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Key Issues in Advocacy

Get involved and take action.

 
 
Image Description: Text states “Free them all includes folks incarcerated in psychiatric facilities” on a window screen. A dark-skinned person with brown hair in a braid sits in a wheelchair staring out the window at the words

Image Description: Text states “Free them all includes folks incarcerated in psychiatric facilities” on a window screen. A dark-skinned person with brown hair in a braid sits in a wheelchair staring out the window at the words

#FREETHEMALL INCLUDES PSYCHIATRIC FACILITIES

#FreeThemAll includes folks incarcerated in psychiatric facilities and nursing homes. Abolition of our institutions must not leave behind our Disabled, our mad, our sick, our elderly community members — trapped and left to die inside of congregate settings like psychiatric institutions, residential schools, group homes, and nursing homes— “for their own benefit.” 

1/3 of all COVID deaths in the US are nursing home residents or workers (particularly Black and brown folks). While we don’t have accurate numbers for folks in psychiatric facilities, we know COVID has disproportionately affected “patients” and workers at these facilities, as well. 

Make no mistake. This is eugenics. This is genocide. There is no reform. The answer is to #FreeThemAll and abolish these institutions. 

Mass ACT is actively working with advocates at the Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee + the Disability Law Center in Massachusetts to launch a class-action lawsuit against the state for its poor management of conditions inside its facilities. Connecticut and the District of Columbia have also filed suits. 

On 5/17, Mass ACT organized a car protest outside of Shattuck Hospital and Tewksbury State Hospital — the two largest state-run psychiatric facilities in Mass; both of which have been heavily impacted by COVID-19 (13 residents have died, two of them on the hospital grounds).

As Sera Davidow stated, “When you have people held against their will, who have been marginalized often for much of their lives, held somewhere without the public being able to find out what’s going on—that’s a problem of its own. There are lots of people in these hospitals who have a lot to say, but without support from the outside, the risk to them [in speaking out] is really, really high.”

Project LETS is organizing to support campaigns to #FreeThemAll from psychiatric institutions + all congregate settings, but we need your support. Contact us to get involved. 

Source: Leah Ida Harris — “Free Our People!” Ex-Psychiatric Patients Demand COVID-19 Accountability in State-Run Facilities

Learn more:

  • Leah Ida Harris wrote a 2-part piece for Mad in America — Life Inside Psychiatric Facilities During the Pandemic — Part 1; Part 2