The indomitable Rusty Selix is a co-author of the Mental Health Services Act and the former longtime head of the CA Council of Community Behavioral Health Agencies. His decades of advocacy have transformed the landscape for mental health treatment in California.

We reprint here a tribute we wrote for a 2017 gala honoring his work:

What makes a champion.
A voice that holds true and steady when others go silent.
Eyes that see injustice where others look away.
Arms that never tire of waving the banner for equity, because brain illness is not a moral failing.
You, Rusty, are a champion.
We salute you for all the lives that have been changed because you fought, and won, and fought some more.