Gay Shame Podcast – Episode 3: FreeBritney, Free Them All (October 15, 2020)

TRANSCRIPT BELOW!

Mentioned in this episode:

The toxic womanizers in power have a new reason to hate Britney Spears: Britney’s life is legally controlled by her family, due to ‘conservatorship’ laws that are getting more widespread attention through the #FreeBritney movement.

In dystopian 2020 California, rich people and their politician-servants are further criminalizing disabled people, people with substance use disorders, and/or homeless people through enhanced conservatorship – indefinitely detaining people so they are out of the line of sight of gentrifiers.

The Marys were joined by our first guest, the inimitable Gentry (@catpowerman5000 on Instagram). 

Also featured in this episode:

TRANSCRIPT

♬ This is a story about a girl named Lucky. ♬

0:40 Nurse Mary Worth:
Look at what you just dragged me into. I just heard Britney Spears for the very first time because Mary sent me. Britney Spears is so far out of my—

0:52 Marie Carey:
It’ll change your life, you’re like, “Wow, I thought I knew music, but now…”

Gay Shame is a virus in the system. We are committed to a trans queer extravaganza that brings direct action to spectacular levels of confrontation. We work collectively outside boring and deceptive nonprofit models to fight white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, cops, settler colonialism and all forms of domination. Liberals think we are a frivolous decoration and mainstream gaze want us gone. Against them and with each other, we instigate and irritate and agitate to build cultures of devastating resistance.

You are entering episode three in which Gay Shame explores the issue of conservatorship.

Police hate her, how Britney gives us the roadmap to a proletarian revolution.

1:46 Nurse Mary Worth:

Oh, I love that!

1:48 Mary Define Trash:
The only way to free Britney is just smash the–

Well, I think us Mary’s should introduce ourselves before we get going. I’m Mary Define Trash.

2:00 Nurse Mary Worth:

I’m Nurse Mary Worth.

2:03 Marie Carey:

This is Marie Carey.

2:05 Mary Daggers:

And I’m Mary Daggers.

2:07 Mary Define Trash:

So today we are going to be talking about conservatorship, a pretty terrible situation in which an individual is stripped of their rights surrounding their money, where they live, who they can be around, and all sorts of other things either controlled by a family member appointed by a judge, or in other terrible cases to the state itself. And we’re going to talk about that from several different perspectives.

2:43 Marie Carey:

Joining us today, we have a very special guest and an advocate in the burgeoning Free Britney movement, Gentry.

2:52 Mary Define Trash:

Well, hi Gentry. We know each other.

2:55 Gentry:

Yeah. It’s been a long time. Very long time, how are you?

2:58 Mary Define Trash:

It’s been a very long time, I’m okay.

3:00 Gentry:

Cool.

3:01 Mary Define Trash:

Well, yes. Let’s talk about Free Britney.

3:04 Gentry:

Yeah.

3:06 Mary Define Trash:

And for folks who don’t know, Britney Spears has been under conservatorship for a little over a decade now. And we brought you on because we want to talk about your work around Free Britney.

3:22 Gentry:

Yeah, um. So yeah, actually, that’s kind of how I learned a lot about conservatorships and how they work, is through Free Britney. But I first became aware of Free Britney about, I’d say it was January or maybe early February of 2019. So she’s been under conservatorship, which is, she’s under what is called a probate conservatorship, um, which is one that’s mostly reserved for people who are like infirmed or elderly. Uh, so they’re kind of more permanent based. Um, but I became aware of it because she had already been under conservatorship, but she had snuck out with her boyfriend when they went in and out. And the paparazzi snapped a photo of it. And her dad then committed her for 15 days in a psychiatric institution. And so basically, that was kind of when the, uh, Free Britney hashtag started popping off a lot on Instagram. And I run a meme page. And I don’t think my meme page was super popular at that point, but I’ve always been really into Britney Spears memes, like, aside from being into her music or whatever, as a pop icon. I feel like she’s kind of like one of the top A-List stars of memes, or meme culture, if you will. So, basically, that was kind of when I learned about it, and then, then I started, uh, using the Free Britney hashtag on a lot of posts that I would put up, because I was noticing that it was drawing in people that were Britney fans, um, that seemed like they were kind of just on the precipice or, like, on the learning curve of learning about this type of internet activism. And so, and they have a lot of passion about them. So what had actually happened was, there’s been a lot of like, kind of cross movement stuff happening with the Free Britney hashtag. And a lot of the people that are leading it are people that work in mental health services. Nurses, doctors, um, people that are against this kind of idea of controlling somebody else’s financial situations or controlling other people’s life decisions, because basically what Britney’s conservatorship means is that she can’t vote, she can’t see her children without somebody present. And, yes, while she is like a celebrity, it’s almost a little bit more alarming in that sense, because it seems like if it can happen to her, it’s actually pretty easy for it to happen to anybody. And it seems like something that is a lot more common, as I’ve looked into it, than I originally thought. So, I guess I didn’t really know what it, what a conservatorship entailed before that. So that’s kind of the little origin story of what I know about the beginning of it, the movement itself. But the way it’s developed is, its kind of exploded all over Twitter and Instagram. And I don’t know, it seems like it’s opening a lot of people up to these ideas around mental health services and how we take care of each other and whether or not we’re supporting each other and making decisions, supporting our loved ones and making decisions, or trying to take control of their whole life.

7:08 Mary Define Trash:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think it’s interesting because that’s kind of the, this is like the –– yeah the first time a lot of people. I mean, it’s the first time I’ve ever heard of conservatorship, too, I’ll say for myself. And so, way back when or one of the first times I head about it, and we’re kind of, you know, it’s always seems like, hoping that something that is hitting the mainstream like that will change people’s perceptions of like conservatorship for like homeless folks, or people who have, you know, less resources.

7:44 Gentry:

Right. And that’s like the number one population that is most effected by them is, yeah, houseless people and you know, looking at the demographics of houseless people, it’s a lot of queer and trans folks. So, you know, and it’s something that’s probably been going on for decades. For queer people, you know, especially, you know, just back when it was mental illness, and it was reason to be committed.

8:13 Mary Define Trash:

Yeah. That’s pretty terrible. That’s bad news.

8:17 Gentry:

So basically, you know, one thing that’s important about this specific case is that Britney, you know, Britney is, um, working, and she’s been working for the last 22 years. You know, she was a child star, obviously, but she only gets $1500 a week allowance, um, even though she, you know, has a much bigger net worth. And um, the interesting thing about it is, yeah, she’d done like four albums. She’s done international tours, she was a host on X Factor. And so, but then according to the state of California, she’s almost considered the same about of rights that, like, a comatose patient, you know. And so, if she’s that sick, why is she working? And why is her family benefiting so much financially from that? And I think that that’s the big concern with how people use a conservatorship to, uh, for their own financial gain or their own gain, you know, resource wise.

9:26 Mary Define Trash:

Yeah, abusive conservatorships are pretty — I mean you hear about them in situations other than that. But yeah, I mean she’s been more or less than, you know, under the thumb of her family for the majority of her life and especially her father. So it will make sense that this kind of, um, you know, legal tool, could be used to continue to kind of manipulate the things that she –.

9:58 Gentry:

Right, there definitely needs to be some kind of policy change or legal change around this stuff and how, how many, how much rights people are given, you know, in these kind of situations.

10:14 Mary Define Trash:

Yeah, absolutely.

10:16 Gentry:

Currently, so her sister took it over. And so that was like, kind of presented in the media as kind of this relief, which it very well could be. But, but a lot of people are concerned about that. It’s like, why is the family continued to be involved if they were the ones that fucked up in the first place?

10:36 Mary Define Trash:

For sure, her brother’s awful. Just awful. The money follows. As a fan, of you know, however people want to see this, but it’s like you know, a part of sort of gay culture. And we’re talking about how Senator Scott Wiener, for instance, as someone who’s like, pushing for like stricter, uh, conservatorship laws in California. There’s some kind of irony of irony, but you know, it’s like, we don’t need like uh, you know, Britney has provided so much for the sort of pumping music of the bathhouse and the clubs, and then to sort of be pushed more, you know, potentially being pushed further away from having rights in the world, uh, by a gay person, is just a situation. Just sad, you know?

11:28 Gentry:

Yeah, it absolutely is. And I think there’s a reason like Britney has such a stronghold on gay culture from that time, and it’s because, you know, there was a huge culture death that happened in the 90s, obviously, and, um, you know, what else, what else was there when I was growing up besides like, you know, Linkin Park, and things that were really ultra masculine, you know?

11:52 Mary Define Trash:

Absolutely.

11:53 Gentry:

And I think Britney provided a sense of solace for a lot of young gay people, you know, in that sense.

12:01 Mary Define Trash:

Yeah, absolutely. Where can, um, people find you?

12:08 Gentry:

So, I am, uh, I run a meme roundup page, called catpowerman5000, you can find me there on Instagram. And, um, actually, if you go there, and you go to my link tree, you’ll see a little link to Free Britney. So it’ll tell you a bunch of action items and things you can do if you want to learn more about the movement. And then also, if you check my igtv channel at catpowerman5000, you’ll see a short three-minute video I made about the Britney conservatorship that kind of details, um, some of the more important notes about it. So if you want to learn more, that’s where you can do that.

12:50 Mary Define Trash:

I love your main page, by the way.

12:53 Gentry:

Thank you so much. Yeah, you’ve been following it since the beginning, pretty much.

12:56 Mary Define Trash:

It’s true. Does anyone else have any questions or? It can be a fun one, it doesn’t have to be—

13:06 Nurse Mary Worth:

I have kind of a serious question. Not a fun one, particularly. But, I mean, so, the Free Britney stuff seems important in that it, it does bring people to think about what conservatorship means and taking away people’s rights. The thing about Britney is that she has $47 million. So her family is basically thieving it from her, and that’s completely different than what’s happening in San Francisco, where un-housed people are being conserved because rich people in San Francisco, gentrifiers, techies, don’t want to look at them. They have nothing. They just want to figure out a way to get them away, out of sight.

13:58 Gentry:

Yeah.

13:59 Nurse Mary Worth:

Well, now that seems really different than the Britney thing. I just, I just feel like it’s important to say that.

14:03 Gentry:

Oh, it is a very important distinction for sure. You know, I think that, so, I didn’t know, I don’t know a whole lot about what’s going on in San Francisco to be honest with that. So basically, they, when they are conserving these homeless folks, like where are they going? Like who’s conserving them?

14:24 Nurse Mary Worth:

Part of the problem is that, that rather than provide public housing for people, or real treatment, they don’t have any of that. They don’t actually have any place for people to go. And the question is, are they going to, you know, build something else, make a new jail that they call a mental hospital or something like that?

14:44 Gentry:

Oh okay, yeah.

14:46 Mary Define Trash:

The conserve, not the conservee — the person who’s doing the conservatorship basically decides where you live, right?

14:55 Nurse Mary Worth:

Yeah, right. That’s absolutely right. Like what’s happening with Britney only on this totally different—

15:03 Mary Define Trash:

Yeah. Yeah, totally. I mean, our, I think interested, or at least the interest in Free Britney is that it seems like I mentioned as, like, it’s a way for people to start thinking about conservatorship fully it will, like, you know, hopefully expand the conversation into, like, yeah, these other kind of dire situations where the state is kind of stepping in and creating almost, like, the kind of alternative prison situations that are, have a different name. And so, like, becomes almost, you know, it becomes it becomes a question of like, abolition and prison abolition.

15:37 Gentry:

Absolutely. And you know, I think that that’s the thing is that, you know, I do post a lot about prison abolition and things in these posts. And so, hashtagging it Free Britney, having the Free Britney content there, and then having people come there to learn about what’s going on with trans folks, what’s going on with homeless folks right now? What’s going on with the prisons, you know? What’s going on with COVID? Or the detention centers? And like, how are these things all a way to kind of just unify and bridge together these movements, you know, bringing on people that maybe are, you know, more like white gays and white women and getting them interested and involved and activated in these different circles, I think it’s pretty, it can be pretty valuable, you know, and it’s not the type of work that everyone is going to be taking on right now. You know, it’s, like, why not just try, you know.

15:36 Mary Define Trash:

Yeah, for sure.

15:38 Nurse Mary Worth:

It’s an interesting entrée into the concepts of abolition through pop culture.

15:43 Mary Define Trash:

Totally. Not necessarily just the traditional path but–

16:50 Gentry:

I mean, the thing is too, that’s interesting, is you know, celebrity culture in itself can be such a prison that we kind of, uh, put these people on pedestals and worship them in a way is just very, uh, it’s kind of demented.

17:03 Mary Define Trash:

Yeah, the worship is very bizarre.

17:05 Gentry: And I think that kind of exposes that as well, you know?

17:09 Mary Define Trash:

Yeah.

17:11 Gentry:

Cool. Thank you guys. Have a good evening and have a good weekend.

17:13 Mary Daggers:

Thank you so much.

17:14 Mary Define Trash:

Yeah, you too.

17:15 Nurse Mary Worth:

Thank you, bye.

17:16 Gentry:

Bye bye, nice meeting you.

17:19 Nurse Mary Worth:

Was it okay to bring that stuff up?

17:21 Mary Define Trash:

I think it was great.

17:23 Marie Carey:

I think it was great to do that. And I think that like creates a perfect segue into like, diving more into abolition and stuff.

17:31 Mary Define Trash:

Totally. I mean, its like Gentry just said, you know, I’ll post Free Britney and then post it up. I mean, that’s kind of the model we’re almost using for this podcast where we’re like, Free Britney. But actually, here’s all the other–

17:44 Marie Carey:

Now that you’re here…

17:46 Mary Define Trash:

Now that you think you’re gonna listen to a remix of Breath on Me or whatever.

18:01 Mary Daggers:

So I have bipolar one, which entails episodes of mania. I have been 5150’d a number of times, which is California police code for cops being called on someone in psychiatric distress. In my experience, the cops were called because, um, I was in public, often not wearing enough clothes or shoes, and behaving erratically. And this can look a number of different ways. People can have the cops called on them for a variety of reasons. Some of the ways that it can look is that, um, I met a woman who said that in LA, they call a 5150 “you don’t want to see her,” referring to like the way that it’s about like being seen in public and looking in a way that makes people feel uncomfortable or feel. You know, like we were talking about like, tech folks and gentrifiers wanting to clean up their streets. Some of the ways that it can look when the cops are called on a 5150, or what they call a wellness check, is that the cops are in a position of evaluating your mental health and they don’t have the training of mental health professionals. Regardless of how you feel about mental health professionals evaluating your wellness, um, they will detain you, um, and often call an ambulance, uh, you will be incapacitated, which usually looks like being restrained or strapped down, which is like, uh, I think a popular image, is people being strapped down and then put in the ambulance. Um, what you don’t see as much on TV is that a lot of times they’ll put a spit hood on you, especially if you’re spitting, which is like a horrible device. Um, then there’s what people call chemical restraint, which is where they’ll drug you, um, usually with a cocktail of anti-psychotics and sedatives. And in California, at least, this is usually the preamble to a mandatory 72-hour hold. Um, we brought up earlier that there is a lot of similarities between jails and psych wards. And some of those are the confinement that you’re not allowed out. You have limited access to outdoors or none. You have limited access to phone calls and visitors. That, in a lot of ways, the psych ward is substituting for jail or prison. You also don’t have, you’re not entitled to try your case with a lawyer. There were some surveys that were taken that were just kind of like, had obvious answers to me with experience being locked up in a psych ward. It’s an MIA survey, more than half of the respondents describe their experience at a psychiatric ward as traumatic, um, and 37% said they were physically abused in some way with forced treatment included as, um, physical abuse. Yeah, everything I was reading was talking about how much higher exposure people had to physical and sexual abuse and cultures within psych wards of, um, not protecting people against that, a lot. Also, I think it’s important to note that Black and indigenous people of color are overrepresented in psych wards, and, um, that often times people experience solitary confinement. Which, I don’t know if people want to talk about how horrible solitary confinement is, but a lot of times punishment within psych wards looks like being locked alone in seclusion and forced medicated. Um, while I was in the psych ward, they attempted to put me under conservatorship. And I’m not really clear on how I got out of it because I was heavily medicated, but I did go to court within the psych ward, with like a volunteer legal representative. And I was going to ask Nurse Mary Worth, because you’ve worked in psych wards, what would have happened if I had been conserved?

22:00 Nurse Mary Worth:

Well, I, that makes, that kind of segues into me wanting to talk a little bit about the history of how we got to where we are, which isn’t a particularly good place. And I’ll get back to that question, what you just asked what would happen if you had been conserved. In the old days, all the way up through the 50’s and 60’s, people were locked up in state hospitals and psychiatric institutions with completely indeterminate timeframes and people’s – people were locked up because some family members though they were acting strange for what was considered bizarre behavior. For being gender queer, gender-non-conforming, for gender-non-conforming including not acting the way a wife was supposed to act, any number of things.

22:51 Mary Daggers:

This also relates to Ugly Laws, which were a group, like a bunch of laws that targeted people with physical and mental disabilities, and that like go back to like the 1700’s.

23:01 Nurse Mary Worth:

People were just locked up and sometimes lived for decades and decades in these horrific institutions. Then, in the 60s, there was a so-called reform movement, um, which ended up in precipitously, releasing people on mass out of the psychiatric institutions with the idea that they were going to have community mental health. The community mental health never happened. The money never materialized. So there are, there is essentially no real community mental health that never came to pass. In 1968, um, they, the California legislature passed a law called Lanterman Petris-Short, which is the law that orchestrates that covers the, the involuntary holds of people with psychiatric disabilities. The idea then was to stop the indeterminate length, um, the length of time not having any, um, it could be for any amount of time. So they set up what you were describing Mary Daggers, where people could be involuntarily held for 72-hours. At the end of the 72-hours, if the psych hospital or the doctor want to hold that person for longer, they had to be, um, they were put on something called a 14-day hold. At that time, there was a, um, hearing in the hospital in which the person could say, “I don’t think you have the right to hold me,” and usually didn’t win that hearing but occasionally did. If the person was kept for, if they felt that the person needed to be kept for longer than 14 days, they would be put, actually they could do a second 14-days, but they would put, could be put on a temporary conservatorship. And all of these steps, there was, there would be hearings, which is what you described, you were in a hearing where they were going to try and put you on conservatorship. Now, this was considered a reform, but when you look at it, what it really means is that the end result is that you can be conserved, which is, as Gentry described, takes away your right to self determination. Then, the state, you are assigned to a guardian, who decides where you will live, if you have to be in the hospital. And what might have happened to Mary Daggers, is that they might have decided that they were gravely disabled, couldn’t take care of themselves, put them in, put them in a long-term care facility, usually privately run, which are not the same quite the same as acute psych hospitals, but they’re every bit as awful. And they, they could have kept them there for up to 180 days, and eventually they could then apply for a permanent conservatorship, which has to be reviewed every year. Part of what I want to know about all this is because I worked as a nurse in psych hospitals, for many years I worked as a psych nurse, and I started out doing that because I wanted, early in the 60s, I was part of a community effort to support people with psychiatric disability, so they didn’t have to go into the hospitals. And that was never very successful, because people didn’t have enough, um, didn’t have enough capacity to really do round the clock care for somebody who was having a real problem. So then I went to work in psych hospitals, and at first I, part of what I was doing there was trying to figure out humane ways of providing treatment as a mental health person, professional as you call it. And over the years, I’ve since come to an abolitionist viewpoint, which is, I feel like that you can’t really have involuntary treatment for people with psychiatric disabilities. That it has to be accessible, voluntary treatment, so that incarceration of people with psychiatric illness is really completely wrong and I’m against it now.

27:24 Mary Daggers:

Thank you, Nurse Mary. You know, when you were describing the like, I remembered as you were speaking, that I was on a 14-day hold that was up for being, I was being, it was considered to extend the 14-day hold. And all I could think about was how to get out. Any way to get out, you’ll say anything you’ll go– I mean, I went to substance abuse meetings because people said if you participated in treatment, then they might let you go, when I don’t have substance abuse issues. There was there were all kinds of ways that you’re trying to get out of that situation. And it’s so set up to keep you.

28:03 Nurse Mary Worth:

Yeah. Now there’s a big premium on participation in psych hospitals.

28:08 Mary Daggers:

Yeah, in the, in one of the psych hospitals I was in in Oregon, they monitored the food like you had to eat. You got scored and graded on how much of the food that you ate.

28:18 Nurse Mary Worth:

Oh, good god.

28:21 Marie Cary:

Like slop and stale bread?

28:25 Mary Daggers:

It was foul.

28:26 Mary Define Trash:

That’s awful. I guess, my question is, then, what are people doing about this in the world? Or what, you had mentioned that, you know, people were trying to do things in the 60s and due to capacity it was difficult to do that. But what are folks doing now to try and prevent this from happening to people?

28:53 Mary Daggers:

There’s a really exciting new program that is in Sacramento and in Oakland. That’s a project of the Anti-Police Terror Project called Mental Health First, that, it’s, like, a community alternative to police for people who are in psychiatric distress. So their mission is, um, to try and divert people from having to have this police contact or this forced confinement but instead see if there can be a community and peer-based support solution to people who are in crisis or dealing with suicidality. So the Mental Health First hotline is (510) 999-9MH1.

29:41 Nurse Mary Worth:

So in 2018, a law was passed in California, pushed by the evil Scott Wiener, who, the purpose of which was to set up pilot programs in three cities: San Diego, San Francisco, and LA to expand conservatorship. They wanted to make it easier to conserve people. San Diego and LA ended up not wanting to participate in the pilot program, just San Francisco. It was pushed by Rafael Mandelman and London Breed. And they, and it, basically, what it would do, it would set, they would make a law that they could conserve people who had substance abuse and mental health issues, put them on this housing conservatorship, if they had eight detentions by police. So this put, meant that the police basically, would have even more control over detaining people with, with so-called, including substance abuse. Before, it is harder to get people conserved for substance abuse. This was specifically directed at un-housed people with substance abuse problems. So this was pushed through the San Francisco Board of Supervisors by, um, Mandelman, who basically said that if you don’t pass this, I’m going to take it to the voters, I’m going to put it on the, make San Francisco vote on it. And so the, the Board of Supervisors passed it. Rafael Mandelman is a gay, he’s a supervisor. The purpose of all of this is to get un-housed people off the street to make the streets beautiful for the techies.

31:42 Mary Define Trash:

Yeah, that’s I mean, we basically have a situation where the wealth of our city doesn’t want to be confronted with homelessness that they’ve helped create. And they want to do whatever they can to push all of those people out of the city. So they don’t have to deal with it.

31:58 Nurse Mary Worth:

Well, they don’t want to do what’s necessary, which is to make public housing and to provide actual voluntary treatment on demand for substance abuse and psychiatric issues. So they don’t want to do that. That takes money and would mean actual commitment to real services. And they’re absolutely not interested in that. But they do want to figure out a way to get people off the streets.

32:20 Mary Define Trash:

Totally. Well, they’ll direct their money into a luxury condo, but they won’t direct their money to services.

31:25 Nurse Mary Worth:

So maybe now you, Mary Dagger. Do you want to talk about Mad Mob?

32:29 Mary Daggers:

Sure, I’m, I just want to remind you of our last episode, Co-Optation. Where so much of it is like really hostile, anti-homeless tying disabled people policy, it is given as treatment and is that, like, that they’ll just code it, when they are making laws and when they’re, you know, directing money. But it’s actually going to get getting rid of people and clearing people out. Mad Mob, did it start last year?

33:07 Nurse Mary Worth:

Yeah, it was like 2018 or no? Okay, maybe 2019, because 2018 was that voluntary services first coalition.

33:17 Mary Daggers:

Right, right. I’m fighting this expanded conservatorship we’ve been talking about, but that was something that we deal with a lot is this kind of role of nonprofit organizations and groups organizing, and there’s often like points of tension with organizing with things like what Mad Mob, like, set out to be, like run, like, with leadership from people who are mad or mentally ill, likem whatever neurodivergent, whatever word that you use for yourself, trying to have, like, voices be opposing conservatorship.

34:02 Nurse Mary Worth:

It was specifically meant to be like a direct action group. And they had a demonstration that was kind of good, in which they went and rampaged through the Department, well not really rampaged, but quietly rampaged through the Department of Public Health. And that was one action we did, we were part of, yeah.

34:21 Mary Daggers:

Yeah, here was this tension with the kind of nonprofit agenda, like the role of the nonprofit proceed. And then, like, a lot of participants wanting to be more direct action.

34:32 Nurse Mary Worth:

Right, which they did, which people did it started to get going, and then the combination of the nonprofit agenda of lobbying the Board of Supervisors, and making petitions, and making phone calls, versus direct action. And then COVID hit, the direct action piece sort of went and just didn’t hold together. But it was very cool for a minute.

35:00 Mary Daggers:

It was very cool.

35:01 Nurse Mary Worth:

It really felt like it had potential, and Gay Shame made this terrific zine about conservatorship that we were passing out to people, go to the San Francisco General and pass it out to people in the who were at the methadone clinic. You know, as they went in and out, just stand there and leaflet. We had many ideas of how we would get the information out.

35:28 Mary Daggers:

Yeah, its, its exciting that Mental Health First, is able to, like, continue to do work, even though there’s COVID. Like, I think at this point, they’re a hotline, and they’re at least in Oakland, they’re not doing, uh, like dispatches to situations. But, um, I definitely am excited to explore ways with the pandemic and with the quarantines, they’ll come back to stuff around conservatorship, because the lawmakers are, you know, they’re not stopping. And the police are certainly not stopping, the police are as we’ve seen, like these tightened sweeps and targeting and attacks on people on the street.

36:12 Mary Define Trash:

I mean, it’s absolutely obscene to give the police the control to determine whether or not someone is mentally capable of doing considering they have no training on any of that.

36:22 Mary Daggers:

It’s just that like, as soon as the ball gets rolling, as soon as you’re strapped down in an ambulance, like the kind of slippery-slope effect of how easy it is to get like sucked into a psych ward situation and a longer hold, potentially losing your rights in the conservatorship, like, especially for vulnerable people. It’s just—

36:45 Mary Define Trash:

It’s designed to do what it does. It’s designed, as things happen.

36:51 Nurse Mary Worth:

Once you’re in that system, it’s very hard to get out of it. I mean, its like, its like every other system that stacked against people. Once you get, I mean, how would you get out once you were temporarily conserved? You know, you wouldn’t have the resources to get a lawyer to get you out. I mean, look at what’s happened to Britney Spears, who has all the resources in the world. And her father is able to control her. Yeah, I like hearing about the Mental Health First.

37:24 Mary Daggers:

It takes people who want to create alternatives to police because there are real issues where people need, like, psychiatric support and need support around suicide. And it’s POC who are mainly the volunteers for Mental Health First, and just to be like, that we’re going to be, trying to provide these alternatives to the police.

37:49
Gay Shame thanks you for completing Episode Three.

37:51 Marie Carey:

Ru Paul’s Fracking, Honey!

37:53 Mary Define Trash:

Ru Paul’s Frack Race! I’m Mary Define Trash.

37:58 Mary Daggers:

I’m Mary Daggers.

37:59 Nurse Mary Worth:

I’m Nurse Mary Worth. This was more fun than I thought, I was dreading it.

38:05 Marie Carey:

These are the Mary’s signing off. Stay gay and stay shaming.

38:11 Mary Daggers:

Free Britney! Free them all!