From: Unzap My Brain <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sunday, January 24, 1999 11:31 AM
Subject: MOUTH -- the Non-profit disability rights magazine needs your support

ON PUTTING YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS I'm Lucy Gwin, and I founded
Mouth magazine in 1990 six months after I escaped from what amounted to a
nursing home. I didn't know nothin' about disability rights until I was on
my way to a dinner date one night and woke up as I was being admitted to a
"New Medico community re-entry center for persons with neurological
impairments." That's what it said on the side of the bus parked beside the
door where, as if by magic, I was transformed into a second class citizen.
I spent five days in that scary place before I remembered my own name or
anything about my life. But apparently my civil rights lobe hadn't been
damaged because the first words out of my mouth after three weeks of
unconsciousness were, "I want a copy of your patients rights document." The
social worker in charge had never heard of such a thing but said, "You
won't need one of those heeere. We'll take good keeer of you." The second
word out of my mouth was "Lying," spoken from my gut in the voice of an Old
Testament prophet. That prophecy was accurate. Not that I wanted taking
care of. If I had been at home, un-drugged, among friends, I would have
recovered quicker. As it was... 

BRAIN DAMAGE IS EXACTLY LIKE E.C.T. — AND VICE VERSA I remember the moment
when memory of my life returned. It came at the tail end of an early
morning dream, in a thousand quick-take visual recollections like some kind
of schmaltzy technicolor documentary. When it was over, I rushed downstairs
all excited to tell whoever would listen that I had got my memory back. The
only person to tell was the kitchen aide who said, "That's nice dear. And
what would you like on your pancakes? Syrup or jam?" During the three weeks
while I was held and drugged against my will, in that Auschwitz on Sesame
Street, where I watched my roommate get raped by the "behavior technician,"
I made some promises to myself. One was to escape that place and publicize
the nature of "services" to people who are labeled as defective. Another
was never again to tell a lie. I've been more successful at that first
promise than at the second. Congressional hearings and an FBI investigation
put an end to New Medico. But I told one more lie, a big one. 

TELLING LIES FOR A LIVING I'd been telling lies for a living, in
advertising, off and on for 27 years when my resolution took effect. I left
advertising for good, but the credit card companies didn't know that. I
started a magazine, This Brain Has A Mouth, with capital I borrowed against
those cards. Then I took Social Security Disability, haven't repaid those
credit cards, and doubt if I'll ever be able to. I knew, going in, that I
was doing it not for money but because this work had to be done. That was
my last lie-for-a-living. I wish I could say I genuinely regret it. I
don't. That crazy decision to start a magazine was inspired by Madness
Network News. I'd subscribed to in in the Seventies, and my boyfriend at
that time, Joel Frank, contributed art to it. (Joel was a certifiable
madman, and I still miss him.) Madness Network News had organized the psych
survivor community and put the madness industry under a microscope. I have
always believed that the de- institutionalization movement owed its power
to that magazine. That was the influence I hoped Mouth would have in the
Nineties. Now, today, almost nine years later, I'm proud of what Mouth has
accomplished and I'm terrified that the Mouth will close forever. 

MOVING TO THE EDGE OF THE KNOWN WORLD We moved to Topeka last summer in
expectation of what amounted to a free house. We got to pick it out, and
friends were going to buy it for us. It was big old yellow house, totally
accessible, right near downtown in the most integrated city I've seen, in a
state where people who are labeled can choose to receive their services at
home or in institutions —it's their choice. Then, just as the moving van
pulled up to the old Mouthhouse in Rochester, NY, our Topeka house title
turned out to be a mess. We had to lease a $900-a-month suburban palace,
sight unseen, because it was the only house available in Topeka that was
big enough for Mouth to fit into. Always we live from hand to mouth, but
this turn of events left us about $5,000 below flat broke. I'm on TRW's
Most Wanted list, so my magic credit cards are long gone. If it weren't for
Tom Olin's credit card, we'd be gone already. Tom's a photographer and
organizer who's labeled with learning disabilities, Mouth's second in
command. FYI, we are not lovers. Cal Grandy works here too now. Cal's a
psych survivor from the Puget Sound area. 

WHAT IS MOUTH? If you haven't seen a Mouth, you won't have the first
bloomin' idea of what's at stake if we go down the tubes. Just to give you
an idea: Mouth has four paid subscribers at the White House, several at the
Department of Justice and other high holies like that. They listen. They
learn. (Be patient. They're slow learners.) Mouth has a reputation for
telling it like it is about everything from charities that murder and
imprison us for money to government agencies and corporations that do the
same. We call them Fundsuckers when we report their names and kick their
butts. Right now we're targeting Homesuckers, people who make their
fortunes out of "supervising" us in group homes and the like. Last year we
targeted the Department of Justice's Disability Rights Section. Five months
of hard and careful investigation brought us proof that they didn't have a
clue. We published that, in detail. The DOJ still hasn't lived it down, but
it's trying. In 1995, Mouth published "You Choose," a large-format booklet
that made side- by-side comparisons, with photographs and taxpayer
pricetags, between life in institutions and life in freedom. It's brought
well over ten thousand people out of institutions and into freedom already.
(Only two and a half million to go...) We are currently working on "Freedom
House," a successor to "You Choose." Once again we will include people with
all disability labels. This time we hope to help free hundreds of
thousands. We're about unity. We report on the Mad Nation's marches and
that horrible new thing called Involuntary Outpatient Commitment, ADAPT's
protests against nursing homes, Self Advocates' calls to tear down the
walls of so-called Developmental Centers, and Not Dead Yet's call for the
right to stay alive. We're all in this together. 

MOUTH IS FUNNY. Our cartoons are as good as the New Yorker's, and our
writers, while often unpolished, speak with street-level authority. They
live at the blunt end of the service system and they want the world to know
what it's like down there. When CBS or ABC or CNN calls here, and they do,
we refer them straight back to our subscribers so they get the whole story
— even if they rarely get it right. We do not publish advertising. Our word
is good. If Mouth says it, thousands of people know it's true. Mouth
reports on, and helps organize, the whole resistance. On our own hook, we
organized about 1,400 people with a variety of labels to rally at the steps
of the Supreme Court in the bitter cold of January 1997 when the Supremes
heard arguments about our "right to die." (Millions of us are cheaper dead
than alive. State budgeteers have noticed that.) Our protest won front page
coverage in 370 newspapers. About half of them put a photo of an angry
cripple, in color, above the fold of the front page — including USA Today
and the Washington Post. Today we're helping Mad Nation and ADAPT and Self
Advocates Becoming Empowered to organize the entire Disabilty Nation to
rally at the Supreme Court on May 12, when the Court will decide whether
any one of us has a civil right to live in freedom. 

MOUTH CAN'T SURVIVE ANOTHER WEEK WITHOUT YOUR HELP. We'd like your help in
getting two thousand people to the Court in May, and in keeping Mouth alive
so we can keep on doing what we're doing. And, Dear Friend, we'd send you a
mailer crying out for your help if we could afford to do that. We can't.
Mad Nation has offered us space on this newfangled web page thing (we don't
have one. don't know how) so we can put the arm on you. Here comes the arm. 

HOW YOU CAN HELP Send money. And please send only what you can afford.
(Don't send food stamps, for instance.) 

WHAT YOU'LL GET FOR HELPING Any amount you send over $20 will include a
subscription for six issues of Mouth, a year's supply of juicy 56-page (or
longer) issues. Send $100 or more and we'll send you the year of Mouth plus
a copy of "Freedom House," the successor to "You Choose" that we expect to
publish later this year. Send us $250 or more and we'll add to that pack of
goodies a stack of six of our best back issues of Mouth and one of the
current issues, by priority mail. Any amount you send entitles you to the
status of our Friend Forever. We'll publish your name, unless you tell us
not to, next Mouth, in our Friends Forever column. And we don't take that
"friends forever" thing lightly, either. Friends are people who've known
your joy and your pain. We're in pain right now, in terror actually, of
going out like a light. Please come to our rescue if you can. 

HERE'S WHERE TO SEND IT Mouth 4201 SW 30th St. Topeka, KS 66614-3203 

Don't forget to include your name and address so you'll get our thanks plus
your subscription and whatever other goodies apply. 

Or fax a page to us, with the amount you want to give, all of the above
plus your phone number, your credit card number and its expiration date.
Our fax number is 785-272-7348. 

Be SURE TO MENTION you read our letter on the internet to receive the free
subscription with your $20 or more support.

"To sin by silence when the should protest makes cowards of men."  ~Abraham
Lincoln