Author: Slingshot Collective

When my partner was laid-off by a multi-national, expletive-deleted, employer in August of 2000, we faced a financial disaster. She had been previously diagnosed with leukemia, had already had multiple lengthy hospitalizations, required weekly visits to a Hematology/Oncology clinic, and would eventually need a Bone Marrow Transplant, an expensive procedure costing more than $200,000. She had only continued working to maintain her health insurance. Now that insurance would be gone in a few months. What were we going to do?

In a weird way that lay-off was the best thing that could have happened to us. It turned out that she was eligible for Medicare because Leukemia is considered a total disability. She applied for coverage immediately after she was laid off. When she finally had the transplant, the costs were covered by Medicare, saving us at least $15,000 in co-payments.

Now the entire country is facing a financial disaster. Private HMO/Insurance companies have bled us to the point of death, while providing an absolute minimum of actual health care. It’s time to expand Medicare coverage to everyone, instead of limiting it to those over 65 and/or totally disabled. The reasons for this are so obvious that they almost defy explanation.

Medicare’s administrative costs are about 4% of its total operating budget. HMO or insurance company administrative costs range between 25%~40%.

The actual price that Medicare pays for a given service or procedure is far lower than a HMO/Insurance company has to pay for the identical procedure. When my partner had her transplant, Medicare paid about $21,000 for a hospital stay and procedure that would have cost a private insurance company over $200,000.

Every employed person is already paying taxes for Medicare. This includes the alleged illegal immigrants. Well if everyone is paying for it, shouldn’t we all be receiving the benefits now instead of waiting until we’re 65 or disabled.

The nurses and nurse practitioners that actually provide most of the services at the clinics would have to spend less time on getting the insurance companies nit-picker approval for every procedure. When I talked to my partner’s nurse practitioner, she told me that she used to spend 4 hours every day phoning the insurance companies trying to get approval for every procedure. They eventually had to hire another nurse just to deal with the companies.

Expanding Medicare would be the least expensive way to resolve the present Health Care crisis. Medicare is a system already in place and functioning fairly well. All it would take is a few minor tweaks to expand coverage, instead of designing a set of entirely new programs.

Some estimates predict that it would save the economy 300 billion dollars to adopt universal Medicare. It would eliminate that alphabet soup of federal and state programs that were designed to deal with the health issues of specific communities, such as Medicaid, Medical, SCHIP, and Workers Compensation Health programs. Industry would not be required to provide health insurance to their employees, (Ford Motor Company consistently pays more in employee Health Insurance each year than they do in sheet metal). We’d all have access to clinics and preventive care, instead of having to resort to hospital emergency rooms, which typically cost 5 to 6 times more.

President Obama and his health-care advisors, already know all of this. So why has there been no mention of a Medicare expansion program from the White House? The White House dismisses a universal health care plan because they say “Americans demand a choice”. Well, there is no choice even for those of us who are employed with healthcare, We get the insurance company that our employer provides. If your employer decides to change insurance companies, it’s “Fuck You Charlie”. He also says that Americans are distrustful of bureaucracy. Well, bureaucracy is what we’ve got. The only actual choice is whether health insurance will be administered by government or corporate bureaucrats. Government bureaucrats are at least slightly accountable. Corporate drones answer only to their masters.

Obama’s plan is designed to simply “reign in” the worst excesses of the private insurance companies, while ensuring they continue their bloated existence, although they may be slightly less bloated than before. But any plan regulating health care is bound to be a very expensive failure and political suicide as long as the Health Insurance Industry and their corresponding thousands of lobbyists control congress through both parties.

Obama could have promoted a Universal Health Care program. Given the enthusiastic support that he had when first elected, and from the health-care rallies that I’ve actually attended, and the people I’ve talked to, including a lot of medical professionals, Obama might have generated enough genuine grass-roots support to overcome the astro-turf, “tea-bag”, and Fox-news style corporate propaganda campaigns. He might have forced congress to legislate some genuine changes in this country. Instead he’s chosen the path of political expediency. That expediency has cost him all credibility and will probably lead to his political downfall.

When Obama was inaugurated president he promised to “Defend the United States against all enemies, both foreign and domestic”. The “Denial of Care” policy means that Blue Cross, Aetna, Cigna, Human Health and all the other HMO/ health insurance companies are directly responsible for more American deaths in any given month, than Al-Qaeda has had for its entire existence.

Slingshot is an independent radical newspaper published in Berkeley since 1988.

This paper is a result of folks coming together to exercise their intellect, creativity, and cooperative autonomy. It is in itself an act of community and defiance in the face of capitalism. This issue of the paper contains a lot about health: physical, psychological and spiritual (variously defined).

Health care is a huge topic, with teabaggers protesting (though probably not actually teabagging) the O-man’s proposals. Why are we even debating this? Shouldn’t we all just have health care, as human beings, as beings in general? But we live in some reality none of us signed up for, and the lunatics who think capitalism is a good idea are right now trying to decide if we should be forced to pay for a broken system of so-called health care, which is really just more profit for those with money at the expense of those without. Real health is not just the absence of symptoms, but is also being free enough to choose how to live, being able to live without having to fuck others over or getting fucked over yourself.

The best prescription for health is living true to yourself, without alienation, or an alienating power telling you what to do. We here at Slingshot are struggling toward that goal, though it may be in fits and starts, with our own unexpressed anger and alienation weighing us down, with unhealed hurts blinding us to our beauty and fabulousness. Even with all our woundedness we hope to bring you, dear reader, a large slice of energy, beauty, honesty and vision.

Reports of the death of independent print media appear to be greatly exagerated, at least around the Slingshot shipping basement which fills up with paper this time of year. Together with piles of this paper and huge stacks of the 2010 Organizer, we’re excited to be publishing our first book (see ad to the right). Making a book was a lot of work and even struggle — trying to blend the collective process with the author/editor/artist’s strong ideas about how the book should be.

The point of publishing the book was to protect People’s Park, in Berkeley, from continued University of California repression — they still think they own the land under the Park — and to inspire folks everywhere to create their own parks on vacant land everywhere. Land belongs to all beings on the earth – reclaim it. We hope to have some articles about the current struggles at People’s Park, including illegal arrests of park users and a crackdown on free speech, in next issue. But for now we’ve featured other land issues including a Redwood treesit and I-69 protests.

Slingshot is always looking for new writers, artists, editors, photographers, translators, distributors & independent thinkers to make this paper happen. If you send something written, please be open to being edited.

Editorial decisions are made by the Slingshot collective, but not all the articles reflect the opinions of all collective members. We welcome debate & constructive criticism.

Thanks to all who made this: Aaron, Amanda, Apple, Bannannna, Bird, Bryan, Eggplant, Kathryn, Kermit, Keziah, Lesley, PB, Rena, Sal, Stephanie, Terri, and all the authors and artists.

Slingshot New Volunteer Meeting

Volunteers interested in getting involved with Slingshot can come to the new volunteer meeting on Sunday, Dec., 13 2009 at 4 p.m. at the Long Haul in Berkeley (see below).

Article Deadline & Next Issue Date

Submit your articles for issue 102 by January 16, 2010 at 3 p.m.

Volume 1, Number 101, Circulation 19,000

Printed September 24, 2009

Slingshot Newspaper

Sponsored by Long Haul

3124 Shattuck Avenue. Berkeley, CA 94705

Phone: (510) 540-0751

slingshot@tao.ca • www.slingshot.tao.ca

Circulation Information

Subscriptions to Slingshot are free to prisoners, low income and anyone in the USA with a Slingshot Organizer, or $1 per issue. Outside the Bay Area, we’ll mail a free stack of Slingshot to you if you give ’em out.

Back Issue Project

We’ll send you an assortment of back issues for postage: send us $3 for 2 lbs or $4 for 3 lbs. Free if you’re an infoshop or library. Send cash or check to Slingshot 3124 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley, CA 94705.

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Slingshot awarded its 4th annual award for Lifetime Achievement to Gerald Smith at our 21st birthday party in March. Gerald has been a key member of the direct action, grassroots radical scene in the East Bay since Slingshot started in 1988, and long before that. In addition to writing for Slingshot over the years, he frequently drops by our offices for spirited discussions. Gerald challenges lazy assumptions and offers sharp critiques in a funny, comradely and engaging way.

Slingshot created our lifetime achievement award to recognize direct action radicals who have dedicated their lives to the struggle for alternatives to the current system. Front-line radicals frequently operate below the radar and lack recognition, which is too bad. While awards can be part of systems of hierarchy, a complete lack of recognition for long-term activists robs us of chances to appreciate and learn from the contributions individuals can make during a lifetime of organizing. Thanks, Gerald, for your continuing contributions to the struggle. Here’s a short biography of Gerald.

• • •

Gerald was exposed to radical activism and ideas at an early age, and he’s stayed engaged and active ever since. “When I grew up, there was an existing social movement in progress. The civil rights movement was not limited to the South. We had become a mass movement in the North. That social movement made it relatively easy for me to connect — because it was large, because it was clear, it was urgent.”

Born in 1949, he grew up in the South Bronx and went to see Malcolm X with his father when he was 10. “I was enamored of Malcolm X – I thought he was the best thing since sliced bread.” But Gerald didn’t find Malcolm’s religious rhetoric convincing — Gerald had already read and rejected the Bible and religion by the time he was 10.

When Gerald was 14, he joined the NAACP youth group but he found it to be bureaucratic and timid. “The NAACP was afraid of young people — we never made decisions on our own.” So Gerald joined CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] and started organizing rent strikes in Harlem during 1964 and 65. He contrasts activism in the mid-1960s to activism now, noting that at that time, just hanging a flier in a building advertising a tenant’s meeting would bring a significant portion of the tenants to a meeting, ready to go on strike. “It was easy because the buildings were falling down. It was very clear that unity in action – you could actually win things. Now there is extreme alienation – people on the same block don’t even know each other.” Back in 1960s “even in a 14 story project, we tended to know each other.” The rent strikes in Harlem proved extremely effective, as building after building struck and won improved conditions.

In 1967, Gerald entered Manhattan Community College. “That’s when I really started to get political.” He worked on a broad range of political action on the campus. In 1969, he joined the Black Panthers, inspired by the Black Panther 21 case. “It was so clear that they were being framed up. I thought, if they’re framing them up, these guys must be revolutionaries.” Gerald notes that the Panthers were the best people he ever worked with. He worked on the takeover of Lincoln Hospital with the Young Lords and helped run the Martin Luther King, Jr. Liberation School, a free school run by radicals. He also sold the Black Panther paper and continued working on housing protests and strikes. But mostly, he worked on the Panther 21 case.

When the Panthers split in 1971 with ugly arguments broadcast on mainstream TV, Gerald entered a period of serious study trying to understand what had gone wrong. He became more committed to the radical struggle. During this period, he moved away from a black nationalist position and moved towards a class analysis. While he knew that “the oppression is all intertwined” he concluded that “blacks alone couldn’t overthrow capitalism by themselves” and he rejected the multi-vanguardist ideas of the times. He became a socialist.

In 1975 Gerald moved to the Bay Area and soon became involved in the Camp Pendleton 13 case. Black soldiers were facing years in prison after they defended themselves against KKK activity. The campaign achieved complete victory with all charges dropped. He met other activists through the campaign and ultimately joined the Peace and Freedom Party. During the 90s and in the last decade, Gerald has run for statewide public office a number of times as a PFP candidate.

In 1984, Gerald worked on the Longshore Union’s refusal to unload South African ships to protest apartheid. That drew him to the anti-apartheid movement at the University of California, Berkeley, which saw a huge, on-going sit-in in 1984 and a militant shantytown protest in 1985. In 1990, working with activists he met during the anti-apartheid struggle, Gerald was one of the founders of Copwatch in Berkeley, which eventually spread worldwide. He’s worked with Copwatch in Berkeley ever since.

In the mid-1990s, Gerald was one of the early DJs at Free Radio Berkeley, an unlicensed micro-powered radio station at 104.1 FM. Gerald has also worked with KALX, on the Amandla Program, and volunteered at KPOO and KPFA. In 1999, helped organize street protests against a Pacifica takeover of KPFA. Currently he is running for the KPFA board.

He’s also stayed involved supporting political prisoners including imprisoned journalist Mumia Abu Jamal and more recently, ex-Black Panthers charged with murder known as the SF8.

A high point of his activism was when he helped organize a one-day, West coast-wide longshore strike to protest the imprisonment of journalist Mumia Abu Jamal. Seeing the power of collective action, he reflects “this is what keeps you going–this is real. [The action made clear] what this could be — people joining together for a just world – that stays with you.”

It isn’t easy to keep struggling, year after year, avoiding burnout or getting discouraged and bitter. On a trip to France for a worker’s festival, Gerald realized how backward the US struggle was compared to rest of the world. “But I wasn’t discouraged. I thought ‘I’m going to measure up – I’m going to improve.'” Perhaps it is that ability to look at the historical moment and see an opportunity for struggle — rather than a hopeless situation — that enables Gerald to keep on keeping on.

Cutten, South Cascadia: the McKay Tract canopy. The landscape below presents itself as a patchwork quilt of war.

Looking West one sees the suburb, which is Progress enacting its will upon occupied land. More ‘development’ is slated, but is being blocked. We have met primarily friendly people here who enjoy hanging out in the forest. We’ve asked them if they want their suburb to grow, and they emphatically do not.

Among the second- and third-growth trees to the South lie a few erroneous mini-mansions with stumps in their yards wider than any of the three SUVs in their driveways. The residents enjoy a quiet life, until one of them starts running power tools.

We look East and see the tops of enormous old growth redwoods towering above the hundred-year-old second growth trees. Some friends live here including spotted owls, ospreys, turkey vultures, black bears, newts, voles, flying squirrels, and the occasional arboreal human.

To the North lies a clearcut. Three years ago, Green Diamond came in and cut down every last tree in the marked ‘unit’, leaving a few huge burned-out snags. Pampas grass and milkweed grow to human height in the trees’ absence; this area is dry and becoming dryer. The company planted a few baby confiers, redwoods and others after cutting the area; but those young trees are waiting until a couple more units are razed, then all the land will be re-zoned from ‘timberland’ to ‘residential’, bringing more mini-mansions, more people. So it goes…

Except the forest friends disagree. They want to live, and the forest is their home. For the past several months we’ve been occupying two tree villages in the McKay Tract, tying in as many Giants as possible with traverse ropes to protect them, with our own bodies, from being cut down. Tree-sitting has been used to defend forest land in Humboldt for decades, and traverses enable a few humans to defend large numbers of trees without descending from the canopy one hundred feet off the ground.

We chose this grove because the trees stand directly against the march of Leviathan in the form of suburban development, and the neighbors, human and nonhuman alike, stand with us to give us love and support. One of the groves scheduled to be clearcut features an osprey nest, at least one spotted owl nest, flocks of turkey vultures circling overhead, a trail and campsite used frequently by bears, and a creek that serves as watershed for the Humboldt Bay’s healthiest population of coho salmon. Surely, not just timber-land. The critters have shown much love for our efforts, particularly the flying squirrels and owls who provide moral support and watch us climb.

Green Diamond (GD), formerly Simpson Timber Company, is now the most active transnational timber corporation remaining in Humboldt County. They have clear-cuts scheduled each year all across the Northwest, and have largely escaped public scrutiny by a process of the 21st-century called Greenwashing (see: their name + their website) and alliances with the State.

Example: the Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for spotted owls, which gives the owls a vague, constantly shifting zone of ‘habitat’ on GD land and a few selected remaining ‘wildlife trees’, usually of low monetary value. In return, the GD gets a bunch of ‘Incidential Take’ permits for owls, basically, a license to kill them at will. The GD’s plan for the McKay Tract is clear-cutting, followed by residential development to double the size of Cutten, of course adding more residents to the city of Eureka and more overall stress upon the environment.

So far no chainsaws have fallen upon the McKay Tract this year, so tree-sitters are still needed to live in the canopy to protect this refuge of wildlife from the perpetual war that is Human Progress. Anyone wishing to join us in the forest or in town are encouraged to contact Earth First! Humboldt at (707)-834-5170.

“For the record, there is no valid phytoremediation method for [lead].”(1) That’s how Rufus Chaney began a recent email regarding a contaminated community garden. Chaney would know — he was one of the original researchers in the promising field of phytoremediation, or the use of green plants to remove contaminants from soil. He believes that current phytoremediation strategies offer few solutions to people concerned about lead levels in yards and gardens. Questions lingered in my mind as well, after I documented activists uses of phytoremediation for Slingshot Issue 99. How long does it take to clean up lead with plants? Is this a practical strategy? Plants and mushrooms can remove or break down other contaminants, like arsenic and petroleum products, relatively easily. Getting plants to take up meaningful quantities of lead is tricky.

Successful lead remediation involves a multi-faceted approach, suggests Anita Malpani, the Research Coordinator at Worcester Roots Project, a community group in eastern Massachusetts with a great track record in neighborhood lead remediation. What makes the Worcester Roots Project stand out is their ability to combine activism and science to tangibly improve community soil health. With guidance from experts in the field of lead remediation, like Rufus Chaney and Sally Brown (Univ. of Washington), Worcester Roots conducts their own field experiments. They have strong connections with the UMASS soil testing laboratory. Youth comprise a large part of their organization and are the primary purveyors of the free soil test kits. In fact, neighborhood soil testing is specifically written into their budget and is a cornerstone of their mission “[t]o struggle for a world where everybody is able to access the necessary resources to live a healthy, dignified life, without prejudice, exploitation or toxic environments.”

Malpani took time out from moving offices — their old office in Worcester’s Stone Soup community center recently caught fire — to answer my questions and explain her organization’s new angle on lead remediation. After years of experimenting with lead phytoremediation using Pelargoniums (scented geraniums), the Roots Project is now looking into chemically immobilizing the lead right where it is.

Although Malpani says they’re still hoping to find practical phytoremediation techniques, and are running new experiments with Indian Mustard, she says their new strategy focuses on phytostabilization. They are experimenting with adding phosphate rock, ferrous materials, and compost to the soil, assessing each soil amendment’s ability to bind up and stabilize lead. After adding the amendments, they plant Pelargoniums, which act as a ground cover and keep down dust, in addition to possibly sucking up some lead.

Phosphorus is key to the problems associated with lead phytoremediation, and also to the potential success of their new tactic. A necessary plant nutrient, phosphorus (P) also binds with lead (Pb) in the soil to form the non-toxic mineral pyromorphite. EPA scientists and other researchers like Chaney find that lead joins with phosphorus to make pyromorphite rapidly, and that “pyromorphite will rarely be absorbed if ingested.”(2) The Worcester Roots strategy now depends not on taking the lead away, but on reducing it’s bioavailability. Bioavailable lead is the lead that can damage our bodies when we absorb it. Scientists estimate that only 30% of the total amout of lead in soil is bioavailable.(2) The rest is already sitting tight in complexes with phosphates, sulphates, and organic matter naturally in the soil. Instead of trying to divorce the lead that’s already bound up, why not try to immobilize the rest of it?

“No plant naturally accumulates really high levels of lead from soils,” Chaney points out. Plants physically can’t absorb lead when phosphates are around. He suggests scientists get good results — i.e. experiments showing that plants do absorb a lot of lead — by growing plants in a laboratory and feeding them nutrient solutions that don’t contain phosphates and sulfates. This loophole guarantees that the lead stays soluble instead of forming pyromorphite or other mineral complexes. But a plant growing in a phosphorus-deficient environment is unheathy and won’t give a good yield. Successful phytoremediation depends on a plant’s ability to remove a lot of lead, which is directly related to how large the plant grows. To negotiate this catch-22, Worcester Roots is experimenting with spraying the Pelargoniums with a foliar application of phosphorus. This helps insure the Pelargoniums grow densely and are an effective groundcover, regardless of the amount of lead they might be extracting from the soil.

Despite Chaney’s grim prognosis on the future of lead phytoremediation, other researchers are still trying to find the right plant–soil chemistry combination for significant lead removal. If scientists aren’t using the “no phosphorus in nutrient solution” trick, they’re probably using the chemical EDTA. EDTA is a chelating agent, meaning it surrounds the lead molecules and prevents them from absorbing onto the soil particles, or even prys the lead-mineral complexes apart. Malpani let me in on an interesting conundrum: it’s illegal in all 50 states to use EDTA in phytoremediation projects, because it’s essentially a recipe for groundwater contamination. Once the EDTA frees the lead, the lead can travel easily through the soil and into the groundwater. So why do scientists and remediation companies pursue research with EDTA and other, biodegradable additives like citric acid anyway? Because phytoremediation is potentially so much cheaper than traditional clean up methods, like excavating tons of contaminated top soil and dumping it elsewhere.

The threat of groundwater contamination is real. Minnesota sued a Superfund lead cleanup project at a Twin Cities ammunition plant when the state discovered lead migrating into the groundwater. The EDTA applied to the experimental phytoremediation plot of corn and mustard plants, to increase the plants’ ability to access and remove the soil lead, was instead helping the lead move deeper into the soil and reach the groundwater. The remediation contractors had failed to obtain a permit for using EDTA in the first place.(3)

Back east amidst a sea of old clapboard houses covered in layers of lead paint, the Worcester Roots Project began their foray into lead clean-up with a series of experiments in 2003 and 2004. They set up 8 test plots, tested for lead content, and planted mostly Pelargoniums, with some corn and pumpkins thrown in for variety. They also looked at how the simple addition of compost to the contaminated soil affected the lead content. Malpani told me the experiments were basic, mimicking the lack of control experienced in peoples’ yards. But the concept was proven: lead content was reduced by about 30% in three of the Pelargoniums test plots, which started out with between about 1,000-6,000 parts per million lead. Adding compost also seemed effective. In 17 community gardens and 1 residence with relatively low lead levels (ranging from 48-323 parts per million), no lead was present after annual additions of compost. And in the one compost-only test plot, lead was reduced 41%, down to about 3,500 ppm, after Roots Project volunteers removed the sod and added 1 inch of compost.

These results are great — they make home-scale lead remediation look easy! I wondered, though, if you could really pull out all the lead after planting Pelargoniums for 3 years, or if less and less lead would be taken up each year. Perhaps that 30% was the fraction of the soil lead that was unabsorbed and easy for roots to access.

I found cautious optimism in the scientific literature regarding phytoremediation with Pelargoniums. I also found the time estimate for lead phytoremediation that I had been longing for: a whopping 150 years to remove all the lead from a contaminated field
in northern France!(4) With 1830 mg/kg lead, the field was not that different than some of the backyards tested by Worcester Roots. Even if you were only trying to reduce the lead to below 400 mg/kg, the EPA limit for yards (not playgrounds or vegetable gardens), it would still take upwards of 110 years. That’s a long time to harvest yearly crops contaminated with lead. To make Worcester soils safe for vegetable cultivation and children’s games, Roots Project activists would have to plant, harvest, and dispose of Pelargoniums for more than a century!

Hence the fundamental change in the Roots Project approach. However, a quick search of the scientific literature revealed that there are, of course, still questions about remediating lead with phosphorus and other soil amendments. For instance, what happens when you add phosphorus to the lead-rich soil of a firing range? After 32 months – almost 3 years – only 45% of that soil lead was bound into pyromorphite.(5) Immobilizing more lead would probably require understanding and changing the soil pH. Plus, it’s important to use a less soluble source of phosphate, like bone meal or rock phosphate, to avoid turning any ponds or streams in the area into bright green algae blooms as inorganic phosphate fertilizers leach into the water.

While they’re researching new methods of lead cleanup, what does the Roots Project recommend in the mean time? “If the lead levels are really high (more than 2,000 parts per million), you have bare soil and you have children who play in the yard, we advise you to use barrier methods like building patios, landscaping fabric with mulch, raised beds, and maybe other lead-safe landscaping methods we use,” suggested Malpani. “If it is between 400 to 1200 ppm you could add layers of compost and phosphorus to bind lead and grow Pelargoniums and dispose of them safely.”

For more information, contact Worcester Roots Project at info@WorcesterRoots.org or visit www.WorcesterRoots.org.

Footnotes:

1. Email from Rufus Chaney, USDA-Agricultural Research Service, to Barbara Emeneau, regarding lead remediation in a community garden in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada http://mailman.cloudnet.com/ pipermail/compost/2009-May/015737.html

2.

3. EPA (2001). Providing Solutions for a Better Tomorrow : Reducing the Risks Associated with Lead in Soil. EPA/600/F-01/014 www.epa.gov/ORD/NRMRL

4.

5. MPCA Settles Alleged Violations at Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant, 06/09/2004. http://www.pca.state.mn.us/news/data/newsRelease.cfm?NR=263167&type=2

6.

7. Arshad, M. et al. (2008) A field study of lead phytoextraction by various scented Pelargonium cultivars. Chemosphere, Vol 71, Issue 11, pp. 2187-2192.

8.

9. Chrysochoou, M. et al. (2007) Phosphate application to firing range soils for Pb immobilization: The unclear role of phosphate. Jour. Haz. Matls. Vol 144 Issue ½, p. 1-14.

10.

When you walk into my house, chemicals waft from your clothes. I know right away that the laundry detergent you use is toxic (most are) and that if I am around you for long I will get a headache. Should I tell you? Are social mores and privacy more important than the health of both of us? I am often confronted with this dilemma. Many everyday products now make me sick and may make you sick if you are around them long enough. I write this to try to warn politely.

Modern American living exposes us to toxic chemical storms daily. Lotions, antiperspirants and deodorants, perfumes and after-shaves, sunscreen, shampoos, laundry detergent and softeners, scented soaps, bug sprays, hand sanitizer, dish-soap, new carpets, incense, “air fresheners”, auto exhaust (including from bio-fuels and veggie oil!), herbicides and pesticides, glues, fresh printer ink, nail polish and remover, and paints can all contain chemicals that can cause adverse reactions. Some of us have become “chemically sensitive”, becoming aware of physical reactions to various chemicals. Maybe we should be considered canaries in the coal mines, and used to warn of exposure to something dangerous. We could be more reliable than information, or rather lack of information, you may be getting from the chemical industry.

Mammal bodies have only recently been exposed to these artificially rearranged molecules. There is little doubt that cancer and other disease is connected to exposure to these new substances, most only developed since the 1950s. Our bodies have not had time to adapt. And there are more and more new chemicals. There is also the very real likelihood that new genetically engineered organisms and new nano materials will wreak havoc with the living creatures of earth as well. And there’s not much regulation out there to protect you, especially in the United States.

According to the Congressional General Accounting Office, the Environmental Protection Agency “does not routinely assess the risks of the roughly 80,000 industrial chemicals in use. Moreover, TSCA [Toxic Substances Control Act] does not require chemical companies to test the approximately 700 new chemicals introduced into commerce annually for their toxicity, and companies generally do not voluntarily perform such testing. Further, the procedures EPA must follow in obtaining test data from companies can take years to complete.” The European Union requirements for regulating toxic chemicals are much more stringent than in the United States. In Europe the burden for proving non-toxicity lies with the chemical producers.

There is a theory that at some point of exposure to toxins, some people’s bodies just cannot resist anymore and become much more sensitive to chemicals. We start to have adverse reactions to chemicals that other people might not notice. It seems important, therefore, for all people to limit their exposures to as many chemicals as possible even if they do not yet have physical reactions to them. Hence we who notice toxins should tell others. And it behooves others to take note and consider protecting themselves.

Unfortunately our medical system has been hijacked by the pharmaceutical chemical makers to the extent that the paradigm of toxic exposure related dis-ease has been censored and discredited. Instead we are sold drugs to solve our problems. Witness how many of the corporate sponsored (Avon, Energizer) events to help breast cancer are to “find a cure” rather than the causes of breast cancer.

And the drugs we are prescribed may be making us worse. There are many and growing numbers of adverse effects and deaths from prescription drugs. Chemicals from pharmaceuticals are showing up in water supplies and wild animals because when humans pee after taking drugs, their urine contains chemical residues, or the actual pharmaceutical drugs themselves.

Healthcare needs a new or at least optional paradigm of trying to analyze what is causing illness rather than focusing on drugs. Who is studying whether genetically engineered foods may be causing obesity or health reactions? It is very difficult to track the results of mass exposure to genetically engineered food over the last few years because the government caved in to industry demands that genetically modified food products should not be labeled or tracked in the US. Unless you buy organic or are very astute about what products contain genetically modified ingredients, you may be exposing yourself to something genetically new in the food supply. Food, cosmetics and cleaning products can also include myriad artificial chemicals. We may be better served by deciphering and trying to avoid toxins rather than ingesting toxic drugs to mask our symptoms.

I have found my own health enhanced by avoiding food with additives, trying to eat organically produced food, removing myself from toxic environments, not using products with artificial fragrances or toxic chemicals, and getting fresh air. Try to avoid the extra stress on your body that chemicals may cause in order to keep up your resilience to exposure. It will enhance your health, my health and the health of the planet.

This article is the last article written by our friend Samantha (see obituary p. 4) On Our Own is a classic anti-psychiatry text that has had a significant impact on radical mental health.

On Our Own: Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health

By Judi Chamberlin

Hawthorne Books, New York 1978.

Judi Chamberlin travels a tumbling path towards the title of her book, through her own experience of the mental health system towards her ideal goal of patients helping each other to keep themselves together. She outlines the problems faced by mental patients and she beats a tinny improvised drum calling out for mad liberation through consciousness-raising.

Chamberlin’s focus on patient- controlled alternatives will strike a resonating note with brave readers who hold high the banner of direct democracy or seek to level the power of authority figures. She even discards the radical theorist R.D. Laing, for continuing a distinction between “healers and healed” in his writings and anti-psychiatry experiments based on them. The intensity of her railing against this distinction may seem arbitrary and extreme without considering the viewpoint of mental patients being treated, usually involuntarily, for conditions in their own minds. The patient faces an isolation not imposed on sufferers of other illnesses, at a time when human companionship may be the only alleviating factor.

The isolation can continue long after the patient is declared “cured,” and a hospital stay or mental disability discharge carries a stigma in looking for jobs, lovers, or friends. Judi goes to great length to show how the discrepancy in power between the psychiatrist and patient remains immense, and unjustified. Danger of harming self or others is legal criteria for involuntary commitment and a patient can be held in custody with only the psychiatrist as a witness of her motives, but the psychiatrist has no more ability to see human intentions to commit acts of violence or self destruction than anyone else. Confronting this authority and dismantling this false expertise lies at the heart of reaching freedom. Judi Chamberlin stays true to this goal and remains extremely vigilant in dealing with any experts who place themselves higher than the patient.

The chapter dedicated to Judi’s own experience with psychiatrists and hospitalization provides her credentials as an ex-patient seeking to raise consciousness and help other patients get by, as well as giving readers a straightforward account of a psychiatric survivor. I empathized with her years of anguish in and out of hospitals, and I was impressed that she described in simple terms the humiliations she experienced as inherent in the hospital system, rather than depending on excesses and abuses. Whether in a ‘cottage’ or a locked ward, group therapy or isolation, Judi comes to fear and hate the physical control inherent in the system.

It is fascinating to me that she sought treatment out between stays, finding the experience of living outside the hospital system with family or a shitty husband unbearable. This is a fact seldom admitted in an exposé of the mental health system, and I find it courageous to be able to admit that you can’t deal with everyday life on your own.

A turning point in her view of the system occurs when she becomes extremely miserable after a mental hospital discontinues her tranquilizers upon admission, and she experiences a variety of physical and mental withdrawal symptoms, such as a churning stomach, dizziness, crawling flesh, anger, and frustration. Another patient tells her she is probably undergoing withdrawal from the medications she was prescribed by her doctor, which had previously not affected her. A light turns on in Judi’s head, as another patient has offered her an unexpected insight into her condition: “I got my first ‘therapy’ at Hillside under that tree, and it came from another patient.” Instead of a “relapse” into mental illness, the absence of the previously ineffective drugs produces new symptoms. Withdrawal from psychiatric drugs is a viewpoint I have never heard from a doctor, and I have recently only come across when a friend mailed me the Icarus Project and Freedom Center’s Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs. But patients have been sharing this knowledge since psych drugs became prevalent in the 1950s, and it helps clarify some experiences in my own life.

Judi’s experiences with the Vancouver Emotional Emergency Center will probably seem familiar to anyone lucky enough to turn to a close circle of compassionate people who have had similar experiences. Strangers or old friends, they do their best to patch together what is needed and listen, and offer relief from the mind games and deceit. The “unmaking of a mental patient” happens as she realizes there are other ways to get the human help she needs and a new life opens up to her. We imagine her able to say the word crazy with a wild grin of abandon and laugh, and Judi is now able to pose a new question: how can others systematically receive the help they actually need?

Judi gets down to business and explores organizations operated by the mad for the mad, working for mental patient’s liberation. She explores the many difficulties ex-patients face because of bias, rather than any danger to themselves. She covers many of the details of various organizations’ daily work, highs and lows, including a whole chapter on funding. She describes groups working both in crises situations, like the Vancouver Emergency Center, and on the long term problems faced by ex-patients, such as Project Release in New York and the Mental Patients Association in Vancouver. She compares the shoestring collectives with a potent “conscious” analysis gained through long discussions, to organizations better funded with a more confused relationship to the system. I was fascinated that many of the groups emphasized ex-patient housing, and a little dazzled that a group of mental patients on welfare in 1978 could pick up cheap city apartments. A goal now that would be classified as dreamy seemed bluntly practical to Judi Chamberlin.

Thirty years have passed since the publication of this book. There are many experiences that date both Chamberlin’s direct experience of hospitalization and the alternatives she discusses: the thorazine “concentrate” and the Great Society War On Poverty funding for community projects are both things of the past. Yet there is a striking skeleton of her work that is easy to recognize, fleshed out in this society. Current drug regiments still focus more heavily on tranquilizing and sedating patients, with only mixed results for actually alleviating unpleasant symptoms. Likewise, confinement and physical force continue to hide behind the guise of treatment. Some of the innovations or alternatives shot down in the book now are mainstays of treatment: community mental health centers are at the core of most outpatient treatment, and a lot of us grew up sleeping through various psychotherapy snore sessions first introduced in the 1960s.

One weakness of the book is the way it lumps mental patients together in a broad mass, without addressing the distinctions between what mental patients experience because of their individual identities. Her vision of liberation is broadly based on a feminist model, but little attention is paid in this work to differences in organizations and institutions caused by race, class, gender, and sexuality. While this broad topic may be beyond the range of this book, the reader is left with the impression of mental patients seeking liberation as predominantly white and middle class. The horrors of the eugenics movement make it imperative to acknowledge the dirty work done by the psychiatrist on poor women and women of color, and any serious attempt at mad liberation must integrate this analysis.

As I reflect on my own experience, Judi’s does seem to minimize certain ambiguities. Can
patients always solve each other’s problems? Is there really no useful role for well-intentioned professionals? There are times when a little tranquilizer might give me the sleep I need to keep from being a pathetic nervous wreck and there are times when other patients provide advice that is not helpful.

On the other hand fear and hostility towards professional psychiatrists is a gut reaction based on real problems, and although psychiatry is constantly toting its reforms, restraints, isolation, andeven electroshock are features of most hospitals, and most patiaents have felt the breath of fresh air another patient’s honesty can bring. I am impressed that Judi presents these views so forcefully.

On Our Own could end up on the tables of many people asking the same questions as Judi Chamberlin. How to get out of a depressing anguish? How to work together to provide some relief when we our troubled? How do we keep vulnerable people safe from psychiatric abuse? Judi provides few solid answers, but her unshaken faith in our ability to provide those answers to each other is an inspiration.

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October

October 17-18

Seattle Anarchist Bookfair – Underground Events Center www.seattleanarchist.org

October 17 • 11 am

Anti-war march and rally – UN Plaza SF

October 22 • 7 pm

Book release party for Slingshot’s new book, People’s Park Still Blooming. Modern Times Books 888 Valencia, SF

October 22

14th National Day of Protest to stop police brutality, repression and the criminalization of a generation

October 24

International day of Climate Action 350.org

October 25 • 9 am – 6 pm

Westfest – 40th anniversary of Woodstock music festival. Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park SF

October 30 • 6 pm

San Francisco Halloween Critical Mass bike ride. Dress up – Justin Herman Plaza

November

November 1

World Vegan Day www.worldveganday.org

November 7 • 7 pm

Book Party “Father Bill: Reflections of a Beloved Rebel” Berkeley Unitarians 1924 Cedar at Bonita www.bfuu.org

November 14 • 7 pm

Art as Propaganda Workshop series: Fashion as Protest and Inspiration: Queer, Punk and Freak Fashion 625 Larkin St. #202 SF www.radicalwomen.org

November 21-28

Caravan in Support of Communities on the front lines of resistance at Black Mesa, AZ 928.773.8086 www.blackmesais.org

November 20-22

Mass Mobilization to Shut Down the School of the Americas Ft. Benning, GA soaw.org

November 27

Buy Nothing Day – protest consumerism everywhere! buynothingday.org

November 30

Mass global action to stop climate change. Lots of cities – actforclimatejustice.org

December

December 7 – 18

Global protest against false solutions at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark – pick a protest in your local area

December 13 • 4 pm

Slingshot new volunteer meeting 3124 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley 510 540-0751

January, 2010

January 16 • 3 pm

Slingshot article deadline for issue #102 – 3124 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley

February

February 10-15

Protest the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, BC Canada. Convergence of anti-colonial and anti-capitalist forces to confront corporate invasion, displacement, and state repression. No2010.com