The Normathon: Mad Pride Miracle

Here is news and updates about MindFreedom Lane County's "Mad Pride" skit, The Normathon.

Updates 28 June 2008:

View The Big Giant Pill as it awaits mounted on the wall of the MindFreedom office, click here!
Live in Lane County? You are invited to workshop every other week to rehearse and prepare for the next Normathon, during the Eugene Celebration this September! We plan a parade entry followed by skits among the thousands of celebration participants! Our teacher: Bjo from the cross-disability group LILA, who is an award-winning playwright!
Learn more about Mad Pride 2008 events all over the world, click here!

Welcome Norm-a-thon-ers!

Is it a skit?

Is it a prank?

It's a miracle!

See this free online five-minute YouTube video about The Normathon: A Mad Pride Miracle, by clicking here.

Or go directly to the YouTube link by clicking here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=7WNcsM15ksA

Secret Background to The Normathon, Mad Pride and More!

As part of Mad Pride 2008, which is covered by -- of all things -- the fashion and style section of The New York Times, MindFreedom sponsored a special event.

The Normathon 2008 was held Saturday, 17 May 2008, in Eugene, Oregon, USA.

The start time was 4 pm, and it was hot.

We met at the Ken Kesey statue at Broadway & Willamette.

We had an out-of-state visitor at The Normathon! Ted Chabasinski is a long-term activist in the "mad movement" with more than 35 years of experience! You can read more about Ted's amazing life (including forced shock at six, locked up for his whole youth, and becoming any attorney) by clicking here.

For text of The Normathon news release click here.

To download a PDF of The Normathon poster click here.

The piece for YouTube was videoed & edited by MFI Youth Outreach Coordinator Martin Rafferty.

Did you know that Mad Pride activities are coordinated by a global organization named and launched by Martin Luther King called the International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment or IAACM? The chair of the IAACM is the physician/clown/psychiatric survivor Patch Adams.

For more info on IAACM click here.

To join MindFreedom click here.

And for more Mad Pride activities? See Related Content below.

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Samantha Johnson, psychiatric survivor, MFI intern

Samantha Johnson is a 22-year-old psychiatric survivor who is interning at the MindFreedom International office. "I was absolutely in disbelief at how the people were treated at the hospital. It was an environment of emotional abuse interspersed with 'treatments' and 'policies' that could be more accurately described as assault. The tragic thing is that there really are some good people working there, but they are unable to provide people with the help they need inside a system that prioritizes profits over people. It might take five years of counseling for someone to truly recover from a mental health crisis, but it takes five minutes to tranquilize them. This is why I started working with MindFreedom. For 25 years MFI has been challenging the mental health system to see us as human beings- to treat us as human beings- through peaceful activism. At MFI we emphasize individual choice, empowerment, and compassion as necessary aspects of a true healing process."

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