MDA Telethon: Wrong Message Overshadows Original Good Intentions.

The following text comes from a blog I just discovered: Miss Crip Chick’s Weblog…thanks to a recent comment from Kara:

"Jerry Lewis is the host of the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s Annual
Telethon, a telethon that occurs every Labor Day to raise funds for
cures by using disabled people as posterchildren. Disabled people
protest the telethon because of its outdated, negative portrayal of
disabilities. These images that the telethon promotes sticks in
people’s minds and continually serve as a barrier for disabled people.
Disability is not the problem, but rather the attitudes and barriers
that society places on us."

"What can we do? Protest. Write a Letter to the Editor. Tell people
about the charity, medical, and social model of disability. Blog. Kara
and I, along with the Disability Activist Collective (website coming
soon) are organizing a campaign against the telethon and the charity
model of disability. We need bloggers (not only
disability bloggers but all! feminist, queer, woc, environmentalist,
activists, great time to build alliances) who will agree to write about
this! The campaign will work much like a blog carnival and will be
heavily publicized in listservs and other sources of media. We
encourage you to participate! To participate, please a comment or email
us a consciouslycrip@gmail.com
We will be announcing the campaign on Thursday via media and will tell
them to check the website postings on Monday. The campaign will be
posted on Kara’s site."

Visit this link for more information, including "A template letter the Disability Activist Collective wrote for you to use…"

Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University View all posts by stevekuusisto