Step Up | Mental Illness Is Not A Crime

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Mental Illness is not a Crime

Step Up
May 7, 2014

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“We have embraced the idea that being mentally sick is a crime.”

It is way past time to overhaul the U.S. prison system.

I’m not talking about a little tweak here and there. I’m talking about throwing a massive metaphorical hand grenade into the entire system and starting over from scratch. We should be ashamed of ourselves for allowing the system to have morphed into what it has.

Why should you care about this? Well, because you’re paying for it. Between states and the federal government the U.S. spends about $74 billion a year housing, feeding, providing health care (such as it is in prison) for inmates and supervising the newly released.

Please click here to read more from the Huffingtonpost.com

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We launched a new cooking class with our Vets last week at Building 209 with two enthusiastic volunteer chefs! We’ll be cooking new recipes weekly using the vegetables and fruits we’re growing in our edible community garden. Contact our volunteer coordinator at chealy@stepuponsecond.org if you’d like to come volunteer and help out.

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Over the past few weeks, we've welcomed volunteer teams from The Home Depot, AXA XL, and Calsense to the West Los Angeles VA Campus to collaborate on the constructing and planting of garden beds and a small citrus grove in Building 209’s own backyard. The beds include tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cucumber, eggplant, strawberries, and basil.

Team Depot funded the project with a grant of $8,000 to cover the costs of materials that included raised beds, drip irrigation, all planting material, sheds, gardening tools, and patio furniture. The Vets have formed a gardening club to monitor the watering and maintenance.

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