Cooperative Behavioral Health Care Deserves a Shot
The Valley Advocate’s excellent piece on cooperative businesses (“Surprise! It’s a co-op. Any business can be a worker-owned business,” Aug. 4-10, 2016) was just the sort of education and inspiration we need to stem the oppression posed by today’s corporatocratic political and economic hegemony. With the will, creativity, and initiative, we’ll indeed see many new types of businesses embrace this model. We should never think, along the way, that we can’t go big with coops: Spain’s Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, a federation of 120 employee-owned companies, employs over 74,000 workers. While not without strains in the organizational structure, the cooperative is regarded as fostering a strong sense of identity among workers and encourages an atmosphere of solidarity.
And speaking of organizations in need of a cooperative model, we should look closely at an unlikely player: Behavioral healthcare. Many people here in the Valley likely know a social worker, addiction counselor, or mental health psychotherapist who has bailed on corporate behavioral health. The constant drumbeat of “productivity,” the drudgery and overbearingness of superfluous record keeping, and clinical managers who operate more as financial officers have driven some of the best people toward independent practice — and as they will tell you, it’s not often an easy road. Cynically, many behavioral health organizations replace experienced personnel with interns who are forced to be line clinicians immediately with large caseloads.
But there’s money to be made, as evidenced by private equity firms who have infiltrated behavioral healthcare, particularly addiction treatment. I could go on and on, but let’s hope we can see cooperative principles enter this industry and make these places attractive to work in again, operating on a people-before-profit philosophy.
Greg Merens
Greenfield
‘Men’s Empowerment’ Movement is Pro-Feminist
Thank you for including the article, “Fact: Men Have Emotions” in the Aug 4-10, 2016, issue of the Advocate. Men reclaiming their emotional, caring, expressive selves and nurturing their somatic (body) awareness is essential to healing the wounds of patriarchy for all our sakes.
In addition to the Men’s Resource Center and the advocacy being done by MERGE, the Valley is host to men’s support groups, doing the inter- and intra-personal work this healing requires. One such circle is run in Northampton by Gary Blaser and Michael Chell, titled a “Men’s Empowerment Group.”
Fliers with this heading (Men’s Empowerment Group) have been repeatedly removed from area poster boards (e.g. at River Valley Market and Thornes’ Market Place, both of Northampton) during the past few years. I beg die-hard, old-school feminists, please read the rest of the flier, and reconsider. Men’s empowerment and healing of this sort is pro-feminist. Men must rediscover their tenderness and vulnerability, and learn that authentic power never precludes another’s power.
For the future of my daughter and my son, I am grateful that men are engaging themselves and one another.
Sia Antunes Blaser
Haydenville
Editor’s Note: Antunes Blaser is married to Gary Blaser.
