Mr. Peter Pong the Pelican has been in the consumer movement ever since 1965, when he was fed so much Thorazine he couldn't fly and then told that the treatment was successful because thinking he was a bird and could fly was part of his delusional system.

After he founded a successful program teaching Ukrainian egg design and other egg art to local children (in an effort to give them something pleasant to do instead of merely waiting until they were old enough to join the gangs that ruled Loisada) which had work exhibited in the American Crafts Museum, Pong's doctor switched his diagnosis from schizophrenia to bipolar disorder, something he hasn't quite gotten used to. But as a Bipolar Bird he has pride and his specialty is advocacy in the media and for those who are hospitalized.

He isn't against treatment, just against the barbarity of most of which passes for treatment these days. He believes mental patients need to form a movement and engage in non-violent (never passive) resistance to have their needs met. His heroes are Gandhi and Thoreau and the leaders of the Stonewall Uprising. He sees analogies between consumers in America and the Untouchables in India and Gays and Lesbians here prior to Gay Liberation, as well as to AIDS patients, who so successfully won funding and acceptance through their advocacy.

But Peter wants more than freedom from discrimination and adequate treatment, he wants to be part of a Proud and Mad nation, whose citizens take medications if they choose to do so, to treat symptoms which they themselves find unpleasant. Apart from trying their best not to annoy other people, he wants to be allowed to think, dress, and talk differently from Chronically Normal Persons, whom he sees as wimps because thehey would be knocked out by a single one of the pills he takes by the handful every day.