NEWSLETTER-2008-OCTOBER

And in the end, after all that’s happened these past 19 months, the Barack Obama I know today is the same man I fell in love with 19 years ago. He’s the same man who drove me and our new baby daughter home from the hospital ten years ago this summer, inching along at a snail’s pace, peering anxiously at us in the rearview mirror, feeling the whole weight of her future in his hands, determined to give her everything he’d struggled so hard for himself, determined to give her what he never had: the affirming embrace of a father’s love.

And as I tuck that little girl and her little sister into bed at night, I think about how one day, they’ll have families of their own. And one day, they—and your sons and daughters—will tell their own children about what we did together in this election. They’ll tell them how this time, we listened to our hopes, instead of our fears. How this time, we decided to stop doubting and to start dreaming. How this time, in this great country—where a girl from the South Side of Chicago can go to college and law school, and the son of a single mother from Hawaii can go all the way to the White House—we committed ourselves to building the world as it should be.

So tonight, in honor of my father’s memory and my daughters’ future—out of gratitude to those who triumphs we mark this week, and those whose everyday sacrifices have brought to this moment—let us devote ourselves to finishing their work; let us work together to fulfill their hopes; and let us stand together to elect Barach Obama President of the United States of America.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080826/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_michelle_obama_text&printer=1;...
KANSAS CITY, MO (2007-10-01)

Kelley Weiss reports on how a broken system is making law enforcement take care of an increasing number of severely mentally ill on the streets, like Troost Avenue, and in the city jail.

In 1963 President Kennedy signed into law the Community Health Centers Act that
Deinstitutionalized the mentally ill, moving out of large state asylums and into the community. The problem is that not enough federal dollars followed to support those community programs. Some of them found places to live like with their families or in private groups homes. Others were left in the street.

Sgt. John Bryant, of the Kanses City Police Department, teaches officers Crisis Intervention Training so they can give better emergency response to people with mental illness. He slows down when a men wearing a three-piece suit, frantically waving his arms and yelling jumps in front of the police car.

One third of all homeless people are schizophrenic, and he says the homeless are more likely to break the law by trespassing, urinating in public or petty theft.

“We know that today in each facility there are far more people with mental illness locked away than there are here at Western Missouri Mental Health Center.”
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kcur/news.newsmain?action=printarticle&
ARTICLE_ID… 9/2/08

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MICHELLE OBAMA’S SPEECH AT THE CONVENTION CONT.
BLUE WATER OUTLOOK
Volume 1, Issue 1
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MENTAL HEALTH, STORY FOUR: FROM THE STREETS TO JAIL AND BACK AGAIN KELLEY WEISS