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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Lauren Tenney, psychiatric survivor activist from New York State

First involuntarily institutionalized, at 15, Lauren Tenney is a survivor of psychiatry. She has been involved with the user and survivor movement since 1992. Her goal is to help stop forced psychiatric procedures, detainment, and confinement, human rights violations, psychiatric abuse and torture. Of particular concern are the elimination of forced electroconvulsive treatment (ECT) on people of all ages, but particularly children and senior citizens, forced drugging, restraints, seclusion, behavioral interventions, and coercion of any kind. Lauren, a Mad-Activist/ Artist/ Author/ Academic/ Adjunct Professor is coordinating The Opal Project, an outcome of participatory action research she coordinated for field research in the PhD program in Environmental Psychology at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her dissertation topic is: "The Institutionalized "Community." She became involved with WE THE PEOPLE when the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights and MindFreedom International needed someone on the ground in Brooklyn, New York to coordinate a response where Esmin Green was murdered-by-neglect. She now lives in Albany, NY with her service dog-in-training and cat. For more info: www.TheOpalProject.org and www.etrash.tv