Public Hostage, Public Ransom: Ending Institutional America
This drama starts with the autobiographical story of William Bronston, an activist physician. His early professional California training steels him with a deep moral, professional and cultural bond to the huge 6000 person population of children and adults with disabilities he encounters incarcerated in Willowbrook State School in State Island, NY, on whose behalf he daily battles to humanize and ultimately catalyze a Federal Class Action Lawsuit against the state to close the death-making institution.
Prior to the infamous expose’ of Willowbrook, no small individualized community living arrangements existed in New York state where warehousing the ‘different’ population was imposed on stricken families. Willowbrook, riven with 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, progressive lawyers, child development leaders in the field, local and national media were united to expose and address the bureaucratic evil and ubiquitous violence that dominated the wretched lives inside.
This passionate book documents the immense story arc, of the public mobilization, media expose and Federal judicial process Bronston forged to what ultimately becomes the legal conviction of New York for systemic human abuse. Dr. Bronston draws the clear lines that indicts the self serving State bureaucracy and provides the strategic rationale to end the cruel Medicaid system, in order to heal the deep societal wound that the nursing home and assisted living industry, the segregated norm, that imposes our universal commoditized and paradigmatic terminus. These victims are the ‘Public Hostages’ who now, by ageing, become society’s elders consigned, again, to profit driven, segregated and congregate institutional lives, funded by Medicaid’s billions, America’s ‘Public Ransom’. Thus, an artificially created domestic refugee population, torn from every community and devastating America’s families has become an accepted paradigm that Dr. Bronston’s narrative intimately charts and passionately describes replacing Medicaid with universal, expanded and improved Medicare for all, single payer health care, as the policy solution and ultimate antidote to this crime against humanity we numbly tolerate.
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The shocking horrors of Willowbrook State School have been exposed and will never be forgotten. In Doctor William Bronston’s defining book, Public Hostage Public Ransom: Ending Institutional America, he takes on all of America’s institutions, the segregated nursing home industry, that have not learned the lesson of the tragedy of Willowbrook. His muckraking efforts remind one of a latter-day Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, or Jacob Riis. His book is a scathing reminder of all we still have to do to build a sympathetic and just world for the many who are unable to find it for themselves.
Jonathan Sanger Film Producer ‘The Elephant Man’
About the author
(Inside cover)Born and educated in Los Angeles, CA, William Bronston received his MD at the University of Southern CA School of Medicine, completed his internship in Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, and was a resident in psychiatry at Menningers School of Psychiatry in Topeka, Kansas.While a senior in Medical School, Bronston founded the Student Health Organization in 1964, a nationwide graduate health science student movement ded- icated to promoting universal health care as a human right, overcoming racism, sex- ism, war, poverty and physician elitism in the health system as the greatest challenges facing society. In 1968 after organizing the American Federation of State, County and Medical Employees mental health worker union in Topeka, Bronston moved to New York where he was a leader in a range of human rights and labor issues in the health care field, a career pursuit continued to the present day.Deeply concern about the plight of children with developmental special needs while in New York, Bronston spent 3 years as a staff physician in the infamous Willowbrook State School in Staten Island. As a public advocate he helped architect the 1971 Federal Class Action Law Suit against New York State for Constitutional violations of due process, right to treatment and decent care aimed to close and replace its state institutions with individualized family and community services. After a 2 year post doctoral fellowship at Syracuse University in Human Service policy, Bronston returned to California where he was appointed as the senior consultant to the Director of the CA State Health Department in the field of Developmental Disabilities, then served as medical consultant to the Secretary of Health and Welfare and finally as the Medical Director of the State Department of Rehabilitation where he served till retire- ment in 2006.Starting with the 1981, United Nations International Year of Disabled Persons, Bronston organized a 6-year, state-wide model, Project Interdependence, to integrate hundreds of multicultural teen youth, with and without disabilities, toward career futures in fields of science, sport, recreation and the arts. In 1997, he established the non profit Tower of Youth to promote digital media arts and technology as a system wide reform in the CA Education system, producing 37 bi-annual regional and North American-wide, teen youth film festivals.Returning to his central and life long devotion of advocating US and CA health care as a right, Bronston again became a major voice in the Physicians for a National Health Program, 30, 000 strong, nationwide, progressive physician organization where his harbinger experience in ending institutionalization in New York inexorably leads to his strategic engagement advancing Medicare for All, Single Payer Health Care in America.
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