Beyond Control: Psychiatry's War on Minorities with Rev. Fred Shaw Jr.

What happens when psychiatric systems designed to "help" actually hurt the most vulnerable among us? Minister Fred Shaw Jr., a powerhouse advocate with decades of experience fighting for children's rights, pulls back the curtain on psychiatry's troubling relationship with minority communities.

Shaw's journey began when his own son was diagnosed with dyslexia and recommended for psychiatric intervention. Rather than accepting the prescribed path of medication, Shaw chose alternative educational approaches that ultimately helped his son overcome his reading challenges. This personal experience sparked a lifelong mission to protect children from unnecessary psychiatric labeling and drugging.

Drawing from his unique background as a former sheriff's deputy, NAACP president, and international spokesperson for the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, Shaw delivers shocking insights into how mental health systems target vulnerable populations. "We don't have mental health in this country," Shaw asserts. "We have mental control." He reveals how approximately 6.1 million American children are currently on psychiatric drugs—medications that chemically resemble substances like cocaine and methamphetamine.

The conversation takes a particularly powerful turn when Shaw discusses foster care and juvenile justice systems, where children are routinely medicated as a form of management rather than receiving appropriate support for trauma. Through stories of children he's worked with directly, Shaw demonstrates how alternatives to medication—proper education, nutrition, physical activity, and believing in children's

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Chapters

• 0:22 Whistleblowing Shrinks Introduction
• 0:46 Meet Minister Fred Shaw Jr.
• 5:16 Personal Journey Into Advocacy
• 8:52 Dyslexia, Labels, and Psychiatric Control
• 18:14 Foster Care System and Medication
• 23:30 The Prison System Pipeline
• 36:25 Parenting and Community Solutions
• 53:31 Closing and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

You've been gaslit into believing that psychiatry and psychology are neutral and always protect families, no matter race. The truth For decades these systems have targeted minorities, stigmatized the vulnerable and torn families apart. We are your whistleblowing shrinks, dr Terrilyn and Therapist Jen, and this is the Gaslit Truth Podcast. Today we have a very special guest. We've got Minister Fred Shaw Jr with us.

Speaker 1: 0:29

He is an author, an activist, a speaker, pastor and humanitarian. A proud Compton native, he served as the Sheriff's Deputy, leading youth programs, ran for mayor, has twice held the presidency of the NAACP branches in Compton and in Englewood South Bay. As the international spokesperson for the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and the president of the Englewood South Bay NAACP, he has fought for decades to protect children, challenge racism in the psychiatric industry and defend families' rights against forced drugging. His work helped pass the Federal Child Medication Safety Act and has launched a national task force for exposing the industry's long history of stigmatizing and exploiting minorities. Following in the footsteps of his late mother, marcine Shaw, a fierce human rights advocate, reverend Shaw remains a tireless voice for justice, education and equality. Welcome to the show, fred.

Speaker 2: 1:30

Thank you for having me. I appreciate coming on the show.

Speaker 3: 1:35

Man, I told Jen last night when I was putting together your bio number one, it was really hard for me to make it smaller because you've done so many cool things, and it was really hard for me to make it smaller because you've done so many cool things. So that was tough and I said it actually brought me to tears listening to or reading about all the things that you've accomplished in your life, because I feel like these humanitarian things are so important and I had no idea that people were so still grassroots in some of these areas like you have been and you continue to be. So I wanted to start this off with just kind of a statement of gratitude for that. Yeah, and I'm so excited to have you on the show.

Speaker 3: 2:16

One of the biggest things when I came across because I came across the CCHR and we kind of came across each other on social media actually, which I had no idea was something that even existed, to be honest. But the biggest movement that you have is with children. Is this correct? With children? I saw some stuff on ECT and children is a big push for you and the drugging of our minority community.

Speaker 2: 2:48

So wherever you want to start talking, I just want to hear about you and what you've done and what you believe to thank you guys for having the courage to bring a topic like this to the forefront so that people can get information and learn what's going on actually in the field. We think a lot of times that mental health is our friend and all of us want better mental health us want better mental health but the problem is is that we are sacrificing patients for the need of profit and a lot of times people are going into these fields ending up worse than when they went in, and it's actually a system that creates mental health patients for life mental health patients for life?

Speaker 3: 3:50

Yes, yes, it does. And can you talk about the advocacy work that you've done with children? Because I think in my world I'm like you know what. I think it really starts there, because we are creating forever consumers in our youth when we are medicating them, because it is a system, a merry-go-round, of not being able to get off. So can you talk about some of the advocacy work that you've done around our children?

Speaker 2: 4:11

Well, to get an idea though, I probably have to set it up a little bit Um, like I grew up with, uh, very, very powerful and good parents. My mother is known because she was out in the community doing amazing things, but my father created the businesses that allowed her to be able to do that instead of being on a job. And so I grew up looking at people who cared about people and I cared about people. But growing up in Compton, willowbrook, watts in that area, uh, there are a lot of temptations in life, and there was a situation where we were actually getting ready to do a home invasion because somebody threatened to kill one of my friends and I was leaving it. And when I got into the house there was a person we were supposed I'm just telling you the way it is we were supposed to take out, and I realized we would have to take out the mother and the girlfriend also, and something within me would not let me give the order. Something within me would not let me give the order. And when we got through that incident, two weeks later, my mother and father took me out to dinner and they were telling me how proud they were that I'd been able to get through the gangs and didn't get involved and things like that. And I started shaking and I realized if I had parents like these and almost threw my life away for God saving me, I would basically give my life to helping children, and all of the work that I do come out of that.

Speaker 2: 6:05

And because a lot of kids don't have a chance. So every single time we do something that make it more difficult for them to survive or get through the system or be able to be themselves, we are, you know, actually going against their nature. We're helping them to succumb nature. We're helping them to succumb. And so for me to do the work that I do, be it Sheriff Athletic League, the World Literacy Crusade, another organization we started. We had chapters around the world teaching kids how to read, because we discovered that part of the reason that you're having this crime is because people are illiterate, and all of the different programs and stuff I did.

Speaker 2: 6:43

It was simply because I felt that kids need to have a chance and once they get into the system too deep, there's nothing I can do for them. But before they get there, I wanted to be on the crime prevention side instead of the crime apprehension side, because I was a sheriff's deputy so I saw that every day people come into jail just to repeat, repeat, repeat and I felt that we should do something. So that led me to opening up a group home. So boys dealing with probation kids it was like trying to do something about the situation, that's all.

Speaker 3: 7:26

That's not just all. It's like that's all. That's all it was, and I'm like it's so much more, and I think you're a pretty humble guy when you're talking about the things that you've done To you. It was all about finding the root cause, like, what is the root cause? What is the root cause? And illiteracy became one of the root causes that stood out to you. If we're going to give these kids a chance, we have to teach them how to read as a basic thing. Right? That's pretty profound. And so when in your life did you figure out psychiatric medication was becoming one of the root cause issues for children and them not succeeding? When did that light bulb? Because there's always this light bulb moment, you know when you connect something.

Speaker 2: 8:23

My youngest son was diagnosed with dyslexia and everything was going fine. Of course we were going through with young parents in our 20s where we're having, you know, asking ourselves all the questions and stuff, and they made a mistake and said he needs to go see a psychiatrist. My mother immediately said don't let them label your child. It will follow him the rest of his life. But the mistake that they actually made is when they said they wanted to send him to a psychiatrist. I said for what? And they said they're helping with his to a psychiatrist. I said for what? And they said to help him with his self-esteem. I said that's my job, I'm his father, I'll help him with his self-esteem. And a friend of mine took me to a place where they dealt with all kinds of kids and they had him doing his letters and clay and things over and over and he wanted to give up.

Speaker 2: 9:27

He was a dad I said if you will just hang in there another two weeks with me, you know I'll let you quit if you want to. And one day he came on me he said dad, I don't have it no more. And I said what he said I can see my letters, I know my numbers and letters and things. And I asked myself how many kids are being diagnosed simply because the system don't know how to handle them. There's nothing necessarily wrong with the kid, there's something wrong with the approach. And at the tutoring place that my son was at, I remember the day he said I can read perfectly. Now, that's all a parent needs.

Speaker 1: 10:12

Yeah, so for you, I love what you just said. Right, you said there's nothing wrong with the kid, it's the approach. It's the approach, and Terry and I align with that wholly right, even as therapists who diagnose people or maybe don't diagnose as much as they should, because we are not.

Speaker 1: 10:34

We do not like we hate labels period Really truly. But that idea, right for you, sparked something. So this idea of here's a child, here's where they're at in their development, there's nothing wrong with them, but the system wants to put a label on them, put a medication, most likely right, Recommend that, Put that into them so that we can medicate them into compliance, so that they can sit still longer, focus more often. You know, be able to do all these things that are required in some kind of level of a standard like educational environment, when in reality this wasn't a trait, it was more of a state that your son was in. So you use a different intervention and got him through what he needed to get through.

Speaker 2: 11:28

Look under the system that we have now, I would have been on medication. Probably Dr Martin Luther King would have been on medication. Muhammad Ali most definitely would have been on medication. Yes, you know, sometimes all we need is the programs for the kids to burn off the energy. I have a very smart granddaughter, but when she used to come over here I used to sneak her ice cream and we could basically count down before she stopped bouncing off the wall. Yep, I mean, like this girl is something to behold, she's five years old and stuff, you know. But you can. You give the kids Frosty Flakes in the morning and all these sugar snack cereals. They go to school and then you could just start counting down and here it goes, you know.

Speaker 1: 12:31

Yeah. So, another example right of here's something you could do different parents change a kid's diet. That's an intervention versus right, taking them, taking them to a provider, getting them labeled, getting them medicated. We can maybe just change their nutrition and you might actually see something different.

Speaker 2: 13:25

And one time I read a study that said 70% of the children, if not a little bit more, could get rid of ADHD by changing their diet.

Speaker 1: 13:34

Diet yeah, that's 100.

Speaker 2: 13:38

And the same thing if you actually gave them a very rigorous study program and you can change all of these things. You can change all of these things. See me and you. If we're watching a television program or we're sitting in a meeting and we don't like it, we just get up and leave. Well, a child in school can't do that. Everybody makes him sit down If he's lost or if it's too slow for him. Either way, he gets caught in that because he's got to move at the pace of everybody else and that can be very frustrating.

Speaker 2: 14:14

If one of the most important things we found with the World Literacy Crusade is the understanding of words, doesn't understand the words that you're using. When you're talking to him, it's almost like you're speaking in Spanish, and so how does he get from under that frustration and not being able to follow along? So things like tutoring, which seem to be eliminated in our schools I'm not going to swear to that because I haven't checked, you're right Tutoring and stuff, they're being replaced with all of this counseling, and you know people asking you are you depressed? And yeah, if you missed the meal last night, you might be depressed, you know. In fact, let me tell you a little thing real quick on that.

Speaker 2: 15:04

I was in South Africa. I was speaking with one of the kings and he said that the children are being labeled ADHD and the only thing wrong with them is they're coming to school hungry and most of them didn't have enough sleep at night and they're being ADHD. So you would give a kid a pill before we would give them a sandwich. And this is going on here in America. It's going on all over the world. If we look right now, there's probably about 6.1 million children on psychiatric drugs. That is the size of the Los Angeles Coliseum, which fits 100,000 people 61 times with nothing but children on psychiatric drugs in this country. That's terrible and something has to happen on that.

Speaker 2: 16:05

Well, the thing was that in South Africa I was talking to one of the kings and he was telling me that the only thing wrong with the children is that they're coming to school hungry and haven't had enough sleep and they were being labeled ADHD. Um, you know, one of the things that people don't know is that Ritalin is very similar to cocaine and Adderall is similar to meth, and so you're giving that drug to children. They're in the same category and everything. And when you look at the health index and all of that stuff, and you're giving that to babies and then later on, when they're 16 and 17 and they start experimenting, the body seems to recognize cocaine and meth and those things real quick and the next thing you know you got a child. That's an addict who may have been set up and I'm going to say may because I'm not a scientist, so I do read the information and stuff but which may set them up to be addicts, and they're teens and young adults.

Speaker 1: 17:23

And here we're saying it started from the symptoms that the child is displaying, starting from the idea that they missed meals, they weren't properly like, right possibly nourished with food right. So that's one factor that makes somebody vulnerable to present in such a way that then leads to well, this is an ADHD thing.

Speaker 3: 17:45

This is a neurological disorder, because that's what they're saying ADHD is now. It's a neurological you're born with it disorder, when really and Jen and I firmly believe this like nutrition is key, you know, I think a lot of these kids could be out of the ADHD net with proper nutrition.

Speaker 2: 18:04

Nutrition, being taught how to study properly. Exercise always helps burn the sugars and things or whatever's in the body that might be called and what they call imbalances. But the truth of the matter is they don't have a clue what they're talking about. Not that I'm smarter than they are, or whatever, but when you tell me that a sign that a baby is possibly mentally ill is because you pick the baby up and if the baby looks away, that is a possible sign of mental illness. And I ask the psychiatrist well, if that's true, where's the mother standing when you pick him up? Because that's where the child is going to look. You know where's the father standing. That's where the child. That's their lifeline. Even children are smart enough to know where the lifeline is. So if you, a stranger, picks them up, the child is going to look away. You know they put kids in foster homes, probation homes they take. Let's go with the foster home.

Speaker 1: 19:22

Yeah, I want you to talk about this, fred, because this is a big, if you can speak to the foster home piece to this and the probation piece to this, because it ties right into on your website, these national and we have to talk about this because this is really. I mean, you're such an advocate, people need to hear this. Three national resolutions, two from the NAACP and one from the National Caucus of Black State Legislators, supported children's rights to not be subjected to coercive psychotropic drugs and to stop the psychotropics in the foster care as well as like the electroshock piece. So talk about this within foster care, please.

Speaker 2: 20:02

Well, the thing is is when you look into the foster care system and probation system and all of these so-called juvenile justice type systems, they mass drug the children. You know they line them up in the morning a lot of times and here they are out there making these kids take their meds before they even get started. You know, I can tell you a story on how we got one kid in particular when we had our own probation homes and we were known for taking the kids that everybody else couldn't handle, and I guess that was part of my mission in life and that's what we wanted, and I guess that was part of my mission in life and that's what we wanted. We get a call that this kid is refusing to take his medication, and so I go to meet with the kid and this is all true. Right here I walk in, I see the kid and I said do you want to talk to me? He said not really. I said if I asked you for five minutes, would you give me that? He said do you want to talk to me? He said not really. I said if I got asked you for five minutes, would you give me that? He said yeah. I said they say you have ADHD. He said yeah, that's what they say.

Speaker 2: 21:24

I say what's the longest you ever talked to a girl on the phone? He looked at me. He said hours. I said did she become your girlfriend? He said yeah. I said OK, what's the longest you played Nintendo? That's what they were playing back then, hours, all day. You know. Do you ever win? Yeah, have you ever read a full comic book? Yeah, ever played a full game of basketball? Yeah, were you able to stay in tune with what was going on with your teammates and stuff? He said yeah. I said let me ask you a question. If I took you to my group home, would you want to come? He said yeah, because just on the questions that I asked him. Yeah, because just on the questions that I asked him. So here comes the social worker, the psychologist, everybody coming out. What kind of questions were those? I said the ones that matter.

Speaker 3: 22:17

The real life questions that matter.

Speaker 2: 22:19

Yes, I said it proves to me that he can pay attention to anything he's interested in. Yes, he can come with me. This guy went on to become a professional bodyguard all kind of stuff Right out of my group of friends. But we didn't make him take drugs and he was smart enough to realize the reason they were giving him drugs was to control him. That's why he wouldn't take them.

Speaker 3: 22:44

It became a power Yep, it was power, yep 100%.

Speaker 2: 22:50

We never had a problem with him. He never got in a fight in our group home. He never violated the rules. He went on to become a bodyguard, celebrity bodyguard for some people and stuff.

Speaker 2: 23:08

If you give the kids a chance and you address them properly, if you know what you're doing, you know they don't know. I'm telling you they're supposed to be the experts. Now they can give you a lot of technical stuff. But I was at the Korean consulate with my mother one time and a psychiatrist was holding court about at-risk youth. A psychiatrist was holding court about at-risk youth and everybody's all tied into him and he's talking about at-risk youth and these people don't have the chance and all of that. And I'm sitting there and I haven't said a word. And finally he couldn't take it and he said well, what do you think? You haven't said a word since you've been here. I said I really don't think you know what you're talking about.

Speaker 2: 23:49

I said answer this the kid sitting on the bus stop to get shot when there's a gang shooting, isn't that kid at risk? Isn't the kid that takes a knife to school because the bullies are beating him up at school, isn't he at risk? I said so which kid are you talking about that's at risk? How come you don't see that the environment creates a risk to all the kids? And people started mmm, mmm and I said I don't have a degree. I said I don't have a PhD. This was the first time I said it. I got it from a friend of mine. I don't have a PhD, I have a PhD. I found out I don't have a PhD. This was the first time I said it. I got it from a friend of mine. I don't have a PhD, I have a PhD. I found out I could do it. I love that. I know what's going on with this kid, because experience is an educator itself.

Speaker 1: 24:43

Oh, yes, like that's, yes, 100% Experience, subjective experience. I tell people, fred, I will say to them I'm like, listen, the doctors are the one that got you in the shit in the first place. When we're working with clients that are so medicated right, and trying so hard to change their life, you know, and people put so much stock in these, in the, in the doctorate, and in the white coat and in the, the licensure Right, and I'm like shit that got you in problem in the first place. Like that's why you're here in front of us, right. But I, I want to ask you something.

Speaker 1: 25:22

Okay, and I'm probably going to mess this up and how I'm asking this question, so, if I'm not using the right terminology here, just I don't know, jump in and just be like all right, jen, seriously, here's what you call this right, here's the PC way to say this. Okay, I want to ask you a question about this movement that has occurred over the past few years about bringing mental health resources and if you guys are not on YouTube right now watching me air quote all this shit, I'm air quoting a lot right now but bringing mental health resources into disparaged communities and this idea that communities and this idea that, okay, you're talking Inglewood, you're talking Compton, okay, significant minorities within these communities, right? Have you found that the mental health resources that get the funding or things that get poured into these communities actually does more damage? Because mental health resources equates to psychiatry, possibly like more counseling and labeling that doesn't actually help the problem at hand? Like, can you speak to that at all?

Speaker 2: 26:44

Well, I will just say this One of the most dangerous things I'm going to be real, like you, being real One of the most dangerous things that you can take a group rooted in eugenics and racism and then put them over a group of people to correct the problem. For a group of people to correct the problem. You know, when we look at some of the most, you know everybody was fighting at one time Now I'm an ex-law enforcement officer, so I'm not anti-police but everybody was fighting the fact of police brutality and stuff like that. But they didn't understand that psychiatry is far more racist than than brutal.

Speaker 2: 27:32

You know, at the time George Floyd was killed, um, with the knee to the neck and stuff. A boy named Carnegie's Fredericks was killed in the middle of institution I think he was about 14, maybe 14, for throwing a sandwich at an orderly and they put him in a position and held him until he died and he couldn't breathe either. And there's been kids six and seven years old held down by big orderlies who never came out of it alive. And then you're going to take this same system and you're going to help in the name. You know you're going to hurt people in the name of help and then say how we're doing you when this is not.

Speaker 2: 28:24

We don't have mental health in this country. We have mental control in this country. We have mental control in this country. We give kids drugs to control their behavior, not to make them smarter, brighter, quicker thinkers. We don't give them those drugs to do that. We give them the drugs to control them and like, like the Godfather said in the Godfather, you know, give it to the dark people, animals, anyway, let them lose their souls. I mean, that's kind of the whole thing that you got going on right there in the field of mental health and they're coming into our community and every single program leads to the, to the uh, the drugs right, right.

Speaker 1: 29:12

So so explain to people. When you say eugenics okay, because some people may not understand this idea of modern day eugenics what are you saying?

Speaker 2: 29:22

the and it's just simply the fact that it's based in a system that certain races are inferior to other races and some are superior to races, and you know you lock society into that type of thing and you know this one has an advantage. The book was that the bell curve years ago, where that was the whole premise of a book, about the superiority of one group over another group. And I, I I've been around all types of people all my life. I've played sports. I was a great, a good athlete and different people and we played against all types of kids and some white kids could shoot the lights out and some. You know, you can think that people got superiority and stuff like that. But if you told me, well, you can't have Kevin Durant, you got to have Larry Bird, you think that I'm a crime? You know it's like no, no. So the whole idea of this superiority thing is a fallacy. You know you can look through black history and you see people who have far less than did a lot and it's like it's just thinkers. People are spiritual beings, they can think. That's my viewpoint. And you know, I don't know if the body, if we can really prove that the body has certain genetic advantages and certain people are not. But I do know environments can create you to develop certain skills.

Speaker 2: 31:03

If I come up in a community that plays a lot of basketball, I can tell you that the kids coming out of that community will be pretty good basketball players. But if your community play a lot of football, then we're going to probably see in your community kids that come out of there. That's really good football players. I mean, it's not. In my opinion, it especially doesn't have anything to do with the way we think, because you can take a Chinese kid and put him in Compton and he'll grow up and he'll speak perfect English for the environment of Compton. Or you could take a Black kid, put him in Mexico and he'll grow up speaking Spanish. And so the mind develops wherever we are. So this whole idea that we need to go into this community that these people are mentally—no, change the environment. Create the opportunities that are needed, educate the kids properly. Get the drugs out of the community, get the crime out of the community.

Speaker 2: 32:07

Yes, this is not a pitch for the president I'd probably vote for you right now and have him a megaphone, damn it you know, I mean, I mean, yeah, you know, we, we sit here and and there are certain things to make sense. And then there's people, oh, your, your, your program is I meant to say it's such a good name, gaslight. I mean, we got people doing it People are telling us that we don't need help with the crime in the community. Well, those people speaking aren't losing the dead children. So I'm just saying we have to be able to have common sense. We have to bring the resources into the community, not just the little help the poor children. Get in here and make sure kids need get the education. How come mothers get to sit on welfare so when their children are in school, how come they're not in school? I mean, look, let's just elevate people and you'll find that all of these things of depression and all of these things will disappear as people become more and more successful. You know, yeah.

Speaker 3: 33:28

When you said get drugs out of these communities, I'm thinking get psych meds as drugs out of the community too, because systemically, the problem is, one of the problems is psychiatric medication for the impoverished is typically free. It is a free thing, like when you you don't have to go, and there was once upon a time, in the state that we're in, that it was like a $2 copay to see a therapist if you're on like Medicaid, right, if you're on public assistance. They did away with that and now also medication is free for people too. That includes psychiatric medication, that includes psychiatric medication. So when Jen and I talked to people and we're like you know better food, you know better programs, all these things, well, that takes money and people don't have money. So what is the easiest thing for them to access Free psychiatric medication? Right, right.

Speaker 2: 34:24

Right. Well, the kids know, because they'll take at school and crush up meth and and and snort it Mm. Hmm, parents don't know, the doctors know, but the kids know the kids know.

Speaker 3: 34:42

We underestimate how smart kids are.

Speaker 1: 34:45

So so this brings this brings a little twist in here to this next piece, and I don't want to go on a rant because I want you to be able to speak about this, fred, so I'm going to try to keep it simple on my end. So, terry and I for years worked in the prison system within the state that we live in, and something that we now now that we do not work for the prison system anymore um, that I personally greatly struggled with was most of the individuals that came into the prison system. I worked in four different male prison systems and in a female one they came in on psychiatric medication and in a female one they came in on psychiatric medication. Three quarters of them, to be fair on an estimate, had a history of taking those medications, and many of which started those medications when they were quite young. It was very rare that we had people come in that for the first time in their adult life they were going to start a psych med, and there's all this discussion about the revolving door and recidivism and all the things, right, okay, but something that I always noticed was I was taken back a bit by the amount and the timeframe by which these people, individuals within the prison system, had medications in their lives.

Speaker 1: 36:13

Many of them started when they were very, very young. Many of them came from very poor communities. I mean, we did not have significant amounts of inmates coming from affluent communities. Okay, there were some, don't get me wrong. And so you watch this trajectory of somebody's story starting when they were really young and a lot of times there were behavioral issues, adhd, odd, all these diagnoses that we don't even give to people anymore, right, because they were oppositional, because they were defiant, because they couldn't pay attention and these meds stayed with them for so incredibly long. Then they come into the prison system and we continue those meds. We add some, we take some away, but like 75% to 80% of the people that were in these institutions are medicated. They leave those institutions medicated and part of the thing that I always questioned one is people weren't really getting better, okay. Two, nobody wants to touch the discussion of recidivism having anything to do with psychiatric medications. Like nobody wants to touch that. So I'm kind of curious to know your lens on this, fred, and if you have any opinion on this.

Speaker 2: 37:35

Well, first of all, your observation is right on point. This is what I'm talking about when I say they set these kids up as children. When we ran our probation homes for boys 24-hour residential care facility, we wouldn't let our kids be put on medication. We lost something like $64,000 a month in funds because we refused to drug children, because we knew what the outcome would be. We had a kid and I'm going to give you this story, this kind of sums it up I'd say 16 years old, so about 6'2", maybe 3, had this scowl on his face and everybody was scared of him. They brought him to my group home. I walked through the door I'm 6'6", 260 at the time and the first thing he asked me you want to box? And I laughed at him and I said they won't let me box you, but I can take you out on the basketball court. We go out on the basketball court. He wasn't as good as me I was at one time almost pro, but this kid had strength, he was quick. So I Now on his thing.

Speaker 2: 38:58

They wanted him to go to a continuation school for bad boys and they wanted him on medication. I took him to a local high school and I took him to the football coach and the football coach did a couple of little slight drills and said bring him to me tomorrow. Now here's a kid that was supposed to go to a continuation school for bad boys and be on drugs. He graduated from the high school, he went to USC and played four years of football there and ended up playing in the NFL. This is a kid that was supposed to be on drugs. This is a kid that wasn't supposed to make it, because somebody myself thought enough of this kid to see what he was capable of. This guy now I think he does nutritional things with people and train people and stuff, but this was a kid that wasn't supposed to make. That is how these drugs are set up and this is how they snatch the future of the people, because we opened up talking about making people mental health patients for life.

Speaker 2: 40:08

The whole thing is to keep these people on these drugs and what they will not do and you can use your shoulder to do it, I'm not finished doing it they will not investigate the connection between all of these violent crimes and stuff and the psychiatric drugs. We just had this shooting in Minnesota. That's so Minneapolis. It's so bad, but nobody's asked is there a connection between that and the psychiatric drugs? What about Las Vegas? What about all these places where these dudes, people, are doing these heinous crimes? How many of these kids are on the psychiatric drug? Oh, they're on the drugs because they have a tendency to do this. Well, the drugs didn't stop it. So what good is the drug if it's the same outcome?

Speaker 3: 41:05

As long as we keep viewing the drugs only as treatment. That's the thing of evaluation and he could not deny it. Correct.

Speaker 2: 41:40

Because you can't.

Speaker 1: 41:41

Yep, yep yeah.

Speaker 2: 41:45

And the guy that was head of children and family services said how did you know that? Once the meeting was over, he said how did you know that? I said I didn't, but it was faster than that by how quick he agreed out of a home and he doesn't know his parents, where his parents are, he doesn't know what's going on and they put him with strangers and then they walk in and ask him do he feel depressed?

Speaker 3: 42:18

Yes, I would feel depressed.

Speaker 2: 42:20

All of us would, yes, see in normal behavior and they're labeling it mental illness. That's why I brought up the thing about the child. How sign of mental illness was a baby looking away? When you pick him up? Well, where is the mother standing? They're taking normal reactions, labeling them mental illness and then getting paid for it, and with all of the drugs. And then when you take the kid off the drug, he will react just like any other addict. Just because he's four years old don't mean he doesn't go through the stages of being an addict when he's been on the drug. So then he starts acting out.

Speaker 2: 43:07

So his body can get, yeah, and then they give him more drugs. And then the mother said oh, he does need these drugs. You created the condition that made him need that drug.

Speaker 1: 43:19

Right.

Speaker 2: 43:20

And that's what we're looking at.

Speaker 3: 43:23

Thank you for putting that together for me with the whole foster care situation. You know, I've thought the same thing, that the kids are overmedicated. But I didn't put it together that and this makes so much sense because the prison system was the same way. You come into the prison system, you get an assessment right away from his parents. Doesn't know if he'll ever see his parents or his siblings or anybody that he knows. Stick them in a group home environment where everybody there is sad, not knowing what's going on, a little bit hypervigilant, wouldn't you think? And they immediately get assessed. And of course they're going to pop for multiple mental health conditions, right, particularly depression.

Speaker 3: 44:08

That makes sense to me. You know it's situational. You're putting a kid in an environment that he has no idea what is going to happen to him or where anybody in his life is, and he's grieving. You know he's grieving loss and just, you know the trauma of it all. Right, I guess I never even put it together that immediate assessment, Jen. It's similar to like taking somebody off a psychiatric medication and the next week you're going to assess them for their baseline. Like that's not even an accurate assessment, Not at all. Like that is not that kid's baseline at all.

Speaker 3: 44:46

You're assessing someone in the middle of a traumatic war, essentially, and saying do you have trauma? Of course you're in the middle of a war. You have trauma right now. Right, you are responding appropriately to the environmental input that's been put in front of you. You know, and so that to me that was simple yet profound. You know to all the times that we assess people are right in the middle of something terrible that has happened to them and then we say this is you, this is your label for the rest of your life. By the way, it will never go away, starting in childhood. What do you expect these? How do you expect these kids to react?

Speaker 1: 45:52

How do you expect these kids to react? I would expect everybody there to be sad or for every behavior has a purpose. Brain fog, lethargy, low energy these are all the things that happen to us when we have to adjust to something in our environment. This is the shit that happens, no different than inmates coming into the correctional system. We just took all of you moms because 80% of the women were mothers. We stripped you of your environment. We took you. Women were mothers. We stripped you of your environment. We took you of your kids. We removed you from your life. And now here you go.

Speaker 2: 46:17

Let me tell you a story. I was 17 and we come from a basketball game and I was racing another person who ended up being a brother-in-law in the future from that incident and I got a little smart because my mother was a community activist and the cop was kind of mistreating. He was trying to show off for other cops. We didn't know it. So anyway, we ended up going to jail and while we're at jail we're laughing and stuff, because the officer is trying to search me and David Greenwood who just passed away so a great player, played in the NBA and everything. The guy was real short. Greenwood was taller than me, he was 6'9". He's standing on the bench trying to search and we're laughing and stuff. And the lieutenant walked in and he says you see those Crips back there. And we said yeah, if you don't shut up, I'm going to put you back there with those Crips. And I said if you put us back there with the Crips and we win, would you let us go without calling our parents? We win, would you? Let us go without calling our parents? The next thing I know my mother and father are at the station and the guy says anybody that's more afraid of the Crips, I mean more afraid of their parents than the Crips. Well, the thing is, when I was growing up, our parents in those days had the cure for ADHD. Yes, I'm not trying to say punish kids and whip kids. I'm just telling you, in those days, when they came into the schools and told us, they literally did this and told us we did not have to get spankings from our parents anymore and if we did, get to call the police and they basically were separating parents from kids. And yeah, we want to protect kids. But at the same time, here come the Crips and all of these gangs on the heels of this and all of these gangs on the heels of this. Because if you don't have any type of penalty for when you're misbehaving, you will just keep misbehaving. So all of us who had parents and in those times everybody on my street had two parents and all we knew to do what our parents told us to do when they said be quiet, you were quiet.

Speaker 2: 48:50

I see kids now cursing their parents out in the store and all this stuff, and the parents don't know what to do. Well, you know, my parents was able to come get him. He's not going to run this house. Now the thing is there has to be a balance. Some things you have to be able to do in the kid's life. You know what if he's running in the street? He needs to be able to hear that voice and when he hears that voice he needs to freeze. What if he gets stuck on an electrical cord in some water? What if? When? See we can.

Speaker 2: 49:26

But when they did that, it was not to help and protect kids, it was to set it up that the kids would have to come to mental health in the future and they can make money on these kids. When I said earlier, they harm in the name of help. Yeah, there are parents who have always, to this day they go overboard and hurt children and stuff, and those people need to be dealt with. But at the same time, parents need to be able to run their house, because I knew my father said if you don't know your multiplication this evening, man, you're going to have a talk. And I knew him.

Speaker 1: 50:07

You knew it that bad.

Speaker 3: 50:08

That was it. That was all you needed. You're like yep, I'll learn them, no problem. Don't want to have that kind of talk.

Speaker 2: 50:14

So the proper balance of everything is important and so that we can move on and do that. But I thought the fact that his kids that were more afraid of their parents than they were of the Crips was an indication that something good was going on in that home, because that was the kind of respect we had for our parents.

Speaker 3: 50:37

Well, it's interesting when you talked about taking parents away from children in the respect of disabling parents right from raising their children. Essentially, then the gangs come in and they end up raising the kids because the parents can't anymore. So it's like the gang violence stuff like comes in and reparents those children and we're cool with that. Not really we're not cool with that, but because you've disabled parents in the home, that that is now a risk factor that could be happening in some of these communities, if I'm hearing you correctly on that.

Speaker 2: 51:21

It's breaking up again now. Oh sorry, I can't hear you that well. Oh, but Did you?

Speaker 3: 51:28

hear me.

Speaker 2: 51:29

Jim, I did. I can't hear you that well, oh, but Did you hear me, jen?

Speaker 3: 51:33

I did I heard you, we have to. Oh, no, I think we lost you again. Fred, oh, you're here, okay. Hey, I have one last question for you, and then I want to wrap this up. How did you get involved with the Citizens Commission on Human Rights? How did that happen for you?

Speaker 2: 51:56

When a friend of mine led me to them all during that time that my son was being diagnosed with dyslexia and I was looking for solutions and they were trying to get him to a psychiatrist, my friend said, no, you need to know this information before you turn your kid over to these people. And then when I went and I seen the materials and what was going on and stuff like that, I knew it was an organization that I needed to be a part of because I saw that as part of education and things like that as part of the problem that we were facing in the black community. And these systems were were ganging up on us. See, when you put those two together education and mental health then you labeled the kid and now the teacher doesn't have to teach the kid because he has a label, the parents don't have to enforce learning because he has a label, and so you know, everything excuses him and lets him skate by.

Speaker 2: 53:07

And when we found our group homes, we found that we didn't have a kid we couldn't teach to read. We couldn't have a kid that we couldn't teach grammar or how to multiply. It was just doing it on a step-by-step basis to where he knew one step before he was taken to the next step. So if a kid doesn't know multiplication, he's going to be confused. If he can't divide, he's going to be confused when he does algebra. And so the school system with all of his wisdom didn't know that. You got to make sure that one step is firmly known before you take a kid to the next step. Well, in the probation home setting, we could take them step by step, make sure they know what was going on before they went to the next step. Well, in the probation home setting, we could take them step by step, make sure they know what was going on before they went to the next step. And we started seeing remarkable results in these kids.

Speaker 3: 53:58

I love this. This was such a wonderful conversation and, again, heartfelt. I appreciate everything that you've done in your lifetime. You've done so many things. I'd love to just sit down and just listen to your stories. You're a historian and I think it's amazing what you've done. And please keep bringing the truth and advocating for our children. Yeah, my mom heart.

Speaker 2: 54:23

If you need me for anything, I really like you guys. You ask the right questions. You're aware of what's going on. If you need me for this or any other subject that concerns the Black community, you just call me.

Speaker 3: 54:38

I will, we will. We'll have you on again, mr Shaw, for sure, 100%. I want to read a statement here for our listeners. This is our final push for MedWatch. The deadline is in October. So if you have been harmed by SSRI or SNRI withdrawal, your story matters. It doesn't matter where you are in the world. We are calling on you to submit your experience to the FDA's MedWatch system. Let's make it impossible for them to ignore us. Join us in submitting your story. Go to antidepressantinfoorg. That is another episode of the Gaslit Truth Podcast. If you've hung out with us this far, thank you for being here and thank you, reverend Shaw. I look forward to talking with you in the future and please, everyone like comment share. Look forward to talking with you in the future and please, everyone like comment share.

Speaker 2: 55:33

Subscribe and send us your Gaslit Truth at thegaslittruthpodcast at gmailcom. Thank you, guys.