No Bus for Sacramento for Mental Health Advocacy Day - May 23, 2007

Dear Folks,

The Berkeley Mental Health coordinator for the AB2034 program called me to tell me that the city attorney has said Berkeley Mental Health can not use the Social Services Transit bus to get folks up to Sacramento on Wednesday May 23, 2007 for the Mental Health Advocacy Day.

Governor Schwarzenegger with the support of California Director of Mental Health Steve Mayberg has called for cutting the funding for AB2034 that has provided funding to get 100 mentally health clients ("seriously mental ill") off the streets of Berkeley and into housing with intensive services integration team (full services partnerships). Their argument now with the passage of Proposition 63 the coming implementation of the Mental Health Services Act can supplant the funding for this housing.

While the city MHSA plan has increased the amount of those categorized as seriously mentally ill and some may be helped by the county MHSA full service partnership plans (Homeless Outreach Services Team, Forensic Assertive Community Treatment etc.) who can be housed who might otherwise be without housing these are other clients and does not come close to replacing the loss of housing Berkeley now provides under AB2034.

This is disaster that threatens to undo whatever positive effects on the street the mayor was hoping to accomplish under his Public Commons for Everyone initiative and the countywide Everybody Home he has been part of.

We need help getting folks up to Sacramento Wednesday morning to get there by 10am for the Mental Health Advocacy Day and we need to let the governor and the legislature know this cut to AB2034 is bad. There will be a rally on the West steps of the State Capitol as well as speeches, a picnic lunch, legislative and budget briefings.

I will be at the Berkeley city council late the evening before to hear the mayor's revised version of Public Commons for Everyone after the public hearing on CDBG (community development block grants) where cuts coming from the Bush administration (taking money from poor people here at home so they can kill poor people overseas) has caused the city manager to recommend cuts to homeless programs.

Thank you for your forbearance.
Michael Diehl
BOSS Community Organizing Team
Berkeley-Albany Mental Health Commission
510-472-6192 or adversary359@yahoo.com

Sidewalk ordinance, 3/13/07 Berkeley city council

Mayor Tom Bates has come out with a rather vaguely worded ordinance concerning restrictions on sidewalk sitting on the streets where people shop in Berkeley. The particular focus is on homeless people sitting on the sidewalks of Telegraph and Shattuck. This will be combined with a focus on providing services and mental health treatment but no more funding is linked to this specifically at this point. The Berkeley Homeless Union, myself with the BOSS Community Organizing Team and the Disabled People Outside Project at the request of Osha Neumann, lawyer for Community Defense Inc. have been getting the word out by flyer and by word of mouth to get people to show up for tomorrow city council meeting on Tuesday March 13th, 2007 and speak out about their concerns about this proposal to restrict sidewalk sitting. On two other previous occassions(as part of Measure O back in 1994-96 and then again in 1998) I successfully was able to organize resistance to previous attempts to ban sidewalk sitting in the shopping districts. I have talked to a number of the street youth and others on the street about this ordinance since Friday. It seems supporters of the ordinance have already been organizing to come and speak for the proposed ordinance which is on the city council agenda.