Taken from Long Letter in: www.spkpfh.de (German/English)

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Not everybody, and there among very sophisticated people, knows that also for patients there exist channels to express their protest, just like there exist channels for the now old and overcome class from the last century, means: the working class.

Quite in common the general strike has disappeared in the trade union houses, and in the SPK we could realize the named fact each day, if we looked out of the window of the SPK at the windows and at the doors of the trade union house there opposite which - quite on the contrary to the coming and going, discussing and doing in the SPK up from the second day of March - was more likely to be compared with a mausoleum, or say: a dolmen in the still existing stone age, than with a channel for protest, regardless for or against whom or whatever it could have been.

Quite on the contrary to the police headquarter there opposite the people behind the windows there in the trade union house seemed not to mean us any harm. One year later, when we pinned our placards onto the window panes of our general assembly room, one year later in March 1971, some women there opposite opened their windows beckoning us with their hands. When we were in prison, also some German trade union leaders joined the protest in favour of the "political prisoners", trade union leaders, who for the rest had spent some time in the concentration camps of Hitler, or better to say: in the concentration camps of Nazi-doctors like Mengele, Heyde, Brandt and so on. From the SPK patients there in prison (see our texts under the headline The way out of torture is paved with broken doctors) those protests in favour of the "political prisoners" became almost not even noticed, because they (the "political prisoners") obviously had nothing to do with protest of illness, but quite on the contrary with caring about the not existing health, thus favouring our enemies.

Of course also English speaking people can keep their illness far away from the doctors, just as we did in SPK, just as we do in the Patientenfront until nowadays. That is a very useful channel to forward the protest of illness, there not to forget, that need creates inventions (necessity is the mother of invention).

If all the workers, the she and the he had decided to do a life-long general strike against the doctors, neither the police and the military, nor the every government could suffocate it or even keep it hidden.

Of course you can withdraw your illness, just the same, as you can withdraw your working force from the industry. In the latter case you have to demand for higher wages. In the other case you have to demand for nothing, because the patients have to do it by themselves, helping each other, liking illness in its ugliest forms of expression, learning to control all ideologic, economic and social conditions there around, changing by that and besides that a lot of things in an indeed revolutionary way.

More and more channels will arise from that, and some of them good enough to put and to keep the protest of illness in force. There is no need to look back to old and well-established channels of the past.

Well, again I am, as I hope, sufficiently aware that if I here make use of the sign Generalstreik (general strike*), I have to take in count reproaches like that, to suffer from ambitious tendencies or even from megalomania. Some years ago such reproaches emerged against the SPK in English speaking literature and just we have taken back some of them to our homes from the book-fair in London.

Therefore we here have to take down some more details and memories concerning the SPK-March in 1970.

In March 1970 there are common calls and claims in the press to refer SPK patients back to the doctors, if there is need or if the collective can't get along in some serious cases. Well the collective can get along and nobody wants to get or gets referred. Thus a "general strike" in permanence against the doctors. Just on the contrary the doctors refer former doctor-patients, who now insist that they become referred to the patients' collective, thus to the SPK.

They have no writings of a doctor or of anybody else with them, when they come, don't get paid their expenses for a car, if they need, regardless that we ourselves of course do it with our own cars, if we are asked for.

The doctors, belonging to the chief-council of the Faculty of Medicine, e.g. the chief of the Clinic for Skin and Sexual Diseases, sent also spies to us, just in March 1970, there among a beauty of a medical-student-girl, to whom the chief of the named clinic has offered more financial advantages, if she succeeds. There have not yet passed the first fifteen minutes and a short talk * about political, ideologic and revolutionary identity, as the lady-spy discloses the reason of her coming, joining the patients. She takes part in SPK for two months, going also with her boy-friends to their homes, but then decides to continue her studies at another university in Germany or abroad, because her chief-doctor, there in Heidelberg, had withdrawn from her and even seemed to suffer from distrust of her. Of course there had not been involved a later on by the doctors so-called "secret working photo circle" in this spy-case.

Only some few examples for channels of illness in protest, March 1970:

• On 5 or 6 March there was a phone call - just as there took place a discussion between an anarchist leader of the students, who for the rest was just on the way to withdraw from Heidelberg because of his, as to expect, father-in-law, who was one of the highest judges in Western Germany, as he told, and he was withdrawing in order and there related to do his examinations, main-condition for a lucky marriage with the high girl, as he added - just in this moment there was a call, that an 8 or 9 years old child, sleeping in the second storey of a bed (her elder sister there in the first storey of the two-storeyed bed), had just fallen out of bed and down to floor and now suffered from a laceration at her forehead. She was at home with her mother.

• About half a year later on we learned from the media propaganda of the Heidelberg chief of all neurologists there in Western Germany, that all doctors expected what there would happen, if some SPK-women would become pregnant. We therefore collected reports of women, who in the past and then in no relation to later on SPK-activities had become pregnant, had gone to a doctor for an abortion, had been ordered by them to get blood from a butcher, to colour themselves the inner sides of their thighs and to come again to him (to the doctor), thus feigning a very severe case of emergency in beginning pregnancy. They had to forward to the doctors the wanted amount of money for and because under precautions, and coming later on to them, in order to have sex, whenever the doctors wanted. Well, within the next months there came together about half a dozen of the named reports, which we, for the rest, never needed.

Yes there exist a lot of channels, channels to withdraw illness from the doctors, just like in former times the workers could withdraw their labour force, not to speak about the possibilities, which come together, if there in modern times illness is collected in addition to the labour force, just as it is the case indeed nowadays in every she and in every he. Look also at the second moment of our Krankheitsbegriff, consisting in the word dependence-of-wages (Lohnabhaengigkeit)*, there already in the days of the beginning of the SPK in March 1970, and sooner.

*means: the modern slave is "free", because there is no immediate owner or chief possessing him; he is only in the possession by money, thus: wage; compare also reification and ask who is the thing, either the money or the person or both or all, thus: every-thing among everything. Of course she or he doesn't grasp it. Why? Look at the first moment of the Krankheitsbegriff: Entfremdung (alienation). In the context of SPK alienation means: Gattungsentfremdung (alienation from human species), Gattung in mankind still being replaced by money.