DRNY Welcomes 2023

**This podcast was recorded December 6, 2022 **

Executive Director, Tim Clune, Esq., discusses DRNY's goals for the upcoming year.

Transcript

- This is Katrin with Disability Rights New York. Welcome to our podcast, Empire State of Rights, where we will bring you information on the most relevant topics regarding disability rights and advocacy. Welcome back from our brief break as we start our sixth season. As some of you may have already noticed, we have a new title and a new look. DRNY is happy to announce that our podcast has been renamed "Empire State of Rights." Our episodes will also change from weekly to biweekly and we will delve into more in-depth conversations with our guests. And today, we welcome DRNY's executive director, Tim Clune, to discuss the goals for our upcoming year. Hi Tim, how are you?

- Hey, Katrin. Happy New Year. I hope you had a nice holiday.

- Happy new year to you, as well. I can't believe that we're starting 2023 already.

- I know. It feels like we were just here yesterday, so I just-- the time is flying for us, but I'm happy to be back.

- Me, too. And as I said a little bit in the intro, we now have our new logo on our podcast, as well, which is pretty exciting. I'm so happy to see the new logo and colors on all of our new assets. So it's great to see it behind you here and to get started talking about 2023. And so-

- It'll be an exciting year.

- It will and we have a lot to talk about, as far as things that will be continuing from 2022. Some really great and happy things to talk about, but we also had some stuff in 2022 in the very end that we are really going to have to follow because some announcements were made in the end of '22 that I'd love for you to talk about that we are working on moving into 2023. Tim, let's talk about those.

- Great. So on a positive note, 2023 marks our tenth year as the Protection and Advocacy and Client Assistance Program. So every five years, we've been doing a look as to what we've done, where we are, and where we're gonna go. And you know, that will be part of our process as we go forward. So I'm looking forward to doing that in the spring. As far as advocacy that we are really paying attention to, as you mentioned, in November of 2022, the end of November, early December, Mayor Adams in New York City announced the new directive where it is his policy to remove people from public places who appear to have a mental health diagnosis and because of that, need treatment in a hospital or a facility. We believe that that violates many, many laws, including the constitutional right to to liberty. We are in the process of addressing this and hoping that we can convince the mayor to rescind this policy, once we can show him why this is a bad policy. You know, involuntary treatment has been historically shown to not be effective. What the city needs to do is to expend the resources to ensure that people have access to adequate housing, adequate food, adequate employment services, all of those things that enable everyone to live successfully in the community. So that's one of the things we're looking at. Last year, we talked about litigation that is ongoing. You know, access in sidewalks or voting issues. We're going to continue to focus on ensuring that people live in the most integrated setting possible. You know, the integration of people into the community is of utmost important to us and we're going to continue doing that, as well.

- And so, Tim, we're obviously gonna be continuing a lot of advocacy, as you said, and one of the things that DRNY has been working towards, not just here with the podcast or in any of the postings that we're putting out. We talk a lot about language and the importance of it and how we talk about people and diagnosis and in the directives specifically that you had talked about coming out of New York City, the words "mental illness" or "mentally ill" have been used to describe people and, you know, we talk about mental health diagnosis. Can you talk a little bit about why it's so important to make these distinctions and how we really need to be having these conversations about language?

- I think it's really simple. I can boil it down to words matter and over the years, the language has been evolving, sometimes in a good way. But unfortunately, when it comes to people who have a mental health diagnosis, the stigma and the stereotyping, the criminalization of people who have a mental health diagnosis, is rampant and I think that the mayor's use of language here, who appear to be mentally ill, it dehumanizes people. Mental health diagnosis is more accurate than calling someone mentally ill. There is nothing good about it. It's pejorative. It is very easy to then use that language to scapegoat people who unfortunately have mental health diagnosis. What we've seen last year is Governor Hochul had changed some language and she signed into legislation laws that changed archaic language. It's a step in the right direction and provided some education for why this was important. We have to continue to do that. We have to stop dehumanizing and criminalizing people who have a mental health diagnosis and this is just a step backwards in our quest to make that happen. So among other things, the mayor's use of archaic language is just further indication of how wrong this policy is.

- Tim, thanks so much for that explanation. I think that it's so important that every time we see something that needs to be addressed, we're able to do it and let our audience know why these things are important. So thank you so much for that. And we have a lot of other things that are happening in the new year and I'm excited to see all of them and share them with our audience. Tim, is there anything else that you wanna say to our audience before we sign off or kickoff?

- No, just keep tuned in to our podcast because this is going to be a source of really good information about what we're doing, where we're going, and how we continue to lead in the area of providing services to people with disabilities. So thank you very much, Katrin.

- Great, Tim. Thank you.

- Empire State of Rights has been brought to you by Disability Rights New York, your source for disability rights and advocacy. If you enjoyed our program, make sure to subscribe, like, and share this post. The video for this episode is available on our YouTube channel with closed captioning and ASL interpretation. If there is a subject you would like us to discuss, please email podcast@drny.org, or comment below. For more Empire State of Rights, follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.