Darrell Steinberg and the Campaign for Mental Health

Celebrating Prop 63 with the July Fundraising Match

To mark the big Prop 63 announcement and jumpstart our critical July fundraising, we've set an ambitious goal of $63,000 in grassroots donations for the month, beginning tomorrow. But it gets better. CCCMHA has stepped up with a dollar-for-dollar match for all of our July grassroots fundraising. That means all of the individual donations, team donations, house party donations and Mental Health Hero recurring contributions will mean twice as much to the campaign in July. For all the mathemeticians out there and the budget crunchers here in Sacramento, reaching our goal would mean $126,000 for our initiative.

Click here for more information on the July Match »

Click here to donate to the campaign »

Click here to build an online team »

Click here to host a house party »

Click here to become a Mental Health Hero »

We're Proposition 63!

We received our proposition number from the Secretary of State today--it's Proposition 63.

Signatures collected, certified for the ballot, we're now drafting the ballot argument. It's a step at a time.

Back at my day job, we're wrapping up the State Budget and getting bills through the policy committees of the second house this week. Once recess begins in July, I'm hitting the campaign trail for Prop. 63.

By the way, my friend, Barry Melton, one of my first campaign contributors for my Assembly campaign and former member of Country Joe and the Fish, offered today to play at any of our fundraising events between now and the election. Barry is now the Public Defender in Yolo County and is a mental health advocate. He's happy to help with our cause. In fact, he's part of it. I'll post his email address within the next couple days in case you want to get in contact with him.

California Teachers Association Endorses Initiative

The 335,000 member strong organization joins our growing coalition of organizations, elected officials and other individuals supporting the Mental Health Services Act.

Click here to visit the CTA website >>

Click here to view our endorsement list >>

AB 2019

I've told you all before that I'm carrying a bill, AB 2019, this session that will go a long way toward raising public awareness and ensuring that mental health services are provided to minors in the juvenile justice system.

In the process of working on this bill, I have crossed paths with, among others, Dr. David Arredondo, a neuropsychiatrist who works with EMQ, which is a children's mental health provider in Santa Clara County. Dr. Arredondo was behind the establishment of the Juvenile Mental Health Court in Santa Clara County, which is one of only two juvenile mental health courts in the state, and he is now involved in helping me with this bill.

Dr. Arredondo has written many articles, two of which are particularly relevant to this bill, and I urge you to take a look at them if you have time. According to the first article, most of the juvenile court judges in the state consider the juvenile delinquency system to be a "dumping ground" for minors with mental disorders. We want to change that.

Click here to view the articles >>

Dr. Arredondo discusses in detail the neurodevelopmental processes of adolescents, and makes a good case that incarcarceration is medically contraindicated for minors with mental disorders, and particularly so when the minors do not present a threat to public safety. Community-based treatment, rather than incarceration, is essential for these minors to develop into productive, happy, and well-adjusted adults. Incarceration should not be a substitute for treatment for minors who do not present a threat to public safety.

You can find the most recent version of this bill at www.leginfo.ca.gov Click on bills, and then Assembly bills, and then type in the bill number.

Raising Public Awareness and Reducing Stigma

If you haven't already done so, please check out the fact sheets that we've recently posted on the site. These fact sheets were put together by Stephanie Welch, who is a researcher with a focus on children's mental health issues. You will find these documents on the right hand side of the Facts and FAQs page under "Additional Facts".

Click here to go to the Facts and FAQs page >>

She has spent thousands of hours reading official reports and other publications on mental health, and has extracted information, with source citations, for these fact sheets.

Stephanie is a big believer in raising public awareness about mental illness, and in reducing the stigma associated with mental illness, and she uses her research as a means of doing this.

I believe strongly that when the people reflected in these statistics need and want help for a mental illness, they ought to be able to find it. I hear so many personal stories about people who couldn't access services for a mental illness, and the mental illness became severe and disabling, resulting in homelessness, incarceration, or disability. This initiative will fund an alternative to those cycles.

Please help us to raise public awareness and reduce the stigma of mental illness by downloading these fact sheets and passing them on to friends. We need all of our volunteers to do this so that voters come to understand the scope of the issues we're addressing through the initiative, and the compelling need for an initiative like ours that will make services a full range of services available and accessible to people with mental illness who want to access them.

Today's email update

Today's email update announced my plans for traveling and promoting the initiative in July, September and October. We also drew attention to developments in the opposition's campaign, including their website. And we highlighted the newest addition to our growing list of law enforcement endorsements - San Francisco City and County Sheriff Michael Hennessey.

If you're not signed up for our weekly email updates, please sign up today.

Click here to sign up >>

Click here to view the opposition campaign's website >>

Summer Events

I finally got a chance to get my summer initiative campaign schedule down on paper. There are several events that will be public, and they sound really interesting. One that I'll share today is the event that is going to be held in Kern County.

This event, to be scheduled for a day in the week of July 19 and organized by Darlene Prettyman, will be a big event in a public park that will showcase Bakersfield's AB 34 program. It will also be a rally for the initiative, and a means of raising public awareness.

Bakersfield's AB 34 housing was built by family members. According to Darlene, it's well worth seeing, and they are proud to show it off. Darlene has already arranged to have Tulare County folks included in this event.

One of Darlene's ideas is to have tents set up to show what it's like to be homeless, contrasted with the AB 34 housing they have built in that county.

All are welcome, and I'll give you the date as soon as it's established.

Fulfilling the promise

Yesterday I wrote about how I became an advocate, and today I'll bring us up to the present. This November, we are going to the state ballot to fulfill a 36-year-old state promise to build a public mental health system. This is a monumental effort that will help end the cycle of jail and homelessness for people with mental illness--from the homeless veteran who suffers needlessly to the children who do not get the early intervention they need.

I always say that homelessness and mental disability do not have to be hopelessness and inability. People can lead productive lives with dignity if we are only willing to invest in helping human beings help themselves.

This is a joint, statewide effort, and we've got more work to do. Let's show everyone that we can how to light the spark that was lit in us. Please plan a house party that will rival Rusty's in size.

The Initiative--a 20-year Process

Early on, I promised to write about how the intiative came about. It all began with two people I met over 20 years ago, Mimi Jones and Michael Duner, who were law school classmates of mine. Both were quadriplegic, Mimi from a bout with childhood polio, and Michael from a college auto accident. Both were unable to turn the pages of our case books, except very slowly and with incredible effort. I got to know them as a tutor, but more as their friend. Though physically so limited, they were the two strongest people I have ever met. I was profoundly moved by their tenacity and ability to endure a law school experience that most able-bodied people considered to be difficult.

In my third and last year of law school, Mimi and Mike asked me to help get a mechanical lift built in the moot courtroom. It was an issue of civil rights, pure and simple. It was a violation of those rights for students with disabilities to be shuttled off to small classrooms to have their trial or moot court experience. Truth be told, it was a fight. Months went by and, despite our efforts, no lift. We organized, involved the press, and found the money, which supposedly was not available. The lift was built, and the courtroom was made accessible to all students. I believe it still is.

That experience lit a spark in me. I saw that advocacy could bring about real life change for people. Maybe more important, the gift of Mimi Jones and Michael Duner humbled me in ways that I've remembed most every day for the past 20 years. They both passed away too early in life, but they taught me that the mirror image of disability is ability, and that it's not what you cannot do that defines you, it's what you can do. And it's not about whether you have obstacles in your way. It's what you do to go through or around those obstacles.

I still find myself drawn most intensely to the issues of disability that helped define my law school experience. My cause now is mental disability and mental health, another civil rights issue, pure and simple. The initiative is a way to fix the obstacle of the broken promise of the state that it would adequately fund a system of community mental health services when it emptied the state mental hospitals.

And that was the beginning. That's why I do what I do, and that's why I'm the lead proponent on the initiative.

Consumers' Rally

I've often said that this initiative will be the most important thing I will do in my life, and I really believe that it will be. The services provided by the money raised as a result of the work we are doing now will fund mental health services for generations to come. I am just incredibly moved by that thought. And I am very honored to be part of establishing a law that will solidly establish a new direction in the delivery of mental health services--one that is voluntary on the part of consumers, and one that considers consumers to be partners, equal partners, in their treatment. And this new direction will be one that incorporates prevention and early intervention, so that people don't have to "fail first" before they get services. We know that we can prevent mental illnesses from becoming severe and disabling by making available and accessible these prevention and early intervention services.

Yesterday I spoke at the Consumers' Network rally on the North Steps of the Capitol. I wanted to share a photo with you as consumers have been partners in this initiative, and they have also taught me so much.