February 28, 2000
State Capitol
Sacramento, California
This protest was organized by the California Network for Mental Health Clients in opposition to Assembly Bill 1800, sponsored by California Assemblywoman Helen Thompson. The purpose of AB1800 is to expand the criteria for and lengthen involuntary inpatient commitment, expand "community assisted outpatient treatment programs" (forced outpatient administration of harmful psychiatric drugs), deprive people accused of mental illness of some of what little protection we have under current California law, and allocate $350 million of public funds to support psychiatric oppression and psychiatric assault in California.
The above pictured protester compares AB1800 sponsor Helen Thompson to Darth Vader, the personification of evil.
Real mental health parity is also when mental patients can refuse chemotherapy as easily as cancer patients.
Sally Zinman, ex-patient and lifelong antipsychiatry activist, was one of the speakers.
"We came in peace! But you locked us up in E-Ward"
The words on this protester's T-shirt are: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Several of the speakers compared modern "mental health" legislation with the atrocities of the German Nazis.