exporting madness

so say hey


I had a really good day, even the four hour torturous Buraco game was fun. I came home and logged on, all set to blog about fluffy little nothingness and then I did the BBC check.


In Buraco there is a phrase, "You can't play if you don't have any cards." This is what happened tonight to my partner and I. We would sit there with practically half the cards in our hands and yet were unable to do anything because there was nothing that could be played in our hands. All we knew is that on each turn we would desperately gather to us more cards in hopes of a break while we watched the other set of partners play brilliantly. Each card we held in our hands was not an opportunity, but a weight. A weight that we knew we could not get rid of and in the end, would bring us down even lower.


There is an American Charity called "Project Prevention." It has been around for a while now but recently, this charity decided to branch out into the UK.


What this charity does is offer money to drug addicts to become sterilized.


Shall I repeat that?


The comments made in the UK boiled down to one, 'this might be acceptable in America but not in the UK, we are a very different country.'


The reasoning behind that statement is that such an offer exploits vulnerable people at the weakest point of their lives. That most persons in the height of their addiction lack the cognitive ability to make such decisions.


Who else would we like to see sterilized? Many of you are probably too young to remember the push to sterilize people with Down's syndrome and other birth defects. Or the movement to sterilize welfare recipients. I had one horrific first hand encounter with someone who encouraged someone else to have their adopted daughters from Brazil sterilized "because you know, they are from the street and you can't get the street out of them." Thankfully, the adoptive parent of those girls dropped that other person like a hot potato.


But that is a strong current of thinking here, that if there is something deemed wrong with someone or difficult to manage or help, that they can be treated as less then. Offering money to a drug addict is akin to handing them an overdose amount of their drug of choice. Sterilization only reinforces the idea that the drug addict is hopeless, worthless and un-redeemable. Even though they are calling it "long term birth control" it is a shocking statement of lack of faith in a person's potential.


Drug addiction is an individual's disease that is inextricably tied to a social illness, the lack of quality of life, of meaning, value and purpose. The sick society remains in denial of its own illness when it writes people off as incapable of contributing to the survival of the human race in any way. Some people need help to health in order to contribute, no one is ever void of that possibility.


Just so you know, here are the people and places that sanction this charity:


Director and Founder- Barbara Harris: Former foster parent, PTA member, founded interracial organization in 1992, actively recruits foster parents, adoptive parent, author of assembly Bill 2614 CA, speaker at private organizations/groups in regards to drug addicted babies.

Reverend Timothy Thompson: Director of the Emmanuel House drug treatment center in Detroit, as well as the Project Prevention Detroit Chapter Director.

Stephanie Sanders: Fresno Chapter Director. Cares for medically fragile children. Adoptive mother, and foster parent.

Robert Myers: Retired Police Officer

Lanora Wood: Secretary.

Smitty Harris: Treasurer.

Honorary Board

Rick Roberts: KOGO, Talk Radio DJ San Diego

Advisory Board

Professor Robert Pugsley: Southwestern School of Law; President of Council of the Friends of UCLA Library

Bishop Henry L. Johnson: The Diocesan of the 16th Episcopal District of the Pentecostal Assembly of the World.

Dennis McNutt: Ph.D, and college professor. Dedicated Project Prevention volunteer.

Bernadetta Carter: Masters of Science and Rehabilitation counselor.

Florence Visamanos, RN

Melissa Roccio MS, M.S.C.C.: Member of child abuse prevention council, Director of Foster Family Agency

Chedgzey Smith-McKeever, MSW, Ph.D.

Bruce A. Thyer, Ph.D: Research Professor of Social Work, School of Social Work

Dr. Sally Satel: Staff Psychiatrist, Oasis Drug Treatment Clinic, Washington, D.C., 1997-present Lecturer, Yale University School of Medicine, 1995-present Professional Staff Member, Committee on Veteran's Affairs, U.S. Senate, 1996-97 Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, 1988-95.


I hope the UK kicks their sanctimonious asses out and I hope the US wises up to the impact of this kind of "charitable" work.


c.2010 Cassandra Tribe. All Rights Reserved.