TWO YEARS
AGO A SIMILAR E-MAIL ALERT GENERATED "BOXES AND
BOXES" OF HOLIDAY CARDS.
PERSONAL
MESSAGES FROM OTHER PSYCHIATRIC SURVIVORS ARE ESPECIALLY
ENCOURAGED.
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA -- Two
years ago, Emily Alexander sent out a call for holiday cards
for people locked up inside psychiatric facilities.
WWW.MINDFREEDOM.ORG DENDRITE
broadcast her plea on the Internet, and readers copied the
message to others. "We got boxes and boxes of personal
holiday cards," said Emily, who is herself a psychiatric
survivor. "Thank you, Support Coalition
International!" Emily said she was most moved that many
former psychiatric inmates wrote personal messages about how
they knew what it was like to be locked up during the
holidays.
For December 2000, Emily is
again issuing a plea...
And WWW.MINDFREEDOM.ORG
DENDRITE is broadcasting it.
This time, your holiday cards
-- from anywhere in the world -- will be hand distributed to
people in psychiatric facilities throughout California. Emily
works as an advocate for the federally-funded Protection &
Advocacy, Inc. (PAI).
BELOW is Emily's request, along
with the postal mailing address for you to use. Please act
soon! Thanks.
Subject: HOLIDAY CARD ALERT
From: "Emily Alexander" <Emily.Alexander@pai-ca.org>
Hi all. It's time once again
for a "holiday cards drive." I work for California's
Protection and Advocacy, as a "Peer/Self-Advocacy
Coordinator." I meet each week with members of self-help
groups in various facilities, including State hospitals and
IMDs (Institutions for Mental Disease).
For the past two years, I've
been asking folks to send holiday greetings to be delivered to
people in locked psychiatric institutions. People have
responded very generously to these e-mail requests, sending
hundreds of cards, all of which were distributed during the
self-help groups' holiday parties.
For many self-help members, the
only cards they received were those generated by these card
drives. They had no one to send them presents, letters, or
even call them. Holidays are just another boring day spent in
an institution, with the usual therapeutic groups and
activities having been cancelled so that staff can spend the
day celebrating.
Facility residents have asked
me whether we will "do that thing with the cards"
again this year. They really look forward to receiving your
cards, letters, and messages of support. It means a lot for
someone in a facility to receive acknowledgement that there
ARE people on the outside who care and are thinking about
them.
Please consider participating
in our card drive. Cards will be distributed to people in
facilities across California.
ACTION
NOW -- Send
holiday cards to:
"Self-Help Group Member"
c/o Protection and Advocacy, Inc.
449 - 15th Street, Suite 401
Oakland, CA 94612
Attention: Emily
I'll collect the cards and make sure they are delivered.
Regrettably, I can't match anyone up with pen-pals, but if you
are interested in establishing correspondence with the
recipient of your card(s), write "seeking pen-pal"
on the envelope. Enclosing a self-addressed stamped envelope
will increase your chances of getting a reply.
As always, messages from
c/s/x's are especially appreciated. ["C/S/X" refers
to "mental health Consumers, psychiatric Survivors, and
eX-inmates."]
If you have questions or would
like more information, please e-mail me at <emily.alexander@pai-ca.org>.
Thank you in advance for your
support. I cannot overstate how much these cards mean to
people.
Sincerely,
Emily Alexander
DENDRITE is a public Internet alert system about human rights in psychiatry, sponsored by Support Coalition
International, sending out notices to thousands of concerned people, many of whom take ACTION NOW!
Support Coalition International is an independent non-profit federation of more than 70 groups in 11 countries united
to WIN campaigns for human rights in the "mental health system." For info on Support Coalition, see the web site:
www.efn.org/~dendron
