An Online Community by and for People with Disabilities

I have often thought that people with disabilities and people who are gay should be natural allies, even before all of the No on Proposition 8 protestsand the subsequent rallies after election day started across the nation. The protests bring back memories of ADAPT actions I've been involved with in the past. I feel that we have many shared experiences in our battles for acceptance in life. Consider how many of us grow up in, but not of, the dominant culture,and often have to look outside our families of origin for role models and inspiration. The fact that we only rarely get the guy or girl in Hollywood productions is only a bonus. Also, all kinds of people think it's icky to contemplate members of either group having sex.

Just when you think you’ve heard everything, a story like this reminds us just how ridiculous government can be.

Eileen Wilbur was one penny short when she paid last year's water bill. Now the city of Attleboro, Mass., is threatening to take action. In a letter they paid 42 cents to mail, city officials say they'll place a lien on the blind 74-year-old's house unless she coughs up a penny by Dec. 10, according to the Associated Press. City Collector Debora Marcoccio tells The Sun Chronicle that Wilbur should have paid the balance on her account when they sent out the original bill. She says the lien notices are automatically printed. "It would be fiscally irresponsible for me to have staff weed through the bills and pull out any below a certain amount," she says, according to the paper. " And what would that amount be?"

People with disabilities across the country and specifically those in Illinois won a huge victory last week when a tentative settlement was reached in a class action suit. The settlement requires that thousands of people with disabilities living in institutions must be offered the option of living in the community. Residents of institutions across the state of Illinois will have the option of moving to small group homes and living in their communities.

Under the terms of the agreement, the 6,600 residents now living in state-funded residential facilities must be given the option to move into small group homes in their own communities. Another 15,000 people waiting for residential services would also be affected by the agreement.

I received the following announcement from a friend. Please consider how you can speak out in support of Ray and others who still face involuntary treatment.

Human Rights Alert: Involuntary Electroshock

MindFreedom International
November 7, 2008

by David W. Oaks, Director, MindFreedom International

The past Wednesday morning after the historic USA election what were you doing? I know what Ray Sandford, 54, was doing. Each and every Wednesday, early in the morning, staff shows up at Ray’s sheltered living home called Victory House in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, adjacent to Minneapolis. Staff escorts Ray the 15 miles to Mercy Hospital. There, Ray is given another of his weekly electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) treatments, also known as electroshock. All against his will. On an outpatient basis. And it’s been going on for months.

Its not too often that I get to mix two of my greatest passions in life when I sit down to write a blog entry. Those two being sports and disability activism. But, today is my lucky day I suppose. And, because the sport is hockey, its even better.

Occasionally I write about perception and instances where society is exposed to the disability experience either in a movie, print media, television program or through some other way. Sometimes this exposure is positive and helps people to come to a better understanding about life with a disability. But, there are many other times where I’m left scratching my head wondering just what the producers were thinking.

Once in a while I get asked to participate in forums or discussions about disability issues. This was the case a few weeks ago at work when I was asked to participate in a presentation for a class from Arizona State University. There were several of us on the panel who shared some very personal insights regarding our disability. Part of the discussion required us to give the official medical label or diagnosis for our disability and then to explain it in simple English.

I find it fascinating sometimes when I meet people who have disabilities who feel its important to make sure I know their label. That is, what professional or medical speak is used to explain what some in other circles might call their condition or impairment.

Ordinarily, I'd be so psyched that the traditional media is running with a story about women with disabilities.But, somehow, when the story features being shoved and pushed around by those who say they love us, there's a lot less to be happy about. Women with disabilities are way more likely to face "Intimate partner" violence, although I think most of the articles are focused on heterosexual couples...not sure how much of a difference being with a woman would make. Are the abusive partners always non-disabled? I don't think the article says for sure. The breakdown we do get is pretty horrifying:

Women with disabilities receive more threats of violence 28.4% to 15.7 for non-disabled women.

We get hurt more by our partners, by about half, 30.6% to 15.7, and face sexual coercion 19.7% to 8.2%.

I couldn't help but smile as I left the county building last Friday morning thinking that I had finally been able to do something that just about every other American has taken for granted for many years. Because of the hard work and activism of many people in the disability community I was at long last able to cast my vote independently, without the help of anyone. I know, for some of you reading this it sounds trivial. You've been able to walk/roll in to the voting booth and fill out a ballot and probably not thought twice about it. But, for some of us, this hasn't been possible.

Yes, I'm a bit late to the party and I should have been able to do this in 2006. Unfortunately, some problems prevented that from happening. Even this time, I had to wait for over half an hour while election workers tried to fire up the machine that read the ballot to me. But eventually everything worked and, after cycling through various federal, state, county and local races, I had finally done it.

I suppose it's wrong to blame my current funk on Classmates.com After all, I'm a far-from-cheerful person with a significant disability at the tail-end of Bush's America...there's no shortage of things to get down about there, not least of which that Arizona voters are poised to vote on that stupid marriage-protection ordinance again.(What? Did we stutter last time? Look, if you don't want to gay-marry someone, don't. Marriage protected)

Also, it sucks that as a PWD, I wasn't really allowed to enjoy the economic boom but I'm feeling the pinch of the bust. Anyway, as you can probably tell if you read this site with any regularity, within the last few cycles(politics-geek for "couple years",) I've become quite the political junkie.

I usually don't include internationally-focused articles that I read for this blog, but this one was so awesomely positive(and still specific) that I thought this was the best thing to come out of Belgium since fruit-topped waffles.

I have a disability, and I am pro-choice.(Although I can't always say that my life has been all about exercising a plethora of choices, more about coping with scarcity, but that is a topic for another time). However, I think it is because I know what it is like to have my bodily autonomy questioned or attacked outright, that I am solidly in favor of women making the decisions about the children they have or do not have.

Dear Americans with Disabilities,

It's a pleasure for me to join you in celebrating National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Americans with disabilities are an essential and underutilized part of our workforce. As President, I will work hard to help you achieve full equality - in the workplace, in education, and in all aspects of life.

I don't have to tell you the dismal statistics - an employment rate 40 points below that of working-age individuals without disabilities and a federal failure to meet the disability employment targets of Executive Order 13173.

I hope this will be an entertaining Pop Culture Thursday double-header this week. It's funny how that happens sometimes; some weeks there is nothing and now there are two in one day, just out of synchronicity.

With all the talk about Downs Syndrome in the news lately, it made me think about a book that has been hanging around our house for months. Despite watching a well-acted but ultimately disappointing "Lifetime" movie adaptation, I strongly recommend this book.

Though The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a work of fiction, it is immediately apparent that Ms. Edwards has done a lot of research among people with Down's Syndrome and their loved ones to bring her vision to life, and it's in the little details with which she excels.

Editors note: From time to time I publish guest articles to the DisabilityNation site. The following was written by Katherine Schneider, Ph.D. Ms. Schneider is a retired clinical psychologist and Senior Psychologist, Emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

I can't decide whether or not to picket the movie "Blindness" when it comes to a theater in Eau Claire. It's an allegory, I know, but the images in it of blind people groping and behaving badly will stay in the back of people's minds. I know--I've been blind from birth and have battled those negative images for 59 years.

This news comes from Bob Kafka of ADAPT.

Dear Advocates:

The legal prong of the "Pitchfork Approach for Social Change" has been active and notching up victories. Individuals in nursing homes, going to Court with assistance from AARP, P&a's and Social Justice lawyers, have won victories in Oregon, Illinois and Florida. (See short summaries below). Advocates efforts to get folks out of nursing homes must continue aggressively. This begins by identifying individuals who want out. This requires advocates to go in and directly speak to the folks in nursing homes to let them know there are opportunities for services in the community.

Interesting and disability-positive editorial from the The Washington Postthis week, although maybe I have become so accustomed to invisibility any coverage is like crumbs to a starving person

This week's Pop Culture Thursday(sorry I'm late again) once again centers on the able-bodied actor I'd most like to claim as an honorary crip, Hugh Laurie and his iconic alter ego, Dr. Greg House.It's funny that I found myself awaiting the chance to catch up with Season 4 so eagerly...at the beginning of the series I rolled my eyes at the thought of watching some British actor "gimp it up".(I've been burned a lot...what can I say?) Now, it's totally hard to believe Laurie doesn't walk like that all the time.

I admit I am prepared to believe the worst about Sarah Palin, first for the idiotic Clinton pander and the somewhat unappetizing combination of aw-shucks girliness with Church Lady sanctimony, that for whatever reason a great number of my countrywomen eagerly embrace. And you can't follow electoral politics long without recognizing holes between behavior and stated rhetoric.

So I was prepared to believe it when segments of the blogosphere claimed "Palin cut Special Needs Funding."

Please note that you will likely not see much in the way of new content on the DisabilityNation site for the next two weeks. I'm going on vacation and will be trying to unhook from the world of technology. No blogging and no podcasts. Its possible that Erika may have a few items to post but I will not be publishing anything until October 1.

Thanks for your understanding.

The Palin pick reminds me of nothing so much, as this.

A few springs ago, during one of the latest rounds of budget "chicken"(wherein Republicans insist they're going to cut everything, and Democrats insist we win if everything is about the same as before) I went to a protest, no doubt staged by those wily, do-nothing community organizers in between latte lunches and a few brisk hours of heartland bashing, to protect the Division of Developmental Disabilities community-based attendant program, which I benefit from.

Those of you in the Nation who have been advocating for years for closer examination of the financial picture relating to funding and operations of institutions and nursing homes probably know this. However, for the benefit of everyone else I want to make a point of identifying just how much of an economic engine locking away our brothers and sisters with disabilities has become for states across the country. In this case, its the state of Kentucky and an all to common problem. Housing people with disabilities in institutions generates revenue and jobs for areas where both are extremely hard to come by.

I think that "King of The Hill" is one of the great underrated satires on television, despite constantly losing column inches to the more gag-centered "Family Guy(although the talking dog and evil baby sometimes kill me too.)

I happened to catch one of my favorites on repeats last night, although if you are cautious regarding "King Of The Hill" and disability humor after the painfully unfunny set of ADA- mocking jokes in season 3's episode"Junkie Business" you are not alone.

I must admit to not being a disability-studies powerhouse like Miss Crip Chick.

I came late, and rather haphazardly, to anything that resembles crip theory. Maybe that's why I'm so interested in how those of us with disabilities are perceived within the larger culture; I was well into my adulthood before I realized that we had anything like a unifying culture of our own. Of course, I was seventeen before I ever got to experiment with the internet, so in many ways I already feel that my understanding is a bit...antique on many issues

. Reading last year's Telethon Blog Carnival brought back so many memories.

Last week it was reported that the National Federation of the Blind, NFB, had reached a settlement in its suit against Target Stores Inc. THe case has been going on for a few years now and, while the end result promises blind people greater access to Target's web site, the longer term impact on access to other sites in cyber space remains cloudy at best.

I'm fascinated by NY Governor David Paterson.

I'd love to interview him for this blog sometime, but I don't know him, of course. I actually had an instructor in a magazine-writing class that acted as if I should know every crip in America...it was flattering and insulting at the same time.Like I could call Steven Hawking and belt out "Yo, Steve! How's it hanging?' as if there aren't millions of us. As if famous disabled people would get so dazzled by the matching chrome, they wouldn't remember to have their gatekeepers keep me out, even if I am polite and don't say "How's it hanging?"

Pop Culture Thursday

Today I'm catching up with one of my favorite TV shows: House, MD. I missed a lot of episodes last year, due to a scheduling conflict so my loss has turned into DisabilityNation's gain, hopefully.

I can already hear Rush Limbaugh foaming at the mouth about this one. He'd probably call it another in a series of liberal-spawned "frivolous lawsuits", given that the defendant is a tourist hotel and host to baseball camps. Critics of the ADA rarely think our amusement is worth getting worked up about, especially when the State of New York orders a business to pay it back $20,000 for its access-violation investigation.

To our critics, we are seldom more than a noise to be silenced.

I read this article about the new community housing options offered in Illinois, as a response to the younger disability community, and there's a certain irony in it.

As a single woman in an urban center with a disability,I find myself searching for many things. But I face one search that Carrie Bradshaw never had to stick in her MacBook: the search for the perfect wheelchair.

You'd think the dizzying array of choices available since the Everest & Jennings dominated eighties
.(weren't those colors awful? I had most of them, too: that sickening greenish-brown, the lackluster blue, the not-really red) the lighter materials, and the zippier styles would make Wheelchair Purchase angst a thing of the past

When I was a kid I had a very complicated wheelchair with many tiny movable parts. So on our vacation to Disneyland, being that we would be riding in a friend's car, my parents decided to leave the marvel of engineering at home in favor of renting one of the Mouse's more standard models. Mom still gets emotional about what came next. Another tourist, lame Hawaiian shirt and all, mixed my party in with two little boys who were goofing off in the rental chairs.

As we draw nearer to the close of the Summer Olympics and the wall-to-wall coverage of the various events, stories of the toll these games have taken on the Chinese people continue to leak out, despite incredible efforts by the government of that nation to hide the reality of life in China. Now we read of two women in their late 70's and how they have been sentenced to a year in a labor camp as part of what the chinese government refers to as a re-education program. While you pause and wonder what threat two little old ladies could pose to China, know also that one of them is blind and has other disabilities.