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Don’t Pass Go, Don’t Collect Two Hundred Dollars, Go Directly to A Mental Hospital!

This is not the board game, monopoly, it is now New Work and California passed by a democratic governor. In New York, ex cop turned mayor just made the board game monopoly into reality for people with disabilities and in California governor Newsom added one more stop on the board and that is mental health courts. What makes this reality an update game is when you put on a virtual reality headset that you can transport you back into time where politicians, police and bureaucrats could just pick up a person with a disability if he/she/they/them were outside and brought to a mental hospital this was made into law called The Ugly Laws. However you take off the virtual reality headset to find out again this is not a game and it is not in the past. Welcome to 2922 where politicians don’t care about our civil rights and are pissing on the Olmstead Act and the newly grave of Lois Curtis! Don’t pass go, don’t collect two hundred dollars, go directly to a mental hospital or jail or be shot by police is the 2022 reality for mostly poor Black/Brown disabled people and like I said this is not new. In the 1980’s I, a Black physically disabled teenager, I was stopped by NYPD officers in Manhattan, NY who thought I escaped from a mental hospital. So today under a Black mayor we return to my youth and even further back to the ugly laws thus institutionalizing poor disabled people in the time of the Americans with Disabilities Act, so called Black Lives Matter, Equality, Diversity & Inclusion. But we want to talk about Black celebrities. Remember Allen Moye, a Black blind man in Harlem, NY. who was just standing outside of a store and was stop and frisk by NYPD for now reason back in September 2010 well he took the Stop & Frisk policy to court. From the August 30th/2013 article in the Chicago Defender newspaper it reports as follows: “Moye’s suit is the first after Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin recently ruled against stop and frisk. Her decision noted that the department routinely performed “unconstitutional stops and conduct[ed] unconstitutional frisks” that targeted young Black and Hispanic men. Her decision came after a class action lawsuit against the city by the Center For Constitutional Rights, which brought victims of the policy and NYPD whistleblowers to center stage. She ordered a federal monitor to oversee the department’s stop and frisk policy. Her ruling also made it easier for New Yorkers to sue the city if they feel they’ve been unfairly stopped and searched.” I bring up Allen Moye to show you that once again Black disabled people are the one target by politicians when they pass harmful policies that are carried out by police. Here in California activists especially houses and mental health action know the history of anti poverty, anti houseless that Galvin Newsom continues to run on and helped implement from Care Not Cash when he was mayor of San Francisco to now establishing a mental health court system that will have the same affect to what Mayor Adams just done in NY aka Don’t pass go, don’t collect two hundred dollars, go directly to a mental hospital. Like I said this is nothing new in early 2000 I wrote an article against force treatment bill in California assembly. The concept of force treatment have always been tossing around in our local government and it never dies from my youth experience on the street of Manhattan, NY to today Mayor, Eric Adams, recently is “ordering police and emergency services to more aggressively hospitalize those with mental illness who are on the streets, even if the hospitalization is involuntary and they pose no threat to other people.” This is coming from a Black mayor who recently talked about his learning disability matter of fact also Governor Gavin Newsom also came out with his learning disability both men have dyslexia ummm. Both men have redesign the monopoly board game in real life with their policies and given power to police and so called Care Courts to do one thing and that is to continue to lock up poor people with disabilities majority people of color. By Leroy F. Moore Jr. 12/4/22


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