Doctoral student in Society and Environment at
@ESPM_Berkeley
attempting environmental epi and disability studies. Disabled white queer. MPH/MESc. She/her.
If you're faculty, particularly tenured faculty, and you're scared that your papers aren't graded or your deliveries aren't coming, what we're begging you to do is PUNCH UP. Instead of pressuring your grad workers to scab, pressure your bosses to propose a living wage.
#FairUCNow
@AlanaKinrich
I felt better and validated that an emergency medicine doctor felt the same way that I do about wide-bore needles that stay in veins. (I also fear moving at all!) I'm also in the Bay, and I'd also be excited to discover that you were my doctor in an emergency.
JUST. GIVE. UNHOUSED. PEOPLE. MONEY. @&€#! The efficiency with which the rich enrich themselves off the California housing crisis is really something to behold.
Nothing changed my view of the court system faster than watching Operation Streamline hearings in Tucson. The dehumanization to which judges and attorneys get accustomed is incredible. The closed nature of most mental health judicial proceedings worries me for this reason.
THREAD. If you want to do some volunteering or if you're retired, a great thing to do is watch court. Join your local courtwatch program, or organize together with your community to start one. It will blow your mind, make you new friends, and make the right kind of enemies.
UC called a bargaining meeting at 12:10 a.m. to present a UAW 2865 proposal that, at the first step 90 days after ratification, pays teaching assistants $24,990 annually, teaching fellows $29,661.50, and associate instructors $26,182.50.
#FairUCNow
The proposal also adds a poison clause that requires grad workers to stop striking when the bargaining team agrees to a contract instead of when the workers ratify it.
@amyfaithho
SOMEONE HANDCUFFED THE PATIENT TO THE BED. That was the first act of violence in this narrative. Trying to escape literal chains is not necessarily a sign of pathology. I hope that you've read the replies from other disabled people to this.
OMG! They didn't know that
@KonstantineinCA
is a disability rights advocate and called on him live, and he told everyone not to vote for
#Proposition1
because it expands forced treatment and that
@ACLU_CalAction
opposes it, and then Trevor Daley cut off his mike.
🎉 Get ready to dive deep into
#Proposition1
! 🎉
Town Hall on Feb. 22 -Mayor Bass, Sheriff Luna, & Supervisor Hahn - this initiative will impact access to mental and behavioral health services for Californians!
RSVP for Zoom link to Prop 1 Townhall Here:
@MarshallProj
You forgot the groundbreaking books by Mariame Kaba (We Do This ‘Til We Free Us and No More Police, the latter also by Andrea J. Ritchie) and Ruth Wilson Gilmore (Golden Gulag).
If your friends are undecided on
#Proposition1
or
#Prop1
, or whether to bother voting at all in California, this is one (the?) article that I’d send them. I almost cried reading it. They really did the homework.
@SFdirewolf
I’m in Berkeley with a few N95s and could be there in an hour if you’d want a stranger to sit there and be the N95 enforcer! Or could call someone you know in SF!
@aliciaandrz
This sounds like overt abuse and I hate it. I’m so sorry. (Totally unsolicited, so please ignore if not helpful! but if you want more support, Why Does He Do That by Lundy Bancroft changed my worldview and helped me get why some people, often men, do this.)
@eofallthings
In one summer job I smashed my toes under a truck liftgate (costing their worker’s comp maybe $4,000?), dropped and cracked a harp (another ~$10,000), and totaled a car. They didn’t ask me back.
#CARECourt
expansion bill
#SB35
is up on Tuesday in Assembly Privacy and is BAD. New amendments let "CARE" courts order medical providers to disclose a patient's records to the county before the patient even knows that a "CARE" petition exists, let alone has counsel. (1/3)
I didn’t even get into how Prop 1 takes money from public systems (counties) and gives a bunch to private companies (and pays interest to people who buy bonds, also a richer group).
@Alonso_GD
Malaysia‘s prime minister seems uniquely courageous? I have no international law knowledge. I just knew that this speech happened from pro-Palestine protests that folks organized during the APEC summit when it happened here in the Bay. I appreciate your tracking this!
@Alonso_GD
Malaysian Prime Minister
@anwaribrahim
also confronted
@POTUS
/
@JoeBiden
directly in public about the United States’ and his complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza at
@APEC
in November. He was the only one there who did that, I think? among the delegates: .
Me too. I also haven’t seen much
#DisabilityTwitter
discussion of Prop 1, which scares me. I think that people think that it’s good because they think that it expands mental health services (it doesn’t) or see that some Rs hate it for the bond. But OMG, please,
#StopProp1
.
I really worry mass institutionalization (which is basically concentration camps) in California will be extremely popular. I've heard people all over the political spectrum thinking unhoused people need to be "reinstitutionalized" for years. Prop 1 is dangerous.
@BeingCharisBlog
COVID-19 is in part a a neurological disease that often causes brain damage, even in “mild” cases in the vaccinated, that doctors don’t know how to reverse. Neurology clinics are currently overwhelmed with patients and scheduling appointments over half a year out.
I want to thank
@SFdirewolf
so much. I never DREAMED of being published in DVP, first of all. Second, we sent this to her, honestly, inappropriately late, and she rushed it to publication on a weekend before the end of the election anyway to keep the community out of the asylums.
If you live in California and are planning to voting in the primary in the next few days read this op-ed by Katherine Wolf on Prop 1 which will force houseless people into institutions, a return of asylums
#CAPrimary
#CripTheVote
#Election2024
CA legislature amended
#AB531
at the last minute to remove all references to "voluntary, unlocked" facilities so that they can use the $6.38 billion in bonds w/o restriction to expand forced mental health treatment and institutionalization in CA. See here:
@MomPedBlog
This is not an adequate apology. I beg you to do a power analysis. For example, where I am, wait times for specialist appointments are counted in months. Dismissing someone from your practice might mean that ultimately you’ve disabled or killed them. But you’ll never know.
New CA forced treatment bill. Senate Bill 1184 by Eggman. Makes it easier to force antipsychotics into involuntarily hospitalized patients for long periods. (Specifically gets rid of the requirement for another Riese hearing when a new type of consecutive hold is started.)
Disabled/chronically ill patients want more doctors who understand us through their own experiences as being disabled and chronically ill doctors. Dr. Bullock points out one major barrier to that happening. (And some of responses just prove how dug in the system is…)
Would you want your medical providers to disclose your records to a court without your knowledge? Bear in mind that this privacy exception will apply to you simply if someone files a
#CARECourt
petition against you, even if you've never had one of the "CARE" diagnoses! (3/3)
@Alonso_GD
Malaysian Prime Minister
@anwaribrahim
also confronted
@POTUS
/
@JoeBiden
directly in public about the United States’ and his complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza at
@APEC
in November. He was the only one there who did that, I think? among the delegates: .
If you get a bill from a US nonprofit hospital system and your income is under six figures, LOOK FOR THE SYSTEM’S CHARITY CARE/FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE APPLICATION. Often you are entitled to fully or partially free care after insurance, and often hospital billing obscures that.
I just discovered that Uber *alone* reported a donation of $4.5 million to the Yes on 1 campaign. They even made their own committee! Why does Uber want Proposition 1 to win so badly?
Follow the money
"...with over $14 million in financing from rich special interests, Newsom and California’s big city mayors are promoting Proposition 1 not to improve mental health care for Californians, but to remove people without housing from sight..."
-
@katherinewolf
'We are horrified': Summary of the last-minute involuntary treatment bait-and-switch that went down this week in
#AB531
by
@CalMatters
(by reporter
@khwangreports
who, apparently unlike the bill authors, spoke to disabled people themselves):
@USAmbUN
@UNRWA
Your veto of the United Nations Security Council ceasefire resolution allowed Israel’s bombing to continue, which led to many of their deaths.
#CeasefireNOW
#Ceasefire
Journalists, if you’ve written the phrase “voluntary court-ordered treatment,” stop and think! (This is not the first article that blithely parrots that particular talking point from the
@CAgovernor
’s office.)
Some states trying to tackle the growing mental health crisis are enacting laws and policies that would make it easier to hospitalize or detain the severely mentally ill against their will or through voluntary court-ordered treatment.
Text of the bill:
Members of the Assembly Privacy Committee:
Kudos to
@ACLU_CalAction
for watching this bill and catching this medical privacy abomination that Senator Umberg inserted into it not even a week ago. (2/3)
This is very very very bad
For more, read this by
@leahida
In the Name of ‘Modernization,’ the Newsom Administration Wants to Disappear Unhoused and Disabled People from the Streets, Rebuild the Asylums
#CripTheVote
#DisabilityRights
Content note for psychiatric coercion.
The CA Senate Judiciary Committee hears Senate Bill 43, which expands the definition of "gravely disabled" and thus clinicians' and the state's power to forcibly institutionalize and inject Californians, in < 2 weeks: Tuesday, 4/25.
(1/14)
Academia does not have to be this way. Admins do not have to be this way. Research and teaching do not have to mean sucking the last drop of labor for the least amount of money from the bodies that do most of both. We workers can make a university that is more just and more kind.
DRC opposes Proposition 1 along with Mental Health America California (
@MHACalifornia
),
@CalVoices
, the League of Women Voters (
@LWVC
), and the
@ACLU
.
For more information, visit:
LOLOL!!! He's right,
#Proposition1
takes resources from community-based voluntary mental health services to put them in locked wards. Even though, say, Alameda County is under a settlement agreement right now for institutionalizing people due to insufficient community services.
From the 11/30 temporary agreement with Academic Student Employees allowing UC to force disabled workers to submit to medical examinations:
“B. MEDICAL DOCUMENTATION
When requested by the University, the Academic Student Employee is” (1/3)
Today we mark
#InternationalDayofPersonswithDisabilities
to celebrate the essential contributions of people with disabilities.
@UofCalifornia
is committed to ensuring their rights & wellbeing, while striving for an equitable, accessible, & inclusive environment today & every day.
Friends!
#Proposition1
is going to be CLOSE and turnout is low. I don’t think that voting is everything, but if you’re willing to vote today solely to add another “no” to that tally, that would mean the world to me.
#TreatmentNotTrauma
#NoOnProp1
I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. Anyway,
#Proposition1
is about clearing encampments to benefit rich people, not care for the people in them. If you care about people with mental health disabilities or w/o housing, vote no and work with us to make care real. Not this.
Proposition 1 in California, for one. Defunds voluntary community mental health care to fund the building of mental institutions, and likely mostly locked ones. PLEASE. VOTE. NO.
#StopProp1
Wow. I wasn't kidding. The Proposition 1 race has been tightening steadily all night. The night began with 53.1% yeses (almost entirely from the early vote). Now it's down to 50.3% yeses, a margin of only 22,647 votes, and still dropping. Only about half the vote is counted.
Friends!
#Proposition1
is going to be CLOSE and turnout is low. I don’t think that voting is everything, but if you’re willing to vote today solely to add another “no” to that tally, that would mean the world to me.
#TreatmentNotTrauma
#NoOnProp1
Bear in mind that they made these amendments MONDAY for a bill that they must get through the entire legislature by THURSDAY. Kudos to Clare Cortright at
@CalVoices
for tracking the expanding number of mental health bills and spotting this.
I hear so many awful stories about insurance denials for inflammatory bowel disease. Do they just not believe these diseases exist or what?
@AnthemBCBS
@UHC
@Cigna
@Aetna
can I send you guys a Wikipedia article or something?
@Hannah_Dreyfus
Um,
@CO_CDHS
, do you want to, you know, do something? Maybe take a second look at one of those 35-plus screened-out referrals? Looks like you received the most recent one not even three months ago?
I’d say at least a thousand out in Oakland Oscar Grant Plaza right now for Palestine. What is the United States media doing?! I’m stunned both at the enormous daily protests around the United States and the near-complete media blackout of them.
@mattbc
@DataProgress
A larger number of patients with long-term complications from COVID-19 that require medical attention reduces healthcare access and lengthens delays in getting specialist appointments for everyone else.
If anyone has recs for either a disability discrimination attorney in California or a patient-centered psychiatrist in California (to do a second evaluation), please DM! Someone just asked me a question about grad school disability discrimination and I don't have a good answer.
@CMAdocs
@SFMarinMedSoc
@GavinNewsom
Counterpoint: Newsom deliberately excluded the people this is supposed to "help" (unhoused people and people with mental health disabilities) from developing Proposition 1, and they oppose it vehemently:
DRC opposes Proposition 1 along with Mental Health America California (
@MHACalifornia
),
@CalVoices
, the League of Women Voters (
@LWVC
), and the
@ACLU
.
For more information, visit:
If you're in CA,
#Proposition1
is a nail-biter. It's polling at 50%. That's why Newsom is suddenly doing a slew of events. I'll never tell anyone to vote for Genocide Joe. If you're in CA, though, and willing to vote to vote no on that one measure, it would mean the world to me.
@blondemedSJW
I’ve had experiences as a patient where docs started doing something to my body without asking or explaining (usually starting an IV or injecting a med), it triggered my PTSD and I reacted similarly (or worse), and the doc thought that I doubted their competence.
@krisrehl
@PplsCityCouncil
@SFdirewolf
@DisVisibility
@ACLU_CalAction
Thank you! A LOT of people worked more for the No side, know more, and/or have been advocating against the expansion of forced treatment in CA way longer, though! (Many couldn't say anything publicly because NEWSOM THREATENS ORGS' FUNDING. %#&@!)
I *really* wish that psychiatrists in CA would stop sponsoring forced treatment bills. The bill author previously mocked people in psychosis, the people whose rights this strips, while the government affairs chair of sponsor CSAP played along: I am tired.
@MomPedBlog
Also what matters, since you’re the person with the power (over your patients’ literal lives) in these situations, is the material consequences of your actions, not your intentions. Your tweet said that your staff routinely add notes in the chart to bias other providers. Not OK.
Updates on CA SB 1184 (and an action item!). Passed Senate Health 11–0. Scheduled for Senate Judiciary on April 30. I filed a Legislative Open Records Act request and got the letters for/opposed to Senate Health, uploaded here: (1/5)
New CA forced treatment bill. Senate Bill 1184 by Eggman. Makes it easier to force antipsychotics into involuntarily hospitalized patients for long periods. (Specifically gets rid of the requirement for another Riese hearing when a new type of consecutive hold is started.)
⚠️ New bill (SB 1196) proposes massive expansion of California's
#assistedsuicide
law:
From terminally ill (6mo) to “grievous and irremediable” condition—no time limit
➕ dementia
➕
#euthanasia
✂️ residency (suicide tourism)
✂️ 48hr wait (same day death)
@CMAdocs
@SFMarinMedSoc
@GavinNewsom
Counterpoint: Here are some of the authors of
#Proposition1
(Assemblymember Wood and Senator Eggman) *overtly imitating and mocking people with mental health disabilities* at a hearing for Senate Bill 43, which strips them of their rights, with impunity:
Maybe TMI, but I'm really struggling with managing a chronic illness lately. When it's not flaring, I question if I was ever really sick and make plans as if it will never flare again, and when it is, I feel terrible for not keeping them.
Prop 1 is (purposely!) complicated but mostly boils down to this: Defunding community-based voluntary mental health services (and taking out a huge bond) to build facilities for forced treatment in locked wards. That’s where most of the money will go. Please don’t do this to us.
California voters are deciding the fate of Proposition 1, a mental health funding reform and bond measure. In this commentary, Clare Cortright of
@CalVoices
argues Prop. 1 is a taxpayer giveaway to private industry that will shrink proven programs.
1/4
@mattbc
@DataProgress
Maybe publication of a survey of healthcare providers in COVID-19-affected specialties asking when their next available new patient appointment is might be fruitful as a warning to the general public.
Remember
#FreeBritney
? (Yay!) She was in a conservatorship in CA. SB 1338, currently sailing through the CA legislature, would push more people into the same thing. My dog Spike begs you to ask your state reps to oppose it today! (And to give him cheese.)
Hello world! One of my advisors and I are REALLY STRUGGLING to place an op-ed about Proposition 1 before the election (we let an outlet sit on it too long). If you have brilliant leads towards someone who might be excited to turn one around at lighting speed by Monday, LMK!
@MomPedBlog
And those other providers will interpret notes documenting “bad behavior” by, e.g., Black patients, Mad patients, disabled patients, chronically ill patients, etc., more negatively because racism and ableism are systemic and none of us white people particularly are immune to it.
@DrZedZha
I mean this as genuinely constructive advice! I would avoid the “we will” construction (from the position of power) with patients who don’t trust you. It has an implied nonconsensual order in it. I’d try “What if we . . . ?” or just “I would suggest . . .”