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TomBruno.org
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CLOSING DEVELOPMENTAL CENTERS, A PRISON AND NOW HAGEDORN PSYCHIATRIC
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RIVERFRONT PRISON CLOSED
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The announcement that Riverfront Prison would close resulted in
the usual silence from Local 1040. The Local's inaction made the closure quick. The Local had been
appraised by Tom, while he chaired the Local's Privatization Committee, of the probability of closure YEARS
ago when members reported suspicious activity at the site when the property was being surveyed. Instead of beginning
THEN with a strategy to sway public opinion in favor of keeping it open and applying political pressure early, Our Local leadership
ignored the warnings and so...we lost that battle....and Riverfront Prison!
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THANK YOU PRESIDENT WADE FOR ANNOUNCING THAT WE HAVE
BEATEN BACK ASSEMBLYMAN GREENWALD'S BILL TO CLOSE 5 DEVELOPMENTAL CENTERS WITHIN 5 YEARS! UNFORTUNATELY, THAT HASN'T
STOPPED THE CLOSURE OF VINELAND DEVELOPMENTAL CENTER'S WEST CAMPUS (COMPLETED IN JUNE, 2011)...
AND NOW
THE EAST CAMPUS IS SLATED TO BE CLOSED BY JUNE 2013.
HAGEDORN PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL IS SLATED TO CLOSE IN JUNE 2012....
HOEW MANY MORE OF OUR MEMBERS MUST BE PUSHED INTO RETIREMENT OR TAKE JOBS AT OTHER FACILITIES AS THE INSTITUTIONS
ARE CLOSED ONE-BY-ONE???
Can you say "Mission Accomplished?" ... George W. Bush did, and we're STILL
in Iraq!
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Chairman of the powerful Assembly Budget Committee submitted a bill
(A-3625) in January 2009 which called for the closure of 5 developmental centers over 5 years. The announcement by Assemblyman
Lou Greenwald, a staunch supporter of PRIVATIZATION and opponent of any attempt to require a cost analysis of privatization
efforts to ensure true savings for taxpayers, relied on false and distorted information about the true costs of institutional
care versus the same care in the community.
His proposal to close would dump 2,400 mentally retarded individuals
into imaginary community provider beds that were as non-existent then as they are now, as evidenced by the waiting
list of MORE THAN 8,000 individuals waiting for community OR institutional beds. Apparently, Greenwald thought that
subtracting 2,400 beds from a deficit of 8,000 beds, and adding 2,400 more people to the waiting list somehow equals a perfect
balance of services for these vulnerable individuals!
Remember when Democrats would never hurt the working class???
Blue Dog Democrats now dominate this state! This is just another example of how much political power the Local has lost
in NJ politics!
Again, we are forced to work against a tide that has been allowed to rise for years instead of
a media campaign that should have been used years ago in order to educate a public that knows little of the real facts!
We already have evidence that the cost of caring for these folks in community settings is MORE than in the developmental centers
in a peer-reviewed, publishd study. We have the evidence of a 92% increase in the death rate of people sent out of developmental
centers into the community. We have the NJ budget figures that Greenwald reviewed in his own legislative committee that
proves he is using distorted and false figures to describe the institutional costs. Now all we need is direction from
a real leader, and alot of political capital, which was wasted since the departure of Tom and Fran Fiore.
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HAGEDORN PSYCH. HOSPITAL TO CLOSE IN JUNE 2011
One by one, insitutions,
and the jobs that are with them, are being lost under the watchful eye of Carolyn Wade. So far, we've lost Johnstone/Skillman
Training School for Boys, North Princeton Developmental Center, Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital, Arthur Brisbane, Riverfront
Prison & Vineland Developmental Center's West Campus. Still slated to close is Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital
(by June 2012) and the other half of Vineland Developmental Center, the East Campus, (by June 2013).
Can we really afford 3 more years of Carolyn Wade's leadership?
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