@Historylover wrote:
Perhaps we should stage a major protest in our major cities.
I think that will just lead to a wave of commitals, TBH. No meaningful awareness or garnering of support.
I'm reminded of an article about Otto Von Bismark I once read. Apparently there was this social caste in Germany (I forget who, specifically) that Bismark didn't like. In the German parliament, Bismark kept passing more and more laws/policies that really screwed these people over. One day, the Kaiser asked Bismark why he was being so antagonistic to these people. Bismark confessed that he wanted to rile them up to the point where they would stage an uprising, so that he would be morally justified in bringing the full force of the police down on them and locking the lot of them up in jail. Problem solved.
I think that, if we were to go off half-cocked in trying to make noise over our plight, our fate would be something similar. I don't see us being the heroes of our own revolution, somehow. But perhaps that is just cowardace or my broken spirit talking. Perhaps a mix of both.
I've been wondering a lot recently about the "Not Before Time" report that was released a couple months or so ago by a VMIAC associate, down there in Victoria. It was a damning condemnation of your system down there, but within a couple days of it's release, it seemed to completely disappear from the news cycle. It seems to even have become a non-event even within mental health advocacy circles - I've seen virtually no mention of it recently. It's become as if the report was never released at all.
It feels as if something sinister has happened behind the scenes. I remember reading at the time that the Victorian government were livid with it's release by the authors, as the government hadn't sanctioned it's release and wanted it's more damning conclusions to be watered-down before publication.
I can't help but wonder if threats have been made to the various advocacy groups by the powers-that-be. "If you don't shape up and become team players, we can make life very difficult for you. We can cut your funding; or we can blacklist you from having any contributing role in our policy-formation conferances." Something of that nature.
There are few things more hazardous then standing up for what you believe in. You're betting with life and limb, but even worse yet, you run the risk of failing. And I think that that's the outcome that stings the fiercest.
We're all so used to the image of the successful martyr; that Martin Luther King-esque image of the hero who gives his life for what he believes in, yet nonetheless succeeds in bringing forth the racial equality he so dearly dreamed of. We can make our peace with that ending. But the idea of fighting till our last, and then the bad guys still reign supreme at the end of the day... that's the image we just can't stomach. That's the image that really knocks the fight out of people, I think.
