FRUSTRATION
Thousands rally at Capitol on eve of vote
You’d be forgiven if you thought a rock star had decided to play a Tuesday morning concert at NE 23 and Lincoln.
Cars, dozen-passenger vans and the occasional tour bus overflowed the Capitol parking lot and spilled into normally quiet surrounding neighborhoods, with some making their own parking spaces of questionable legality. Lines of people decked out as if they all thought it was Christmas snaked from the building’s entrances back into the parking lots. A helicopter buzzed above and Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers warned the crowd they wouldn’t get close enough to see anything.
They didn’t turn back. After all, the point was not to see or hear, but to step out of the shadows and to speak.
The Oklahoma Behavioral Health Association had called on the public to rally to oppose a state plan to cut outpatient services for mental illnesses and addictions. It’s a plan no one has said they support, including the agency which proposed it — the spokesman for the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services was one of those tweeting that he was at the rally — but which officials say they may have to adopt if legislators don’t find a way to
We’re attacking the most vulnerable population that we have, and taking away life-giving services.”
Pat Murphy, of Piedmont
close a $215 million budget gap.
If the cuts go through, people with mental illnesses and addictions will still have psychiatric hospitals, crisis centers and medication, but no other services, unless they can pay for them.
Katarina Bryant and several other people who drove down from Tulsa said the services that could be cut helped them through the worst crises of their lives. Without treatment at Family Children’s Services, she thinks her best-case scenario would be living on the street and losing custody of her children. The worst-case scenario would have ended with a toe tag.
“They have helped me 100 percent with keeping my life and enjoying my life,” she said.
Jennifer Powell, who receives treatment for bipolar disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder through the same agency, said the services and support she gets saved her life, at least twice.
“It would really throw me off if I lost it all,” she said.
By the time the rally started at 10 a.m., the fourth-floor rotunda had turned into a sea of green, for mental illness, and red, for addiction. The seats filled up, then the standing room, and then troopers started directing visitors to the third and fifth floors, where they waved to each other and angled smartphones to try to capture the action.
Lissa Green, who had arrived an hour in advance, was one of the few hundred to reach the fourth floor. She wore a purple T-shirt with hot pink lettering announcing, “I’m clean and sober because of DRUG COURT, GATEWAY (an addiction treatment program) AND RED ROCK.” She hopes to give back to others by training as a peer support specialist, but that career path could be closed if cuts to outpatient services go through.
Her drug court graduation was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, and Green said she wanted to participate in the rally because she thought the diversion program was the only thing that could have saved her life.
“You can get more drugs in prison than you can outside,” she said.
The speakers’ voices didn’t carry even to the back rows inside the rotunda, even with the help of speakers, but the crowd could pick up enough to join in chants of “Save our services,” which echoed off the marble.
An Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper told organizers to encourage the crowd to move along; the trooper estimated there could be as many as 2,000 people waiting in lines outside to get through one of the Capitol’s three entrances. The organizers told attendees, through the speaker system, to not stand around, and to find their legislators so others waiting outside could get in.
Pat Murphy, a licensed clinical social worker from Piedmont who said he’d worked in mental health for 33 years, was looking for Sen. Stephanie Bice, an Oklahoma City Republican. He said he had come to represent people who couldn’t speak for themselves.
“I’m ashamed at what we’re trying to do and what that’s done to the Oklahoma standard,” he said. “We’re attacking the most vulnerable population that we have, and taking away life-giving services.”
Others wanted to speak to any lawmaker willing to hear them out. Kelsey Carrico, a young woman with a gray T-shirt to match others who use services at Roadback Inc., said she had made the drive from Lawton not only to speak for herself, but for others she knew who had died by suicide. Without the help she received, she thinks she might have gone down the same path.
“It’s my life. These are our lives. My children’s lives, everything,” she said.
Cari Brewer, who works at Roadback, said she hoped her clients would force lawmakers to think of them and their families when deciding whether to vote for a budget plan.
“These are the faces of the people you’re hurting,” she said. “I can find another job. I can move on.”
The fire marshal declared the building was full while a gaggle of visitors still waited outside, so the organizers set up the speakers on the south steps after the main rally to address some of those who couldn’t get in, said Randy Tate, CEO of NorthCare and president of the Oklahoma Behavioral Health Association.
Some of those rallying on the south steps had posters calling for tax increases on energy companies or cigarettes, but Tate said the Oklahoma Behavioral Health Association planned the rally to be bipartisan. They want longterm funding for mental health, but any plan that gets the revenue and the votes is acceptable, he said.
“This is bigger than your party,” he said.
Some of the leaders of Oklahoma’s mental health community ended up on the south plaza, where the speakers strained against the crowd noise. Mike Brose, executive director of the Mental Health Association of Oklahoma, said he and the other staff who came from Tulsa couldn’t get in to the building, but that was fine with him. It meant people who normally don’t have lawmakers’ ears got inside, he said.
“Voices are being heard that normally don’t ever get heard,” he said. “In my entire 37 years (of work), I’ve never seen a gathering like this.”
Gail Richards, who has lobbied on behalf of mental health organizations for years, said she’d never seen so many people come out of speak on their own behalf.
“This is the first time I’ve been here and seen a tremendous number of people who receive services,” she said.