About the Event
In September 2020, IDHA hosted a public panel discussion called Decarcerating Care: Taking Policing Out of Mental Health Crisis Response, which explored the carceral nature of mental health crisis response through the voices and experiences of survivors and people with lived experience.
On Thursday March 4, 2021, we will continue the conversation with Decarcerating Care: Challenging Criminalization and Control in Mental Health, a panel that will deconstruct the prevailing narrative around the decriminalization of mental illness and explore ways in which public mental health services and well-meaning "reforms" inherently uphold the ongoing coercion and control of marginalized communities. Panelists will explore the stigmatization and surveillance often experienced by those seeking or mandated to treatment, recognizing that mental healthcare is not immune from the systems of oppression inherent to racial capitalism. By again uplifting a range of expertise and lived experiences from diverse backgrounds and identities, the panel will focus on harmful practices within mental health treatment that inhibit self-determination and maintain the status quo, while amplifying approaches to politicized care and community-based alternatives that keep us safe while accessing the healing we need and deserve.
Please register via Eventbrite to join. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with details on how to dial into the Zoom webinar.
Donations
IDHA is a small organization that strives to meet the accessibility needs of our community to the best of our ability. Our events are by tiered suggested donation to ensure we can provide closed captions on our events and other programs, though we strive to never turn anyone away. We appreciate donations of any size for those who have capacity to give.
Access
ASL + CART will be provided in Zoom. If we reach maximum capacity (1,000 people), this webinar will also be broadcast live on IDHA’s Facebook page (note that the Facebook stream will have ASL interpretation visible, but not live captions). The session will be recorded and shared with all registrants. If you have any questions about access, please email us at contact@idha-nyc.org.
Panelists
Marco Barrios
Marco Barrios is a resident of Queens, a veteran and a member of Freedom Agenda. He works as a criminal justice advocate with the Urban Justice Center Mental Health Project. In addition, he is engaged as a member of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice Implementation Task Force, as part of the Subcommittee on programming. Prior to his role in criminal legal system reform and building communities, he was formerly incarcerated and while serving his sentence, he obtained his bachelor’s degree in behavioral science. Furthermore, throughout his incarceration he had the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of his affliction with post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use. The tools and skills that he acquired over the years shaped him into the man he is today and always wanted to be. He believes that the improvement of his character, mind and perception has prepared him to dedicate his life to the work he is doing.
Dustin Gibson
Dustin works in the tradition of deinstitutionalization and has worked with Centers for Independent Living (IL) in Pittsburgh, PA and both of the national IL organizations. He is the Access, Disability and Language Justice Coordinator at PeoplesHub, a Peer Support Trainer with Disability Link in Atlanta, GA and a founding member of the Harriet Tubman Collective.
Victoria Law
Victoria Law is an author and freelance journalist focusing on the intersections of incarceration, gender and resistance. Her books include Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reform, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women, and Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind: Concrete Ways to Support Families in Social Justice Movements and Communities. Her newest book "Prisons Make Us Safer" and 20 Other Myths About Mass Incarceration will be out in April.
Her writings about prisons and other forms of confinement have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Wired, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Village Voice, In These Times, Rewire News and Truthout. She is a co-founder of Books Through Bars—NYC and the editor of the zine Tenacious: Art and Writings by Women in Prison. She is also a proud parent of a young woman who has graduated from the NYC public school system.
Kendra McLaughlin
Kendra J. McLaughlin, PhD (she/her) is a legal psychologist, writer, educator, and activist. She also lives with bipolar disorder. Her research and writing centres on various ways in which people who are psychiatrized face criminalization, surveillance, and confinement. Kendra is a carceral abolitionist feminist and a socialist. She believes in a future where all psychiatrized people are consulted in the care they receive and in societies in which no person is expected to pay for health/medi/pharmacare. You can find her writings at CriminalizedMentallyIll on Instagram and on her website: KendraJMclaughlin.com
Yazan Za3za3
Yazan is the Community Organizer at Vigilant Love, a healing justice organization committed to challenging the structural and communal impacts of Islamophobia and the War on Terror at large. Yazan's primary work focus on Vigilant Love's #ServicesNotSurveillance campaign where they support with the development of political analysis, campaign strategy, and educational facilitation with special attention to the overlaps between racialization, surveillance, and the co-optation of health. Yazan holds an MA in Women's and Gender Studies from San Diego State University. Their own research focuses on the relationship between war, migration, surveillance, and social welfare programming.
Moderator
Grace Ortez
Grace Ortez is an empathy-driven and revolution-minded NYC-based prison abolitionist. She is a community organizer, paradigm shifter, generational cycle breaker, and advocate for the incarcerated (and their loved ones). She also serves her community as a criminal justice reform and healing-oriented speaker, re-entry coordinator, and healing circle facilitator. She is a member of Freedom Agenda, and currently works as a Community Outreach Coordinator at Dream Deferred Inc.
Grace is a proud daughter of the South Bronx with Indigenous roots, whose expertise comes from lived experience as a violence, trauma, and psychiatric survivor. She is fiercely passionate about uplifting Black and Brown communities impacted by systemic trauma and mass incarceration - through grassroots movement building, elevating directly impacted voices, increasing civic participation, and reclaiming community power within NYC and beyond. Her mission is to help bring about both a cultural shift and concrete systemic policy change in the ways that our society responds to trauma, mental health, violence, and racial equity.
Grace is a firm believer in both restorative and transformative justice, second chances, and compassionate rehabilitation without exceptions - because no one is defined by their worst moments in life, and no one is beyond redemption.