“An important precedent for both solidarity with Palestine and for union democracy”

New York University’s Graduate Student Organizing Committee votes to join BDS.

(For shame, UAW and New York state legislators.)

Mr. Robot

Good show.



Good soundtrack.

The art of the gouge/model of the market

“Excessive on its face, such largesse at the top is all the more appalling for the widespread poverty and debt enabling it.”

- “The art of the gouge: How NYU squeezes billions from our students—and where that money goes”

“The actual scandal of ‘The Art of the Gouge’ is that even if NYU is a particularly egregious offender of basic decency and honesty, most of the report’s indictments could apply equally to nearly any American university.”

- “‘The Art of the Gouge’: NYU as a Model for Predatory Higher Education”

“[N]eoliberal rationality disseminates the model of the market to all domains and activities...and configures human beings exhaustively as market actors, always, only, and everywhere as homo oeconomicus.”

- Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos

Video of Tuesday’s “Charlie Hebdo and Challenges to Free Expression” forum

The Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, which hosted the forum, has already made the video available. It’s about an hour and twenty minutes long. If you prefer to read a summary of the discussion (with a bit of commentary), mine is here.

“Blasphemy is just debate”: a report from yesterday’s PEN forum on “Charlie Hebdo and Challenges to Free Expression”

Before I cover the content of the discussion – which was lively and insightful – I want to note that my hopes weren’t fulfilled: none of the group who chose to boycott and protest PEN’s award to Charlie Hebdo accepted PEN’s invitation to take part in the panel discussion.

Now, I wouldn’t automatically attribute this to cowardice – I can think of a number of reasons people wouldn’t want to participate in public debates (though I expect that among the more than 200 protesters one or two debaters could have been found). But before making the introductions, the moderator read aloud a short joint statement from the protesters, attempting to justify their refusal on the grounds that the forum should be for people to get to learn about Charlie Hebdo and what they do. So declining the invitation to participate does seem to stem from cowardice of some sort (…possibly indicating a budding realization that their claims about CH were ignorant?), rooted either in the fear of having to try to defend their smears in person to CH staff members and those knowledgeable about the magazine or in the fear of discovering that they were very publicly and embarrassingly wrong in the first place. It’s also just…strange. Last night’s gala afforded them only the option of protesting symbolically by boycotting or refusing to applaud the award; but the forum would have provided the opportunity to share and exchange views. Why would professional communicators choose the former? (While I was disappointed by this choice, I continue to hope that at least some of them, after some reflection and research, will come forward and acknowledge that they had misunderstood and mischaracterized the magazine.)

In any case, their refusal was unfortunate, since it was the protesters who most needed to learn about and understand Charlie Hebdo. It was also ironic in that, as I’ll discuss below, one of the major themes of the discussion was that at the very heart of their work is a desire to provoke public debate. The protesters’ refusal to engage in discussion and debate with those they oppose wasn’t just disrespectful to the murdered and surviving staff of the magazine – and it was that – but also contrary to a basic principle of free expression. Defending free expression can’t just be about defending people’s right to express themselves, but has also to involve calling for their voices to be heard and engaged with, for people to listen to what they’re saying, to take their ideas seriously.

So…on to the discussion. The participants were the moderator; PEN Executive Director Suzanne Nossel; director of the NYU Institute of French Studies Ed Berenson, who provided an introduction locating CH in the historical tradition of French satire; Charlie Hebdo’s editor Gérard Biard; and CH film critic Jean-Baptiste Thoret. I’ll talk about a few of the major themes.

Understanding Charlie Hebdo

The values promoted by CH shouldn’t have to be emphasized, but in view of the baseless attacks from some PEN members and others, it was useful to reiterate them. The discussants spoke about CH’s commitment from the start to fighting racism and all forms of discrimination – against not just racial and ethnic minorities but women, LGBT people, immigrants, and poor people.

They underlined that their emphasis was on politics and power, and that their principle targets had long been the French Right, and especially the far-Right Front National. Part of a long satirical tradition, they seek to attack political power – institutions, representatives, icons. Religious institutions, representatives, and icons are only a small subset of the “sacred” phenomena they attack - these also include political parties, nations, and so on. They’re about defying and contesting power in any form.

The discussion returned again and again to their mission to provoke thought and debate. The people who murdered their colleagues and commit other such crimes, they argued, don’t want debate. (They pointed out that the recent attack in Copenhagen actually targeted a debate.) For all they know, they could be murdering those who agree with them – what’s important is shutting down any discussion or debate. Their project isn’t a religious but a political one: to impose their views on others and silence dissenters. In contrast, the CH staff see their work – including blasphemous cartoons – as intended to contest power and open debate.

On differences between the US and France concerning free expression and criticism of religion

The conversation covered important differences between US and French law and culture, specifically between secularism as practiced in the US and laïcité in France and between US and French laws surrounding freedom of expression. Critics of the magazine in the US often seem to ignore the difference between US secularism (or “secularism”) and French laïcité. Laïcité as they described goes beyond the separation of church and state – it understands the public sphere and political discourse as a common space in which religion has no role or status, and outside of which religion (for some) is practiced, and respected, privately. In this context, religion is seen as intruding on the public sphere and publicly mocking religious iconography and practices as political targets is acceptable. This can be difficult to understand here in the US because our system is so different in theory and in practice. The US system wasn’t really discussed at the forum, but as I’ve argued many times it’s based on a bogus sort of compromise in which institutionalized religion is (in theory) kept separate from the state, but religious claims and identities suffuse political discourse and public policy, all while people are expected to refrain from criticizing or mocking religion because it’s an allegedly personal and emotional matter. Whatever the problems with laïcité in practice (and Berenson hinted at some, although unfortunately there wasn’t time to return to them), the US system with its tradition and practice of deference to “personal” religion even as religion colonizes public life is ridiculous and anti-democratic.

In any event, people from outside France should seek to understand their system before pontificating about what is or isn’t within the bounds of acceptable discourse there. I think this also helps to understand the perspective of CH a bit better. They see religion in highly personal and private terms. It only comes to be of interest to them, and a target for their critique, when it improperly invades the democratic public sphere and makes political claims to status and power. So their attacks aren’t on individual believers or their dignity but on religion as a political force. They see believers not as representatives of, or represented by, a religion but as equal participants in a shared democratic sphere.¹

Another significant difference discussed is that, while the US has few legal prohibitions on speech, France has speech laws prohibiting, for example, inciting racial or religious hatred, denying the Holocaust, or trivializing the slave trade (I had been unaware of this last one). The panelists differed about some aspects of these laws. Berenson was strongly opposed to all of these prohibitions. Biard disagreed, arguing that there was a meaningful difference between satirizing religion and denying historical facts. Thoret talked about some of the unintended consequences of such laws in this age of social media. Banning language and images from the public sphere and institutional channels, he said, can drive them underground, in a sort of “return of the repressed,” especially into social media where they’re most often seen by the young. The anti-Semite Dieudonné, for example, was removed from French television, and quickly discovered the immensely greater reach of YouTube. Thoret contended that the ideas have to be fought in the public space.

On self-censorship

The problem of self-censorship was raised in two contexts. First, in relation to media outlets and their decisions about whether or not to publish the CH cover cartoon from after the attack or other controversial images from the magazine. All were in agreement, I think, that they believed the media should have shown the images – not without context, of course, but accompanied by relevant contextual information – as a newsworthy subject, as an opening to discussion and debate, and as a demonstration of commitment to the value of free expression.

Once again, they refused to accept the designation of “special” defenders of free expression and other important values, arguing that everyone can and should actively defend them. Biard discussed how the magazine’s original decision in 2007 to publish the Danish cartoons (which they presented thoughtfully, accompanied by commentary) was taken in response to the firing of the editor of another French paper who had published them. It was an act of solidarity when other publications had chosen self-censorship. It’s sad to imagine how things might have turned out had more than one other publication joined them at the time…

Self-censorship was also talked about in relation to individuals. Panelists were concerned about the threats and violence, and the lack of solidarity, leading writers and artists to self-censor. While they made it plain that the attack and public responses haven’t led them to change anything about their approach, they worried about self-censorship creeping in. It’s an especially pernicious sort of censorship since people aren’t always fully conscious of the fact that they’re doing it.

On reading images

Another theme was the question of the different nature of, and complexities in interpreting, verbal vs. visual commentary, words vs. images. Biard and Thoret spoke passionately about the general problem of “illiteracy” (as Caroline Fourest put it in a recent interview) with regard to images, an illiteracy not limited to cartoons or humorous or satirical images but extending to all visual representations. Biard talked about how children are surrounded with images from the time they’re born – on television, in advertising,… - without knowing how to go about interpreting them, and how they’re never really taught how to read them. Thoret, who teaches about film, noted that he’s found his film students often lack the skills to critically analyze images. Both called for public attention to this problem (which has enormous political reach given the use of images by the powerful) and education in reading and interpreting visual representations.

They also alluded to a number of problems with their critics’ attempts to interpret images pulled from their immediate and larger (linguistic, cultural, political, historical) context. Part of the problem, of course, is a basic lack of skill in reading images themselves and of awareness that this skill is lacking or needed. But the difficulties of reading decontextualized images from other cultures, which should be obvious, have been all but ignored, even denied, by the PEN protesters, who’ve arrogantly insisted that not only can they definitively interpret the decontextualized images but that they can speak for people in the French political context.

The moderator asked an important question about the globalization of culture and the issues that can arise when images are seen or used outside of their original context. Biard acknowledged that this was increasingly the case, but cautioned against responses to this phenomenon that would put all of the burden on creators to preemptively address all possible misinterpretations (which would be impossible in any case). He argued that an artist envisioning and trying to guard against all of the ways their work could be misread, intentionally or unintentionally, or cause anyone offense, wouldn’t be able to produce anything. I think this returns us to the question of literacy in interpreting images and the complexities involved with trying to read them across different contexts. Of course creative people have a responsibility to minimize the possibility of misreading and misrepresentation of their work (and I’ve discussed examples of CH staff demonstrating this responsibility), but all of us need to be aware of these problems and, most important, to use caution and humility in interpreting or discussing unfamiliar images.

They also pointed out that CH isn’t just a publication of cartoons. The images appear in the context of words and articles, and are as much a subject of editorial discussion and debate as the written pieces they accompany. Critics, however, tend to treat them as though they’re freestanding, and worse, to focus only on the cover images rather than those within the stories themselves. Moreover, people aren’t, they emphasized, forced to buy or read Charlie Hebdo. Thoret described his dislike of soccer and wish to avoid all things soccer.² But he’s not compelled to buy soccer magazines any more than people are compelled to buy CH. This wasn’t of course an argument that consumption decisions should trump democratic debate. But it was worthwhile to note, because reading some of the articles attacking CH you’d almost be led to believe this small satirical publication had the power to demand that it be read by every person in France.

On “Je suis Charlie”

They also talked about their response to the support for the magazine following the massacre, particularly from some of the institutions they’ve targeted most viciously.³ They stated that they’ve never been naïve – they’ve always known many of these expressions of support were ersatz and politically self-serving and would evaporate in a matter of months or even days. The film critic Thoret, in keeping with their emphasis on dissension and debate, also expressed his discomfort with the idea of a globally shared opinion, which reminded him of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

I think the most poignant remarks concerned their response to the “Je suis Charlie” supporters whose support was and is genuine. Naturally rejecting iconic status, with all of the anti-democratic bad faith it entails, and insisting that they’re not the “owners” of the universal values they defend and champion, they called for those who shared their values not to leave it to them but to take action themselves:

OK, you’re Charlie. So take a pencil, take a pen. Stand up for these values…. ‘Je suis Charlie’. OK, so do it.

Thoret said that he dislikes that they have been singled out as especially courageous, arguing that many if not most people can and do also show courage in these situations.

On the history of French satire

I’m going to close where the discussion opened. Ed Berenson opened the discussion by situating Charlie Hebdo in the bawdy, irreverent, anti-clerical tradition of French political-religious satire dedicated to skewering all claimants to power. (These two articles, which I plan to discuss in an upcoming post, go beyond France to fit their work in an older, global tradition.)

One aspect of this history discussed by Berenson that I’d forgotten or somehow never knew was that Voltaire wrote a play in 1741 called Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet. I impatiently await delivery of the 2013 translation.

Some last thoughts

I was already favorably predisposed toward Charlie Hebdo going into the forum, but I was impressed by Biard and Thoret especially given the stupidity of the protest here; Biard’s opening line - “We don’t eat children, and we don’t eat believers” – was funny, but shouldn’t have been. It’s terrible to be ignorantly accused of being the opposite of what you actually are, and I thought they handled it remarkably well. They seemed deeply committed to challenging power in any and every guise and to provoking thought and debate, and talked about their continuing hope that the current controversy helps to bring about more debate. This made the protesters’ blanket refusal to join the panel all the more aggravating and embarrassing.

And one last note. Almost every piece I’ve read, not only the attacks on Charlie Hebdo but the defenses too, includes some line or other about how the author dislikes and won’t attempt to defend the cartoons. They’re puerile, juvenile, unsubtle, unintelligent, ugly, and just “not funny.” I’ve never been a fan of cartoons, including those meant as political satire, but I’ve now seen numerous images from CH and I like them. I’m sure there are many I wouldn’t care for, but overall, yes, I find them interesting, thought-provoking, not exceptionally ugly, and often funny.

¹ I’ll note that their views are less extreme than my own on this subject. While of course I share their concern about religion as an explicitly political force, I also have a problem with “private” belief and the epistemic practices associated with faith. I think faith, even when ostensibly private, always has political consequences.

² He mentioned one player’s name, and then expressed his annoyance that he even knew it, since it was occupying space in his brain that could be used to much better purpose. I know that annoyance very well.

³ They laughed about the ringing of the bells at Notre Dame in their honor, but correctly pointed out in response to a comment from the moderator that ultimately the Pope did not speak in support of them.

204 denigrators and disassociaters; 0 discussers and debaters

The number of PEN members who’ve signed on to a letter publicly disassociating themselves from the organization’s decision to award Charlie Hebdo for courage in defending free expression now stands at 204. I’ve been checking the page for Tuesday’s PEN forum “Charlie Hebdo and Challenges to Free Expression,” and have seen no updates about additions to the panel. Of course, it could be that the site just hasn’t been updated, but I assume this would be a significant enough development that it would be announced. I’m also sure that of the 204 signers, at least a few must be in New York, a short subway ride from the event.

I do continue to hope that a couple of the anti-Charlie crowd agree to join the panel, for a few reasons. First, I think that the best way to address their concerns is to give them a public airing in such a forum. Second, it seems to me that if you’re going to sign a statement declaring others undeserving of an award for courage, you should at least be willing to try to make your case in their presence. Third, I’ll be at the forum, which isn’t just a short subway ride for me, and I selfishly expect it will make the event far more lively and productive.

Panel discussion about “Charlie Hebdo and Challenges to Freedom of Expression” this Tuesday in New York

PEN will be hosting a panel discussion at the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, this coming Tuesday, May 5, at 10 AM, concerning “Charlie Hebdo and Challenges to Freedom of Expression”:

Charlie Hebdo’s recently appointed editor-in-chief, Gérard Biard, and its film critic, Jean-Baptiste Thoret, are visiting the United States for the first time since the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s office in Paris, which killed eight of their co-workers and four others. On the evening of Tuesday, May 5, they will receive the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Free Expression Courage Award at the PEN American Center’s annual Literary Gala in New York.

Please join us for a conversation about the challenges to free expression in France and Europe, the role of satire in open societies, the controversies that have surrounded Charlie Hebdo, and the tensions between respect for religious differences and protections for freedom of expression.

The panel is in formation and will include the director of NYU’s Institute of French Studies, Ed Berenson; Charlie Hebdo editor-in-chief Gérard Biard; PEN Executive Director Suzanne Nossel; and Charlie Hebdo film critic Jean-Baptiste Thoret. Journalist Maggy Donaldson will moderate.

Admission is free but seats have to be reserved.

I’m pleased some of the surviving CH staff members will have an opportunity to speak for themselves, though it’s almost surreal to see them put on the defensive a few months after their colleagues were massacred. I hope some of the people who’ve written about their plans to boycott the gala have been invited to join the panel or will at least attend the forum, where it will be possible to get beyond the swirl of ignorant accusations and learn about the actual history, motives, and attitudes of Charlie Hebdo.

Speaking of Jon Stewart…

I didn’t know any of this:

Jon Stewart recently purchased a farm in New Jersey with the intention of providing a sanctuary for farm animals rescued from cruelty.

…Stewart’s wife, Tracey, is also an avid supporter of farm animals’ rights. She discovered Farm Sanctuary after reading Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food, [Gene] Baur’s 2008 account of the conception and evolution of the organization….

…“The joy of interacting with animals as friends instead of using them for human consumption is life-changing,” says Tracey in a press release. “A trip to Farm Sanctuary should be on everyone’s to-do list, but you can also bring a little bit of sanctuary home when you sponsor an animal through the Adopt a Farm Animal Program.”

…Because of these reasons, the organization has named two rescued sheep Jon and Tracey in their honor. The Stewarts will be further recognized at a Gala on October 24 2015 in New York City.

Here’s a link to the Farm Sanctuary.

And here's president and co-founder of the Farm Sanctuary Gene Baur on The Daily Show a few weeks ago:

The best art I saw in 2014

We’re now well into February, but I still have a couple of categories to go in my 2014 favorites series.

Chilean artist Francisco Tapia’s work remains my favorite individual piece of 2014. The two others are museum exhibits.

The first is almost a punchline – “You know you’re in Maine when…” “…you’re viewing ‘Andrew Wyeth: The Linda L. Bean Collection’ at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art.” It doesn’t get much Mainer than that, unless maybe you’re there snacking on blueberries with Stephen King and a lobster named Bog. A beautiful, wistful exhibit in a gallery overlooking the sea.

The small museum is in a pretty, peaceful location, and I enjoyed their permanent collection quite a bit. My favorite piece was a 1979 sculpture, “The Tyrant,” by Clark Fitz-Gerald. Unfortunately, and inexplicably, they didn’t have any images of it in the gift shop and I can’t find a decent picture online.

The second was the “Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937” show at the Neue Galerie in New York. The exhibit, so popular they had to extend its run, was extremely well done. It presented the history clearly and set the works (present and missing) in their historical context. One painting I was compelled to return to and ultimately had to tear myself away from was Lasar Segall’s stunning “The Eternal Wanderers”:

[Source]

I read some reviews of the exhibit later and one concern some reviewers expressed, and which had crossed my mind at the time, was that because the show presented some art that was favored by the Nazis alongside the works they hated, it could lead to the message that art can or should be judged in these terms - if fascists liked it, it’s not good art, and vice versa. It’s a valid concern. The exhibit did show how the Nazis often (mis)interpreted art not on the basis of its political content or the artist’s “race” or politics but on its formal qualities. So an artist doing religious pieces in an expressionistic style, for example, could be persecuted for producing grotesque images or for denigrating or mocking religion, even if he was apolitical (or sympathetic to fascism) and even if he saw his work not as a criticism but as a celebration. The Nazis, unwittingly, were “right” in the sense that many of these works promoted a dangerously humanistic attitude; but that wasn’t the basis for their fearful rejection of these modernists. So it’s a complicated matter, and they probably could have done a better job in addressing it. Overall, though, a tremendous exhibit.

In related news, the Neue Galerie will host “Gustav Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer: The Woman in Gold” beginning on April 2 and coinciding with the April 3 release of the movie Woman in Gold starring Helen Mirren:



(I don't know how good the film is. The trailer isn’t especially promising, and the early critical reviews are negative. On the other hand, it can’t be worse than The Monuments Men. Come to think of it, I learned of both stories through The Rape of Europa, which I would recommend quite highly.)

Chloe Coscarelli opening vegan restaurant in New York this summer

Having recently recommended her latest cookbook, I was thrilled to discover that chef Coscarelli is planning to open a casual vegan restaurant in the Village in a few months. I look forward to trying it out when I’m in the city!

Long Island Sound

Pier at Cedar Beach, Mt. Sinai, New York

98%

In happy academic union news, graduate workers at New York University have voted overwhelmingly (620 to 10) for union representation, and the administration has agreed to negotiate in good faith.

News sources are reporting that this makes NYU's (again) the “only" graduate assistants' union recognized by a private university in the US. I prefer to think of it as the first.

Sirens of the lambs

Magritte and the animals

I spent a weekend in New York recently, and had a swell time. Hung out with friends. Enjoyed lovely weather. Had another delicious lunch at Candle Café. (They have frozen entrees now, available at Whole Foods. I tried the tofu and spinach ravioli, and it was quite nice as frozen food goes. They’re pretty pricey, but I would get some more if they were on sale.) Finally got to Moo Shoes and picked up some desperately needed boots. (I’ve been fortunate the weather in the northeast has been unseasonably warm, but I was beginning to feel chilly, and would be starting to look silly, continuing to wear flip flops.) Stayed in the lap of luxury in a suite in a midtown hotel, which I was pained to have to leave after such a short stay.

A highlight was a visit to the Museum of Modern Art. I’d planned to go for the “American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe” show, which was well worth a visit, but was over the moon to learn that the exhibit “Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938” had opened that weekend. Magritte has been one of my favorite artists for pretty much ever, and I enjoyed the exhibit immensely. It was a reasonable size, and the period featured is when he did what I consider his best work. I just love his style – the clarity of design, the sophistication of color, the blend of seriousness and play. And everything is so neat and crisp and contained. (…But then I’m probably the only one who actually liked Monk’s paintings.)

Of course, I took special notice of animal themes. I hadn’t been familiar with many of Magritte’s animal-related paintings before, but there were several on display and I found more later online.*

One featured in the exhibit was Pleasure (1927):

One I found online (and I’m surprised I hadn’t come across it before) is Collective Invention (1935):

Another example is Homesickness (1940):

But my favorite work in the show by far, to which I kept returning, was Hunters at the Edge of Night (1928):

It’s not that I believe Magritte was trying in these works to say something about other animals or humans’ relationships with them – that seems very unlikely - but that his use of animal and animal-related imagery in these poetic juxtapositions can evoke feelings and ideas about them that transcend his original intent. These ideas remain consistent, though, with his interest in subverting ordinary understandings.

*The colors in these are terribly distorted, which is unfortunate.

In vegan food news…

It’s Vegan MoFo, the vegan month of food, so I’m going to gather some food news items that have come my way recently and add a note of my own.

First, two fast food chains are introducing vegan options. Chipotle is going to expand nationally its sofritas, which has been a hit on the West coast. (It’s not actually their first vegan menu item: their burritos with black beans and guacamole are also vegan.) TCBY will be (or already is – I haven’t yet been in to check) offering Silk Chocolate Almond flavor, made with Silk almond milk.

In other restaurant news, eight new vegan restaurants across the US. For those in the New York City area, Gothamist’s nine best vegan dishes in NYC.

Also, “Groundbreaking, Game Changing Vegan Cheese Is Here”! (I haven’t ordered the cook book yet, though I’m quite excited about it, because I think that for many of the cheeses I’ll need a better blender than I have. I can’t remotely afford a Vitamix, but perhaps a Ninja Pro…?)

Finally, ZUCCHINI. For the past few weeks I’ve been perfecting my zucchini risotto. Zucchini was never one of my favorites, but I had a delicious pasta mista (I have to admit, mixing pastas goes against my grain :)) with zucchini in Italy which changed my mind. Of course, I can’t recreate the al fresco dining by the Mediterranean, but I’m thrilled to have discovered another vegetable to love.

The Woman Who Wasn't There

I happened upon this documentary recently. I'd somehow missed this entire story when it was in the news:

People are fascinating.

Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary!

I recently visited the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary in New York. I loved it and wish I could visit every day. Here are some pictures of the animals (photographic quality took a backseat to cuteness in some of my choices; I make no apologies). You can learn more about the animals in the pictures here.

Before I visited I read the book by founder Jenny Brown, The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals:

I recommend it if you’re planning to visit, and possibly even more if you’re not.

Occupy the APA - October 6, NYC

I'm working on a multi-part series on problems in the arguments of Erich Fromm, which is itself a preliminary to another multi-part series expanding his revolutionary ideas about science and "the art of loving" to nonhuman beings, which all in turn is but part of a much larger project, so I'll just post some quick announcements and short pieces for a bit.

An Occupy the APA rally/march is planned for the 6th of October in New York. Here's the announcement with basic information (contact information at the link):

HUMAN RIGHTS RALLY & MARCH

Saturday October 6th, 2012, 12:00 P.M., New York City

Rally & March from the United Nations

to

American Psychiatric Association Meeting!

Freedom from Forced Treatment and Abuse in the Mental Health System!

End Psychiatric Treatment That Denies Human Rights!

Every day, people young and old are forced into harmful treatment that they don't want and that they don't need. Join The Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (CHRUSP), MindFreedom Int’l, PsychRights, The Icarus Project, We The People and more to rally for human rights in mental health treatment, policy, and culture!

Listen to some of most powerful voices from the psychiatric survivors movement and get inspired to stand up for human rights in psychiatry!

What do we want? Human Rights!

When do we want Them? Now!

Saturday, Oct. 06, 2012

12pm - Across the Street from the UN (1 UN Plaza)

2pm – Solidarity March to the APA mtg. (7th & 53rd)

In honor of people held in forced treatment settings!

For anyone interested - a little history of the psych rights movement.

Vito on HBO

By all means, watch this moving, tender, inspiring film.