This is the 75th anniversary of the construction of the nation’s largest segregated, congregate institution for persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) Willowbrook State School, in New York, and the 50th anniversary of the explosive Geraldo Rivera TV expose of its horrors.
Despite its closing under Federal Court order for crimes against humanity and conversion into a public college in Staten Island, the funding of the original cancer continues to expand our institutional culture, with facilities of 6 – 200 beds continues across our society, our likely destination as we all age.
The deep and compelling documentary of this drama is detailed in my new illustrated publication, “Public Hostage Public Ransom: Ending Institutional America”, where I worked as a Building Physician. It traces the arc of the enormous decades-long struggle led by mobilized families, educators and social justice lawyers to call the system to account.
This history is heralded with the announcement of the “Year of Willowbrook Memorial 2022”, organized at Staten Island College by a coalition of advocates and educators that will host dramatic public events monthly through this year as well as host public tours of a poignantly created, “Willowbrook Mile” through the pastoral, transformed 60 building property. Any closed system is a set up for human abuse that New Yorkers are familiar with, that thrives on monetizing, dehumanizing and stigmatizing the people within.
The source of our institutional culture, apart from public acquiescence, is fueled from the hundreds of billions of dollars that drive our system with Medicaid dollars that force eligible families into poverty and fund “facilities” rather than families, despite a few states whose waivers exist to deflect the current institutionalization norm.
The antidote is to end this cruel funding river of money and replace it with a comprehensive health care system change, by law establishing a single public trust fund that will replace all private insurance premiums, copays, deductibles, and existing categorical Federal and State dollars with one source of public payment for all health care for all New York residents embodied in the “NY Health Care Act”. “Life Time Care” must replace Medicaid’s 56-year policy of “Long Term Care” and support individualized planning, workforce elevation and the decentralization of familiar medical hospital and residential empires of care.
The wrenching Willowbrook story overwhelmingly demonstrates that we must imaginatively, individually plan and return people back to home like and personal community care to avoid segregation of dependent family members, especially as we all age.
Please read the story, attend the Willowbrook events, actively remember, speak out, cherish differentness in our midst! Demand Universal, guaranteed, single-payer health care reform, for all residents of New York!
