Empowering citizens

I always thought I was the smartest kid who ever lived. I was taught to believe that. My parents pushed me on that because they wanted to counter the idea that I was a second-class citizen. I had gone to jail with Dr. King. I was in the civil rights movement. I led a group of children to jail. I was empowered to do that. I really did feel that I could do anything. 

Actually, the Committee s assertion is a brazen falsehood. The primary concern of any mental hygiene law is to empower physicians to imprison innocent citizens and to impose ostensibly medical interventions on them against their will. As one would expect, sitting on the Advisory Committee on the Recodification of the New York Mental Hygiene Law are the Commissioner and two Assistant Commissioners of the New York State Mental Hygiene Department. 

At the heart of this movement is a commitment to empowering individuals and making sure that all relevant parties have a chance to give input on the decisions that affect their lives. Practitioners of dialogue and deliberation believe that inclusion is essential to what they are doing, and they build it into every aspect of their work. They see it as one of the bedrock principles of successful citizen engagement. 

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