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National Association for Rights Protection & Advocacy (NARPA) Annual Meeting
Affiliate Support Committee
Here's a message from volunteer Frank Blankenship of MindFreedom Virginia, chair of the new MindFreedom Affiliate Support Committee. Frank encourages MFI members to use mutual support to help build and create more affiliates! If you'd like to be on this Affiliate Support Committee, contact Frank at his e-mail address provided.
MFI Affiliate Support Committee
by Frank Blankenship, MindFreedom Virginia
e-mail: virginia@mindfreedom.org
I would like to encourage those MindFreedom International members interested in forming MindFreedom affiliates to network with other MindFreedom members interested in forming affiliates. What with email and the internet, we should find few insurmountable problems to giving MindFreedom a voice at the local and the state levels, as well as at the national and the international levels, if we do so.
Problems are more readily resolved, and bumps are more easily smoothed over, where MindFreedom members can come to the aid of other MindFreedom members when such difficulties do arise. We will be able to move ahead more easily and effectively where we can benefit from the experience, collectively and individually, of other members of MindFreedom International who are working at the same tasks.
Networking with other members of MindFreedom International who are working on forming affiliates can help us to circumvent, and to deal with, some of the obstacles that are sure to crop up in the course of building affiliates. There is no need to isolate oneself from others in our movement when a connection with a colleague is as close as the keyboard of a computer.
Our numbers are growing, we aren't alone, let's work together. When we share our concerns and our experiences, we learn from those concerns and experiences, and we are in a better position to press forward with our demands and with our plans for the future. Networking is a tool that can be used very effectively in the process of building affiliates, and since it is a tool, we should not neglect to use it in the building of MindFreedom affiliates.
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About the photograph: Frank Blankenship (on left) with Larry Plumlee of MindFreedom Washington, DC. Area stand in front of the bank of elevators that leads to the main entrance of the American Psychiatric Association in Arlington, Virginia. Frank and Larry were part of a nonviolent guerilla theater to "screen for normality" in front of the American Psychiaric Association (APA) office. APA chose to shut down their main 20th floor entrance for the day, 11 October 2007. To get to a close-up of the photo, including the APA special letter behind Frank and Larry, click here.
