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TO: California Treatment Advocacy Coalition
FROM: Carla Jacobs & Randall Hagar
DATE: August 28, 2000
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LET’S SHAKE IT LOOSE

Today the San Francisco Chronicle ran an editorial in which it pointed to four bills that the legislature must act on before this year’s session ends on Thursday.

The first one that John Burton’s home paper listed? AB 1800!!!!

This may be an opening we can use to shake our bill loose, but we only have a few days. Those of you who did not get a letter off to Burton last week—please, please fax him now and copy your Senator.

And we ask each of you (even if you are faxing a letter) to make just two phone calls—one to your Senator and one to Senator John Burton.

Tell them that treatment must be prized over sickness.
Tell them we must help those who can’t help themselves.
Tell them that we can no longer fill our prisons with the sick.
Tell them of the people who will die if AB 1800 is not passed.
Tell them that AB 1800 must be voted on before the session ends.
This is our last chance this year.

After Thursday (if we don’t get AB 1800 through), all we can do is work toward the 2001 legislative session.

No matter what, we will have at least a number of relatively quite months coming up.

We can’t let down now.

REMEMBER WHY WE DO THIS.

And for who.

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AUGUST 28, 2000, MONDAY

EDITORIAL

Capitol's Crunch Time

THE CALIFORNIA Legislature is scheduled to adjourn for the year Thursday. State lawmakers must not consider taking off for the campaign trail without acting on these four bills, each of which appears to be in a precarious state going into the final week of the session.

These bills need to be passed this year:

AB 1800, by Assemblywoman Helen Thomson, D-Davis. This bill addresses the cycle of despair that characterizes the current system for dealing with the severely mentally ill. All too often, people with such illnesses are left sitting in jails or on the streets without treatment -- or even recognizing that they need help. The Thomson bill would broaden the definition of "gravely disabled" to give hearing officers greater latitude to order such patients to receive treatment. This bill would not force people back into institutions; it would merely give authorities and social workers the legal clout to get the mentally ill into outpatient clinics where they can get the treatment they need to function in society.

The key: Senate President John Burton, D-San Francisco, citing civil liberties concerns, has refused to allow the measure to move out of the Rules Committee…

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California Treatment Advocacy Coalition
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