Happy Mad Pride Day (July 13)

[url=http://www.rabble.ca/news_full_story.shtml?sh_itm=723cf28ab33d333581cf96... mad celebration, By Amy Packwood.[/url]

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Celebrating madness, crazies, nutters and others is what Mad Pride is all about.

“Just like we all suffer under patriarchy and heterosexism, we all suffer under ableism and saneism,” says Jeremiah Bach, 25. Bach is a self-identified madman and co-organizer of Toronto Mad Pride 2007.

The Mad Pride movement has grown from a smattering of people frustrated with the stigma and silence surrounding psychiatric consumers, survivors and others to a cacophony of loosely organized annual events around the world.

The name (inspired by Pride as in Gay Pride) and the date (July 14, a.k.a. Bastille Day, an international symbol of liberation) are the same around the world, but as the movement spreads, it evolves with the communities it celebrates. In Ghana, there is a street march planned; in upstate New York, a vigil. England celebrates with a week-long BonkersFest.

In Toronto, Mayor David Miller has issued a proclamation declaring July 14, 2007, Mad Pride Day in the city. The day's main event for Toronto is the Bed Push. The Push is becoming a tradition for Mad Pride and was started in England in 2005. A group of Mad People dressed in pajamas staged an escape, wheeling a bed from Mill View Psychiatric Hospital 60 miles to London's Bethlem Asylum, infamously known as Bedlam, while being chased by a giant syringe.

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