West 57th KIDS and Straight Inc., Virgil Miller Newton exposed
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Calvina Fay is clueless. She is the Director of DFAF. DFAF is owned by Mel Sembler. When Straight Inc. shut down in the early 90s Mel Sembler changed the name of the Organization to DFAF. These are the same people that abused countless of children in the name of “rehabilitation”. When Straight was around they used faulty statistics and tactics and they still do today.
They make a ton of money in the “troubled teen industry” legalizing would greatly hurt their industry and ability to make money as an organization. She says 60% of people using drugs (my guess mostly alcohol) abuse children. That statement alone is false and such a hypocritical statement to come from an organization who themselves has abused children for years. When the truth finally comes out on a mass scale about what the DFAF has been involved in, they won’t have much of a leg to stand on.
Richard Lawrence Miller is the same person who wrote that piece on the appalling lack of ethics involved in Dr. Richard H. Schwartz’s use of Straight, Inc. “clients” as experimental research subjects. This was recently mentioned in the following thread:
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Drug Warriors and Their Prey
From Police Power to Police State
by Richard Lawrence Miller
Praeger Publishers 1996, ISBN 0-275-95042-5
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There is a certain difficulty in writing a review of Richard Lawrence Miller’s Drug Warriors and Their Prey, but not because it is a difficult book in any usual sense. On the contrary, it is disarmingly easy to understand the author’s every implication. Yet the theme of Mr. Miller’s essay, a point by point comparison of the reality of Drug Prohibition in the United States today with exactly analogous situations leading up to Hitler’s Third Reich and the attempted destruction of the Jewish people, is certain to repulse the very readers who need most to understand that, indeed, it can happen again. Thus the book, and any honest review of it, might achieve little more than preaching to the converted: those who can readily accept its main thesis must already be active in resisting not just the “worst excesses” of the War on Drugs, but the entire and historically-proven futility of the very concept of Prohibition as a means to advantageous ends.
Not that Hitler and the Reich’s atrocities are too distasteful for public examination and discourse, far from it! Americans, and to a lesser degree, Europeans, continue to watch with relish and fascination each new television episode depicting Hitler and his cohorts, continue to make best-sellers of both fiction and non-fiction tomes about the Reich, and we see many educators and intellectuals insisting that the morbid details of Hitlerism be widely taught in the schools so that we may “never again” fall into the trap which ensnared the post World-War-One German nation. Equally atrocious episodes as the Nazi reign (at least with respect to relative population size), which have more recently occurred in Vietnam and Cambodia, or in East Timor, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, to mention but a few, are given short shrift by producers of documentaries and consumers of such “entertainment,” and ignored in classrooms as potential “never again” object lessons. Even more glaringly, America continues to largely ignore the implications of an even more successful genocide which American Policy, assisted by American Congresses and Politicians of the highest stature, committed over a period far longer than the Reich’s brief existence: the eradication of Native American populations. A recent book which rightly dared to call that eradication a holocaust, was indignantly denounced by many “intellectuals.”
Hitler and his image have clearly become a modern scapegoat through which we attempt to psychologically expunge collective guilt for our own atrocities, past and present, as well as for those other atrocities which we do nothing, or very little, to prevent or stop. There is plenty of evil-reeking film footage of Hitler’s life and times which when watched, with their pompous and cymbal-crashing military tunes, and their images of “the bad guys” far surpassing anything that Hollywood can invent, become the perfect medium for our unfortunate proclivity to hate. And to do so collectively in a way which seems correct and proper. The evil image of Hitler and his deeds provides catharsis for the sins we care not to recognize, dare not recognize, and allows a continuation of a status quo which is fertile ground for allowing hate to produce once again the very situation from which inevitably rise the most glaringly evil aspects of our modern world.
If we can see from these observations why many a reader will close his mind to Mr. Miller’s thesis, or perhaps merely look at the dust jacket and replace Drug Warriors on its bookstore shelf, it is nevertheless quite necessary and effective to compare the American-led War on Drugs with events in 1930’s Germany. As Mr. Miller readily shows, it is not with the after-the-fact evil image of “The Great Dictator” that current parallels correspond, but rather with the actions of individual and ordinary Germans, their daily life, the ease with which they fell into that horrible trap, and the actions of police, mayors, governors and administrators, the deeds and “researches” of doctors and scientists, the judgments of the courts, the facile way in which the Jewish people were ensnared in “The Chain of Destruction : Identification, Ostracism, Confiscation, Concentration, and Annihilation.” Before 1939, when it became painfully obvious to every person on earth what the Führer was up to, it was equally as difficult as now to see the inevitable course of events which follows from the first principles of fascism. Many in the United States and England praised Hitler’s National Socialism for having brought Germany out of the Great Depression, Presidents and Prime Ministers believed his Treaties and Promises, even subscribed to his overall political vision, until it was far too late for anything but total conflict.
If the very accurate and chilling comparisons of developments in 1930’s Germany to the modern War on Drugs disgusts some readers to the point where they are blinded to the reality exposed in Drug Warriors, that in itself is a telling parallel to that decade before the beginning of WWII. Euphemisms and pacification would today certainly go no further in helping to reverse ill-conceived Drug Prohibition than they did in reversing the Reich’s rise to power. Books and articles by those who predicted the inevitable course that post WWI fascism would take were, as will be Mr. Miller’s book today, viewed as unnecessarily alarmist, the product of an over-vivid imagination or even fanaticism. But in the telling of such truth, as in the recommendation of possible means of avoidance of great disaster, there really is no alternative but the kind of stark simplicity of theme which Drug Warriors epitomizes. For the few persons on the brink of waking up to the reality of the Drug War, the book will certainly provide better catalysis than other current, and less honest if more complacent tracts. For those masses eternally convinced that “it can’t happen here,” there is, history would teach, little that can convince.
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The chapters in Drug Warriors are named for the stages of “The Chain of Destruction” mentioned above, which, as Mr. Miller points out, derives from Raul Hilberg’s monumental study of the destruction process as applied to the holocaust. From the very first page of chapter 1, “Identification,” we see in vivid detail how the modern drug-user is fulfilling the same function as did the Jew during National Socialism. He is the perfect scapegoat, the perfect distraction, the ideal “other” and alien, the perfect tool “for maintaining the social turmoil needed by authoritarians” in their rise to power. Miller quotes Karl A. Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz:
Just as it was difficult for people in the US or England of the 1930’s to get worked up about a “few incidents” of the breaking of windows of Jewish shops, or the “excesses” of burning the contents of a library or two, it is today difficult perhaps to get worked up over some of the documented “excesses” of the Drug War, hundreds of which are described and referenced in Drug Warriors. “A few” such incidents can always be blamed on individual human error and frailty, as when an over-zealous cop assassinates a purported marijuana dealer. But what of the evidence so well presented in Drug Warriors of actual drug warrior “death squads” instituted by US government agencies to “assassinate narcotics leaders?” What are we to make of the statement of former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates (also the founder and designer of the DARE program, “Drug Abuse Resistance Education”): In 1990 he advised the U.S. Senate about the “‘casual user’ and what you do with the whole group. The casual user ought to be taken out and shot, because he or she has no reason for using drugs.” Gates later emphasized that he was not being facetious and declared marijuana users to be guilty of treason. Such sentiment in the US today is not unusual. William Bennett, the former “Drug Czar” and therefore top drug police officer declared that ethically no trial is required before killing citizens suspected of drug dealing. The next day Bennett said of drug dealers, “You deserve to die.” (These passages quoted or paraphrased from Drug Warriors, where they are referenced.) Comparisons to the Gestapo are unavoidable.
Miller goes to great lengths to make it painfully obvious that we are not dealing with a few minor incidents provoked by the occasional renegade, but as in 1930’s Germany, a vast and vicious machine is being oiled and tested, a horribly familiar pattern is again materializing, and normal law-abiding citizens are today just as unaware of what lies just around the corner as they were formerly. More critically, just as leaders and intellectuals of the 1930’s were equally as duped and pacified into non-action, even to supporting the rise of the Nazi machine, a significant movement of leaders and intellectuals resisting the American lead in the War on Drugs, a coalition of nations, for example, which might quickly put an end to the rising power of Drug War Fascism, is nowhere on the horizon, it would seem. Such a project would need to be a widely visible, intentional and public denunciation of American policy accompanied by a radical shift in Prohibition policy itself within those nations.
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As much as it may itself seem a fanaticism to compare Drug Warriorism with Nazism, I have tried to show here why that is far more an artifact of our psychological makeup than a misinterpretation or gross exaggeration of the factual evidence at hand. On every page of Drug Warriors the facts are profuse. We ignore them, and their proper interpretation, at great peril:
After all, what is the vision of a Drug-Free America? Millions in prison or slave labor, and only enthusiastic supporters of government policy allowed to hold jobs, attend school, have children, drive cars, own property. This is the combined vision of utopia held forth by Nancy Reagan, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, William Bennett, Daryl Gates, and thousands of other drug warriors. News media and “public interest” advertising tell us this is the America for which all good citizens yearn.
I shall end my own intellectually risky yet morally necessary task of agreeing wholeheartedly with Miller’s analysis and prognosis by quoting the same passage with which Drug Warriors begins,
This is a bit oldish. I cannot for the life of me understand why it didn’t get posted on the forum yet, because it sure is a Classic.
Blue color emphasis ; red color inserted comments .
Posted: Feb 2, 2006
AN INTERVIEW WITH TOM BRATTER
Founder of John Dewey Academy
Great Barrington, Massachusetts
By: Lon Woodbury, April 19, 2005
Two things stand out in talking with Tom Bratter. First, in his early years, he qualified as a “struggling teen.” Bratter explained that during his adolescence in the 1950’s, he was lucky because the availability of drugs had not yet arrived in suburbia. “I have no false illusions or sense of righteousness in this reality because had they been available, I know I would have become a casualty of the chemical dependency movement. The odds are high that I probably would have died from my addiction to them because I was that kind of kid.”
Bratter said that due to his “ignorance and stupid behaviors,” he was in a lot of pain and graduated in the bottom 10 percent of his high school class. In addition, Bratter’s father was a very successful “workaholic” who started one of most respected law firms in New York City. “He always rescued me by convincing everyone to give ‘Tommy one more chance.’ I was a loser, reject, retard and failure by choice; my only successes came in my athletic ability in track; my records endured for 44 years.”
However, the very things that were destructive and negative in Bratter’s life also became the things that influenced his passion, ability and life-long devotion to helping adolescents. It also inspired him to create the unique school he calls John Dewey Academy, in admiration of the early 20th century philosopher and educator John Dewey.
Second, for almost a half century, Bratter has worked exclusively with bright, unconvinced and self-destructive adolescents. After receiving his Ed.D. degree from Columbia University Teachers College, with a dissertation titled “Confrontation: A Group Psychotherapeutic Treatment Model for Alienated, Unmotivated, Adolescent Drug Abusers,” [a title that he has repetitiously used -- with but minor alterations -- for most of his professional life] Bratter started and directed six community-based prevention and treatment programs in Westchester County (NY) for alienated and angry kids.
“Again, I was lucky. My beloved mentor, Alex Bassin, who wrote the proposal that created Daytop Lodge, predecessor to Daytop Village, introduced me to the program when it was in its infancy. I learned more about effectively treating this difficult population from ex-addict counselors and recovering alcoholics than from my professors at Teachers College. I was a confused and conflicted graduate student, but I knew what worked and why it worked. My professors espoused theories which made no sense. They were either Freudians or followers of Carl Rogers, neither of whom confronted the true issues behind the behaviors.”
[I have to wonder how he coped with the larger than life presence of social justice through education activist Maxine Greene. Teachers College became a bit of a haven of humanism sprinkled with diehard pinkos for a while back then, due in large part to her presence. I can see how Bratter couldn't relate.]
In the 1970s, Bratter worked as a psychotherapist at Teen Centers and as director of a Methadone Clinic. He was a part time consultant for many programs, an independent psychotherapist in Scarsdale, NY, and an adjunct professor at Union Institute and the College of New Rochelle. He was very much in touch with the experiments of creative solutions throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In 1985 Bratter decided to implement what he had learned by founding the John Dewey Academy, a residential boarding school for adolescents with problems. Bratter refers to himself as a gunfighter and says “there are two rules when working with adolescents. “Rule One: A few will fail and die. Rule Two: Tom Bratter cannot change rule one. Before I symbolically burned my membership card in the American Psychological Association, 10 kids died of drug overdoses, committed suicide or were murdered, which radicalized me. I view psychotherapy as a war. If I cannot convince a kid to change, I know damn well they will live wasted lives, so I accept this as a mandate to force them to change.”
As an example of the intellectual ferment of the 1970s, Bratter recalled an International Conference on Therapeutic Communities in Bangkok, Thailand in the mid-1970s, where he met Mel Wasserman, Founder of the CEDU Schools. Both men were very much involved in the intellectual stimulation around the concept of therapeutic communities, and attended as many conferences as they could on the subject. According to Bratter, they discussed how these concepts could or should apply to schools for troubled adolescents.
Bratter explained that he started The John Dewey Academy to prove to psychotherapists and educators that it is a crime to assume that some are too damaged to change. “No kid in our history has been maintained on any psychotropic poison. All graduate and attend competitive colleges. A third make the dean’s list, a third become responsible role models and student leaders, and more than a third attend graduate school. There is no residential treatment program or special purpose school in the world that can duplicate these results.”
Interestingly, Bratter said that few psychiatrists and psychologists refer patients; instead they send their own kids. “I would wager that at least 20 percent of our graduates have a parent who is a therapist or teacher. We work with a special bunch of kids who are not amenable to traditional techniques and convince them to ‘bust their asses.’ Our kids spend at least three hours a day, every day, studying, and we are accredited by the New England Schools and College Association. They attend at least 10 hours of groups. And there is no secret why they work so hard; they know that if they produce, we will convince the best colleges to admit them. Where is the controversy? What we do obviously works!”
[No small thanks to his friend and colleague -- Malcolm Gauld of Hyde School, who headed up the assessment committee in 1993 -- for that NEASC accreditation.]
Bratter says heavy peer pressure and using treatment as a catalyst is very important in the healing of the students. He emphasizes peer pressure for three reasons: “Kids don’t give others an inch, the helper learns more, and it is vital for these kids to stop masking their feelings and start getting honest.”
His goal with each student is to provide hope. He enrolls children who have either given up on life, or never bought into it because they have never felt challenged. Looking through the mask, he sees a child with good potential but who also needs work to bring it out.
In John Dewey Academy, Bratter brought together all the elements of structure and challenging academics in a unique combination to prove a point, which is that there are better ways to work with difficult children than the all too common mainstream procedure of diagnosing and medicating on a mass scale.
“We trace our origins to the ex-addict-run therapeutic communities which utilized confrontation and positive peer pressure to force change,” Bratter explained. “Empowerment creates change because kids feel vested in the Dewey community. They have high expectations for growth and reject stupid, sadistic and self-destructive behavior. John Dewey is stressful because the expectations for growth and improvement continue to escalate. But the rewards are great. The next chapter for all Dewey graduates is college which permanently seals their past. No one asks me what kind of kid I was because they assume that since I attended Columbia University, not only was I bright, but also a good little boy. Both are myths! But no one cares any more because that is ancient history.”
I first met Tom Bratter in the early 1990s, and at that time, he truly was John Dewey Academy. His direct influence was evident in every aspect of the school. Since then, he has taught the staff his philosophy and turned many of his functions at the school over to them. Bratter’s involvement is still very evident, but more as a founder than an administrator. He is taking steps to ensure John Dewey Academy has a solid foundation with or without his direct involvement in the future.
For an example of the confrontation style of John Dewey Academy, see the article The Interview and the Student’s Response.
The Dr Phil show is having a show on Salvia in November. This is BAD. Dr Phil has a very large audience, and the show is very likely going to be highly negative. Probably all about kids going out and getting a hold of it, doing it, and then doing stupid stuff.
We need to make sure this show either:
a) does not air
b) air’s with an unbiased viewpoint
You can register for Dr Phil’s website here:
http://www.drphil.com/members/register/
Go to the message boards after signing up:
http://www.drphil.com/messageboard/
I clicked on “feedback and help”, and then clicked on “talk about the show”, and posted my message (which you can read here, I am using the username falkenjeff http://www.drphil.com/messageboard/topic/3422/msg/id/1030662/#1030662 ).
Make sure that your messages are clear and informative, and NOT whiny and full of cursing and swearing. The messages are moderator reviewed before they are posted.
This alone is probably not enough. We need to email the show, and possibly phone them. Be willing to appear on the show, and explain why salvia is not dangerous, and why it should just be age restricted instead of banned (like alcohol and tobacco). We can’t let the stupid kids who abuse it ruin it for us all.
This is the contact Dr Phil section:
http://www.drphil.com/shows/page/contactdrphil/
This is the “email the show” option which is located in the section above. This may be the best option, but I dunno:
http://www.drphil.com/plugger/respond/?plugID=9164
This is the phone number for ordering tapes, so I dunno if you can do anything else with it:
1-866-437-7445
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