2. The cross of Christ represents JUSTICE. But justice is ordinarily denied for Americans with mental health dysfunctions. Whereas physically disabled people are rushed to hospitals if they suffer a crisis, i.e., heart attacks, diabetic comas, etc., people who suffer mental health crises are arrested. Many mentally ill Americans are killed during lunacy arrests, and others are killed once imprisoned - by restraint char, Tasers, and brutality. Unfortunately, mental patients suffer abuse by neighbors in their communities and by police officers. My brother Larry was a mentally, physically disabled man who was murdered under secret arrest in Memphis Shelby County Jail in 2003. He represents millions of sick people who deserve treatment, not incarceration or the constant threat of imprisonment for being sick. Mental illness should not be handled by the Department of Corrections, but by the Department of Health, like other diseases. Learn about individual tragedies criminalizing mental illness causes by following me at Twitter, where I am @koffietime - http://twitter.com/koffietime
3. In my morning devotion today, I read John 9, the story about a man who was born blind. Jesus' disciples asked Him why the man was born blind; did he sin, or did his parents sin? Jesus answered that the man was born blind in order for God's glory to be revealed through him. When Jesus healed the man, many people were astounded at the miracle and believed in God. My mother and I understand that the same thing happened to my brother Larry, who was a lifelong schizophrenic heart patient. He wrestled with mental illness since being stricken with mumps at the age of 8. Because Larry suffered acute mental illness and was murdered in jail, AIMI members protest imprisoning mental patients across America. Children now receive Mumps, Measles, and Rubella (MMR) inoculations during the first weeks of life that protect them from mumps. But in the 1950s, those childhood diseases were common. Usually, the diseases ran their course without lasting injury, but not always. The infection from Larry's jaws traveled to his brain and damaged it. Larry lived in a mental hospital for most of the next 20 years.
4. The disciples asked Jesus why the man was born blind in John 9. When bad things happen, it is common for us to ask God why he allows human suffering. Why was Larry stricken with mumps and subsequent mental illness? Why did God allow his mental illness to be aggravated by separation from his family at a tender age? Why was the child further traumatized by shock treatments? Why did our family endure decades of suffering that Larry's schizophrenia caused? Whenever we are faced with tragedies in life, it is natural to wonder why a loving God allows His people to suffer. It was not until after Larry's murder that we knew that like God used Larry like he did the blind man in John 9. AIMI advocates for justice and compassion for mentally ill Americans, and the advocacy would not have begun except for Larry's murder under secret arrest and the denial of open disclosure and justice that followed his death and continues today.
5. Sometimes Larry was lucid for weeks during home visits, and we were amazed at his intellect. But eventually Larry would declare himself well and stop taking his psychiatric medications. Then he would experience a crisis that led to re-hospitalization. His crises usually demanded police intervention. Police in Fayette County, Tennessee would hold Larry overnight and transport him to Western State Mental Hospital in Bolivar, Tennessee within a day. Psychiatrists, nurses, and orderlies worked together to stabilize crises patients. Counselors met with patients' families to help them understand mental illness and their loved one's treatment program. Acute patients were restrained until they got better. Functional patients had privileges to attend crafts classes, a monthly social event, and could visit with their families at picnic tables and park benches on the hospitals' beautiful, sprawling grounds. When mentally ill Americans experience a crisis today, they are arrested and tossed naked into 9' x 6' solitary confinement cells where some people have been for decades. A young Hispanic man with bipolar disorder starved to death in his solitary cell in Utah in February 2011.
6. With the advances that have been made in psychiatric medications in recent years, most acute mental patients could be fully functional. But like Larry, many people decide to stop their treatment after they exit jails and hospitals because they do not recognize their own health care needs. AIMI advocates for psychiatric patients exiting institutions to be mandated into assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) programs under Kendra's Law to provide subsistence assistance and continued psychiatric care after release. Kendra's Law participants in New York experienced around 85% reduction in future hospitalizations, arrests, homelessness, and incarcerations after joining the program. Therefore, AOT programs were already proved to save money, reduce crime, and restore lives.
7. Advocating for changes in how mental illness is handled in America has led to persecution for this Christian human rights advocate. Why is Mary Neal censored, stalked, and threatened for advocating for treatment to replace imprisonment for mental patients? Why am I denied police intervention regarding the crimes against me? Why are phone calls not allowed to reach Larry's family at 678.531.0262 except calls from close family members? Most other calls are immediately directed to voice mail and deleted without anyone in my house being allowed to hear them, or callers hear a lying recording saying that our phone is disconnected. We suffer intense persecution like Jews before the Holocaust or runaway slaves for righteousness sake because I advocate for the least of these, His brethren - sick, naked prisoners like Larry was when he died under secret arrest. The circumstances of Larry's murder are so barbaric that the government refuses to disclose them under the Freedom of Information Act or federal subpoenas. Google "The Cochran Firm fraud."
8. My advocacy is dangerous because prisons and jails in America have been privatized, and wealthy Pharisees profit by them. Reducing the number of mentally ill prisoners (currently 1.25 million people) would negatively impact the investment portfolios of wealthy, unscrupulous, mercenary people who benefit every time a sick American is denied psychiatric treatment in his community, commits a crime ranging from vagrancy to murder, and goes to jail. I have to list the contents of my blogs because some data is coded not to appear by cyberstalkers who do not want you to read about and support our advocacy for sick Americans to be treated and not punished for mental illness. That is why I published at the beginning of the blog that this article has 17 paragraphs, 7 links, 1 video, plus the 9th chapter of John.
9. In the early 1970s, Medicaid insurance had stopped being available for inpatient psychiatric care, and hospitals downsized and closed across the nation. Hundreds of thousands of acute mental patients were deinstitutionalized, and America's streets overran with homeless sick people. Larry was among hundreds of thousands of acute mental patients who were permanently released from mental hospitals - deinstitutionalized in the 1970s. He still experienced mental health crises that necessitated police intervention, but after 20 years of jail arrests and releases, police tired of their enforced roll as his psychiatric caretaker. Shelby County employee announced to Larry's family member that they were "getting sick of fooling with Larry Neal."
10. In July 2003, Larry's care home called his family to report that he did not return to the facility the night before. Larry's family and social worker searched for him as a missing person for nearly three weeks. Memphis Shelby County Jail denied that Larry was incarcerated and denied having any inmate meeting his physical description. Police did nothing to help find Larry, although he was a lifelong mental patient with a severe heart condition that required continuous prescription medication. Police knew about Larry's heart disease and psychiatric condition because of his missing person report and from years of misdemeanor arrests, but they were "sick of fooling with Larry Neal,"
11. On August 1, 2003, police officers went to the house where our mother lived before she moved to Atlanta to live with me. The officers informed our relatives who now occupy the home that Larry had died in jail that morning and that he had been under arrest during the entire time we searched frantically for him as a missing person. Police refused to say whether he was tasered, killed in a restraint chair, assaulted, or if he died merely by secret arrest and deprivation of his heart drugs. Larry's murder was followed by a government cover-up wherein parties in Shelby County Government, the United States Department of Justice, and The (Johnnie) Cochran Firm colluded to protect the jail from exposure.
12. Immediately after Larry's murder, The Cochran Firm contracted with Larry's survivors to represent us in lawsuits against the State of Tennessee and Larry's final care home for negligence and against Memphis Shelby County Jail for wrongful death, but the attorneys actually held the case secretly inactive until Tennessee's statute of limitations was at its end. When my elderly mother and I sued The Cochran Firm for defrauding us, the injustice system closed ranks to protect the law firm from our justice quest and still refuses to release records about Larry's fatal incarceration under federal subpoena or the Freedom of Information Act. Instead, when Larry's mother and sister dared to sue The Cochran Firm (which is likely a covert government operation), the stalking and censorship stared.
13. Calls and emails to and from potential employers are prohibited, and I am impoverished because I continue to advocate for justice for my brother and decriminalization of mental illness in America. Yet, I do not stop asking for fairness and compassion for sick people. When Christians put on the full armor of God, there is no covering for our backs. We are to press onward when facing the firery darts of the enemy and proclaim the Word of God to all the world, even rich, unprincipled leaders: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
14. Why did Larry spend his life as an acute mental patient, then suffer and die in jail? Was it because he sinned or his parents sinned? No. Everything that happened to Larry and our family was allowed in order that the glory of God could be revealed though his sister's endeavors to give ASSISTANCE TO THE INCARCERATED MENTALLY ILL ("AIMI"). Please visit our online human/civil rights organization. Across the nation, 1.25 million mentally ill Americans and immigrants are wrongfully incarcerated when they should be either hospitalized or treated in their communities, depending on their offenses and functionality. It costs substantially less to treat than to punish mentally ill people by imprisoning them, usually with longer jail terms and under harsher circumstances than other inmates, such as solitary confinement. But the mentally ill comprise over half of America's 2.3 million prisoners, and their incarceration is financially profitable to private prison owners. When Jesus healed the man who was blind from birth in John 9, Pharisees (unrighteous lawyers) were not pleased to see the man helped. Today, Pharisees are angry about Mary Neal's efforts to decriminalize mental illness.
15. Pray for my family and me, and help us and this work. Since your calls may be prohibited, try writing to me at 5315 Kelleys Mill Circle, Stone Mountain, GA 30088. Maybe they will allow the mail to get through. If you send a donation, only send money orders or checks. I used to have a PayPal icon on my blogs, but it was prevented from functioning.
16. Not only the mentally ill are victimized by the powerful in America today. People have many valid concerns, and protests are common. In January 2011, I felt led by God to suggest that Americans who protest injustices join together in a peaceful, powerful BOYCOTT 4 JUSTICE and spend no money on the 9th of each month throughout 2011. The shopping moratorium is the People's 9/11 response to corporate greed and government misdeeds, such as criminalizing mental illness, outsourcing jobs overseas and to prisoners to avoid unions, minimum wage and worker safety laws, expensive wars that deplete funds for schools, health care, and other social programs, weakened environmental protections, and many other circumstances caused by corporate greed.
17. Participants are asked to announce their support for the BOYCOTT 4 JUSTICE on their websites, when commenting at news articles online, in their prison ministry meetings, in union halls, and wherever they interact with other concerned citizens online or in person. However, announcing your participation is not imperative. Just do it! No shopping on the 9th of any month throughout 2011. Together we will demand respect as customers and constituents in a peaceful shopping BOYCOTT 4 JUSTICE. http://freespeakblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/boycott-4-justice-no-shopping-may-9.html
19. God's will is being done when I expose injustices to the least of these, His brethren. Although my advocacy (my ministry) is hated by Pharisees as Jesus' work always is, the Lord says to my heart, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." Won't you join Jesus and me in striving for justice in America? For your convenience, John 9 is presented below, then a final word about this advocacy and a stirring video appear before and after my signature block.
John 9
1And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.
2And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?
3Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.
4I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.
5As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
6When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay,
7And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.
8The neighbours therefore, and they which before had seen him that he was blind, said, Is not this he that sat and begged?
9Some said, This is he: others said, He is like him: but he said, I am he.
10Therefore said they unto him, How were thine eyes opened?
11He answered and said, A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash: and I went and washed, and I received sight.
12Then said they unto him, Where is he? He said, I know not.
13They brought to the Pharisees him that aforetime was blind.
14And it was the sabbath day when Jesus made the clay, and opened his eyes.
15Then again the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. He said unto them, He put clay upon mine eyes, and I washed, and do see.
16Therefore said some of the Pharisees, This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath day. Others said, How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? And there was a division among them.
17They say unto the blind man again, What sayest thou of him, that he hath opened thine eyes? He said, He is a prophet.
18But the Jews did not believe concerning him, that he had been blind, and received his sight, until they called the parents of him that had received his sight.
19And they asked them, saying, Is this your son, who ye say was born blind? how then doth he now see?
20His parents answered them and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind:
21But by what means he now seeth, we know not; or who hath opened his eyes, we know not: he is of age; ask him: he shall speak for himself.
22These words spake his parents, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed already, that if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue.
23Therefore said his parents, He is of age; ask him.
24Then again called they the man that was blind, and said unto him, Give God the praise: we know that this man is a sinner.
25He answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.
26Then said they to him again, What did he to thee? how opened he thine eyes?
27He answered them, I have told you already, and ye did not hear: wherefore would ye hear it again? will ye also be his disciples?
28Then they reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple; but we are Moses' disciples.
29We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is.
30The man answered and said unto them, Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes.
31Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth.
32Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind.
33If this man were not of God, he could do nothing.
34They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out.
35Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God?
36He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?
37And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee.
38And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him.
39And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind.
40And some of the Pharisees which were with him heard these words, and said unto him, Are we blind also?
41Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.
20. Thank you for your interest and participation in the struggle to make America more 'true to what it said on paper,' especially the Constitution, the government's contract with the citizenry of this great nation. Without unity in action, our "inalienable rights" get more alienable every day. No one should be exterminated under secret arrest, and no people should be imprisoned for reason of a common, treatable health condition. Our tax money should not be used to punish Americans for having a common, treatable health condition.
21. In this blog, see also these articles: Justice Gagged re Political Prisoners, Justice Gagged re HubPages, Justice Gagged re Facebook, Justice Gagged re Twitgoo, Justice Gagged re Christianity, and Justice Gagged re Sick Vets. I must list this blog's entries as I publish articles because otherwise, they may disappear on my blog's index at the right side of this web page, and your browser may skip them (censorship). Asking people in authority to treat others like they want to be treated is censored now as it was 2,000 years ago when Jesus walked among us. Enjoy the video below - The Battle Hymn of the Republic, a slave abolition song from the Civil War era.
Blessings,
21. In this blog, see also these articles: Justice Gagged re Political Prisoners, Justice Gagged re HubPages, Justice Gagged re Facebook, Justice Gagged re Twitgoo, Justice Gagged re Christianity, and Justice Gagged re Sick Vets. I must list this blog's entries as I publish articles because otherwise, they may disappear on my blog's index at the right side of this web page, and your browser may skip them (censorship). Asking people in authority to treat others like they want to be treated is censored now as it was 2,000 years ago when Jesus walked among us. Enjoy the video below - The Battle Hymn of the Republic, a slave abolition song from the Civil War era.
Blessings,
Mary Neal
No comments:
Post a Comment