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Grand Junction atheists, agnostics, humanists and skeptics gathered at CMU last Saturday to lead a discussion on targets of discrimination. Highlighting mentally ill, non-religious, immigrant and LGBTQ community members’ struggles, various organizations including CMU’s own Secular Student Alliance hoped to generate an atmosphere of acceptance.
Various organizations attended including Humanists Doing Good, a local non-profit organization dedicated to spreading secular education, the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the American Civil Liberties Union, the largest public interest law firm in the U.S.
“I think it’s mostly about opening up the conversation,” President of the Secular Student Alliance Ashlee Bigham said. “A lot of the topics tonight are things that people aren’t very comfortable talking about, and I think the more we can talk about it openly, the more people can understand who these people are with each organization, and maybe some acceptance can come from that.”
Just in time for Mental Illness Awareness Weak, Heather Nara, Vice President of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, made an argument for a new way of thinking and approaching mental illness that’s all about putting the people first.
“We have a tendency to say that a person is schizophrenic or bi-polar,” Nara said, “but we should be saying someone has or is living with schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder.”
Nara went on to highlight Grand Junction’s particular struggle with mental illness, asserting that the suicide rates in the Grand Valley are 1.5 times the Colorado average and 3 times the national average.
Most people don’t know about mental illness,” Nara said, “and lack of access to healthcare has been a huge block.”
Nara encourages those struggling with mental illness to take advantage of the numerous resources available in the Valley, including the on-campus NAMI (the first in the state) and the Mind Springs Health behind Texas Roadhouse.
ACLU speaker Kathleen Hynes wrapped up the event with a discussion on key civil rights cases that have helped to define the struggle immigrants and LGBTQ community members face in the U.S.
“Do not believe anything I tell you,” Hynes began. “Research it yourself.”
Hynes gave a step-by-step analysis of some of the key civil rights cases that have swept the country recently, including the 2010 AmWay debacle in which a bus-full of company employees were arrested by a federal ICE agent on the charge of being illegal immigrants.
The fact that the employees were speaking Spanish was enough probable cause to carry out the detention.
Hynes attributes gross misuse of law enforcement power to the dissolution of the 4th Amendment, which she asserts took a nosedive after the War on Drugs and 9/11. Hynes pointed to New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s controversial Stop and Frisk policy, which giveslaw enforcement the right to search a person’s belongings if they’re suspecting of carrying a weapon. To date over 4 million searches have been carried out.
Hynes also identified major inequalities in the LGBTQ community alluding to various state discrepancies.
“29 states allow the firing of LGBTQ employees and 47 states allow attorney’s to refuse jury duty to a person based off of gender and sexual identity,” Hynes said.
Hynes also mentioned the recent issue in Lakewood, CO in which a gay couple was denied a wedding cake because of the shop owner’s personal religious convictions.
Hynes argued that because of public accommodation, the legal obligation for business providing to the public regardless of differences, the case would likely turn out in favor of the disadvantaged gay couple.
“No battle is won forever,” Hynes said. “If you ignore your civil liberties they will go away.”
The Secular Student Alliance is relatively new to CMU and is working with students and faculty to start an atheist/humanist/skeptic student group. Though the group was satisfied with the turn out for their first event, Bighham expressed concern for the university’s acceptance of their existence.
“We faced a lot of problems with Student Life,” Bigham said. “We were just given misinformation and we had a lot of problems getting them to let us know what we needed to do.”
While the group admits they’re not completely sure where the conflict stemmed from, they believe resistance had to do with the controversial nature of the presentation.
“It just felt a little too coincidental that we had to fight so hard to get something like this,” Bigham said.
cferganc@mavs.coloradomesa.edu
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