Crazy Cool Festival Links Healing Arts and Political Action in Fight Against Stigma of Mental Illness

"The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." So said Martin Luther King, Jr., quoting the 19th-century abolitionist Theodore Parker.

On Saturday, October 11, from 10 AM to 4 PM, Community Links, the young adult program of the mental health agency, Baltic Street AEH, sponsored a "Crazy Cool Festival" in Prospect Park, sharing the message with more than a hundred participants that the oppression and stigma faced by people living with mental illness are often worse than the dis-ease itself.

Defying the blues on a gray day

In an act which defied dark clouds and occasional rain, Community Links established a "stigma-free zone" in an encampment of pop-up blue tents, ringing the plaza next to the park's band shell at 9th Street, where mental health consumers, family members, friends, and curious passers-by engaged in healing arts to celebrate their full human potential and expressed their desire for social and political action against trauma of all kinds.

Speaking on behalf of her staff, volunteers, and everyone in attendance, Yasmine Kamel, project director of Community Links, set the tone with the following address:

"The odds are that you or someone you love has struggled with their mental and emotional health. That struggle does not change the fact that they are as full of potential as anyone else and as deserving of inclusion and opportunity as anyone else. Yet, people who identify with these challenges encounter stigma in all walks of life, from stereotypical media portrayals, to open discrimination and exclusion in social and professional spaces. [Today is a day to discuss, learn, and celebrate] the uniqueness, beauty, and power of our community! [Educate yourselves] about the forms of [stigma which] impact people labeled .. or identifying with mental health conditions; and how you can work to fight and end them!"

Mike Veny of Transforming Stigma (www.transformingstigma.com) and Sascha Dubrul of the Icarus Project (www.theicarusproject.net) added words of wisdom based on their experiences of being considered mentally ill. They defied society's perception of risky behaviors by recounting how they stretched their personal boundaries through musical and theatrical performances; thereby finding support from like-minded people.

Sascha "Icarus" Dubrul has landed

Jenna Ritter of DHARA (www.dharanyc.org) stretched muscles with breathing exercises and gentle movement as an introduction to her "Six Weeks to Wellness" course developed at  the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI NYC-Metro), which "lays the framework of yoga healing principles for mental health in an experiential and practical way." 

In an artistic vein, Juan Nolasco, of Healing Arts Initiative (HAI) instructed audiences how to make mandalas, intricate patterns which represent wholeness and symbolize one's journey through life. He presented examples of his own digitally-transformed acrylics on canvas. (Contact him at nolascojuan51@yahoo.com.)

Juan Nolasco's "Neon Medusa"

Elizabeth Paulus was another art exhibitor. Her watercolor prints ranged from portraits to still lives. (Her contact: woolylambart@yahoo.com.)

"Pharmacy" by Elizabeth Paulus

For those who wanted to share their emotional journeys on paper or out loud, the following workshops were opportunities for story-telling:

Kristin Richardson Jordan (KristinRJordan@gmail.com) of Uproar Poetry stimulated would-be poets to list insults and compliments they had faced. She distributed Maya Angelou's famous "Still I Rise" as an object lesson:

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise...

Kassandra Whittaker (kwhittaker@communityaccess.org), of Parachute NYC, a new group of respite centers throughout the city for people experiencing emotional crises, invited passers-by to speak out against stigma by telling their own tales of discrimination.

Through its "I Will Listen" project (www.iwilllisten.org) and the affiliated "Hearing Voices NYC," (www.hearingvoicesnyc.org), NAMI NYC-Metro, in the person of Dana Daugherty (outreach@naminyc.org) gained commitments to support family members in need of mental health services and be more tolerant of easily-misunderstood "symptoms."

NAMI listens and learns

Michael Murphy of Peaceworks/Anti-Violence Project (www.avpusa.org) passed around a transparent plastic ball with suggestive, but incomplete slogans, such as "the most helpful  thing I've done was..." By selecting whichever one caught their attention, participants took turns testifying who they are and what they do. 

Peaceworks promotes alternatives to violence

The booths of Raise the Age NY (www.raisetheage.ny.com), Youth Organizing to Save Our Streets (www.yosos.org), and the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services (www.nyaprs.org) stood as venues of political theater (or "agit-prop"). The first seeks to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 18; the second, a project of the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center, weighed in against violence and trauma. The last requested petitioners to condemn the coercive Families and Mental Health Crisis Act proposed by Congressman Murphy (R-PA).

Although the skies did not clear by afternoon's end, nor the heavens rejoice with hosanna's of praise, Community Links had demonstrated folks with behavioral health challenges know how to care for and inspire each other to new heights. Its staff and volunteers proved to be able do-it-yourself'ers in recovery from mental illness and substance use conditions, with two years' experience hosting open houses to inform potential clients of resources throughout three boroughs.   

Community Links's mission is to help "participants improve their quality of life by achieving independence and self-sufficiency, through community participation and integration. [They] work with young adults 18-25 years old residing in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, who are living with psychiatric diagnoses or struggling with substance abuse."

[They] offer:

• Peer support and hands-on assistance in establishing and maintaining connection to community resources;
• Collaboration on setting short-term and long-term goals;
• Referral to essential services, such as advocacy and [treatment];
• Connections to health-related work groups and [advisory committees], as well as meditation, aerobics, and other exercise/healthy living classes;
• [Help finding] educational resources (e.g. computer training, GED classes, college prep, and [other] skills training);
• Group workshops on recovery and socialization;
• [Information about] peer-led and other support groups; and
• Vocational counseling/volunteer opportunities. 

(See Community Links's brochure, "Embrace, Empower, Evolve! Empowerment through Community Integration," by contacting them at (929) 210-9810 or communitylinks@balticstreet.org.)