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"
