Dan
Weisburd's Email to Randall Hagar,
President
of NAMI Sacramento
AS REQUESTED PERMISSION IS GRANTED TO WIDELY DISSEMINATE THE FOLLOWING:
In a message dated 3/13/01 1:52:25 PM, Dan Weisburd writes:
Randall-
The subject of this e-mail is your current posting (on the NAMI Sacramento website) of my September 5 letter to the NAMI California board, The JOURNAL Search Committee, and Dr. Stephen Mayberg at DMH.
Click here to see the
letter.
In what I have learned to expect as a distortion of anything I say or do (when retransmitted or
interpreted by the current hostile board of which you are one of the most vocal members) it has come to my attention that you have posted (without my consent--a courtesy extended to me by all others who have requested permission to share my letter of September 5 with their affiliate membership) under the false headline or title "Journal Editor's Resignation Letter" the copy of a letter in which I propose an orderly transition to a new Editor and Publisher to be selected by a distinguished Search Committee who have a vested interest in the publication. Each and every member of the Search Committee has a distinguished reputation in the Mental Illness field and all have been authors, coeditors or underwriters of The JOURNAL. Some have been all three. They have an honest admiration for The JOURNAL and how it respects various points of view on a particular subject, and they grasp how labor intensive the effort is for me or anyone else attempting to edit and compile this honest and open communication.
Few members of the current board have had any involvement with The JOURNAL, and the few who have are totally unaware of how the publication has been financed over the years. There has never been a need for any previous board to "rescue" the publication, until this current board came along with its highly suspect method of fact finding, which included sending the Executive Director and the Office Manager from the room so that they might not have to deal with the "facts" about JOURNAL finances. As a board they have collectively shown an arrogant indifference toward gaining an understanding of the fundraising process in particular, perhaps because a majority of them had made up their minds regarding the so-called suspension which they decided upon.
This is my demand to you, in particular (a copy of which will be sent to counsel as a further indicator of the deception perpetrated knowingly by you as a member of this board) that you remove the letter immediately from your website and, at a minimum, replace the falsehood couched in the headline "Journal Editor's Resignation Letter" by using a headline that states "JOURNAL Editor/Publisher Proposes Orderly Transition By The End of 2001" which honestly reflects the true content of my letter, and then that you send me a request, which I shall promptly answer in the affirmative, to allow you to place the letter on your website.
And as for your reprint of the so-called letter that E. Fuller Torrey sent to me, please be advised that Fuller sent a FAX to me that had no return address, or I would have answered it. His note to me was also shorter and did not have the NIMH Report citing Lewin as source, as your posted note did. But you and your readers should know that none of the sources that Fuller cites (NONE OF THEM) have confirmed that anything in their reports substantiate in any legitimate way the conclusions to which Dr. Torrey comes. All of them have been contacted by reputable and independent third parties and none have confirmed. What does that tell you?
As my Publisher's Note in Mental Illness and the Law contends, Fuller comes to slippery conclusions that are not substantiated by the sources he cites, and he somehow gets away with it ... repetitively. No one knows that better than the good doctor himself. And by the way, he told me nothing "in person." I phoned him, and we had a friendly chat and when I tried to grasp his methodology for coming up with his sensational "1,000 murders" figure there was a touch of embarrassment in his voice when he said, "It was a guesstimate, Dan."
You and your readers might keep an eye out for the March 12 issue of Mental Health Weekly in which they say there is "a mismatch between the Torrey statement and the Lewin analysis" and they also say that when Torrey references the Department of Justice Report "he has cloaked his opinion with a scientific basis that does not exist." And then, most damningly, they state firmly, "...there is no scientific study to substantiate Dr. Torrey's numbers." PERIOD. That's the message. And it was stated by me in a kinder way in The JOURNAL because I like the man, and know he has genius in him. The
desperation that caused him to label persons with mental illness as "dangerous" because
dangerousness sells, is what I and so many others cannot countenance.
There is a lot of hypocrisy in Fuller's self-serving way of using the old sophism, "Killing the messenger is a time-honored way of dealing with unwelcomed messages, but it has never changed the message" and applying it to himself while placing me in the dirty garb of the executioner. Clearly he wears that mantle himself as, through his minions on the NAMI California board, they collectively show the power to suspend The JOURNAL (while heaping false praise on it) dismiss it's
founder - editor - publisher - fundraiser and inaccurately state that he (I) resigned for health reasons, which is absolutely untrue! Then they cap it all with the ignominious and childish "gluing" of the pages of the Publisher's Note in Volume 11 Numbers 3 and 4 so that our readers have no access to the vital information contained therein.
"...it has never changed the message," quotes Fuller. What you can't change---you glue---right? The 2001 board of directors has disgraced the
organization and themselves by their malicious actions. That is the message I get clearly from hundreds of NAMI California members when they are exposed to the truth of all this.
- Dan Weisburd
Click
here for the original story on NAMI California censorship.
Click
here for the National Stigma Clearinghouse news item from February 18, 2001.
Click
here for the original "NAMI unglued" alert from Support Coalition
International.
Click
here for the text of the censored articles.
Additional
Footnote: The gluing and censorship of the NAMI journal was the work of
the newly-elected NAMI California board of directors, not any local chapter, not
the national group. In fact, to clear up a mystery, the NAMI California board
itself chose the glue. (And while sometimes the pages can be easily pulled
apart, sometimes peeling does destroy patches of print on the censored pages.)
The director of the vocational rehabilitation program, Turning Point, which did
the gluing says they feel tricked by NAMI. When Turning Point agreed to the job,
they had no idea it involved a controversial censorship. The director said they
would have refused if they'd been fully informed. You can e-mail
NAMI California and ask that they share your comments with their board of
directors, including Mr. Jacobs at: namica@pacbell.net
Click
here for the Update:
Dan
Weisburd DEMAND Notice released March 8, 2001. Dan Weisburd demands a retraction
and apology from the NAMI
California Board of Directors.
Click
here for the "IT
IS CENSORSHIP! I WILL NEVER KOWTOW TO A DICTATORSHIP!" article by Dan
E. Weisburd Editor of The JOURNAL (March, 2001)
Click
here for Dan
Weisburd's email to NAMI Sacramento regarding his original Sept. 5, 2000 letter
to NAMI California.
