Public Hostage Public Ransom: Ending Institutional America

by William Bronston M D

Public Hostage, Public Ransom starts with the autobiographical story of William Bronston, the activist physician whose early professional California training steels him with a deep moral, professional and cultural bond to the huge 6000 person disabled population he encounters incarcerated in Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, NY, on whose behalf he daily battles to humanize and ultimately catalyze a Federal Class Action Lawsuit against the state to close the deathmaking institution. Prior to the expose of Willowbrook, no small individualized community living arrangements existed across New York state in lieu of 30 massive state institutions. Medicaid funded, these institutions warehoused the 'different' population imposed on their stricken families. Having been closed to admission by public scandal and impossible overcrowding, families were blackmailed to have their dependent member submit to secret viral research whose impact was completely unknown, where rampant disease, gruesome sanitation, lack of adequate food, clothing, carloads of tranquilizing medicine and the most minimal care and supervision was the brutal norm. Ultimately, concerned parents, caring workers, top child development leaders in the field, local and national media were organized to expose and address the bureaucratic evil and ubiquitous violence that dominated the wretched lives inside. This passionate book documents the immense drama, and story arc, of the public mobilization, media expose and Federal judicial process Bronston helped arouse, that forged the path to what ultimately becomes the legal conviction for this systemic human abuse and Justice Ruth Ginsburg's subsequent, monumental Supreme Court Olmstead Decision that framed the rightful foundation for nationwide deinstitutional reform. Dr. Bronston draws the clear line to indict the self serving State bureaucracy and the strategic rationale to end Title 19 of the Social Security Act, the Medicaid system, in order to heal the deep societal wound that the nursing home and assisted living industry, the segregated norm, that compels our universal commoditized and paradigmatic terminus. The human rights movement in America has transformed the lives of all people with special needs as new politics, technology and a profound awareness of the dehumanization of this vast community reached a zenith in the late 1960s and 1970s. It leads to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act that emancipated the devalued and stigmatized populations of labeled people including Mental Retardation, Cerebral palsy, Autism, Epilepsy, Polio, sensory loss, neuromuscular degenerative conditions, on and on, "public hostages", who now age to become society's elders consigned again to profit driven, segregated and congregate institutional lives, funded by Medicaid's billions, America's "public ransom". _ us an artificially created domestic refugee population, torn from every community and devastating America's families has become an accepted paradigm that Dr. Bronston's story intimately charts and passionately indicts. Universal expanded and improved Medicare for all, single payer health care, is the clear solution and ultimate antidote to this crime against humanity we numbly tolerate.

Genres: Psychology

384 pages, Paperback

Published August 17, 2021

Reviews

[Jonathan Levine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had purchased Dr. Bronston's book during a book signing as he had been touring with Ellen Marie Wiseman (author of The Lost Girls of Willowbrook). Unlike Mrs. Wiseman's novel, Dr. Bronston's book is a work of non-fiction; complete with an agenda and message he is trying to convey. Having worked at Willowbrook State for a few years, he knew first hand about the atrocities going on and was committed to advocate for the disabled patients and their families when few others with higher authority than him were there for support. He is a very intelligent and honorable man, and you are made aware of that through the pages of this autobiography. There are some instances where he includes some numbers crunching on populations and budgeting that I found a rather slow read, but overall the book is an interesting read and I'd imagine the points he makes will have you nodding your head in agreement all throughout. As it was published in early 2020, it includes a late chapter with regards to contemporary state institutions like nursing homes and the devastating effects of tye COVUD pandemic.

[Heather Zipser · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely heartbreaking, but also amazing story about the lives of those in Willowbrook. This doctor is a true hero and the insight from this book is startling.

[Dominique Nicole Marsalek · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m only a few pages in but wow. I often think about if my partner and I had been born just 20 years earlier (me a ward of the state placed in “special education” and him a person with cerebral palsy who was also placed in “special education” as devalued peoples *a term the doctor uses aptly*) … that we would have both been placed in one of these institutions for the entirety of our lives, alone and abandoned by society. These are the truths we need to know to prepare for what is to come. The movement to institutionalize is coming back and we must be prepared to fight it with everything we have. Do not go gentle into that dark night … rage, rage against the dying of the light.

A must read.