- Disability Pride Approach
- Reimagining of Representation
- Schalk's Recommendation

Alternatives for how Non-Profits and Social Justice Organizations Should Interact with Disability

Schalk notes that this rhetoric playing on ableist fears by activists of disablement, incapacitation, and loss of autonomy are magnified with the  use of the term vegetable to describe Byers. Schalk also notes this usage is directly in contrasts to the Black Panthers coalition work with disability organizations.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Schalk argues that by collaborating with psychiatric disability activist groups the BPP gained the nuanced context needed to cover psychiatric abuse while the BPP added the context of their race-centered approach which allowed for intersectional critiques of psychiatric abuse that were not being discussed by white disabled activists at the time.

Use of Coalition Organizing to Not Distance

The appeal noted in the article title is that the probation department is threatening to revoke his parole.

Byers Legal Troubles and Parole

The Black Panther party used the phrasing "human vegetable" to emphasize the harm of psychosurgery and forced pharmaceutical treatments on Black, poor, and incarcerated people, particularly as they believed these treatments targeted activists. However, this rhetoric frames disablement as the ultimate harm of white supremacist control—superseded only by death. Consequently, it implies that people harmed by state-sponsored disabling violence are reduced to "human vegetables" and can no longer act as activists.

The Black Panther's Use of 'Human Vegetable' as a Symbol of Oppressive Violence

Schalk, Sami. Black Disability Politics, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478027003

Black Disability Politics

The work of the Black Panther in fighting psychosurgery shows that their intersectional, race-centered activism was necessarily coalitional and required alliances between nondisabled Black people, non-Black disabled people, and Black disabled people. These alliances were forged by the BPP highlighting the connection between prisons and mental health facilities in a way that did not minimize either experience. 

The BPP's work is another example of how Black Disability Politics can be enacted without the need for an explicit mention of disability.

The Black Panther's Activism Around Psychosurgery as Black Disability Politics

- Byers experience of racism in the army and links to suicidal ideation
- Byers' race being represented as a key factor in his treatment at the hospital
- Byers' mental disability being framed as produced and sustained from racist and ableist social structures.

How the Article Emphasizes Race and Racism

"V.A. Hospital Pays For Human Guinea Pigs: Performs Psychosurgery on Black Oakland Youth," was the third and final article published in the Black Panther about Lou Byers, published a week after "Mother of Psychosurgery Victim Appeal for Community Help."

"V.A. Hospital Pays For Human Guinea Pigs: Performs Psychosurgery on Black Oakland Youth"

Two articles on Lou Byers show the enactment of Schalk's third approach by the Black panther by  stating "the Black Panther Party's Free Legal Aid and Educational Program is looking into various resources so as to assist Lou Byers" and the final article states that Byers' mother with the aid of the Black Panther Party is seeing legal and medical help for her son. 

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