Mad Pride Day - Saturday July 14

Wed Jul 11 14:54:53 EDT 2007

BED PUSH

Join us in Toronto for
International Mad Pride Day

Sat. July 14
1 p.m. -- Speeches -- at Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (1001
Queen St. West at Ossington).
1:30 p.m. -- Bed Push leaves, marching, drumming, and dancing to the
Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre (1499 Queen St. West) for more
celebration.

For more info: Friendly Spike Theatre, ph. 416 516 4740 or e-mail
friendlyspike at primus.ca

Rabble.ca news
-----------------------

by Amy Packwood
July 10, 2007

Celebrating madness, crazies, spinsters, nutters and others is what Mad
Pride is all about.

„Just like we all suffer under patriarchy and heterosexism, we all suffer
under ableism and saneism,‰ says Jeremiah Bach, 25. Bach is a
self-identified madman and co-organizer of
<http://dawn.thot.net/madpride2007.html>Toronto Mad Pride 2007.

The Mad Pride movement has grown from a smattering of people frustrated
with the stigma and silence surrounding psychiatric consumers, survivors
and others to a cacophony of loosely organized annual events around the
world.

The name (inspired by Pride as in Gay Pride) and the date (July 14, a.k.a.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastille_Day>Bastille Day, an international
symbol of liberation) are the same around the world, but as the movement
spreads, it evolves with the communities it celebrates. In Ghana, there is
a street march planned; in upstate New York, a vigil. England celebrates
with a week-long
<http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/madpride/bonkersfest-2007>BonkersFest.

In Toronto, Mayor David Miller has issued a proclamation declaring July
14, 2007, Mad Pride Day in the city. The day's main event for Toronto is
the Bed Push. The Push is becoming a tradition for Mad Pride and was
started in England in 2005. A group of Mad People dressed in pajamas
staged an escape, wheeling a bed from Mill View Psychiatric Hospital 60
miles to London's Bethlem Asylum, infamously known as Bedlam, while being
chased by a giant syringe.

Ruth Ruth, director of the
<http://www.globalserve.net/~friendlyspike/>Friendly Spike Theatre Band
and one of the organizers for Toronto‚s Mad Pride, sees Canadian Mad Pride
as an opportunity celebrate the margins. „I really believe there is hope
for the world in what we have excluded,‰ she says. Ruth entered the
psychiatric system in the late 1960s as a teen with dyslexia. „I grew up
believing that I was really stupid, and I turned out to be really smart.‰

Ruth, a disability studies student at Ryerson University in Toronto,
maintains an A average and a scholarship, but it was through her work at
Friendly Spike as an actor on shows by and about mental health consumers
that she began to think of herself as a survivor. „It was deemed that
there was something wrong with me rather than that there was something
wrong with society and I began to believe there was something wrong with
me; that I was insecure, nervous, a fuck up,‰ she recalls.

Mad Pride is about building general community awareness and visibility
but, Bach emphasizes, also about increasing awareness within the
community. „People are so heavily psychiatrized or medicalized that they
don‚t know there is a community. People are taught that they have
illnesses as individual problems so therefore it‚s dealt with individually
when in fact, there is a community that questions these labels, that
throws them out, that‚s engaged, that‚s sexy and ready to move forward
politically and socially and culturally.‰

The movement resists sticking to any one definition of a mad person. Some
people, like Ruth, identify as survivors of an oppressive system, some as
consumers of the mental health system and others, like Bach, say that
„being crazy is an experience in itself, it is not necessarily a result of
oppression.‰ Both include anyone who exists outside the social norm in
their understanding of madness.

Ultimately, „If you think you belong in Mad Pride, you belong in Mad
Pride. It‚s simply about being who you are and being proud of it,‰ says
Ruth.

The Mad Pride day festivities will begin at Centre for Addiction and
Mental Health (1001 Queen St. West) at 1 p.m., with speeches from local
politicians (Toronto city councillor Gord Perks, NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo and
NDP MP Peggy Nash). The Bed Push leaves at 1:30, marching, drumming, and
dancing to the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre for more celebration.

Links to wash it down with:
<http://www.Mindfreedom.org>Mindfreedom.org, the international go-to
organization for mental health activism.
<http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/madnessandciv/themes.html>Sparknotes
on Foucault‚s ideas of madness and institutions.
<http://www.camh.net/Publications/Cross_Currents/Autumn_2005/psychopatient_crcuautumn05.html>CAMH's
discussion of language.

Amy Packwood grew up in the American South but has neither a gun nor an
accent to show for it. She moved North, picked up a degree in English
Literature and Theatre from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan and
then hightailed it to Toronto where she enjoys daydreaming, riding her
bike around the Don Valley and learning about Canadian candy. She also has
a degree in journalism from Ryerson University.

<http://www.rabble.ca/phpAdsNew/adclick.php?n=a0a8bedd>

<http://www.rabble.ca/news_full_story.shtml?x=51206>
<http://www.rabble.ca/news_full_story.shtml?x=51206> Kirby report (2)
turns a blind eye to women
Despite the mounting evidence ˜ as well as Canada's many commitments to
using Gender-Based Analysis in policy and program development ˜ federal
health studies somehow remain gender-blind. >by Laila Malik

<http://www.rabble.ca/rpn/episode.shtml?x=54575> rpn: Raeanne's story,
Saskatoon
Listen to the podcast on boilingfrog, part of the rpn: In and out of
hospitals, a litany of drugs and poor treatment were only some of the
hardships Raeanne endured. However, her indomitable spirit found a way to
heal, without a psychiatrist or pharmaceutical drugs.

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