Occupy Anchorage and Title 21 People Lure Me To Assembly Meeting

Occupy group at Assembly Meeting

I'm still trying to finish a post from the last Assembly meeting I attended last June (on the mayor's veto, coming soon, I promise) but both the Title 21 citizens' group and Occupy Anchorage folks were both set to testify at the Assembly meeting at 4:30 today.  And though I knew I was going to be late, I came anyway.  Didn't matter.  It's 5:20 now and the Assembly just got started and they're doing housekeeping stuff.  So I had a chance to talk to some people before the meeting.  I'm waiting for one of the videos to get uploaded now.  The Loussac Library where the Assembly chambers are has wifi, but it's slow.

Jo-Ann Chung,Pamela Scott,   Assembly Member Elvi Gray-Jackson

5:27  They are honoring former Assistant Muni Prosecutor Pamela Scott and now Jo-Ann Chung who have gotten judicial appointments.  Both approved.


5:36  Now they are recognizing and celebrating Alaska native Heritage Day November 25, 2011.

I have a 6:30 meeting nearby.  Am I going to get to see anything I came to see at 4:30?

Now it's a liquor license issue on Muldoon. Now a whole slew of them.  The image has a few of the many they are approving. There's one for a Tesoro Station on Government Hill that had problems with selling to inebriates that seems like it's going to be held til later.

The video's ready now, so I'll post it. 

You can watch this live on cable or online.
Though who knows when the Occupy folks and the Title 21 folks.

Assembly member Trombley is now questioning someone about the Sullivan Arena and asking why they had a monthly loss of $750,000. The respondent says it's for the year and there is money coming in through visitor taxes and other items. Now Trombley is asking about the new figure of $39,000.

I could go on and on. Now Assembly member Starr is questioning about how someone had asked his girlfriend to marry him using the scoreboard at a hockey game, but so many lights were burned out she couldn't read her name.

I'll post this now.

UPDATE: 6:10pm - someone is now talking his 3 minutes to tell the Assembly about the dangers of power toothbrushes. His time was up but Assembly Member Gray-Jackson asked him to continue up to 3 more minutes. Dental profession has recognized harm called toothbrush abrasion. Spinning, rotating, osculating power toothbrushes.

I've been here since 5:45pm and I'm really starting to wonder how the Assembly plans its time. I understand the importance of honorary motions etc. But it seems there are some really serious meaty issues before the Assembly and they ought to address them.

This guy wants the Assembly to take action to prohibit sales of power toothbrushes so that kids don't live their lives with the pain of toothbrush abrasion.

6:15 pm Assembly is now going to take its dinner break. And I'm going to leave and miss all this for my other meeting. But I do have another video I'll put up later.

Business Week Calls Anchorage America's Tenth Best City - But Don't You Believe It!

How could they do that?  I bet it's a hoax.

I've been working hard all these years to keep people out of Anchorage.  Whenever I travel and people ask me about living in Alaska, I tell them what they want to hear:  It's very dark.  It's very cold.  The snow and ice are brutal.  The constant drip of the melting ice from our igloo's ceiling is awful.  Keeping the sled dogs fed is a never ending and nasty task, and no matter how much you feed them, they still  bark all night (which is six months.)  And the prices!  Three times what you pay for lettuce or milk, but ours is wilted and sour.

I acknowledge that there is something that we call summer, but remind people that our house and yard is under a huge chain link fence cage to keep out the killer mosquitoes for those couple of days when the temperature gets above freezing.

And now Business Week goes and lists Anchorage as America's Tenth Best City.  Don't believe it.  We all have cabin fever and you never know who's going to start shooting people instead of road signs.  And there are bears and wolves in those areas not ruined by oil spills.  If you're looking for a great place to live, try Seattle, try Portland.  Las Vegas has really low housing prices right now.  So does Florida.  Consider Baghdad.  Fresno.  Even Sarah fled to Arizona when she had the chance. 

I don't know which Chamber of Commerce type paid Business Week to rank Anchorage so high (or at all) but, trust me, strings were pulled, hard. 

But I have an option if your friends tease you about not ever having cruised to Alaska and those state paid ads encouraging you to visit are making you feel unhip.  I've started a project to allow you to 'visit' Alaska without leaving home.

My program lets you send us the cost of your cruise and land tours plus $300 a day for shopping without having to really come here. An added benefit is knowing that the money stays in Alaska instead of all going to Outside businesses that exploit us like a colony.  And you don't have to suffer a trip to Alaska.  You can spend the time incognito at a spa in Palm Springs while your friends think you're cruising Alaska.

We'll send post cards from Alaska to all your friends, and for a slight extra charge, we can even superimpose your parka'd image onto videos of glaciers, on dog sleds, fighting off giant mosquitoes, snagged in fishing line, swimming with breaching whales, panning for gold.  

So, remember the adage not to read everything you believe.  And don't even think about moving to Alaska, America's Best City to Avoid.

Co-Housing Comes to Anchorage

Our daughter had emailed us a couple of links to co-housing sites near Portland. She's working near Portland and looking for a permanent place and wants to have a close community.

Co-housing is a word coined by Chuck Durrett*, an architect who studied co-housing in Denmark in the mid-80's. Co-housing was his version of the Danish “bofællesskaber.” which his website says "directly translates to “living communities."

Chuck Durrett at podium in Anchorage, slide of Co-housing project

So last week when a friend let us know there was a group in Anchorage looking to create a co-housing development here, we went to their meeting at the museum.   Chuck Durrett spoke at the meeting and showed slides of different co-housing projects he's helped to develop.

Essentially, co-housing enables folks to work together to plan a project for housing that is  more conducive to neighbors getting to know each other doing things together.  The homes are closer together usually, but with greater open spaces on the the property.  There are community buildings for recreation and community dinners.  He said some places eat together once a week, others three or four or five times a week.  But that people don't have to go to the community meals. The legal work is much like a condo association.  Individuals or couples or families generally own their individual homes but the surrounding land and common buildings are owned jointly.  Usually the front of the homes face walkways and common space and many of the places he's helped develop have homes with front porches.

Anchorage Co-Housing Organizers

There seemed to be a move toward recovering the community connections that existed before modern suburbs came to be.  This is also the kind of setting I knew as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Thailand, and which, to a lesser extent, we've had in my neighborhood in Anchorage, especially when Mrs. Nash was still alive.

The museum auditorium was probably 80 or 90% full - maybe 150 people.  And a followup potluck was scheduled for Sunday evening at St. Mary's Episcopal church.  Since that's pretty close, we walked over there to meet folks and see how this was going.

After eating, people were divided into groups which identified factors they'd like to see.  Here's the poster from the group I was in.  But after everyone marked their top three factors and each group shared what they'd come up with, it seemed all the groups had the same notion.

The group is actively looking for 2.5 - 5 acres of land in Anchorage and there's a two day workshop scheduled for February that was just about full by the end of the evening Sunday.





They had a map which had circles with 1/2 mile radius near various commercial areas where they had looked for potential sites with Chuck Durrett while he was still in town.  He'll be back in February for the workshop.  

I was struck by the lack of ethnic diversity in the crowd.  They have generational diversity, but it's a pretty homogenous group so far.  Essentially this is a type of condo group, but where the people get to design the project and the intent is to have more community interaction than most neighborhoods provide.  There is flexibility - like having some rental units and there is turnover when a family has to move out.  So far, the units have held their value well, Durrett said. 

You can learn more about co-housing on line.  The Cohousing website says

"Cohousing communities are old-fashioned neighborhoods created with a little ingenuity. They bring together the value of private homes with the benefits of more sustainable living. That means common facilities and good connections with neighbors. All in all, they stand as innovative answers to today's environmental and social problems. Learn more >"

 Chuck Durrett's company's website says,"

Shared lives are healthy lives - McCamant & Durrett Architects designs intergenerational cohousing communities that create and promote environmentally and socially vibrant sustainable neighborhoods.

Intergenerational cohousing communities respond to the needs of today's households by combining the autonomy of private dwellings with the advantages of community living and shared resources."

 And for those interested in the Anchorage here's the local co-housing group's Facebook link.   There were a lot of people.  I'm sure once a site is selected some people will drop out because it's not in their preferred part of town.  And when people have to put money on the table others will leave.  But they had a lot more people than they expected and it's possible that there could be more than one project in Anchorage if there's enough interest. 

*Not only does it say this on his company's website, but they even have the Oxford English dictionary entry that credits him and his partner with the term.

Stevens Prosecutors - "serious, widespread . . . intentional" illegal concealment, but no prosecution

[UPDATE:  I should have checked before I posted this.  Cliff Groh already had posted on this and appears to have had access to the report.  Cliff, an attorney, attended the Stevens trial and has a better  sense of this than I do.  You can see his post at Alaska Corruption.]

There has been a trickle of web reports that the investigation Judge Emmett Sullivan ordered on the prosecution of the Ted Stevens case is complete.  Henry F. Schuelke's 500 page report will be available to the public by January.

I haven't been able find Judge Sullivan's actual order but here's what others are reporting:

 New York Times:

 "A court-appointed investigator has found that the high-profile prosecution of the late Senator Ted Stevens was “permeated” by the prosecutors’ “serious, widespread and at times intentional” illegal concealment of evidence that would have helped Mr. Stevens defend himself at his 2008 trial, a federal judge disclosed on Monday.

But the 500-page report by the investigator, Henry F. Schuelke, recommends that none of the Justice Department officials involved in the case be prosecuted for criminal contempt of court because the judge who presided over the trial, Emmet G. Sullivan, of Federal District Court in Washington, did not issue an order specifically instructing prosecutors to obey the law by turning over any exculpatory evidence. [emphasis added]

This last part sounds a little strange - that the judge should have to tell the prosecution to obey the law.  I do know that during the Stevens trial one local attorney told me he was astounded at the withholding of the evidence and said he'd be disbarred if he'd done something like that.  But later, another attorney told me that at the Federal level, the prosecutors have discretion over what they turn over while Alaska attorneys do not.  I'm not an expert here, so I'll just report what I've heard, but take it as speculative.

The Times article says the Schuelke reviewed 150,000 pages and interviewed dozens of witnesses. 

The judge quoted Mr. Schuelke as saying that the investigation and prosecution of Mr. Stevens had been “permeated by the systematic concealment of significant exculpatory evidence which would have independently corroborated his defense and his testimony, and seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government’s key witness.”
Mr. Schuelke and Mr. Shields also “found evidence of concealment and serious misconduct that was previously unknown and almost certainly would never have been revealed — at least to the court and to the public — but for their exhaustive investigation. . .

While Mr. Schuelke did not recommend prosecuting the prosecutors for criminal contempt, the judge noted that the investigator had written that he offered “no opinion” as to whether “one or more of the subject attorneys” might instead be charged with obstruction of justice. 

The Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility is also conducting its own investigation of the prosecution in this case. 


There have been a lot of strange and, for me, yet to be explained anomalies. 

• Stevens, at the time the senior Republican in the US Senate, was indicted by a Republican president while his Justice Department was shown to be exceptionally political.  Someone explained that the Public Integrity Section had considerable independence, but it's hard to believe that the White House hadn't been notified before things went public and thus hadn't at least tacitly approved.
• Ted Stevens' conviction was thrown out in one of the earliest high profile actions of Obama's Attorney General Holder
• Yet, despite that, Schuelke's report finds serious infractions but recommends no prosecutions.  

It seems there are still a lot of things we don't know.   This is a 500  page report so by January we should have some of these questions cleared up.  Or maybe we'll have more questions. 


 NewsFeed Researcher offers these additional sources on this story :

1. 'Serious misconduct' in prosecution of Ted Stevens, report says - Crime Scene - The Washington Post
2. DOJ: No misconduct in Stevens case - John Bresnahan - POLITICO.com
3. A court-appointed lawyer investigating prosecutors involved in the Ted Stevens case said misconduct by the department was pervasive. - Law Blog - WSJ
4. Breaking: Investigator Says Stevens Prosecutors Intentionally Hid Evidence | Main Justice

Budget Reduction Act - High Stakes Poker?

I'm still trying to figure out this deficit reduction exercise.  The Budget Committee has a few more days to create and pass their plan.    There needs to be seven (of 12) votes to pass anything.   That would result in a bill that would go to the House and Senate for an up or down vote.  No amendments.  No filibusters.  Simple majority passes or rejects it.

Was this committee a set-up?  If so, who set it up?  The Democrats or the Republicans?  At first glance, it looks like the Republican got dealt all the aces.

The point is to try to balance the budget (at least to greatly reduce the deficit) in a reasonable time period.  The Democrats are willing to include cuts, but also want to increase revenues (taxes mainly).  The Republicans only want cuts.  Most have signed a No Taxes pledge and that's where they've been sticking.  

The deal starts with cuts.  There are no taxes or other revenue increases.  And if they fail, there are automatic cuts, no taxes.  So, as I see it, the Democrats have already given up most of the concessions the Republicans want.  (Well, they want the Democrats to give up more.)  But the Republicans haven't given up anything serious.  OK, some don't want cuts in the military and there would be some big ones if the committee fails.  But it's cuts.  If they want to keep the military whole, they'll have to agree to some revenue increases.

But if they don't agree,  automatic cuts (and no revenue increases) begin.

After looking at a number of websites that explain the Act, I decided to borrow part of this summary from the blog of Keith Hennessey, a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution [a conservative think tank] at Stanford University, and a Lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Stanford Law School.

• If this new Joint Committee legislative process fails to result in a law, then there will be no tax increases and there will be triggered $1.2 T of across-the-board spending cuts in discretionary spending, Medicare, farm subsidies, and a few smaller entitlements. These triggered spending cuts would hit defense more deeply than other types of spending.
  
• The additional deficit reduction could include tax increases, but only if:
• 7 of 12 Members of a new Joint Committee of Congress agree to raise taxes, including at least one Republican Member of the Committee;
• and a majority of the House and Senate vote for the Committee’s recommendations;
• and the President signs the bill into law.

 So, was this some slick deal the Republicans pulled on the President?  After all, the default is big spending cuts and no taxes, just what the Republicans want.

Or did Obama pull one over on the Republicans?  I'm not sure, but there are some signs that this might fail in Obama's favor.  The cuts don't automatically begin until 2013, and Congress can pass legislation between now and then to stop or change the automatic cuts.

And while the Republicans can argue that the Democrats refused to compromise, anyone looking at this can see that it's full of the cuts the Republicans wanted and that there are NO taxes or other revenue increases that Democrats want.  That is, no Republican compromises.

And a lot of folks are saying the automatic cuts, during a recession would be a disaster.

Here's today's (Nov. 20, 2011) Wall Street Journal:

However, in the wake of the committee's expected failure, the additional spending cuts—including $600 billion from the Pentagon—don't take effect until 2013.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he didn't believe Congress would allow those cuts to take effect in the defense budget because of the dire warnings of its detrimental effects.

However, President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) have opposed attempts to mitigate or tamper with the spending-cuts mechanism, which once had been considered a powerful incentive for the panel to reach a compromise.

But the one-year time lapse before the enforcement mechanism kick in reduced the sense of urgency and eased pressure on the panel.

So, if the intent of the drastic cuts that are automatically triggered if the committee doesn't create and pass a bill (or the Congress doesn't pass it or the President doesn't sign it), was to force the committee to pass something, it doesn't seem to be working.

And now with an election coming up in less than a year, how is the electorate going to evaluate who caused the problem?  The Democrats who wanted to raise revenue, but were willing - from the git go - to cut some of their cherished programs?  Or the Republicans who started with the Democrats taking huge cuts, but were never willing to make any revenue increasing compromises until the very end, when they offered a very symbolic revenue compromise, but with conditions that seemed to canceled out the benefits.  Here's a New York Times report on the Republican proposal.

And CBS News reports that 64% of Americans support tax increases on the rich to lower the deficit.  Perhaps it's beginning to be clear that the Republicans are less interested in decreasing the deficit than they are interested in keeping their rich supporters rich and untaxed, and in chipping away at government so their rich friends can do whatever they want - whether it's increasing credit card fees or extracting resources - without pesky governmental regulations intended to keep the environment clean and workers getting a livable wage and not getting injured or killed on the job without any health insurance or pension.

Maybe even the police monitoring the Occupy demonstrators are recognizing that their jobs and pensions are vulnerable too, that they are part of the 99%.  Maybe this whole exercise was simply to expose the protectors of the 'job creators' for what they are.  And perhaps Obama couldn't lose this game.  If they got Republicans to raise taxes in the committee, that would have been good in general.  If they couldn't, then it would give the public one more example of the Republicans' "heads I win, tales you lose" strategy. 

Only time will tell.  Perhaps the Republicans haven't learned from the housing crisis where consumers were lured in with deals that were too good to be true, only to have the rug pulled out from under them.   Perhaps this committee - already stacked with cuts and no taxes - looked too good to resist.  They thought they couldn't lose.  But maybe they have.

Or maybe not.  We'll see.

Tip Down

I saw these scissors in a parking lot the other day.  I'm guessing they fell out pointed down and just stuck in the compressed snow of the lot.  It's harder to imagine that someone purposefully left them there, and they weren't in very deep.  I did move them out of the parking lot after I took the picture and into some eye-level snow on top of a wall.

I'm not even sure what kind of scissors these are.

Yes, I know this isn't much of a post. I'm stalling while I work on longer ones and other things.

Profligate Consumers or Greedy Bankers? Which Story Will Prevail?

[Of course, you all know it doesn't have to be either-or.]

What are some of the possible stories out there about the US financial crisis as well as the European crisis?


The Establishment Stories:

1.  The banking system is the backbone of our prosperous societies.  It keeps money moving in our economy so that businesses and consumers can get the cash that keeps capitalism rolling and everyone can enjoy a much higher living standard than would otherwise be possible.  The housing crisis put that whole system into jeopardy and only through bailing out the banks could governments prevent civilization as we know it from collapsing. 

2.  Greece and Italy, among others, have been profligate in their spending and now can't pay back all the loans they took. Greece and Italy must now tighten their belts and pay back the loans they made.


Counter Stories

1.  The US  banks and the real estate industry, not to mention the American dream, all ganged up on consumers (is that how you identify yourself when someone asks you to say something about yourself?) to sell unrealistic loans to millions of Americans.  Those in the system who had any brains at all knew that many loans would never be repaid.  But they lied to the consumers and convinced them to take out the loans, because they got well compensated, and they weren't going to be the ones holding the loans when they went belly up.

2   In Confessions of an Economic Hitman  John Perkins describes his job as an expert consultant sent to developing countries to do studies of their infrastructures.  The studies were designed in advance to recommended huge construction projects that were more than the country needed, but perfect for the needs of foreign companies that wanted to extract the countries natural resources.  And these projects came with loans that the country could not afford and would put them in debt to the countries or international organizations lending the money.   Is this what happened with Greece and Italy? 

What really happens if the banks take the big hits instead of the Greek people?  Or if the hit is shared to some degree?  And what would have happened if instead of paying off the banks, the US would have given the money to the people defaulting and just let them pay their mortgages?

This piece from George Friedman at Stratfor fleshes out the Greek scenario:

Two dimensions explain this outcome. The first was national. 

1.   The common perception in the financial press is that Greece irresponsibly borrowed money to support extravagant social programs and then could not pay off the loans. 

2.  But there also is validity to the Greek point of view. From this perspective, under financial pressure, the European Union was revealed as a mechanism for Germany to surge exports into developing EU countries via the union’s free trade system. Germany also used Brussels’ regulations and managed the euro such that Greece found itself in an impossible situation. Germany then called on Athens to impose austerity on the Greek people to save irresponsible financiers who, knowing perfectly well what Greece’s economic position was, were eager to lend money to the Greeks. 

Each version of events has some truth to it, but the debate ultimately was between the European and Greek elites. It was an internal dispute, and whether for Greece’s benefit or for the European financial system’s benefit, both sides were committed to finding a solution. [I reformatted this a bit to emphasize the two perspectives]

He goes on to explain that inside Greece, the elites will do fine when Greece repays the debts, but the average folks "would lose jobs, pensions, salaries and careers. . ."


The question lots of people have is whether this was all engineered to redistribute wealth from millions of people to a few people.  And it's all intangible and complicated enough that few people can know for sure.  But as the dust settles, a lot of just every day folks are beginning to think they were scammed big time.

And if you listen to any financial news you know they say "the economy needs more consumer spending" and then the next minute they say "Americans aren't saving enough."  What's wrong with a system that requires you  to spend the money that you're also required to save?  Do I hear the word "unsustainable"?


I heard someone on the radio the other day complaining about the inconveniences the Occupiers were causing near Wall Street.  Seems to me Wall Street caused a lot of inconvenience for a lot of Americans themselves.  Just as the European financiers are causing a lot of trouble for Greeks and Italians.  (I'll leave the Spaniards out of this for now, but in case Tomás is reading this, I better mention them.)

 My sense is that Occupy hasn't begun to flex its muscles.  This is a global movement that isn't unrelated to the Arab Spring, the Tea Party, and Wikileaks.  Those folks who still write this off as a bunch of unemployed bums who just need a job and a haircut don't have a clue.

Here's a video that shows both the imagination and technical skill of people involved.  There's certainly great irony in using the Verizon building to post this message.



Thanks JL for the Stratfor reference.  Thanks to Phil for the video.

Occupy the Cold - Anchorage Protesters

I stopped by the Occupy Anchorage site today.  It was a chilly 5˚F (-15˚C) or lower.  There's an open side tent and three other tents on the edge of Town Square at the end of F Street.  I got there a bit after 4pm and there were three people and two dogs.  More folks dropped by after a bit.

I didn't have enough room on my camera disk to get more than this 28 second video.  (Sorry, I'd backed the disk up on my external hard drive, but then I couldn't access those pictures and videos on my camera to delete them.  I better read the instruction manual better.  I can delete them using the computer.)

Next Friday, Black Friday, is the day they're expecting to have trouble with the Municipality.  They'll be lighting the official city Christmas Tree on Town Square and they don't want the protestors tents there.  The said they are being left alone even though they don't have a permit ($800, they said per week).  But the Muni has a permit for next Friday.  They are playing it by ear.


They said there were 14 sites in Alaska.

Here's part of a forum post from Nov. 11 by Dub - the guy in the black hat in the picture.

My name is John Westlund. I am 21 years old. I have been working since I was 11 trying to support my family and myself. Trying to have stability. Recently I quit my job, left my still paid for apartment, and joined the occupy wall street movement 24/7 for the past few weeks. I have never felt better about what I'm doing with my life. All I wanted was stability, and I found no way to truly accomplish this while relying on money. I realized it could and should be worth nothing tomorrow. The economy everywhere is unstable because of ecological practices worldwide. Money is truly worth nothing! Until we have a perfect system. Until that day I will stay a protester, an environmentalist and a part of Occupy. We have learned enough over the past 200 years to create this system, a unified peaceful system. One of stability. One that is permanent. Sustainable. For all. No more overpopulation problems from idiotic food manipulating meant only to make the most amount of money possible.

BTW, there are heaters in the tent, but they weren't getting any electricity when I was there.

"There aren’t any physical methods of diagnosing a mental illness: There’s no blood test. There’s no mri. So-called mental illnesses are diagnosed on the basis of behavior. The “chemical-imbalance” theory was invented by the marketing departments of drug companies to try to convince doctors to prescribe their products."

Humans probably know more about outer space than about the depths of the oceans or the depths of our brains. Mount Holyoke College professor, psychologist Gail Hornstein, challenges what little we think we know.  And if you've been here before, you know I like my ideas challenged.  (Of course, there has to be serious, fact based evidence to make it a real challenge and not ideologically based nonsense.)


The Sun Magazine continues to amaze me by having pieces that challenge what I know.  Here's a bit of an interview with psychologist Gail Hornstein from the July 2011 issue. 

"Frisch: Why do you feel so strongly about avoiding the phrase “mental illness”?
Hornstein: The term “mental illness” is heavily charged, politicized, and ambiguous. I prefer to talk about “anomalous experiences,” “extreme emotions,” and “emotional distress.” The main reason I don’t use medical language is that people who are suffering often don’t find it very helpful. No one experiences “schizophrenia” — that’s just a technical name for a lot of complicated feelings.
People who have been taught that “mental illnesses are brain diseases” see psychiatric patients as dangerous and unlikely to recover. And those in crisis are often understandably reluctant to consult mental-health professionals, because the stigma of mental illness is so severe: it’s possible to lose your job, your home, and your family as a consequence of being diagnosed with a mental illness. In cultures that take a social view of emotional distress, by contrast, people more readily seek help because they aren’t as likely to be ostracized and are assumed to be capable of full recovery."

She goes on to talk about studies of people diagnosed with schizophrenia in developed  and undeveloped countries.  "[O[utcomes were much better the developing countries."

You can read the whole Hornstein interview here.

 Here's a bit more:

"Hornstein: In psychiatry mental illness is a metaphor imposed on people’s behavior. There aren’t any physical methods of diagnosing a mental illness: There’s no blood test. There’s no mri. So-called mental illnesses are diagnosed on the basis of behavior. The “chemical-imbalance” theory was invented by the marketing departments of drug companies to try to convince doctors to prescribe their products. Some doctors say depression is just like diabetes: you have an imbalance of a neurotransmitter, the way a diabetic might need more or less insulin, and this drug will restore your balance. But with diabetes it’s possible to measure the amount of sugar and insulin in your blood. We know what a balanced level is. No doctor who has given anyone an antidepressant has ever measured the level of a neurotransmitter in the patient’s body. There is no independent means by which to tell if someone has a “chemical imbalance.”

Frisch: Do any mental illnesses have a known physiological basis?

Hornstein: The initial symptoms of Huntington’s disease resemble the symptoms of mental illness. When folk singer Woody Guthrie first manifested Huntington’s disease, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. Similarly people in the early stages of brain cancer may behave in anomalous ways. If you don’t know they have cancer, you might think they’re having a psychiatric breakdown. But once they get a cat scan, you can see the brain tumor. You can’t see schizophrenia."

I don't know if all this is true.  I've come to believe that meds help with some symptoms, but also to know that they often have negative side-effects, and tend not to deal with the underlying causes.  This raises questions to pursue. 


Thanks Jim for plying me with all those Suns.  You hooked me.  

Interrupting Our Dysfunctional Society - The Interrupters and LeadON! Among Many

How does change happen?  At this point in the history of the US, change is not coming from the official political leaders.  But change is happening all around.  People are coming together and taking charge of their own lives.  Whether it's the people at Occupy events around the country, or businesses who are converting their structures and operations to be more energy efficient, or local food groups, or even people joining the Tea Party, people everywhere, mostly off of the media's radar, are coming together and speaking openly about how they feel and how to make life better.  Not only for themselves, but for everyone else.

In Anchorage this week, a group of kids from around the state got together to talk about how to make their lives better.  Although a group I volunteer with (ANDVSA) was the sponsor, I didn't get to the Lead On conference.  But the participants made their own videotape.




Here's what Meryl of Tenakee Springs wrote about it:

For the past two years I have been lucky enough to attend the LeadON! conference, and I’ve learned an awesome amount about my peers, my community, my state, my world, and myself. Despite the impact it has had on my life, I have a real difficulty describing what LeadON! is exactly. A leadership conference? (Yawn…another one?) A mini-summit? (Summit? To what? Everest?) A youth gathering? (Are we starting a cult?). Nothing really seems to do it justice, or make any sense. I find myself always tripping on my words when I try to explain it to people.
For me, LeadON! has been this incredible opportunity to actually gain the confidence I need to make positive changes. I’ve met people and made connections that have broadened my mind and pushed my life forward. I participated in workshops during the conference that were very, very far out of my comfort zone, and found myself actually enjoying being out of my “box”. I got to listen to speakers who were so powerful their messages still stick with me. I heard my peers tell stories about the rough parts of their own life, which made me brave enough to do the same.  Yes, it’s a lot for only a few days!
The most empowering part of LeadON! was the way everyone, the speakers, the adults, and the youth, spoke openly about a wide range of topics. I believe that positive change begins within ourselves and grows outward, and talking honestly about what we want to change is the first step. LeadON! gave me the chance to do that. While I may not always have the words to describe how LeadON! has influenced me, maybe that is actually what has given me the power to show the world what leadership is, instead of simply trying to slap a definition on it. We define it in our actions, every day. That’s what LeadON! has really shown me.
-          Meryl, Tenakee Springs

This year's conference is over.  But if you are (or know) an Alaskan Youth between the ages of 13 and 18 you can look at this year's application form and think about applying for next year. 


The Alaskan Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse (ANDVSA), which sponsors LeadON!, is focused on PREVENTION.  That means working to prevent problems before they happen and opening opportunities to people who might not have otherwise known they had healthy and positive options. 

From the ANDVSA site:

What Do Youth Leaders and Community Partners Do at the Mini-summit?

• Youth-led workshops, nationally recognized speakers, and major fun!
• See what youth and community partners are doing across the state.
• Use theatre, art, and media to improve their leadership skills
• Share information and projects from your community.
• Have fun with musicians, actors, activists, business leaders, and Alaska youth
• Develop ideas to promote peace and equality in your community
• Learn more about youth and adult project partnerships.
• Hiking, outdoor activities, networking, and much more!

This week, we also saw the movie The Interrupters.  It follows a group of ex-gang members and ex-cons as they go through their dysfunctional neighborhood, interrupting violence, through the force of their personalities, experience, and fearlessness.  They too, offer people alternatives to killing, as a way to resolve differences.  Another example of people speaking openly.



This is a powerful film that takes you on an intimate trip into a dysfunctional neighborhood in Chicago, where violence is the learned behavior for dealing with violence.  Into this neighborhood a doctor joins locals who want to change things.  The doctor views this epidemiologically - as a disease that needs to be tracked down and stopped as you would any other disease.  It's not about bad people, but about people who are infected by things in their environment that cause them to behave in self-destructive ways.

And once you've been through the neighborhoods with different interrupters and seen how they gain the trust of those infected with violence and slowly offer them alternatives, after you see the humanity behind the stereoptypes we have of 'those people', it's easy to understand that ignorance that leads one legislator to call the National Guard to come pacify the neighborhood.  And if your brain is good at making connections from one situation to another, you realize the enormous foolishness of the National Guard and the US military trying to make force peace on Iraq and Afghanistan.  This is using violence to teach people peace.  The target already knows violence.  It's the interrupters, working slowly and tirelessly, with love and respect and intimate knowledge of their patients, who are using peace to teach peace.

It's people from the neighborhood interrupting dysfunction to solve their problems. 


This interrupting business is going on all over.  It's what Anchorage Healing Racism does by bringing people like Brent Scarpo to Anchorage. And what Penny Arcade does in an entirely different way with her show that's at OutNorth again Friday and Saturday night at 8pm, with an extra show added Sunday afternoon at 5pm.

Look around your community.  It's happening all around you.  You just need to pay attention, reach out, and connect to it.