It’s commencement day at the Moody Bible Institute, and the front steps outside Culbertson Hall look like a flea market. Furniture, bags of clothing, luggage, and boxes are strewn about in a maze of piles through which students mad-dash between Wells Street and the hall, where an information desk is surrounded by other students asking God knows what. Taped to the wall next to a plaque marking a spot near the spot where Dwight Moody decided to establish the school is the cardboard sign “Convention 2002,” with an arrow. The convention is in Alumni Auditorium, a plain white room in which every seat comes with a foldout desk and a Bible. About 80 of the seats are occupied by the conventioneers, a group of conservatively dressed people ranging in age from mid-20s to mid-70s, many wearing name labels and pins made from wooden ice cream spoons painted white, with decorative flowers glued under the inscription “Help Save our MHC.” If a student looking for a hand to move a couch doesn’t know the initials stand for “mental health centers,” he might think this a convention of missionaries.
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Volunteers climb the aisles to pass the collection basket for Moody, which has donated use of its auditorium to the Chicago Coalition to Save Our Mental Health Centers. Today’s convention is only the second in the coalition’s 11 years of existence–and the first to be attended by a health commissioner. That’s Dr. John Wilhelm. Hands clasped on the table in front of him, he sits flanked by the convention’s cochairs, Diane Plotkin and Kevin Birnbaum, as coalition board member Robert Koptik–who’s a “consumer” studying to be a social worker–says a few words.
Prior to the convention, Wilhelm assured coalition members that clinics would stay open. But Birnbaum says, “A verbal promise not to close the centers is not good enough. Once they’re closed, they’re gone.” He invites the audience to approach the stage, where an elderly man in a yellow T-shirt holds a microphone. A line immediately begins to form. Because it’s after two o’clock and the convention must end by four, each conventioneer will have just one minute to speak his or her piece.
The social worker says he and his coworkers were told to stay away from the convention. “My superior told me that I can get fired for consumer advocacy.” The volunteer holding the microphone asks Wilhelm, “Is that true?”
Wilhelm says he’s been keeping track of the number of people he’s listened to (he thinks it was 26) and taking notes. He agrees that the centers are necessary. From the back of the hall, the former patient whose wife said he owed his life to the centers calls out, “Yer not a politician, yer a nice guy.” Wilhelm replies that being commissioner requires him to be both a salesman and a politician. But he’ll take the compliment.
Two women have brought proposals. Elaine suggests creating an advisory board made up of consumers and current and retired staff to meet with Wilhelm on Bureau of Mental Health policies. Kelly proposes a liquor tax specifically targeted to raising money for mental health centers. Over the past few years the city has spent twice as much on street planters as it has on mental health, she says. The conventioneers know their place in the pecking order. They may be mentally ill, but they’re not crazy.
