MISSION STATEMENT

SILENT VOICES SPEAK started out as Silent Voices: A Writer’s Workshop, as the first group at the drop-in center at the Broadway location of Community Counseling Centers of Chicago, whose purpose is to empower it’s attendees to form and attend their own groups.

We have branched out as an independent entity. We are silent no more. We say yes to the creative possibilities of life & art...

The mission of SILENT VOICES SPEAK is to give a voice to people who are disenfranchised. Many of the participants in SILENT VOICES SPEAK are also visual and/or performing artists.

Membership is open to all.
Send submissions to lizhipwell@gmail.com.

Monday, March 30, 2015

An Open Letter to the Honorable Mayor Rahm Emanuel


March 23, 2015 (my 64th birthday)

The Honorable Rahm Emanuel
Office of the Mayor
121 North LaSalle Street
Chicago City Hall 4th Floor
Chicago, IL 60602

Re: Debbie Delgado‘s Question

Your Honor:

Respectfully, when will Debbie Delgado receive an answer from you about the status of her city mental health services? Will it be before, after the runoff election or ever?

To refresh you, Debbie Delgado, a former mental health clinic consumer who stood face-to-face with you on at the Wicker Park Committee Board meeting in March with you and, in desperation, confronted you about receiving ineffective mental services upon the closure of the City’s Northwest Mental Health Clinic, 2354 N. Milwaukee Avenue where she and her son received promising recovery services.

Ms. Delgado suffered when both of her sons were shot in 2006 by an assailant. Ms. Delgado experienced Undue mental health issues arose when her oldest son died in his brother’s arms; all three victims by a police system that did not protect them.

I know that you “are eager to get to the substance of residents’ concerns.” Ms. Delgado and her surviving son, are so traumatized that when the Northwest Mental Health Clinic, their post-traumatic shock disorder (PTSD) worsened because they are unable to receive comparable mental health services from their reassigned clinic. Their newly assigned clinic has insufficient psychiatric care and causes Ms. Delgado and her son to pass by three cemeteries to get to the new clinic. Now Delgado’s son refuses to leave his room. Ms, Delgado simply wants to know why you closed “her” clinic without regard to the consequences to her, her son, and other Chicagoans living with mental illness.
I’m sure Ms. Delgado, in her effort to help her remaining family to survive, is not concerned about budget cuts, or other administrative matters. She just want to know why you closed “her” clinic. To date, through various attempts, you have avoided answering her.

So when will you answer her? I think she’s entitled to know. I’d also like to know so that I can stand and others in Chicago’s Mental Health Movement can stand beside her and support her in any answer you give. Why did you close “her” clinic?

Very respectfully,

Kathleen A. Powers, AAS
Advocate-At-Large
5625 North Winthrop Avenue #503
Chicago, IL 60660-4443

1 comment:

  1. This Rahmbo action still haunts him in 2016!

    ReplyDelete

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