NATIONAL ALLIANCE FOR THE MENTALLY ILL (NAMI) BECOMES "UNGLUED"....

...OR SHOULD WE SAY NAMI IS IN A STICKY SITUATION?

NAMI GLUES TOGETHER PAGES TO TRY TO CENSOR ARTICLES IN TWO ISSUES OF ITS OWN JOURNAL.

THE FIRED JOURNAL EDITOR SAYS, "IT IS CENSORSHIP! I WILL NEVER KOWTOW TO A DICTATORSHIP!"

USE YOUR E-MAIL TO STICK IT TO CENSORSHIP! PLEASE COPY THIS NEWS FAR AND WIDE *NOW*!

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA -- The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill claims it is "The Nation's Voice on Mental Illness." But NAMI is suppressing, gagging and firing a brave voice speaking up for human rights.

NAMI has published a slick magazine called _The JOURNAL_ for 11 years, through its California chapter. In a public e-mail yesterday, editor Dan E. Weisburd said that the newly-elected NAMI-California board of directors has "knowingly killed" _The JOURNAL_, censored his articles, and fired him.

AND THEN THE STORY GETS REALLY WEIRD...

The NAMI-California board has openly admitted it is now using glue to stick together the pages of articles by Weisburd in two recent issues. The glue is a desperate censorship attempt. But the sticky ain't stayin' stuck. NAMI used rubber cement. NAMI members who are outraged by the censorship are gleefully reporting they are able to peel back pages and peak inside to read the taboo articles.

Once more, NAMI leaders' blind faith in a "chemical quick fix" is producing a side effect: Resistance. Said Weisburd, "Typical of their ineptitude, they didn't even do a good glue job."

The un-sticky glue may be a sign of in-house rebellion. In a truly disgusting twist, NAMI made "mental health clients" at a vocational rehabilitation program, Turning Point, apply the glue. It's unknown who chose the glue.

WHAT IS NAMI TRYING TO HIDE NOW?

What were Weisburd's sins? First, he challenged in print the patron saint of some NAMI leaders. Weisburd questioned fraudulent statistics spouted by extremist psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey. Torrey is one of the main champions of increasing the use of involuntary psychiatric drugging of people, even those living at home out in the community. Second, Weisburd wrote about the need for better physical medical attention for people taking prescribed psychiatric drugs, including his own son.

Heading up glue brush brigade is Brian Jacobs, president of NAMI-CA board. Jacobs is married to Carla Jacobs, who recently led the crusade to lobby for AB 1800 in the California Assembly. AB 1800 would have made it easier to commit Californians, and made it possible to involuntarily drug them in their own homes. Hundreds of mental health consumers, psychiatric survivors, mental health workers, family members and advocates united to stop the Jacobs. AB 1800 was crushed in July 2000.

What the Jacobs can't win through voting they want to smother with glue. And the Jacobs label _us_ "mentally ill"? Is this what "normal" looks like?

*** EASY FREE E-MAIL ACTION YOU CAN TAKE ***

COPY THIS NEWS TO ALL APPROPRIATE PLACES ON AND OFF THE INTERNET -- YOUR E-MAIL CAN MAKE THIS CENSORSHIP BACKFIRE! More actions are at the bottom of this alert.

BELOW ARE EXCERPTS from Dan E. Weisburd's public e-mail yesterday to a colleague. Break the silence!

"IT IS CENSORSHIP!
I WILL NEVER KOWTOW TO A DICTATORSHIP!"

by Dan E. Weisburd
Editor of _The JOURNAL_

You may broadcast via e-mail what I'm about to tell you far and wide. In recent years the NAMI California Board of Directors has gone from being mediocre to being a malicious absurdity. In the process I have become a prime target for the simple reason that I am pro-consumer and pro-patient's rights. They worship E. Fuller Torrey, MD, who is a good person but has succumbed to selling involuntary treatment by branding unmedicated people with mental illness as violent, and I've pointed out his fallacious and unsubstantiated statistics.

The simple truth of the current state of affairs is that _The JOURNAL_ is no more. Period.

The board of directors of NAMI California, through its attorney, has informed me that it has suspended _The JOURNAL_. In addition they voted to glue shut my traditional Publisher's Note pages opening the "Mental Illness and the Law" issue because Brian Jacobs, the board president, got an attorney to give the opinion that my calling into question the views of E. Fuller Torrey, MD (a public person -- published in _The NY Times_, _Washington Post_, etc.) could constitute defamation.

Again, showing me no courtesy, had they have called on me they could have learned that I had obtained four authoritative legal opinions to the contrary including one from a former Harvard Law School professor who taught First Amendment and defamation law. Plus, they could have learned that sources cited by Torrey had told the National Stigma Clearinghouse that their work in no way substantiated his claims of 1,000 murders a year by persons with serious mental illness. My concern was labeling our people as violent and that that stigma-raiser was printed, without hesitation or verification by some of our nation's best newspapers!