 5
Item 8
.
.
.
Item 21
.
Item 31
Writing an open letter to Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg over how he put his 13yo old daughter into the mental health system, and then used she, his son, and members of their synagogue for political theater. To be sent to him and multiple newspapers and state legislature members, and especially to his mouth piece, the Sacramento Bee.
Sunday’s Sacramento Bee w/ audio
”
Bee Opinionated: Scrutinizing the amount of care in Gavin Newsom’s CARE Court proposal
With the end of California’s legislative session on the horizon, one of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s most controversial proposals, CARE Court, appears to be an almost sure thing. It’s faced minimal resistance from legislators but fierce opposition from mental health experts, homeless advocates and human, civil and disability rights groups.
”
California law firm receives award for homeless service
http://www.ladowntownnews.com/business/california-law-firm-receives-award-for-homeless-service/article_20bf05ea-2008-11ed-abb4-9bbfa3ddeb22.html
******************************
OPEN LETTER CALLING OUT SACRAMENTO MAYOR DARRELL STEINBERG:
Mayor Steinberg, your daughter entered the mental health system at the age of 13. Everyone knows that this white coat trip always amounts to calling 911 to win a family fight. It couldn’t have happened unless you went along with it. And it had to have originated with some kind of a familial identity conflict. The only people who don’t seem to understand this are people those like you who have done it to one of their own family members.
Most compelling:
Sanity, Madness and the Family Paperback – January 1, 1973
by R. D. Laing and A. Esterson
https://www.amazon.com/Sanity-Madness-Family-R-D-Laing/dp/B0012TIO74
Not to traffic in her name, pictures, or videos, it sounds like now in her 20’s she still believes that she suffers from “mental illness”.
How could this be good for her? And do you think with the gaslighting of talk therapy and the chemical attacks on her central nervous system that her life prospects could be diminished enough that she could some day end up unhoused?
And if she was unhoused, having little in the way of transportation or secure places to store things, do you think something like SB-1338 Care Courts could help her, mandatory court appearances, having to check in by cell phone with Thomas Insel’s auditors, and her life being made into a Recovery Project?
You had an obviously staged picture taken with her at your religious community, with you holding her by her shoulders, like you were having hold her up. It also had your son and members of the community. Weren’t you just using these people for political theater?
Did the members of this community know that there were family conflicts in play before you fed her into the mental health system? Did they know anything which should have been reported to Child Protective Services?
Will you concede that your entire political career and your affiliation with Susan Eggman and Thomas Insel has just been a quest to prove that “mental illness” has some objective reality, and that you need affirmation on this because of how things unfolded with your daughter when she was 13yo?
And will you concede that Care Courts SB-1338 is just an attempt to use California’s unhoused as political scapegoats to help substantiate your theory of “mental illness”, and that if we really want to do something to alleviate homelessness that we need public housing for all who want it, and that we need to intervene in families before anyone finds themselves in the situation your 13yo daughter was in or Susan Eggman’s aunt Barbara was in?
*********************************
Now sent to Office of Darrell Steinberg, and to members of State Legislature
Joshua
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Susan Eggman has also got AB-1035, authorizing courts to make people tell them if they are taking their meds.
Ayes 49, Noes 0
Joshua
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They seem to be saving Care Courts SB-1338 till the very very end.
They just passed something which frees up more money for counties to build more in-case psychiatric facilities.
Joshua
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They seem to be doing their adjournments in memory, and to continue tomorrow at 10 am.
I could not hear that they did item 327 SB-1338. But they did something right at the end making lots of sound cuts, and something failed. It was the only thing that failed for the entire day out of about 300 items. And it was something being carried on the floor by Assembly Member Mike Gipson, of which Care Courts was but a handful.
I know they would have saved it for the end because they did have a full schedule and the Sacramento Bee said that Care Courts had stimulated a heated debate. Nothing else today generated any debate. The vast majority passed with zero no votes.
Have to wait until the newspapers say something.
Joshua
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It seems to be listed again as item 327 for Tuedsay 8/23
“The Assembly has adjourned until Tuesday, August 23rd at 10:00 a.m.”
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/todaysevents
Steinberg put his daughter into the mental health system at age 13. Since everything he has done is just trying to find affirmation that “mental illness” has objective reality.
Joshua
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CA State Assembly live:
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/chamber-video
Today’s Schedule, looks like Care Courts SB-1338 is now item #260.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/todaysevents
PDF of today’s schedule, 252 pages.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/pdfpublications/dailyfile
Looks like they have enough on the table, that if they want to they can just let something get pushed of the edge and never vote on it.
Unchanged here:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
They seem to have for now skipped #260, SB-1338, Care Courts.
News Today:
OB Rag
The Deadly Logic of CARE Courts
”
But while these have been dominating headlines, we’re lost sight of the single most dangerous one yet: the plan touted by state and local Democrats to create a separate legal system through what are perversely called “CARE Courts.”
An acronym for Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment, Senate Bill 1338 proposes a raft of policy and legislative changes allegedly to assist people living with mental health and substance abuse challenges. Championed by Governor Newsom and currently set for approval by the Legislature this week, if passed it will almost certainly be signed into law.
It involves an initial $65M for set-up costs and $49M each year after for enforcement, but $0 to address the already chronic shortage of therapists or suitable housing. (As it is, 57% of Californians are unable to access the behavioral health care they need, and California comes in 34th in state rankings on access to care.)
And it allows anyone from family members to first responders — including private “homeless outreach workers” — to petition for a court order.
Disability Rights California correctly points out several flaws with SB 1338. It does not mandate housing be provided, and would perpetuate institutional racism and widen health disparities. And the language of the statute is sloppy and imprecise, using terms not defined in the bill itself or in California law.
The American Civil Liberties Union has also joined in condemning SB 1338, as it will once again allow people to be medicated and institutionalized against their will, endangering the civil liberties of Californians living with disabilities, caught up in the criminal legal system, and/or experiencing houselessness.
In short, creating a different legal track for certain people by definition creates second-class citizens with diminished rights and protections relative to others.
One might think that these criticisms are based in the Law of Unintended Consequences. But taken together, it’s difficult if not impossible to see them as absolutely intentional.
Our problems with mental and physical disabilities and homelessness are the direct result of our electeds refusing to redress the lack of accessible health care and housing for everyone. And now they want to wash their hands of it by being allowed to replace our society of common weal with a polity of the competent, in which autonomy is tied to financial capacity — and devil take the hindmost.
”
California Disruptive Meetings (This was not me!)
https://www.goshennews.com/news/national_news/california-disruptive-meetings/image_7f180cd8-a4f4-5d61-a41b-ceff0bbe8412.html
ACLU California Action
WE NEED HOUSING, NOT COURTS
Oppose SB 1338 (Care Courts)
https://action.aclu.org/send-message/ca-oppose-sb1338
Joshua
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So I think they skipped #260 Care Courts SB-1338.
Their media feed hung up, as I have seen before.
Doing vote changes now and adjourning.
Joshua
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Can the CARE Court actually provide care?
By Jenifer Esteen and Allen Cooper | Special to The Examiner Aug 23, 2022
https://www.sfexaminer.com/our_sections/can-the-care-court-actually-provide-care/article_5b93d6b8-2301-11ed-8b1e-971c443734d1.html
Joshua
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Darrell Steinberg still wants internment, “legal obligation to accept it”.
If they had Universal Basic Income, and a Strong Public Housing Offering, people would use it. But when it is just forced housing, internment, and forced mental health treatment, people have to resist it at all costs.
Community meets with Sacramento mayor for discussion on homelessness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okv1rvV_EQs
https://www.kcra.com/article/sacramento-mayor-steinberg-meets-with-community-group-questioned-on-response-to-homelessness/40949995
Joshua
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Our economic system is broken. So many people unhoused that laws become unenforceable.
So I think driven by Michael Shellenberger, Gavin Newsom and Darrell Steinberg try to set up psychiatric internment. Remember Steinberg put his 13yo daughter into the psychiatric system.
Steinberg says of the shelters he wants to set up, “Legal obligation to use it, and government has legal obligation to provide treatment.”
So he wants psychiatric interment.
So of course people are obliged to resist.
If they had Universal Basic Income and a Strong Public Housing Offering, people would partake. It would not be just the unhoused.
But Newsom and Steinberg are not progressives, they are neo-liberals. And this later is a repackaging of fascism.
Joshua
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California Governor Gavin Newsom is on the verge of getting his Psychiatric Police State Law passed, Care Courts SB-1338, watching the CA Assembly in session now.
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg wants the unhoused to be in Psychiatric Internment. This is exactly what he did to his 13yo daughter.
CA Assembly Live, on file #38
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/chamber-video
Care Courts is file #309
S.B.No. 1338 —Umberg et al.(Gipson)*
An act relating to mental health.
Unchanged:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
Recent News:
Lucille Ball’s Daughter Lucie Arnaz Slams Liberal California’s Homeless Crisis
https://www.themix.net/2022/08/lucille-balls-daughter-lucie-arnaz-slams-liberal-californias-homeless-crisis/
^ This entire family has long been flagged as right wingers.
https://doorsofchange.org/
Joshua
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https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/chamber-video
File 258, sb 679, first highly discussed bill, affordable housing, trying to address homelessness.
A Senator Kamlanger bill.
Assembly Member Isaac Bryan identifies himself as a renter.
No voices against.
Just barely passed, min 41 votes
14 no votes, looking to all be Republicans.
SB-679 passed, probably needs to go back to the Senate now.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-06-26/we-desperately-need-affordable-housing-in-l-a-this-bill-will-help-us-get-some
Joshua
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State Assembly seems to be adjourning without having considered Care Courts Sb-1338.
they did have lots of voices of objection to something from Senator Scott Wiener which would allow communities to extend the drinking hour from 2am to 4 am . A few voices for, and many against and it failed. (good!)
Most other items had no discussion, except SB-679 which passed. Senator Kamlanger.
Care Courts SB-1338 still looms.
I don’t agree with this news opinion, but it talks about SB-679
https://www.kabc.com/2022/08/19/your-tax-dollars-at-risk-los-angeles-could-face-tax-hikes-for-public-housing-and-a-cabrini-green-new-deal/
Joshua
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Senate Bill 679, authored by Senator Sydney Kamlager, and supported by nearly 100 organizations including local cities, community organizations, and housing experts, would create a first-ever Independent countywide housing and homelessness prevention agency that unites 88 cities to create affordable housing, prevent homelessness and support thousands of working families burdened by the recent spike in rent costs
This SB697 is hated by the real estate industry, but it just passed the assembly. It might be the most important thing passed this session. Republicans voted against it.
Should have to go back to the Senate now because of amendments, but it should pass.
https://2urbangirls.com/2022-08-coalition-rallies-in-support-of-senate-bill-679/
Gavin’s Care Courts is undecided, but hopefully it will go down in flames.
Economic issues only become about mental health because of neo-liberalism.
Darrell Steinberg wants the unhoused to be in psychiatric internment because this is what he had done to his 13yo daughter.
Joshua
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California State Assesmbly Live, on item 40 now.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/chamber-video
Care Courts SB-1338 is item number 237
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/todaysevents
Unchanged:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
No Recent News
Assembly has 30 min lunch break at 12:30pm
Joshua
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File Item 237 was SB-1338 and they seem to have quickly handled it, but it was “just the amendments, so it is “out to print and back on file”. And they did this by voice vote with no one offering any counter opinion.
They do this handling of amendments on many of the bills.
So I think it is still not passed and that that will come at some later time, probably a different day.
Joshua
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https://www.assembly.ca.gov/pdfpublications/dailyfile
So I guess SB-1338 being item 237 today was the “third reading”. It was not slated to be passed or failed today.
Joshua
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California CARE Court | UFW March to the Capitol | “What is California” Podcast
has audio, 16min 17 seconds for the part about CARE COURT
https://www.capradio.org/news/insight/2022/08/25/california-care-court-ufw-march-to-the-capitol-what-is-california-podcast/
This must be opposed in everyway!
I am alarmed by how many people go along with these ideas of Care and Treatment.
CA Assembly has adjourned until Monday Aug 29th.
Joshua
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The Assembly has adjourned until Monday, August 29th at 1:00 p.m.
Item #160, I guess for Monday. It was read a third time and I see amended yet again. Keeping the pressure on them is working.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/todaysevents
S.B.No. 1338 —Umberg et al.(Gipson)*
An act relating to mental health.
Vote required: 41
2022
May 26
In Assembly. Read first time. Held at Desk.
Jun. 2
Referred to Coms. on JUD. and HEALTH.
Jun. 16
From committee with author’s amendments. Read second time and amended. Re-referred to Com. on JUD.
Jun. 21
From committee: Do pass and re-refer to Com. on HEALTH. (Ayes 9. Noes 1.) (June 21). Re-referred to Com. on HEALTH.
Jun. 29
From committee: Do pass as amended and re-refer to Com. on APPR. (Ayes 14. Noes 0.) (June 28).
Jun. 30
Read second time and amended. Re-referred to Com. on APPR.
Aug. 3
August 3 set for first hearing. Placed on suspense file.
Aug. 11
From committee: Do pass as amended. (Ayes 13. Noes 0.) (August 11).
Aug. 15
Read second time and amended. Ordered to second reading.
Aug. 16
Read second time. Ordered to third reading.
Aug. 25
Read third time and amended. Ordered to third reading.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
7 major amendments
192 page pdf for Monday
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/pdfpublications/dailyfile
I am not sure if it is to be voted up or down Monday or not.
Recent News:
A defenseless woman was stabbed just for being homeless in California. Is this who we are?
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/article264776624.html
w/ 10 min audio
Rosie Lander was living in a tent in Red Bluff when she was stabbed 41 times on August 9. Chuslum Buckskin, 18, was arrested by police and is the primary suspect in the attack. A 14-year-old was also arrested as an accomplice, according to police in Red Bluff Rosie Lander
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/article264776624.html
Newsom, Steinberg, Eggman, and Insel with their Care Courts and trying to tar the homeless with “Mental Illness” are making this worse.
*********************************
Will voters in California force homeless people out of sight? One city pushes new battleground (Sacramento)
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-homeless-Measure-O-Sacramento-17399035.php
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-homeless-Measure-O-Sacramento-17399035.php
Joshua
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So here, 192 page daily file pdf for Monday Aug 29.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/pdfpublications/dailyfile
So Care Courts sB-1338 is item #160 with its Aug 25 amendments, slated for Third Reading.
I do not know if this means they can vote to pass it, or when they would. They say the legislative session ends the 31st, so time is running down.
It is also listed with Bills on the Assembly Daily File, vote required: Majority.
Recent News:
As CARE Court faces key vote, counties say Newsom’s proposal adds burden to overtaxed behavioral health departments
https://www.capradio.org/articles/2022/08/26/as-care-court-faces-key-vote-counties-say-newsoms-proposal-adds-burden-to-overtaxed-behavioral-health-departments/
Column: Violent crime is spiking in Trump’s California. These counties blame everyone but themselves
https://news.yahoo.com/column-violent-crime-spiking-trumps-120053535.html
California clears more than 1,250 homeless encampments in 12 months
https://lakeconews.com/news/73463-california-clears-more-than-1-250-homeless-encampments-in-12-months
Newsom highlights Mobile Homeless Connect resources & services
Mobile Homeless Connect exemplifies California’s all-of-government, client-centered approach to reducing barriers to housing
https://www.losangelesblade.com/2022/08/26/newsom-highlights-mobile-homeless-connect-resources-services/
Homelessness in California: Causes and Policy Considerations
https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/homelessness-california-causes-and-policy-considerations
Want to Fix Homelessness? Students Followed the Data — When They Could Find It
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/experience/news-history/want-fix-homelessness-students-followed-data-when-they-could-find-it
So much of this stuff tying Homelessness to “Mental Illness”, herein lies the problem.
Sacramento Mayor Steinberg meets with community group; questioned on response to homelessness
https://www.kcra.com/article/sacramento-mayor-steinberg-meets-with-community-group-questioned-on-response-to-homelessness/40949995
^ this is where Steinberg makes it clear that everything is to be internment.
Former Mental Health Czar Scorns Traditional Psychotherapy
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sacramento-street-psychiatry/202208/former-mental-health-czar-scorns-traditional-psychotherapy
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CA State Assembly live:
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/todaysevents
And Care Courts SB-1338 is still on for the third reading #160 and on the Assembly Daily File.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/todaysevents
Gov. Newsom hails effort to clear highway homeless camps. Here’s what he calls a success
https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/homeless/article264989414.html
Not sure what will happen. As I know it would still have to be voted on by the Senate, since the Assembly amended it, and several times.
I think they only have through the Aug 31st session.
This could all happen today though.
Noting about its status has changed.
I look at this analysis they offer for the Aug 25 version.
file:///C:/Users/branch/Downloads/202120220SB1338_Assembly Floor Analysis.pdf
As I know, these last two amendments are coming from Gavin’s Admiration, and they have largely neutralized it.
A few counties are expedited to do it by Oct 2023, and the rest by Dec 2024. And their own emergencies could further delay it. And of course we don’t want these judges to be installed. But these dates are a long time out.
And a lot of provisions limiting who this could apply to have been added.
Mostly I want to make sure that it is not just being used on people who remain silent and refuse any cooperation.
Not fully satisfied that they the threat is neutralized. And the ideas are still there, still on the table.
I think we need to be vigilant, and we have to coach people how not to cooperate in any way.
And we need a real remedy, which is No Needs Test Public Housing and Universal Income.
I know a lot of people have been putting pressure on Gavin and on the State Assembly, and it is for this reason that Care Courts has been constrained.
Recent News:
https://sfbayview.com/2022/08/courts-are-never-places-of-care/
Joshua
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Eggman’s Conservatorship thing passed, with zero NOE Votes, and glowing support from this Sharon Quirk-Silva, who describes seeing people who “need help” in parks and everywhere she goes.
S.B. No. 1227— Eggman et al. (Haney)*
An act relating to mental health.
Sharon Quirk-Silva
Joshua
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This has to do with medicating youth in Foster Care. Passed with zero no votes.
This has been a statewide problem.
S.B. No. 528— Jones. (Villapudua)*
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They have not talked about Care Courts, and they are going on a one hour dinner break.
Don’t know what is going to happen. At this point though I think the most important thing to do is to organize resistance to the entire mental health system.
Joshua
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Older Homeless People Are At Great Risk of Dying
https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2022/08/423551/older-homeless-people-are-great-risk-dying
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CA State Assembly Live
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/chamber-video
Now they should have just one more day beyond this to pass anything, then the end of the legislative session. And they should have come back at 6:30pm last night, after dinner to continue.
So here is today’s file, 224 pages, and Care Courts SB-1338 is item number 184.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/pdfpublications/dailyfile
A few things fail, but most everything they vote on passes. Voting NOE seems to have the same effect as not voting. Some times large number do not vote. Sometimes Republicans vote NOE as a block, but there are not that many of them.
With only a few items are there dissenting opinions.
No change in status here, though this does not update until overnight.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
So it looks like Care Courts is still up for a vote.
Recent News:
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg put his 13yo daughter into an out of state mental hospital. As far as I am concerned, there is nothing else worth knowing about him.
But, here, he got this published today:
https://www.desertsun.com/story/opinion/2022/08/30/care-court-plan-targets-governments-responsibilities-homelessness/7907835001/
Steinberg continues to make Mental Health the cornerstone of his political career and he is closely associated with Thomas Insel.
Homeless Encampment Fire In Fremont
https://patch.com/california/fremont/homeless-encampment-fire-fremont
Shooting at homeless camp in Chula Vista
https://news.yahoo.com/shooting-spurs-california-city-fence-001200504.html
Rob at Home: Region Rising – Mayor Darrell Steinberg (25min, looks interesting)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkpBc48Au3Q
This starts with an ad from Murphy Autism Attorneys, 916 Sacramento Area Code.
MurphyAutims.com. But their web site seems not to exist and I cannot find anything more of them.
OOPs. I am suspicious of more of these facetious disorder things getting introduced with Steinberg. But I misread. It is MurphyAustin.com
https://murphyaustin.com/
A very large law firm, right next to the state capital, seemingly very broad area civil.
Steinberg says that his interest in mental health began when he was 18 and 19yo, a student at UC Berkeley.
He lived in the dorms, and near the “Center for Independent Living”. For people and Berkeley students living with Physical Diabilities.
At UC Davis Law School, Steinberg and friends Mimi Jones and Mike Dooner started to argue for putting a lift into their Mock Courtroom, so that the students with disabilities could fully participate.
They got the run around, but within 4 months the lift was built.
The flip side of disability is ability. He was tutoring 2x quadriplegics.
AB-2775, Sharon Quirk-Silva from Fullerton. Now usually she is one of the toughest wanting to put the homeless in straight jackets and on drugs. But here she is behind some motor vehicle fee waiter for the homeless living on 4 where road and highway vehicles as their primary residence.
State Assembly is on 30min Lunch Recess until 1pm.
Joshua
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A.B. No. 682— Bloom.
An act relating to housing
Just passed, but by holding the roll open for 10 minutes.
Joshua
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A.B. No. 1663— Maienschein.
An act relating to protective proceedings.
This passed and Maienschein is a mental health anti-homeless extremist.
Joshua
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This has failed, Republicans voting against it too.
A.B. No. 2644— Holden et al.
An act relating to custodial interrogations.
Vote required: 41
2022
Aug. 29—Read third time. Passed. Ordered to the Assembly. (Ayes 25.
Noes 9.).
Aug. 29—In Assembly. Concurrence in Senate amendments pending.
Legislative Counsel’s Digest
AB 2644 as amended in Senate August 24, 2022
(Pursuant to Joint Rule 26.5)
AB 2644, as it passed in the Assembly, prohibited law enforcement officers from
employing threats, physical harm, deception, or psychologically manipulative
interrogation tactics during an interrogation of a person 25 years of age or younger.
The Senate amendments decrease the age from 25 to 17 years of age or younger,
narrow the prohibition on the use of these interrogation tactics to custodial
interrogations, and delay operation of the bill to January 1, 2024.
Vote: 41. Substantial substantive change: yes
Joshua
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Ab-2223, Buffy Wicks passed. This is kind of out here. No own can ever be prosecuted for abortion or miscarriage inutero. This could be like an iron clad Roe V. Wade but with no time limit. It just barely passed and with Republican’s voting no.
Joshua
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AB2273 Age Appropriate Design Code Act, Buffy Wicks, Global Standard For Protecting Youth Online. Passed easily.
Joshua
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State Assembly taking a 90min dinner break, and letting some committees meet, and then reconvening at 6:30pm.
No Care Courts yet, and only one day more.
Darrell Steinberg is beyond belief.
Joshua
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So here is the CA State Senate Floor Live 8/31, last day of this legislative session.
https://www.senate.ca.gov/media/senate-tv1/video?id=190566
And here is their agenda, item #24 is Care Courts SB-1338, having to concur on the amendments that the Assembly has made, since the Senate originally passed it with zero Noe votes.
https://www.senate.ca.gov/calendar
Looks like last night after dinner the Assembly passed Care Courts.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVotesClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
So the people who refused to vote were 5,
Bryan, Megan Dahle, Irwin, Lee, Mayes
Mayes is our only independent. Isaac G. Bryan is a Democrat from Culver City, and he is always very interesting to listen to and he identifies himself as a rentor.
https://a54.asmdc.org/
Megan Dahle is a Republican from Redding. I imagine the wife of Senator Brian Dahle, who is in the runoff for Governor.
Irwin and Lee are Democrats from Oxnard and Milpitas.
The only no votes were Kalra and Stone, both Democrats.
Kalra is San Jose’s Ash Kalra, someone who has opposed Care Courts from the very start. He had been San Jose City Council, and before that a Public Defender, and then a defender of those they were trying to get involuntary conservatorship of. Kalra saw though Care Courts from the very start.
Mark Stone is from Monterey and Santa Cruz and he has always seemed like a good guy. But as Chair of Assembly Judiciary, he had gone along with Care Courts. Most happy to see his opposition now.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVotesClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1338
So the State Senate has gone into recess. I don’t think they have done Care Courts item 24. But all they are having to do is approve the Assembly’s amendments, and they do soften it and they seem to delay it for a year.
Joshua
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I find it interesting that the no votes ended up coming from Democrats, per your description. I remember you talking about several GOP members being opposed to this and speaking against it. What happened to them?
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When care courts had originally sailed through the Senate, there were zero Noe votes. The only one refusing to votes was Hertzberg, a Democrat.
CA Senate coming back to order now.
https://www.senate.ca.gov/calendar
Recent News:
‘Forcing the hand’: Gavin Newsom leans into legislative agenda as first term nears end
https://calmatters.org/politics/2022/08/gavin-newsom-legislative-agenda/
But the governor’s biggest priority this year has arguably been the passage of a sweeping proposal, known as CARE Court, to compel people with serious mental health issues into treatment and housing.
https://www.ntd.com/3-courts-rule-against-newsom-lockdowns_833112.html
3 Courts Rule Against Newsom Lockdowns
Care Courts SB-1338 being discussed now. Presented by Tom Umberg (D – Santa Anna), co-author with Susan Eggman. Umberg says it is to “focuses on the chronically homeless, those with schizophrenia and schizophrenia like conditions so that we supply the support systems so that they get better. And he talks about the thousands upon thousands who are the loved ones, the family members. Says Assembly amendments are extensive. Provides training for judges, and getting the needed behavioral health care professionals.
Eggman thanks Umberg and Dr. Mark Ghaly. Talks about racial disparity and how this is about moving people to the front of the line and how in 20 years we will look back and ask why we did not do more.
Senator Jones speaks in favor of it.
(So we want to house people, how does mental health become a part of this?)
No more discussion or debate, so they do a unanimous role call.
The logic of the three people who spoke is 100% that we have to make people’s decisions for them.
So Care Courts will go to the Governor who certainly will sign it, and we now have a Mental Health Police State.
Senator Stern now talks about SB-1446, and says that Care Courts has no guarantee of treatment our housing. So speaking pro-mental health he wants his bill for treatment and housing.
And it seems to be passing. Kamlager voted No and Herzberg did not vote.
I am not going to watch anymore of this stuff because it is depressing how delusional out state legislature could be.
The problem is that Liberalism gets transformed into Neo-Liberalism.
Joshua
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(Duplicate comment)
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Steve, in Assembly Appropriations Republican declined to vote. But those voted are really just advisory. Generally Republicans go along with this because they want a stratified society and so they see the homeless and the mentally ill as social menaces. And these kinds of bills make the homeless and the mentally ill the same.
In the Assembly last night a binding vote, Megan Dahle declined to vote. I think she is the wife of candidate for Governor Senator Brian Dahle.
The one Independent and 3 Democrats declined to vote.
Two Democrats, Kalra and Stone voted Noe.
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Thanks for the clarification. I am aware that the so-called “mentally ill” have few friends either side of the aisle. It is one form of prejudice and discrimination that all but the most enlightened “social justice warriors” seem to find AOK, and one area where “government overreach” is totally fine with the Right.
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Mark Stone and Ask Kalra voted Noe. Kalra had been a Public Defender, and then a Defender of those they were trying to place under conservatorship. Kalra was the first and most vocal about his opposition.
People need to learn to refuse to have any dealings with the Mental Health System, to offer it no cooperation whatsoever.
Darrel Steinberg has a lot to do with why now in CA we have a vast number of psych med addicts, maybe 10 to 20% of the population, and seemingly are never able to spend enough money on mental health and are using mental health to explain more and more things, and now have passed legislation to do internment.
Prop 63, 2004
https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_63,_Tax_Increase_on_Income_Above_$1_Million_for_Mental_Health_Services_Initiative_(2004)
https://dmh.lacounty.gov/about/mhsa/
Recent News About Care Courts:
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/crime/care-court-proposal-clears-legislative-hurdle-awaits-newsom-signature/article_ffcbcb30-297a-11ed-8c05-13a37c6bb023.html
”
The ACLU California Action, Human Rights Watch, Coalition on Homelessness, Mental Health Association of San Francisco, Disability Rights California and other advocacy groups have expressed opposition to the plan. Chief among criticisms is that the plan would force individuals into treatment if they do not cooperate, and that they could then be placed under conservatorship.
”
https://www.kqed.org/news/11924117/governors-care-court-plan-passes-assembly-clearing-way-to-become-law
“It ignores the very stark reality that we’re living in this moment,” said James Burch, deputy director of the Anti Police-Terror Project, which is part of a statewide coalition opposing CARE Court. “We are tens of thousands of beds short in the Bay Area of the permanent housing that we need. … And we are woefully short on voluntary treatment programs.”
“Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced the proposal in March as a way to help people who oscillate among emergency psychiatric treatment, incarceration and homelessness get the support they need.”
Newsom was just capitulating to criticism from the Right in Michael Shellenberger.
”
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Stephen Manley said he sees people caught in that cycle every day. Manley oversees a mental health care diversion court for people awaiting trial for suspected crimes.
“I think this is a major step towards building a system that is going to be effective, as opposed to the present system,” Manley said, “where these individuals simply cycle through our jails over to the emergency room of a hospital, back to the streets, back to the jail, back to the hospital. And it doesn’t stop.”
”
Most of the drive for this does seem to come from the family members:
”
Assemblymember Suzette Martinez Valladares (R-Santa Clarita) said CARE Court was coming 10 years too late. She shared the story of her cousin, a Vietnam veteran, who was homeless and living in an encampment for five years before he died.
“I wish that my family had the tools that this bill is going to bring forward so that he might still be alive and with us,” she said, adding, “But there’s more work to be done. This bill is great, but we need resources for the programs, for the services, for the workforce that doesn’t currently exist.”
”
Because of advanced industrial and information technology, we have no need for such a large work force. But now we need all these mental health workers. And these people will show up to vote.
CARE Courts—the Controversial Plan to Compel People Into Drug, Mental Health Treatment—Set to Become Law
https://sfstandard.com/politics/care-courts-the-controversial-plan-to-compel-people-into-drug-mental-health-treatment-set-to-become-la/
”
The “passage of the CARE Act means hope for thousands of Californians suffering from severe forms of mental illness who too often languish on our streets without the treatment they desperately need and deserve,” Newsom said in a statement.
”
https://news.yahoo.com/newsoms-court-ordered-treatment-plan-205512657.html
Joshua
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So having to re-calibrate in the wake of Care Courts passing, moving to an active resistance posture. Looking for who might be taking the lead.
Assembly Media Archive:
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media-archive
Seem to have passed Care Courts after dinner 8/30. I want to hear what the people said.
12 1/3 hours.
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/assembly-floor-session-20220830/video
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/assembly-floor-session-20220830/video
So coming back after recess 7:00pm
Calling SB-1338 Care Courts, Mike A. Gipson presenting:
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/media/assembly-floor-session-20220830/video?time%5Bassembly-floor-session-20220830%5D=34925.374649
Richard Bloom was the author of the Assembly version, mostly the same, but they decided at the last minute to proceed with the Senate version. I suspect that they knew that there would be more opposition in the Assembly.
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This Sharon Quirk-Silva is in charge of this Assembly Committee on the Homeless and Mental Health for Orange County. She always goes on and on about “seeing people who need help” everywhere. “Many of our families have been touched by homelessness.”
She talks about her own brother, “Billy who struggled with not only Mental Health, but with Severe Alcoholism.”
The idea that someone is “Mentally Ill” usually starts within the family.
This Bennett, Ventura, is not a name I had heard of in connection with this before.
Marie Waldron, high ranking Republican, says she has spent years working in the Mental Health field.
This Laurie Davies (R) says that she and her husband are conservators of her sister-in-law.
So she explains that there had been help, that if something happened they could get her into a hospital and “back into medication”.
“When they are in this stage they are not able to make commonsense decisions”
Like they decide that they should not keep taking mood altering chemicals that numb and stupefy them.
Cooper says he spent 13 years in law enforcement and he saw people brought into the jail and get on medication and “get normal”.
And he says “The number one issue in our state is homelessness. The public wants it solved.”
Heath Flora (R)
Valladerez (R)
10 years ago her cousin, a Vietnam veteran had been living in a tent in a homeless camp for over 5 years, and, “He lost that battle.”
No one has spoken against this. But Al Muratsuchi (D) says he will be voting for it but with mixed feelings.
“Fundamentally philosophical issue, when does compassion end and our desire just to get people off of the street begin. Real issue is housing.”
“I don’t think this is a great bill.” (the previous speakers were celebrating how great it is)
( this is more smarts than I had expected from Muratsuchi )
“I think we are taking the easy way out”
Patterson(R – Fresno) talking about breaking the “heart of God” and how he supports this bill.)
No one else spoke, Gipson closed. Muratsuchi spoke a critical message, but he will be voting for it.
“We can build all the housing that we possibly can. But unless we deal with people’s mental illness, that is for naught.”
“I wanna celebrate because I believe that we are moving in the right way for the first time, dealing with people who are having mental illnesses.”
Ayes 62, Noes 2
Joshua
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Recent News:
Opinion: They’re big Newsom wins, but questions remain on CARE Court
Civil rights groups say mentally ill homeless people who have committed no crimes can’t be coerced into accepting treatment
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/editorials/story/2022-09-01/newsom-diablo-canyon-care-court-mentally-ill-homeless
Man sleeping in wheelchair outside McDonald’s is killed, CA officials say. Two charged
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article265247361.html
Officer ran over homeless man on Fresno sidewalk, advocates say. Police investigating
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article265201116.html
We have only one party at the state level. The reason that the Democrats are going along with the Psychiatric Police State, is that they are being attacked from the Right, and because in some places people have been elected who really are Republicans, but they call themselves Democrats.
And then Democrats are being attacked from the Right, being called Liberals or Progressives. But many of them are nothing of the sort, they are Neo-Liberals.
So rather than set up a Strong No Needs Test Public Housing and Universal Basic Income, they want to label and intern people and hire people into Mental Health and Social Work. These people will vote too.
Joshua
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We need the most militant kind of anti-psychiatry movement working at all levels. The majority of these CA legislators still believe that the psychiatric system is “helping” people, rather than seeing that these drugs are poisons and that they are creating more psychiatric basket cases.
Joshua
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video:
CARE Court bill goes through changes before reaching Gov. Newsom’s desk
https://www.abc10.com/video/news/local/california/care-court-bill-goes-through-changes-before-reaching-gov-newsoms-desk/103-2b349072-b479-4edc-be86-344404d9f490
How can Newsom change it from what the legislature passed?
Newsom expected to sign CARE Court bill into law any day now
Some last-minute changes were made to the bill before the legislature passed it to address concerns from counties.
https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/california/newsom-expected-to-sign-care-court-proposal-into-law/509-86f0acc0-5fb2-4a94-b971-ff558bfd4ddf
https://www.laprogressive.com/homelessness/why-we-oppose-care-court
Joshua
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I hadn’t been planning to post this stuff, but its subject has made it so prominent.
Jordana Steinberg: ‘A story of overcoming’ mental illness
w/ video
http://media.sacbee.com/static/sinclair/jordana/index.html
The main function of the Mental Health System, as it is with the autism industry, it is to get people to believe that there is some objective reality to their supposed ailment.
And with the talk therapy and the drugs, they usually can make people cave in.
Joshua
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So likely she had something like a nervous breakdown, at age 13. And they had to get her away from the parents. It was probably over some kind of a family identity conflict. So getting her away from the parents until they can undergo counseling could well have been a life saver.
And they had talk to her to find out what was going on.
But there also should have been an investigation by Child Protective Services. Paying for private doctors and an out of state hospital should not have evaded that.
And so she made it through. But that does not mean that today should believe that she has ever had anything like Mental Illness.
Making her believe that only serves the purpose of exonerating any and all perpetrators.
And Steinberg has gone on to try and make CA into one 40 million bed mental hospital, and now a Psychiatric Police State.
Joshua
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California is now a Psychiatric Police State. And lest you think this
only applies to the unhoused, they are saying that they want to apply
this “help” to people before mental illness makes them unhoused. So
it applies to everyone.
We must resist and we must use all available means. We need the most
militant kind of anti-psychiatry movement, and working at all levels.
The majority of these CA legislators still believe that the
psychiatric system is “helping” people, rather than seeing that these
drugs are poisons and that they are the reason we have more and more
psychiatric basket cases. And the idea that someone has “mental illness” is usually something which has started in the family.
At the state level CA is now just one party. And so we have a lot of elected people who really are Republicans, but who call themselves Democrats. And then Gavin and his Democrats do face public pressure over the increases in homelessness. But a lot of them are not liberals or progressives, like Gavin himself. They are neo-liberals.
So Gavin is trying to turn CA into a 40 million bed mental hospital. And maybe it was close to this already because of Darrell Steinberg’s 2004 Prop 63. This has to be why we have an ever increasing percentage of the population dependent on mood altering psychiatric neurotoxins. And in most families, if they are not rich enough to hire private doctors, then they have been led to believe that one of their own has a “Brain Chemical Imbalance” and that they are forever dependent on psychiatric neurotoxins and likely are incapable of every leading a normal life.
So Gavin’s Care Courts now makes this coercive. It starts with the unhoused, but it is pitched at everyone.
So we must resist, we mush find ways to resist, ways large and small. We must never yield one morsel of cooperation to the psychiatric system.
We need strategies to deal with these enforcers at first contact, and hopefully to be able to run them off.
And we need strategies and attorneys to defend us in court.
And then we need methods to show our complete rejection of Care Courts and the entire mental health system and its conceptual underpinnings on a daily basis.
Joshua
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Recent News About Care Courts SB-1338
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-04/newsom-capitol-guns-care-court-diablo
Newsom also faced fervent opposition from civil rights groups for his Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment (CARE) Court proposal, a far-reaching plan to provide court-ordered treatment for thousands of Californians suffering from a mix of severe mental illness, homelessness and addiction.
A coalition that included the American Civil Liberties Union, Disability Rights California and the Western Center on Law and Poverty — groups with which Democrats in the Capitol often align — spent the legislative session castigating the proposal as an inhumane effort to criminalize homelessness and strip people of their personal freedoms. The Legislature overwhelmingly approved it, with Republicans and Democrats celebrating its passage.
“It runs completely counter to truly progressive ideals,” said Susan Mizner, director of the ACLU’s Disability Rights Program. “It’s a throwback to an era in which we punish people for being poor and we punish people for having mental illness.”
https://goldrushcam.com/sierrasuntimes/index.php/news/local-news/40581-governor-newsom-s-statement-on-the-legislature-s-passage-of-care-court-says-this-offers-hope-for-thousands-suffering-from-severe-forms-of-mental-illness-who-too-often-languish-on-our-streets-without-the-treatment-they-desperately-need-and-deserve
“Today’s passage of the CARE Act means hope for thousands of Californians suffering from severe forms of mental illness who too often languish on our streets without the treatment they desperately need and deserve.
“CARE Court is a paradigm shift: providing housing and services in the community, where people can heal – and not behind locked walls of institutions and prisons. This was the vision set out over 50 years ago, but only now – with unprecedented investment in new housing, mental health services, and CARE Court – can we see this promise becoming reality.
“CARE Court received overwhelming, bipartisan support from the Legislature and comes at a time when California is investing a record $14.7 billion in funding for housing and homelessness support and more than $11.6 billion annually in mental health throughout the state. This bill also comes with real accountability for local governments that don’t comply with court-ordered treatment plans. The CARE Act also holds individuals needing care accountable to engage in treatment, with self-direction supported and civil rights protected.
“I’m grateful for bill authors Senator Thomas Umberg (D-Santa Ana) and Senator Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton) as well as Senate President pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins, and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon for their leadership in getting this legislation across the finish line. With our partners, we’ll make CARE Court a reality, giving hope to not just those suffering with severe, untreated mental illnesses with psychosis, but also offering a lifeline to the friends and family members of these individuals who for too long have felt hopeless in getting help for their loved ones.”
Bass and Caruso Plans (looks like we get one free LA Times view per day)
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-04/homelessness-plans-la-mayor-candidates-karen-bass-rick-caruso-explainer
Tents line the streets of the Skid Row area of Los Angeles Friday, July 22, 2022. California will establish a new court program to steer and even force homeless people with severe mental disorders into treatment after lawmakers on Wednesday, Aug. 31, gave final approval to a proposal pitched by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
https://www.gettysburgtimes.com/news/business/image_6010b14d-70fb-5d6d-8401-3b45523e0e49.html
Darrell Steinberg gets the C. M. bench jump
https://www.goshennews.com/news/national_news/california-disruptive-meetings/image_7f180cd8-a4f4-5d61-a41b-ceff0bbe8412.html
Joshua
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Recent News on Care Courts sb-1338
L.A’.s first street psychiatrist makes his sidewalk rounds, transforming homeless lives
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-07/l-a-countys-first-street-psychiatrist-treats-patients-where-they-live
California wanted to end homeless shelters. Instead, COVID reinvented them
https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/california-homeless-shelters-17423387.php
Craig Huey: California Exodus Amid High Gas Prices and Homeless Crisis w/ video (far right)
https://www.ntd.com/craig-huey-california-exodus-amid-high-gas-prices-and-homeless-crisis_836764.html
California goes for broke for bad policies (Washington Examiner, far far Right)
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/california-goes-for-broke-for-bad-policies
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This LA Times article is completely pro-mental health and pro-drugging!
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-07/l-a-countys-first-street-psychiatrist-treats-patients-where-they-live
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^ I had posted this article yesterday. Looks like we get one free LA Times read per day.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-07/l-a-countys-first-street-psychiatrist-treats-patients-where-they-live
”
Before she met Dr. Shayan Rab, Diana Silveria was the daughter of Elvis Presley, hanging out with Lynyrd Skynyrd on a skid row sidewalk.
Three weeks later, Silveria, 51, was taking medication and slowly coming to reality in a room at the Russ, a single-room-occupancy hotel.
Under Rab’s care she was beginning to piece together shards of memories — from her childhood in California to her mother’s phone number. She had agreed to Rab’s plan to move, once she’d fully stabilized, into long-term residential treatment away from the mayhem of the streets she’d been living on.
If the plan holds, Silveria’s picture may go up beside some 30 others on a gallery of success stories pinned to a wall in the county outreach office on 6th Street in the heart of skid row.
A psychiatrist with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, Rab leads a small but growing initiative in street-based treatment that is beginning to make inroads into the population of homeless people who wander L.A.’s streets with untreated mental illness.
”
It goes on to talk about getting people into conservatorship and about Outpatient Conservatorship.
It creates the impression that these medications are good for people. I don’t know what sorts of drugs these are. They are probably the kinds they give people when they get 5150ed. Maybe someone knows about these sorts of drugs. They should not be able to do that to people.
To talk to a person on the street enough to really understand their life, would take years and years, and that is only if they want to tell you. And usually I think the client would have to grow a great deal to be able to talk about things.
Anyone who is on the street has had their life shattered at some point, and generally they know it very unwise to talk about personal things, and that would include talking with a Country Street Psychiatrist.
It is abusive to try and probe into someone’s affairs when they are not seeking that.
I have some familiarity with this neighborhood of Los Angeles. All the neighborhoods are demarcated by freeways. This one is marked of by an approximately square arrangement of freeways. I think this is what they call the old downtown or south central. I know that google street view has shown block after block of tents on sidewalks. This is what happens when you have enough people who are unhoused. Impractical to try and run them out.
Most people would not refuse actual residences. But if you start offering this, it will not just be the unhoused who want this. It will be most anyone who is not rich. They want to do something about the homeless, but only if it can be done in such a way that it severely stigmatizes them.
A strong no needs test Public Housing Offering with Universal Basic Income would solve all such problems and create a check on private real estate inflation. But of course it is the real estate industry itself which is the most opposed to this.
So we have instead gone with the Mental Health approach.
The County is only doing this, and the Times is only writing about this, because of Care Courts passing. Care Courts does not alter the legal status of this, but they want to bolster support for it. Or they want to influence the Nov election.
Putting people on drugs does not alter the situation. If you want to alter things you need to make economic changes, like Public Housing and Universal Basic Income, and you have to intercede in situations like when Darrell Steinberg’s daughter got put into the mental health system, before it gets that far.
Joshua
Pearl Jam with Neil Young
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvtdbfI1sqQ
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Care Courts Recent News:
California lawmakers approved CARE Court. What comes next? w/audio
https://calmatters.org/housing/2022/09/california-lawmakers-approved-care-court-what-comes-next/
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/09/disability-civil-rights-racial-justice-and-housing-advocacy-organizations-urge-ca-governor-newsom-to-veto-care-court-legislation/
US: California Should Enact Housing, Treatment Options That Work
Deceptively Named ’CARE Court’ Legislation Will Undermine Effective Solutions
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/09/08/us-california-should-enact-housing-treatment-options-work
“The so-called ‘CARE Court’ is not about care at all – it plays on prejudices against people who are unhoused and living with mental health conditions to create a coercive system of court-ordered treatment when we know that involuntary treatment is ineffective and inhumane,” said Olivia Ensign, senior US program advocate at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of pouring millions of dollars into coercive measures that are set up to fail, lawmakers should invest in proven treatment and support programs.”
Governor Gavin Newsom proposed the CARE Court in March 2022. In the face of consistent opposition from a long list of disability, racial justice, peer-led, and other civil and human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, the California legislature passed the bill in August. The bill now heads to Newsom for his signature.
The involuntary referral to the court can result in an order from a judge, called a CARE plan. That plan may include an order exerting power over fundamental areas of a person’s life, including medication, housing, and other services and support. Failure to obey this CARE plan can result in additional intervention, including possible conservatorship, which can strip a person’s ability to make decisions over their own lives and deny them the right to autonomy over their own health.
The new law will divert resources away from existing behavioral health and housing initiatives, potentially including successful community-based voluntary treatment, housing programs, and other social supports. The CARE Act does not create any new behavioral health or housing resources. Instead, it redirects money already in the budget to programs required by a CARE plan, placing additional pressure on resources that are already in short supply.
“The politicians who have promoted the CARE Court have repeatedly and falsely claimed it provides ‘voluntary’ treatment, when, in fact, the entire system is based on coercion,” Ensign said. “A person’s ability to access critical services and housing should not hinge on court control.”
Joshua
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Care Courts Recent News:
still waiting for Gavin to sign it. Activists trying to persuade him not to.
Hopes and fears as CARE Court charges forward
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/hopes-and-fears-as-care-court-charges-forward/article_7c6ae292-2fd0-11ed-a163-4bfda162a695.html
“Erik Henriques, director of peer services at the Mental Health Association of San Francisco. Henriques spent four years of his life under a conservatorship and now helps people who are exiting psychiatric hospitals, jails and involuntary detention for issues relating to severe mental illness.”
California has a right to water. So why do Sacramento’s homeless lack access to water?
Sacramento got to 116 deg F. w/ audio
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article265506896.html
Tension rises at Bay Area’s largest homeless encampment as state tears down blockade to evict residents
https://www.sfchronicle.com/eastbay/article/Tension-rises-at-Bay-Area-s-largest-homeless-17427979.php
Joshua
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Care Courts Recent News:
There are better ways to help a panhandler than handing over cash, experts say
https://wcti12.com/news/nation-world/show-compassion-to-panhandlers-by-helping-local-shelters-instead-experts-say-california-homelessness-affordable-housing-panhandling-handouts-how-to-help
^ this isn’t talking about mental health, but it is a moral reform, tough love approach. Compassion cards directing people to services.
Joshua
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Care Courts Recent News:
Homeless Resident Sues San Jose Over Sweep
https://patch.com/california/campbell/homeless-resident-sues-san-jose-over-sweep
Joshua
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Recent Care Courts News:
NewsMax propagates absurd right wing views
Sacramento Mayor Urges Solution for California’s Homeless
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/california-homeless-sacramento/2022/09/13/id/1087288/
Column: Could extreme heat be just what California needs to finally solve homelessness?
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-13/extreme-heat-climate-change-california-homeless-shelter-housing-policy
“Unlike in cities on the East Coast and in the Midwest, which rely on a robust network of shelters to spare homeless people from the dangers of extreme cold, cities in the West have long let people languish outdoors in our generally good weather.”
again pushing the mental illness fallacy
“Researchers this year found that unsheltered people — especially those with a mental illness — were significantly more likely to end up in the hospital during extreme heat than housed people, based on a study of emergency room admissions.
”
California Heat Wave Crisis Exposes ‘Broken’ Homeless System: Mayor
“These days are extreme examples of what is wrong and broken in the first place,” Steinberg said. “If extreme weather can help drive the change that is necessary, then let’s take advantage of the crisis.”
Sacramento Business Owners Protest Dangers of Homeless Drug-Addicted, Mentally-Ill Transients
A neighbor’s vigilance resulted in the arrest of a transient guy with a $250,000 warrant Sunday
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/sacramento-business-owners-protest-dangers-of-homeless-drug-addicted-mentally-ill-transients/
“12 days
The Governor has 12 days to sign, approve without signing, or veto a bill. A letter or phone call to the Governor’s Office is appropriate to state your position on the bill. If the bill is signed or approved without a signature, it goes to the Secretary of State to be chaptered.”
https://www.senate.ca.gov/legislativeprocess#:~:text=The%20Governor%20has%2012%20days,of%20State%20to%20be%20chaptered.
“approve without signing”?
https://www.statescape.com/resources/legislative/bill-signing-deadlines/
Joshua
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Open Letter to Gavin Newsom
Gavin,
So now that you’ve got Care Courts passed, have you decided on a Care Courts Internment Badge? These were from Dachau.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/images/Holocaust/triangles.gif
Be sure to let us know so that we can order cloth in the correct color. And let us know when we should order rolls of barbed wire and canisters of Zyklon B crystals, and then when we should assemble in lines at the train stations.
Recent Care Courts News:
WATCH LIVE: Gov. Newsom to Sign Legislation Establishing CARE Court in Santa Clara County video, Eggman, Umberg, someone from NAMI Harold Turner.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/california/newsom-care-court-santa-clara-county/3002996/
Silicon Valley officials question Newsom’s mental health plan
https://sanjosespotlight.com/silicon-valley-santa-clara-county-officials-question-governor-gavin-newsoms-state-california-mental-health-plan-care-court-illness-treatment/
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Assemblymember Ash Kalra, who opposed the bill and represents District 27 that covers a large swath of San Jose and a portion of Santa Clara, said CARE Court could have a disproportionate impact on homeless individuals who are already stigmatized.
”
Fast Food Fight and CARE Court Plan Near Finish Line
KQED w/audio
https://www.kqed.org/news/11922990/fast-food-fight-and-care-court-plan-near-finish-line
And yes, Gavin will sign it, he is endorsing it. But Santa Clara County is not supposed to be in the first counties to go, Oct 2023, it is supposed to be in the rest to be done a year later.
Here is a full video of the event, with the speakers, IT IS SICKENING!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey8rHoeWgfY
The Mayor of San Diego is there and he says his aunt has schizophrenia.
Earlier I had heard Darrell Steinberg speaking of how Governor Reagan had closed the mental hospitals, most of them. Steinberg says that that was right because On Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was not fiction.
But Steinberg says that Reagan was supposed to make up for that with out patient treatment. So now this is happening.
As I know this is Assisted Out Patient Treatment, meaning coerced. And mostly how it works is with instead of asylum walls, with pills ingested which give on their own walls.
Joshua
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Democrats have come to the position that when Governor Ronald Reagan closed down most of CA’s mental hospitals, that something wrong was being done. They needed to be replaced by Out Patient Treatment, or Assisted Out Patient Treatment. That means the asylum is created in your own head by using drugs.
And as CA Governor Gavin Newsom has signed his Care Courts Psychiatric Police State Law, his people talk about using drugs to “stabilize” people. And most of those behind this really seem to believe that member of their own family would have benefited from this:
Homeless advocates decry Newsom’s mental institution law
https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/homeless-advocates-decry-newsoms-mental-institution-law/
”
The Oakland-based Anti Police-Terror Project is voicing strong opposition to the bill. APTP asserted that court-ordered hospitalization and medicalization are ineffective, as well as violate an individual’s human right to voluntarily seek mental health treatment.
”
Joshua
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Care Courts Recent News:
Advocates Criticize Newsom Over Measure Aimed at Substance Use Disorder
https://www.nugmag.com/advocates-criticize-newsom-over-measure-aimed-at-substance-use-disorder/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=advocates-criticize-newsom-over-measure-aimed-at-substance-use-disorder
There’s not much care in Newsom’s CARE court
https://48hills.org/2022/09/theres-not-much-care-in-newsoms-care-court/
CARE Court could start in San Diego County by next summer
https://www.kpbs.org/news/local/2022/09/16/care-court-could-start-san-diego-county-next-summer
SF Must Have a Mental Health Court in 12 Months, But No One Can Say How it Will Work
https://thefrisc.com/sf-must-have-a-mental-health-court-in-12-months-but-no-one-can-say-how-it-will-work-98638bc7d77f
News
Newsom signs bill creating CARE Court system into law
https://almanacnews.com/news/2022/09/16/newsom-signs-bill-creating-care-court-system-into-law
https://www.theepochtimes.com/gov-newsom-oks-care-act-to-force-severely-mentally-ill-people-into-treatment_4734703.html
Interesting to hear what their ideas are:
How CARE court act will be implemented in Kern
https://news.yahoo.com/care-court-act-implemented-kern-012632196.html
Newsom Signs Far-Reaching, Controversial Mental Health Bill Into Law
https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/newsom-signs-far-reaching-controversial-mental-health-bill-into-law/
We Do Not Need CARE Court Aug 11, extensive list of signatories, 20 pages
https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2022/08/Open%20Letter%20to%20Governor%20Newsom%20August%2011%202022.pdf
Joshua
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Care Courts Recent News:
Why housing advocates oppose a new California law designed to help the homeless
A new California law ostensibly aimed at helping unhoused people shreds their autonomy, advocates say
https://www.salon.com/2022/09/18/why-housing-advocates-oppose-a-new-california-law-designed-to-help-the-homeless/
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Already, unhoused people with severe mental health disorders can be involuntarily held in psychiatric care, but only for three days. They can leave only if they promise to take medications and make certain appointments. Using a court order, the CARE Act extends that period for up to a year, which can be extended to two years.
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”
Family members, service providers and first responders — including paramedics or police officers — are among those legally able to file a petition with CARE court. If facing criminal charges, the individual could avoid punishment by enrolling in a mental health treatment plan. A judge could then order someone into treatment, including housing and medications.
”
“This law violates a person’s right to self-determination and violates people’s right to choose how they want to and need to address their problems,” Sam Tsemberis told Salon.
Newsom’s office is describing the program as a “paradigm shift” — but some advocates say that shift is in the wrong direction.
“This law violates a person’s right to self-determination and violates people’s right to choose how they want to and need to address their problems,” Sam Tsemberis told Salon in an email. Tsemberis is the founder and CEO of Pathways Housing First Institute, a non-profit founded in 1992 that originated the Housing First model for addressing housing access. He characterized the law as politically motivated, citing Newsom’s alleged bid for U.S. president, and designed to appeal to voters “tired of seeing homelessness.”
“Based on my clinical experience and research comparing voluntary and involuntary court-mandated treatment programs, it is very clear that better outcomes are achieved when treatment is voluntary, trauma-informed, and compassionate,” Tsemberis said, adding, “This law will not have any impact on reducing homelessness because it does not provide funding for housing.”
But the fact that police can intervene in these situations has alarmed some advocates. “Law enforcement and outreach workers would have a new tool to threaten unhoused people with referral to the court to pressure them to move from a given area,” Human Rights Watch said in April.
“Newsom’s ‘CARE’ Courts bill will not stop homelessness and it will not stop our mental health crisis,” James Burch, deputy director of the Anti Police-Terror Project, said in a statement, citing statistics that people with untreated mental health disabilities are 16 times more likely to be killed by law enforcement. The San Francisco Chronicle recently reported that nearly 1,000 people have been killed by California police in six years.
California lawmakers approved CARE Court. What comes next?
Manuela Tobias & Jocelyn Wiener, CalMatters 9 hrs ago w/ audio
https://lompocrecord.com/news/local/state-and-regional/california-lawmakers-approved-care-court-what-comes-next/article_c2887221-ce25-565d-9b91-07786ac08346.html
California Politics: Newsom signs Care Court legislation, agrees to gubernatorial debate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxULYnWgM5E
video
https://www.abc10.com/video/news/politics/california-politics-newsom-signs-care-court-legislation-agrees-to-debate/103-f17267f0-bda4-4dda-87a5-ef418f5a0d4a
Joshua
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Everyone behind Care Courts, everyone except Gavin, has a family member whom they have tracked into the mental health system. That is all the Mental Health System is, containment for the family scapegoats. And now this is being formalized as a legal trap for the unhoused. There was no homelessness in America 1940 – 1980. It is now because of legal and economic changes ushered in by President Reagan’s Administration. Newsom, Steinberg, Umberg, and Eggman are shameless. Public housing is what contains private gentrification. Psychiatric drugging is about the worst thing you could do to someone. Legal resistance is being organized.
Joshua
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Care Courts Recent Related News:
San Jose Homeless Sweep Creates New Dangers
The sprawling land once home to hundreds of San Jose homeless residents sits mostly empty this week.
https://patch.com/california/campbell/san-jose-homeless-sweep-creates-new-dangers
^Care Courts will solve nothing, except to create a new class of drug addicts, to make people see why they have to avoid the shelters, as they are internment camps, and to give the Democrats more of these Mental Health and Social Workers to vote for them.
Homelessness in California’s Cities
https://www.ppic.org/event/homelessness-in-californias-cities/
Rising homelessness is tearing California cities apart
Democrats are under pressure to fix the state’s most pervasive problem — or at least move it out of sight.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/21/california-authorities-uproot-homeless-people-00057868
^ a good article!
“San Diego has penalized people refusing shelter”
Mayor Gloria’s push for homeless ‘progressive enforcement’ leads to eightfold spike in arrests
https://inewsource.org/2022/06/10/san-diego-homeless-arrests/
‘It’s Just Horrendous’: Thousands Of San Jose Seniors Face Homelessness
https://patch.com/california/campbell/its-just-horrendous-thousands-san-jose-seniors-face-homelessness
S.F. had bold plan to cut chronic homelessness in half in 5 years. The numbers only got worse
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/homelessness-plan-numbers-17453102.php
Joshua
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Care Courts Recent Related News:
San Diego County officials talk about the implementation of ‘Care Court’
https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/san-diego-county-implementation-care-court/509-e14a2003-a5e8-47c2-ba53-fa82a6b02c24
Commentary: Governor Gives Us the CARE Act When What We Need is Housing For the Homeless
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/09/commentary-governor-gives-us-the-care-act-when-what-we-need-is-housing-for-the-homeless/
Opinion: 9 Bills Newsom Can Sign Today to Alleviate Homelessness in California
https://timesofsandiego.com/opinion/2022/09/22/opinion-9-bills-newsom-can-sign-today-to-alleviate-homelessness-in-california/
Disability Rights California Disappointed with Governor Newsom’s Signing of SB 1338
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/09/guest-commentary-disability-rights-california-disappointed-with-governor-newsoms-signing-of-sb-1338-umberg-care-court-into-law/
Joshua
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Resistance needs to be organized, people need to know how to fight this on the ground, and in court.
I would say refuse to tell the cops anything which goes beyond the immediate situation. Say, “I’ve been instructed by a civil attorney to never talk about anything beyond the immediate situation, never to talk about anything which gets to constructing a biography on me, because I may be taking some actions in the civil court to redress historical wrongs.”
This might infuriate police as they are not used to people standing up to them. But let them arrest you whatever. And same for a judge and same for any of these Social, Mental, and Behavioral Health Workers. Try to not even be in the same room with them.
So tell them nothing, and just face them down, and you should be able to avoid drugging, which is the the most important. And if they talk about shelter or any other programs, “I have been ordered to give no response at all.”
They never really have anything on you unless you discuss your biography with them. And anyone who lives on the street has already had their biography nullified.
And when they try to put words into your mouth do not take the bait, just stick to your own line. If unhoused never affirm it, and resist any temptation to plead for pity. This is what talking to them really amounts to.
Anyway, this needs to be organized by lawyers. And we need to set up safe houses and an underground railroad.
Joshua
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Looks like we get one free LA Times read per day:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-24/doubts-raised-over-the-los-angeles-homeless-count-is-it-time-for-a-new-way
Newsom Promised in 2008 to Fix Homelessness: Instead, He Made it Worse w/2x videos
https://elamerican.com/gavin-newsom-promised-in-2008-to-solve-homelessness/
Senator Brian Jones announces new bill banning homeless encampments near schools and parks
The bill requires enforcement officers to provide information about sleeping alternatives, homeless and mental health services, and homeless shelters.
https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/senator-brian-jones-new-bill-banning-homeless-encampments-near-schools-parks/509-89684d42-1d82-4c7b-aca6-499d5149c102
California’s homelessness crisis hits new flash point: Private residents suing cities over encampments
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Could-this-California-city-s-next-step-to-17462802.php
Thomas Insel, July 22, NY Times, with 1 hour 13 min audio.
There’s a paradox that sits at the center of our mental health conversation in America. On the one hand, our treatments for mental illness have gotten better and better in recent decades. Psychopharmaceuticals have improved considerably; new, more effective methods of psychotherapy have been developed; and we’ve reached a better understanding of what kinds of social support are most helpful for those experiencing mental health crises.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-thomas-insel.html
20% of adults are on prescription psych meds.
Joshua
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Resistance:
Our jails are always full to capacity with all the Drug and Domestic Violence cases. What they can really do to people who defy the Care Court will be limited. We need to resist in mass, and we need to prepare people for this. And we need to shut down the Los Angeles County Street Drugging Team.
Recent News:
LA agencies failed to spend nearly $150 million in federal homeless grants, report says
https://abc7.com/homelessness-los-angeles-county-homeless-in-southern-california-federal-grants/12266305/
Joshua
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California’s CARE Court: A Step in the Right Direction or ‘Terrifying’ Step Backwards?
https://voiceofoc.org/2022/09/californias-care-court-a-step-in-the-right-direction-or-terrifying-step-backwards-%EF%BF%BC/
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Fed up with tent cities, officials up and down California have ironed a new approach to the publicly-visible homelessness crisis on their hands:
Putting homeless people in front of judges and potentially into treatment programs.
The newly-approved and highly controversial system is known as CARE Court, and it isn’t exclusive to homeless people or intended for all of them.
Rather, the new law’s authors say it’s for those with mental health and substance abuse issues, who under the current system only get help after they deteriorate or commit crimes, or end up back on the street with no help at all.
The idea’s to court-order such people into a treatment plan for up to two years, with County of Orange officials joining six other counties in committing to an early rollout of the system over the next calendar year.
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But around this new system are two directly opposing views of how voluntary it really is – and where it stands in California’s long and notorious history of institutionalization.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, state lawmakers and big city mayors have pushed CARE Court as non-coercive and individualized – and as the next step in the state’s move away from institutionalization.
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Civil rights groups, on the other hand, say CARE Court is institutionalization’s next chapter, coercive by its very structure, while self-determination — voluntary but supportive treatment — is the best route through which people recover.
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The CARE Court legislation invokes the ‘self-determination’ concept twice in its text and in accompanying public policy documents.
Yet the very concept’s loudest advocates have come out swinging against it.
While painted in voluntary terms, critics say CARE Court guarantees no housing in the unaffordable state.
In the long run, they say the plan empowers courts to warehouse people in shelters or place them in conservatorships, the case where a judge appoints someone (the ‘conservator’) to care for another adult deemed to have no self-decisionmaking ability.
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“These big city public officials can make what they’ve been trying to do happen at the expense of poor people really easily,” said Lili Graham, a Disability Rights California attorney and one of CARE Court’s chief critics.
“And you can put someone anywhere, regardless of whether it’s the right place for them or not.”
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But if you ask Brooke Weitzmann, a high-profile attorney for homeless and disabled people:
“Voluntary does not require the judicial branch.”
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CARE Court Rings Alarms for Civil Rights Groups
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Weitzmann, meanwhile, has this question: “Why would we want to redirect money that could be going toward the actual resources and toward the people’s needs, into the administration of a court system?”
“We already have a great voluntary system,” Weitzmann said. “It’s called the Health Care Agency. And if they had enough employees, to help people come up with voluntary plans and execute them, if they had enough internal staff, and enough contractors, we could be meeting the needs.”
In a written emailed statement responding to questions on Sept. 19, Umberg said “Housing is a vital component to the CARE Court process – but finding stability and staying up to date with treatment is virtually impossible for the unhoused. One of the upsides to this new process is that the court will be able to issue orders that are specific to the needs of each individual (i.e. bridge housing, a licensed adult care facility, supportive housing, etc.).”
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Photos: State clears Wood Street homeless camp, Oakland’s largest
Caltrans planned in July to shut the camp by the first week of August
https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/09/26/photos-state-clears-wood-street-homeless-camp-oaklands-largest/
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Is Orange County Gutting Local Homeless Resources Needed by CARE Court? VOICE OF OC
https://voiceofoc.org/2022/09/is-orange-county-gutting-local-homeless-resources-needed-by-care-court/
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A jobseeker looking to clean up.
A woman whose husband tried to kill her.
Those are the types of people who found solace, pre-pandemic, at a South Main Street homeless service center in some cases every day of the week in Santa Ana.
And later wrote about it in sworn court declarations.
The center’s one of several homeless service providers throughout Orange County – like Micah’s Way, the Harm Reduction Institute and Mary’s Kitchen – getting pushed out by local city officials over public nuisance complaints.
They represent one side of the homelessness debate that views direct assistance and basic needs as crucial to helping people recover their lives – and with full autonomy.
That seemed to jive less and less with local officials over the years, seeing these sites draw visible homeless presence, in favor of what some consider a new rallying point: Court-ordered mental health treatment.
It’s called CARE Court, and it seeks to put people with critical mental health issues into court-ordered treatment plans for up to two years before they deteriorate or commit crimes.
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California Crane Strikes Amtrak Train While Clearing Out Homeless Encampment
https://www.newstrail.com/california-crane-strikes-amtrak-train-while-clearing-out-homeless-encampment/
Newsom Signs Bill to Allow Homeless to Keep Emotional Support Dogs in Shelters
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/bill-to-allow-homeless-to-keep-emotional-support-dogs-in-shelters-signed-by-newsom/
Senate Bill 774, authored by Senator Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys)
(When Care Courts SB-1338 first went through the State Senate, Hertzberg was the only one who refused to vote for it.)
Lawsuit demands San Francisco stop homeless camp sweeps
https://www.turnto23.com/news/state/lawsuit-demands-san-francisco-stop-homeless-camp-sweeps
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area and others filed the lawsuit in federal court on behalf of the Coalition on Homelessness and seven individuals who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. Defendants include the city, several city departments and Mayor London Breed.
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Abandoned vehicles burn at troubled California homeless encampment
https://kesq.com/news/2022/09/27/abandoned-vehicles-burn-at-troubled-california-homeless-encampment/
Sports betting to solve homelessness? Dodgy claims made by Prop. 26 and 27 campaigns, fact checked w/ audio
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article266083936.html
Mayor Bill Wells and Amy Reichert call out San Diego County’s failure to fix homeless crisis
w/ video
https://www.kusi.com/mayor-bill-wells-and-amy-reichert-call-out-san-diego-countys-failure-to-fix-homeless-crisis/
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This isn’t the first time in CA that there have been big uprisings over the homeless. It maybe comes about once a decade, since there has been homelessness, which is about 1980.
It will continue to get worse because of advancing industrial and information technology reducing the need for labor, and that then reducing the economic demand for industrial goods.
This Todd Gloria is taking a lot of criticism from the Right. But he is also one of those screaming the most loudly for Gavin’s Care Courts, and to have it first implemented in San Diego County.
Gloria, like most of the other backers of Care Courts such as Umberg, Eggman, and Steinberg, is one who had a family member whom they put into the mental health system. They fault the mental health system and the law for it not being coercive enough.
Bill Walton, basketball legend and San Diego resident, rails on how city has handled homelessness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-U2-dc8S6A
^ What the authorities are afraid to do is no needs test public housing, and then Universal Basic Income. This houses everyone without creating internment camps or advancing the Mental Health System. But most people who are not rich would want this. I contains private real estate gentrification, so the people who are the most against this are the real estate industry.
So the authorities are careful to make sure that whatever they offer is only available to the eyesore homeless, and to do this they invoke the idea of Mental Health.
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Abandoned vehicles burn at troubled California homeless encampment
https://kesq.com/news/2022/09/27/abandoned-vehicles-burn-at-troubled-california-homeless-encampment/
One man had earned a living by being a stage hand.
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Among the residents who have been relocated to housing is Ron McGowan. He was a stagehand almost his entire life, and it was paying the rent, until COVID.
“During the pandemic we were the first ones to get hit,” he told KPIX. “A lot of other industries could pivot. You could not pivot as a stagehand.”
He took the money he had and put his belongings in storage. With nowhere else to go, he ended up at Wood Street.
“On and off for two years,” he said of his time in the encampment. “It has definitely been traumatic over there.”
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Well Gavin’s COVID Hysteria hit those who lived with the most itinerant employment the hardest. And so there was a huge surge in the homeless population. And this really hasn’t come back down, and it isn’t going to either. It is a permanent change.
And then Gavin’s AB-5 destroyed the Gig Economy, so a lot of people who had earned their living that way were out of luck.
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This video was from yesterday
Mayor Bill Wells and Amy Reichert call out San Diego County’s failure to fix homeless crisis
https://www.kusi.com/mayor-bill-wells-and-amy-reichert-call-out-san-diego-countys-failure-to-fix-homeless-crisis/
Sounds like the Democrats want to declare homelessness a Public Heath Crisis, which is a hold over from the COVID insanity and similar, and it is similar to Care Courts and turning homelessness into a “mental health issue”.
Conservatives are actually opposing the Public Health Crisis approach!
But what really is to happen is quite unknown.
No needs test public housing and Universal Basic Income will solve the entire problem, as very few people would refuse that. It is not “Housing First”, which is internment. And it contains private real estate gentrification. Similar to how in most industrialized countries and in the US, agricultural prices are controlled by the central government.
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Care Courts Recent News:
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria in Netherlands studying bike lanes as homeless crisis grows
https://www.kusi.com/san-diego-mayor-todd-gloria-in-netherlands-studying-bike-lanes-as-homeless-crisis-grows/
San Francisco sued by homeless demanding affordable housing
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/san-francisco-sued-by-homeless-demanding-affordable-housing-2022-09-28/
Cities can’t prohibit the homeless from using blankets or pillows on public property, court rules
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Cities-can-t-prohibit-the-homeless-from-using-17473913.php
Homeless San Franciscans Sue, Charge City of San Francisco and Mayor Harass Unhoused, Violate Their Civil Rights in Cover Up for Affordable Housing Failures
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2022/09/homeless-san-franciscans-sue-charge-city-of-san-francisco-and-mayor-harass-unhoused-violate-their-civil-rights-in-cover-up-for-affordable-housing-failures/
Homeless Advocates Sue San Francisco To End Homeless Encampment Sweeps
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/homeless-advocates-sue-san-francisco-to-end-homeless-encampment-sweeps/
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Care Courts Recent News:
Crisis Intervention Teams have advantages over CARE courts
https://capitolweekly.net/crisis-intervention-teams-have-advantages-over-care-courts/
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Debates about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s CARE Courts program have raged across the state in recent months. A major point of contention is whether Californians with mental health challenges will be helped or hurt by being pushed into the legal system.
In Portland, Oregon, there is a different approach that has proven successful for many years.
Crisis Intervention Teams (CITs) (Mobile Crisis Services) work with local crisis centers to “provide people in mental health crisis the care they need instead of incarceration” …. “Community Mental Health Programs in collaboration with local law enforcement agencies have established CIT programs across the state to de-escalate crisis situations involving individuals with serious mental illness.”
CITs Mobile Services respond to a mental health crisis in the community, with police normally already at the scene. The Mobile Services deescalates the situation–without using force–to get the person in crisis to agree to go to a crisis center and avoid being booked by the police.
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CITs assure that most folks being dropped off in a mental health emergency don’t end immediately up in jail or in court because of their medical condition. CITs aren’t a panacea. The people helped often came back later in another crisis because their living circumstances hadn’t changed and homelessness is a permanent crisis if you’re homeless.
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CARE Courts force people into a treatment program and apply penalties for non-compliance “…, the consequences for being found “non-compliant” with a CARE plan or not attending court hearings are serious: a possible referral to Lanterman- Petris-Short Act (conservatorship) proceedings with a presumption that there is no suitable community-based alternative for the person.
This creates a direct route to conservatorship – a legal determination that deprives a person of the right to choose where to reside, to make medical decisions, to vote, to decide social and sexual contacts and relationships, and other fundamental rights.
This is a strategy for assuring people comply with mental health treatment programs, but in my opinion, it is needlessly punitive and not based on proven effective treatment strategies.
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The CARE Courts will throw Californians already suffering from several life crises into an unfriendly and intimidating system, when what people in crisis need is compassion and help.
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California’s Housing Crisis Hasn’t Spared the State’s College Students
https://reason.com/2022/09/30/californias-housing-crisis-hasnt-spared-the-states-college-students/
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For many California college students, navigating homelessness or overcrowding has become part of getting the degree.
Five percent of University of California (U.C.) students and 10 percent of California State University (CSU) students are homeless during the academic year, according to one state estimate. The two public university systems have a combined 16,000-person waiting list for on-campus student housing.
Meanwhile, those in search of private, off-campus housing describe a punishing months-long grind of Craigslist searches and competing with 40 other applicants for the chance to rent a single room in a 50-year-old home.
“You’d regularly see the street lined with students sleeping in cars,” says Nolan Gray, research director at California YIMBY and a PhD student at UCLA. “I had students in classes that I helped teach who were sleeping in cars, sleeping two to three people to a bedroom while still paying $1,000 a rent. ”
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California city giving homeless people $18,000 to move somewhere else, reports say
https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/california-city-sausalito-giving-homeless-people-18000-to-move-somewhere-else-reports-say-united-states-waste-of-the-week-taxpayer-dollars-open-the-books-adam-andrzejewski
Will the California Homelessness Crisis Curtail Gavin Newsom’s Ambitions? The Nation
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/homelessness-gavin-newsom/
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We need to be rehearsing people in role plays on how to stand up to these Mental and Behavioral Health and Social Workers, and on how to face down the judges in the court room.
They need to know how to maintain the autonomy in their lives, and to keep the needle out of their arms.
Joshua
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How can we? They can’t be reasoned with. The courts are a joke too. I’ve been to them. They automatically side with the psychiatrist. They don’t need any proof. Even a top notch lawyer has difficulty in MH courts.
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Well, total non-cooperation is the first way. So you don’t show up in court or in the psychiatrist’s office unless they have you in handcuffs. And even then, you refuse to talk.
And in the field, police officer or no, you refuse to talk to them.
Okay, but I am not qualified to give legal advice. This is why we need to have the resistance organized by attorneys.
Care Courts, Recent News:
Opinion Behind Newsom’s move on California’s chronic problem with the mentally ill
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/03/newsom-california-mental-health-care/
“The 1967 legislation had been years in the making, a bipartisan undertaking that proponents hailed as the Magna Carta for people in state hospitals. It provided patients with basic rights, accelerated the emptying of those antiquated institutions and became a template for states across the country.
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Mayor Darrell Steinberg responds in wake of deadly 24 hours in Sacramento w/ video
https://www.abc10.com/article/news/crime/deadly-24-hours-sacramento/103-e1c0e4c1-4ab3-4f06-8aed-5978a4cab2d4
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If you refuse to talk to them, they’ll keep you for months. This has happened to me. The judge also only cares what the psychiatrist has to say, and can court order you even if you don’t show up. I got court ordered a guardian when I didn’t show up to one court. I’ve heard of stories where successful lawyers had trouble winning cases involving psychiatrists. Argue or stay silent, the courts generally just ignore what we say anyways.
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