I fly to Minneapolis/St. Paul area at the end of this month to attend three full days of speaking out and support for the Ray Sandford campaign to his right to say “no” to his ongoing forced electroshock.

If you are anywhere near St. Paul, we hope you can join us. For info see the Ray Gateway at:

https://mindfreedom.org/ray

On the Friday, May Day, 1 May 2009, we will be in State Capitol Rotunda from 10 am to 2 pm.

The first hour will be networking and set up. We’ll do a news conference at 11 am. And then we’ll have a speakout to share people’s concerns about Ray and our support for him.

We will also take some time to try to visit some of the elected officials that have been notified about Ray Sandford’s electroshock.

Incredibly, every one of Ray’s elected officials have refused to even express a word of CONCERN about the ISSUE of forced electroshock.

It may make sense that they would not want to speak about a particular client in the mental health system by name.

It may make sense if they did not want to weigh in conclusively on a complicated topic that is new to them.

But how could all of Ray’s elected officials refuse to even express a public question about the policy of forcibly electroshocking Minnesota citizens who are living peacefully out in the community in their own homes?

One word:

Sanism.

Or perhaps it ought to be called Mindism.

You’ve heard of racism. You’ve heard of sexism. Sanism or Mindism somehow allows elected officials to view a constituent diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder as not truly a citizen worthy of justice.

But the public is getting concerned. If you use Google search engine to look up the names of several of Ray’s elected officials found in his Ray’s Web of Link$.

Some day the public will want to know, “When did they know… and what did they do?”

– David W. Oaks, Director, MindFreedom