To fight the proposal of the center the Black Panther Party actively worked with disability rights and women's rights groups, including but not limited to the Committee Opposing Psychiatric Abuse of Prisoners and the California Mental Health Coordinating Council to form a coalition to protest the creation of the center with state funding. The formation of the coalition led to Hiestand testifying in front of the California State Senate and the filing of an administrative complaint against the center. The coalition also worked in concert with student and faculty protests at UCLA to successfully prevent the funding and creation of the center. 

Black Panther Party Coalition Organizing around Opposition to the Center

The Black Panther Party's opposition to the center was based on the problems with psychosurgery highlighted in articles in the Black Panther including the potential for abuse among marginalized populations and the problems with biologization of violence.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

The aim of the center, even after revisions and pubic response periods, was to use the center to work on psychiatric and neuroscience research aimed at discovering causes and treatments for what was presumed to be biologically driven violent behaviors. The draft proposals also included planned research focusing on urban population, mental hospital patients, prisoners, and women. 

Purpose of The Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence

Schalk hones in on how the article specifically emphasizes "hospital administrators" along with prison wardens as individuals who wield the weapon of psychosurgery as an example of how the Black Panther isn't just highlighting psychosurgery as a genocidal tool, but in particular the BPP is aware of the dynamics of racism, classism, and ableism, present in psychiatric treatment and how these dynamics lead to abuse of multiple marginalized groups.

Black Disability Politics in "Tearing Out Our Thoughts: Psychosurgery and the Black Community"

Hilliard was not the only incarcerated member of the BPP who recognized the disabling and then neglect and abuse of disabled inmates at psychiatric facilities - and due to publications such as Hilliard's autobiography, this definitely informed the Black disability politics of the BPP. 

Affect of Inmates Accounts on Black Disability Politics of the BPP

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

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