News
Mental Health Event
Focuses on Children
The Second Annual Rethinking Psychiatry Symposium
coming up this weekend focuses on psychotropic drugs
and their use on children and the elderly in care facilities.
The event is at the First Unitarian Church of Portland,
1011 SW 12th . There is a suggested $5 - $20 donation, but
no one is turned away for lack of funds, and no registra-
tion necessary.
Featuring attorney Jim Gottstein, founder of the Psych
Rights legal clinic, the event features a full slate of work-
shops and a resource fair.
The keynote talk is entitled “Addressing Psychotropic
Drugs,
Forced Medication, and Children.” It’s Friday, May 11,
from 7 to 9 p.m.
Gottstein and a panel of professionals and peers will
speak on the growing concern of the use of forced med-
ication in the name of mental health care especially in
children and the national movement to create a mental
health care system that is more holistic, effective and
humane.
On Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Gottstein leads a spe-
cial session called “Renaming and Reclaiming Our Mental
Health Story: Using Our Personal Journeys, Experiences
and Legal Rights.
The session is about how psychiatric survivors can share
journeys and experiences and work to develop action
plans in support of mental health care treatment alterna-
tives and of improving mental health rights in Oregon.
More resources and workshops are scheduled, and lunch
will be provided by Occupy Portland.
Continuing Education Units CEU's are now available for
licensed social workers and other health care workers who
attend the symposium. Details below.
For more information contact Marcia Meyers at 503-
665-3957 or go to www.RethinkingPsychiatry.org
Page 6 The Portland Skanner May 9, 2012
Bending Toward Justice Awards 2012
Sho Dozono, Rachel Bristol, Sen. Jeff Merkley, Ward Cunningham and Bernie Foster at the second annual
“Bending Toward Justice” luncheon.
An advocate against hunger, a philanthropist business-
man, a technology pioneer and a publisher, were honored
May 1 at the second annual “Bending Toward Justice”
luncheon. Sen. Jeff Merkley hosted the event and made the
awards.
Held this year at Portland’s Ecotrust building, the awards
luncheon is sponsored by Opportunity & Renewal and
Progress for Oregon political action committees, which
support Sen. Merkley. About 300 people attended the lunch-
eon.
The Honorees
Rachel Bristol, executive director of Oregon Food Bank,
will step down this year after almost 30 years as feeding
hungry people in Oregon. Her advocacy has helped hun-
dreds of thousands of people and under her watch Oregon
Food Bank has expanded. The food bank distributed more
than 81 million pounds of food in 2011 and the Portland
Business Journal named it
the ‘most admired” non-
profit.
Ward Cunningham is the
inventor of the wiki
method of sharing infor-
mation on web pages. A technology expert, Cunningham
has been a lead innovator at tech companies such as,
Microsoft, Tektronix, the Eclipse Foundation, Wyatt Soft-
ware, the Hillside Group, AboutUs and currently Citizen
Global. His inventions have influenced web development
across the globe.
Sho Dozono is the founder and owner of Azumano Trav-
el. In 1996 he organized a 30,000-strong march to support
school funding, before forming the Portland Schools Foun-
dation, now called All Hands Raised. After 9/11 he
organized Flight of Freedom to support New York’s tourist
industry and has sent similar Flights of Friendship to Thai-
land, after the 2004 tsunami, to New Orleans after
Hurricane Katrina, and to Japan after the 2011 earthquake.
Bernie Foster is the publisher of The Skanner News,
founded more than 35 years ago to give a voice to African
Americans and other underserved communities in Portland
and the Northwest. When activists wanted to name a street
in Portland after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., they convened
at The Skanner News building. Foster also co-founded with
Bobbie Foster, The Skanner Foundation, which distributes
education scholarships at its signature event, The Martin
Luther King Jr. breakfast.