Saturday, July 12, 2025
12 - 3 PM
Battery Park Burlington, Vermont
March Route
We will assemble in a parking lot located at King Street and South Winooski Avenue (essentially, one-half block east of the Hood Plant parking lot).
The march officially begins at King Street and South Winooski Avenue. Begin on South Winooski Avenue (at King Street). Turn left (west) on Main Street, turn right (north) on Church Street, turn left (west) on Pearl Street into Battery Park.
Parking Lot
Battery Park
Program
1 PM Welcome: Betsy Hoekstra, Emcee
Laura Ziegler, Speaker
Caro Liu, Speaker
Vivan Bose-Pyne, Speaker
Sascha Dubrul, Keynote Speaker
Music: Jasmine Marshall
MJ Griego, Speaker
Leah Harris, Keynote Speaker
Music: Instant Bullshit
3:00 PM Closing
3:10 PM Group Photo
Need support during Mad Pride 2025? We’re here to help you! We have volunteers who are trained and ready to support you throughout the day.
>> If you are needing medical attention, find street medic volunteers wearing a red plus sign!
>> If you are in need of safety support, find de-escalation volunteers wearing pink bandanas!
>> If you are in need of peer support, find our peer support volunteers with blue bandanas!
About the Keynotes
LEAH HARRIS
Leah Harris is an advocate, facilitator, and writer educating about the harm caused in the name of mental health care, and to put forth a new paradigm of what it means to care.
Since 2001, Leah has been fortunate to be a part of liberation movements created by and for mad, mentally ill, neurodivergent, and disabled people (mMIND). Leah has been with them in fierce solidarity ever since.
In all of their work, Leah seeks to elevate the perspectives of lived experience — people who possess invaluable wisdom and insights on the public policies and practices that directly impact them, but whose voices are still too rarely heard in the public conversation on mental health.
For twenty years, Leah’s focus in writing, education, and advocacy has been the abolition of all forms of coercion and involuntary intervention in mental health care.
Leah studies the policies and practices of the last half-century that continue to haunt us today in America, and they uplift ideas and innovations led by people with lived experiences globally that reflect a more compassionate, consent-based, public health and human rights-based approach to support and care.
Leah is also interested in the influence of AI and tech on mental health, the intersections between menopause and psychosocial disability, peer supported approaches for altered states/psychosis, the medicalization of psychedelics, undoing sanism, and social justice approaches to suicide prevention and care.
Leah’s reported memoir-in-progress, NONCOMPLIANT, weaves their family’s narrative alongside the larger history of mental health care in America, making an urgent case for abolition of harmful, coercive practices and institutions.
SASCHA ALTMAN DUBRUL
Over the 12 years Sascha Altman DuBrul has spent working with the Icarus Project, Sascha has had countless direct experiences of peer-to-peer healing and support with others who shared similar struggles and diagnoses. During that time Sascha has learned that a lot of what society teaches us about “mental illness” just isn’t true. The language of “disease,” “disorder” and “dysfunction” often masks that we are deeply resilient beings who are doing our best to heal in circumstances that are themselves dysfunctional. In other words: the society we live in is sick and it can be hard to try and fit into a sick society.
Sascha’s experiences gave him skills for understanding and working with various expressions of madness. He learned that, while for some people psychiatric medicine can be very useful, there are so many different ways to find healing and stability. One of the foundations to healing is knowing there are other people out there who understand you and have your back.
Along his journey, Sascha has studied and practiced many healing modalities including Internal Family Systems, generative somatics, and Open Dialogue, and he has had a long term meditation and yoga practice. Sascha also grows gardens and saves seeds and learns many lessons from the wild. He has been keeping a written journal for 25 years and writing his dreams down every morning for a long time. Sascha uses these tools to continue his own healing as well to inform his work with others.
Sascha received his Masters from Hunter College School of Social Work in 2016 and spent several years working in the public mental health system in New York City with young people recently diagnosed with psychotic disorders. Working inside the public system left Sascha more convinced than ever that we need creative and visionary ways of working with extreme emotional experiences. It reinforced his belief that people with lived experiences of madness have an important role to play in evolving the way our society relates to psychic difference. The current system does not offer much space for our voices to be heard as change-makers; through this practice Sascha wants to help grow a network of people who feel empowered to advocate for themselves and others.
Sponsors TRAILBLAZERS
Disability Rights Vermont
Intentional Peer Support
LMW Design
MadFreedom Advocates
Pathways Vermont
Wilda L. White Consulting
ADVOCATE
Vermont Center for Independent Living
ALLY
Washington County Mental Health Services
PARTNERS
Another Way
Counseling Service of Addison County, Inc.
Health Care & Rehabilitation Services (HCRS)
Howard Center
SUPPORTERS
Clara Martin Center
HireAbility
Vermont Psychiatric Survivors
CONTRIBUTORS
Community Health Centers – Safe Harbor
Out in the Open
Veronica Russell
Mad Pride Day Planners & Volunteers
This is the non-exhaustive list of folks who helped plan Mad Pride 2025. From attending planning committee meetings, leading fundraising efforts, sharing ideas and feedback, asking questions, and generally being part of the Mad Pride Community.
PLANNING COMMITTEE
Aaron Schiff
Amey Dettmer
Ashley Bernstein
Calvin Moen
Chris Hansen
Chris Nial
Ed Paquin
Eric Laufe
Esmé Knoke
Grace Shneider
hannah sorila
Hilary Melton
Ken Russell
Laura Cushman
Leia Falco
Leslie Nelson
Lindsey Owen
Malaika Puffer
Neilah Rovinsky
Nico Oldfield
Rev. Mark Hughes
Sarah Launderville
Zack Hughes
MadFreedom Advocates (MFA) is a grassroots, non-profit organization run by and for psychiatric survivors, mad folks, and others marginalized by the mental health system. We’re working towards equal rights, better services, and ending discrimination. MadFreedom Advocates works across Vermont to support leadership, education, and advocacy for people with lived experience of trauma, institutionalization, neurodivergence, extreme states, or other marginalization by sanism.
Thank you for attending Vermont Mad Pride 2025! We’d love to hear about your experience — scan the code below and share your thoughts! Your feedback is important to us and will be taken into consideration while planning Vermont Mad Pride 2026.
