Thread by @sunnshiiny

I’ve avoided this information because it is personal and deeply impactful on my psyche. But it illustrates our current predicament quite clearly.

And I’ve had lots of therapy.

https://twitter.com/globalnewsto/status/1437530841224261634

My mother developed full blown bipolar disorder at around age 35. It went untreated until I dragged her (literally) into the University Hospital Psychiatric walk in clinic to have her diagnosed when she was 50.

Fifteen years of medically untreated mental illness and several years of instability before that. At first I thought she was just an alcoholic. She drank herself to oblivion frequently. Her symptoms worsened over the years. Delusional when manic. Almost catatonic when depressed.

I don’t know how many times I drove my mom’s station wagon home after retrieving her from the Old Cromdale tavern. Chasing away creepy rapey men who saw an easy target. I’d undress her, wash her and put her to bed. And hoped she sobered up enough to go to work the next morning.

I cooked, cleaned and looked after my two younger brothers. And I took care of my mom. School was unimportant and I failed most grade 11 classes and had to repeat them. There was absolutely no way I was going to remain in poverty. So I moved to my father’s & went back to school.

A selfish move to preserve my opportunities that meant sacrificing my brothers. Not a day goes by I don’t regret leaving them behind. I ran from chaos.

Flash forward several years and my mother was still cycling in mental illness induced torture. For her and for my family.

I had taken her to be diagnosed but she refused to take her medication. Her behaviour had become unmanageable. She had burned so many bridges that the only people who continued to speak to her were my grandparents, my brothers and me. But she threatened us often.

Her favourite threat was showing up unexpectedly at the worksite of me and my brothers or their spouses. Drunk, spewing hateful accusations of ungrateful children abandoning their mother to poverty. It was humiliating, disruptive and frequently got us, her children, fired.

She did it often enough. When she was desperate for money. By this point she had lost her job and was permanently unemployable while unmedicated. So she did live quite miserably. I regularly brought her food and essentials when she was depressed.

It was too painful to interact with her when she was manic. I didn’t recognize her. She was a completely different person when she was in the elevated state of mania. My brothers helped her then. I avoided her. It hurt too much. And it triggered my PTSD. I gave them money.

One day she called me up and threatened to show up at my work. I worked at Health Canada in the public health branch. I was mortified.

I called the mobile mental health team and requested an intervention. They did pick up my mother & took her to Alberta hospital to be assessed.

She was released within an hour and given a bus ticket to get home.

The mental health assessment? She was deemed NOT a threat to herself or to others physical safety, therefore she was released back into the public. She was free to continue to harass me & my brothers. She did.

That’s the day I learned that individualism as a concept is a farce.

Our laws are derived from English common law and based on the premise of libertarian individualism.

Basically any individual can harass, make a public scene, shout lies and smears, cause disruption legally.

That’s not considered against the law. It was perfectly legal for my mother to threaten to come to my place of employment and try to humiliate me and disrupt business for everyone. There was nothing my brothers and I could do. Because she didn’t threaten our lives.

In our society, the individual is paramount. Human rights and freedoms are provided to the individual. Not the community, nor to individuals capable of finding alternate employment. Not the individuals subjected to emotional torture & coercion. Not those targeted with harassment.

Freedom of expression means you can make a complete ass of yourself and law enforcement will do nothing.

IMHO this is legally ridiculous. If a life isn’t actually threatened, others can torture, harass, extort, coerce. All to their delight and the target’s misfortune.

Collective rights are not guaranteed rights. Only individual rights are. And it’s seen as a too punitive measure to stop an individual from freely expressing themselves, regardless of the fallout, damage or disruption they cause.

Well, screw that nonsense!

This is the legal interpretation & precedent that anti maskers & anti vaxxers are exploiting. Individualism is systemically implicit in all human rights legislation.

There are ineffective and inadequate anti harassment laws.

Private property owners can request police remove disruptive people from their property. But there’s nothing stopping an individual from shouting, screaming & disrupting while on public property. Until a person enters private property they’re free to continue being an asshole.

That’s why people with anti statist agendas are protesting covid restrictions. Because they can.

The only solution is to require mandatory vaccination to participate in private venues. Mobs of caustic Dominionists and freedom fighters will continue to be assholes.

What worked with my mother was my brothers and I telling her we would disown her if she didn’t stop threatening us and our employment and started taking her medication. Then I sat in fear and anxious anticipation for the rest of her days. She never did come to my place of work.

She did start taking her medication. She became more reasonable and able to communicate with all her children. We loved her. We did not love her mental illness or her behaviour that accompanied it. She stopped making threats. We all chipped in to help her. Life became stable.

Until my brother was murdered. She never recovered from that trauma. He was her favourite and the most devoted of the three of us. She died from cancer 5 years after my brother died. They share the same grave for eternity. Her ashes buried in his plot.

It’s not normal for people to act so irrationally.

One of the systemic changes required to legislation is increasing the rights of individuals and communities to ensure safety AND mental wellbeing. The law doesn’t recognize our interdependence or mental wellbeing as a right.

That needs to change.

Individual’s rights should not impede on society or other individuals wellbeing and mental health.

Until the law changes, the LIBERTARIAN assholes of society will continue to hold the rest of us hostage to their toxic behaviour and disruptive tactics.

We need to claim the right to shut down disruptive behaviour that impedes the wellbeing of the community and of individuals.

That’s what the Liberals should work on to strengthen vaccine passports. Then law enforcement can intervene when a mob of mentally unstable nuts act up.

But a law like this would have profound implications.

Victims of domestic violence might actually be protected from violent men.

BIPOC and LGBTQ would be protected from bigoted rhetoric by politicians and employers.

People who lie to gain support could be stopped.

It’s legal to lie, to gaslight, to manipulate truth, to deceive and malign. But a law that recognizes interdependence and mental wellbeing of the community could be used to mitigate dishonesty.

Indigenous communities operated on a community rights model. Of course that’s severely compromised since Europeans have influenced indigenous peoples and communities. But it’s a concept that deserves exploration and consideration for UNDRIP.

What if it were the law to consider the rights and wellbeing of everyone else when making decisions. Any decision.

Extracting fossil fuels. Shutting down pipelines. Mandating covid measures. Designing corporate law.

The application would be endless.

What if individualism remained important but was not the only relevant consideration?

Wouldn’t climate change and just transition be much easier if every human individual’s wellbeing had to be factored into policies?

Including O&G workers and environmentalists and everyone in between. First Nations and the other three indigenous peoples could help contribute to this legislation through consultation and recommendations.

This could be an UNDRIP legacy on a path to national reconciliation.

A paradigm shift in the primacy of individual human rights to include consideration of community rights and the mental health & wellbeing of others as elements of the legislation’s interpretation. A new precedent to promote equal rights for all.

I don’t appreciate being held hostage by growing numbers of libertarian mobs demanding their individualism be respected over our collective public health.

I don’t appreciate my premier and his political party insiders negating my rights and my familiy’s rights to mental and physical wellbeing by pandering to this group of craven libertarian bone heads.

I don’t appreciate the wealthy and the Dominionist evangelical Christians trying to reshape this province and my nation to reflect individualist extremism, giving the wealthy and patriarchal Christian hierarchy primacy in rights and privileges and remove democracy.

Inclusion of communal rights and mental wellbeing would address all of that.

It would be unlawful to use disinformation to persuade voters. It would be unlawful for industries to swindle taxpayers from royalties and taxes owed.

It would force disparate polarized special interests to be aware of their opposition’s perspective and consider it in any decision making.

It would not solve everything. A consensus decision making model shifts how problems are viewed and shapes how they can be resolved.

It doesn’t eliminate conflict and it doesn’t stop people from only considering their own needs.

But it helps involve everyone in decision making and gives equal credence to every perspective. As long as it also is presented in the context of what’s best for everybody.

I’ve thought about this since I discovered my mother was free to harass and terrorize me. No one deserves the right to terrorize others through threats and intimidation.

Let’s see how committed NDP are to their ideology. Even left libertarians could support this legislation.

It’s the far right rugged individualists who would object. And they would fight it tooth and nail.

Just like they fought Bill C-10 that incorporated elements of this concept. And Bill C-6 that would protect the individual from having community values imposed on them.

English common law is based in toxic libertarian individualism. It’s a product of the feudal system and the rights Lords and Kings sought to preserve.

It is the systemic belief and value at the root of every prejudice that gives all privileges to white Protestant Christian men of wealth.

Until that changes, every policy is window dressing or lipstick on a pig.

Property rights serve individualism and wealth accumulation.

It isn’t capitalism that is toxic.

It’s individualism and libertarian beliefs and values that privilege the wealthy, the loudest, the most intimidating and the most brutal in society.

For thousands of years, many small and large communities of First Nations peoples were able to use various models of consensus for group decision making to provide human rights and egalitarian participation for all members of their society.

It time you let us teach you our ways. It’s time we let those who consider all as welcome to participate and voice opinions in a purposely reduced conflict environment how to negotiate and bring consensus to achieve harmony and peace.

But we require a majority and we don’t have one. The next best option is NDP puts their money where their mouth is and starts using a consensus model to conduct themselves in committees and in negotiations with the governing party, LPC.

I’m not going to hold my breath.

But if NDP is serious about moving progressive agenda forward, they’ll drop the “Singh is the saviour” routine and start moving their base towards a consensus model.

It’s time to put up or shut up.

Election is over. It’s time to work on solving our extensive list of crises.

@threadreaderapp please compile