CATS in the 99% Meeting: Date Time and Location

[Guest guest]

Below is the information for the CATS in the 99% meeting.  It seems timely that we are meeting as a community particularly with the recent survey from the NYS-OP regarding the push for a permanent exemption; which would enable city and state run facilities to hire non-licensed professionals!  Very much looking forward to meeting with everyone and if you have any questions do not hesitate to contact me!  Happy Holidays and take good care!

 

Creative Arts Therapy

students, recent graduates, and established professionals

are invited to join a

conversation inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement:CATs in the 99%

Monday, January 9, 2012 

6- 8 pm at Pratt Institute (Manhattan Campus) 144 W. 14th street

Room To be announced

In

order to help our clients inside of hospitals, clinics, schools, and prisons,

we CATs have needed to act as agents of these institutions, enforcing their

rules and policies, even when doing so has limited the expression and

empowerment of our clients.

 

In

recent years, decisions by those who run our institutions have further compromised

our ability to help our clients heal and regain access to their creativity.

 

We

understand the increasing anger we see in our clients, who are receiving fewer

services.

 

The

newest members of our professions, often working under the most difficult

conditions in order to gain hours for licensure and to establish themselves in

the field, typically spend the most time with clients, have the greatest

empathy for their clients’ anger, yet increasingly find themselves the targets

of their clients’ verbal and physical attacks.

 

Many

of us will be paying off debts to banks for decades, or even the rest of our

lives, for the education and training we needed in order to become CATs.

 

Our

clients have important insights to express about injustice in the U.S. If in

the past we CATs have served the 1% by keeping our clients under control within

institutions where their voices are not allowed to catalyze change in the

larger world, we need to withdraw our buttressing of the 1%, and begin to join

our clients, and the rest of the 99%, contributing to our far greater combined

strength as a people united against injustice.

-- " There are only two ways to live your life. One as though nothing is a miracle; the other as though everything is a miracle " Albert Einstein