Month: July 2012

By Angel Lemke

Just a couple weeks ago, I wrote this, in my (overdue) seminar paper for my course in Ethics After Postmodernism: “[I]t is really discomfort that motivates ethical action. Rorty argues that ‘it is best to think of moral progress as a matter of increasing sensitivity, increasing responsiveness to the needs of a larger and larger variety of people and things’ (429, Rorty’s emphasis); we should understand ‘sensitivity’ here to mean not just a vague awareness of the other, but of an actual felt sense that the other is if not a part, at least of extreme importance to our relational selves such that in cases of injustice ‘a failure to intervene would make us uncomfortable with ourselves’ (430, Rorty’s emphasis). In this conceptualization, comfort becomes not a capitulation—for example, remaining in the closet at family gatherings in order to make one’s homophobic grandmother comfortable—but an ever-receding horizon at which we continually aim. In this conceptualization, no single person or group’s comfort takes greater priority; or, as the Buddhist tradition has it, ‘No one is healed until everyone is healed’. . .We might ask, in our example, first, that our homophobic grandmother simply acknowledge our same-sex partner’s existence, rather than expecting her immediate transformation. Discomfort becomes a tool that serves a pedagogical purpose in our ongoing journey toward true collective comfort rather than merely being an unpleasant feeling that we would all like to avoid.” I’m not sure that passage says anything new to those of you who are involved, one way or another, in anti-oppression work. I’d venture that it’s a bedrock principle of the movement, finding discomfort a productive site for growth and self-reflection. But right now, it seems strangely prescient. I cite my paper because I’m about to make some people uncomfortable. And I want to make sure they know: it’s not for nothing. It’s because I think we can all be better than we are. Rather, I should say that I’m about to refuse to make some people I love feel comfortable. When the latest Chick-fil-a flap started popping up in my Facebook feed, my initial reaction was, “Um, this is news?” I briefly considered posting or linking to posts that listed Chick-fil-a alongside the myriad other organizations with leadership who spout hate (The Salvation Army, for instance) or who try to put on gay friendly faces while still funneling money to anti-gay politicians and initiatives (Target). But by the time the Jim Henson Company posts started, I felt pretty much like a commenter on a friend’s post who wrote:

“I've been avoiding chik-fil-a for years because of the homophobia, and when I've mentioned that I wouldn't buy from them or some of the two dozen other openly gay-bashing companies out there, thatI see fit to abstain from, I got scoffed at. But lo and behold, when a muppet makes a stand, we all jump into that bandwagon. And don't get me wrong, I approve and I'm not trying to be all hip about it, but chik-fil-a is hardly the only corporation that has been openly endorsing anti-gay movements and since we all have google, why does it take a talking frog to get people to notice something?” In short, my attitude was “Over it,” followed by an eye roll and some muttering about how they probably use factory farm chickens, too, and how no one does their homework about where their money really goes, and the more things change, and other jaded leftist mutterings, etc, etc. A general resignation to the apathy of the masses. But then a strange thing started happening. People who have for years presented themselves to me as straight allies—not terribly active ones, but people who don’t oppose same sex marriage and have more than one “gay friend” and are generally good people—started acting very strangely. They weren’t acting apathetic at all. They seemed to care about this issue. . .or at least they cared about it enough to want to make it go away, to make it seem as though it shouldn’t have been an issue in the first place. First, a straight male friend interrupted our text conversation to ask if we could still be friends if he had dinner at Chick-fil-a. I thought was a bad joke, and did what I do when bad jokes fall flat; I didn’t respond. When he checked in at Chick-fil-a later on foursquare, I started thinking about the position such a text put me in if it were—as it appeared—in earnest. The way the question was posed, my options were either say, “Sure, I’m cool with you knowingly providing profits to folks who think I’m an abomination” or “No, I’m another one of those angry lesbians who’s all ‘sensitive’ and ‘political’ and ‘making a ‘big deal’ out of things.’” You know, some days you just don’t feel like fighting the good fight. Even when you TOTALLY are a sensitive, angry political lesbian. Since there was no good answer in the multiple choices, I left the question blank, in hopes that the questioner would independently recognize the design flaw in the exam. And someone at HuffPo did a better job of addressing the “making a big deal out of things” response better than I could, anyway. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/conor-gaughan/chick-fil-a-homophobia_b_1711566.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false) Then this popped up in my Facebook feed: “Being conservative doesn’t mean I can’t love everyone. . .Straight, gay, AND chick-fil-a :).” I’ve spent a long time puzzling over what that one means. The best I can come up with is that it’s an argument that fast food patronage is apolitical. I’ve never been to a Chick-fil-a. I had to look up how to spell it today when I sat down to write. I’ve lived in Ohio all my life, and by the time they started to penetrate this market, I already knew about the heinous politics, and I was making a general effort to eliminate fast food from my diet, for both political and health reasons, so I just never went. What I am beginning to gather, however, is that they make one hell of a chicken sandwich. I mean, it must be the best chicken sandwich some folks have had in their entire lives. It must be a life-changing, willing-to-risk-life-and-limb-for-a-taste-of-that-fine-fine-chickeny-goodness kind of sandwich. Why else would so many people who are avowedly not-homophobic be trying so hard to justify their continued patronage? Though I loathe most of the national dialogue on gay marriage on all sides (there’s more than two), and will rattle on in snarky-leftist-Michael-Warner-and-Dean-Spade-quoting glee about how marriage is the wrong goal, I can’t deny that there has been much change since I came out, only a decade and a half ago, and that I fully expect to see gay marriage legalized, for better AND worse, in my lifetime. And what I think is going on in my Facebook feed and among my more casual straight allies is the gradual realization that it is going to require more from them than “liking” the I Support Gay Marriage in Ohio page. That it is going to require more than having some gay friends. They might have to have uncomfortable conversations with their family members. Or their church communities. Or their co-workers. They might have to give up their chicken. This is where the rubber meets the road, folks. Put up or shut up time. This is when being an ally gets uncomfortable, when you have to give up some of your privilege. I think you’re starting to realize that, and I think some of you want us queers to say it’s okay to chicken out. I’m here to say that it’s not. A couple years ago, Sarah Schulman’s Ties that Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences was a devastating read for me, not because it told me anything I didn’t already know, but because it was so angry, because it galvanized my anger, and because it made it clear to me that I could not go on making straight folk feel comfortable about their heterosexism. It’s pretty plain in Schulman’s account: “Are homophobic family members evil? Well, not if you be

lieve that evil does not have a human face. Yes, the people who won’t take responsibility for their dying gay son, won’t invite their lesbian sister to their wedding, won’t allow their gay cousin to hold their child, won’t praise their gay co-worker, won’t send their gay son a birthday card, vote for anti-gay politicians, give money to a homophobic church, love films that diminish gay people—those people may have all kinds of great attributes. You may love them. They may have taken you fishing when you were six or made you a quilt for Christmas or had a great sense of humor or looked just like you. That is what evil looks like. Evil knows great old songs, can be weak and vulnerable, can love you, can feed the hungry, can pick out a book because they were thinking of you. Evil can have Alzheimer’s. Familial homophobia is deeply human, as all evil is the product of human imagination.” Devastating. So many people in my life become evil in this light. Some of you become evil in this light. But, mercifully, there is also this: “[A]ll people have the option to judge and act ethically. That there are individuals in all situations who do take responsibility proves the availability of moral behavior as a possibility for the others. There were always white people who opposed slavery, always German Christians who opposed Fascism. There are always Jews who oppose the Israeli occupation, always Americans who oppose the war with Iraq, always men who work for abortion rights. There were always capitalists who opposed the persecution of American Communists and Russian Communists who opposed the persecution of the Jews.” So there is hope. But what she doesn’t stress is that it will be HARD, that having the courage of your convictions always is. You don’t get to be an ally and funnel money to a hate-monger. The two don’t mix. You have to choose. I don’t care how uncomfortable that makes you. (For how uncomfortable it makes ME, see the link above.) I am here to tell you that you have to choose. In talking about my plans to write this with a friend earlier, I planned to throw down the gauntlet by announcing my plans to live a conviction that I’ve had for some time but have been failing at because it requires giving up some conveniences and some privileges, because it will require more work than I’ve been willing to put it in. The kind of conviction that I can talk about on Facebook, and then forget about when I go about my daily life. I’ll write of it another time, because I think it is crucial to make such choices public, to offer other ways of being in the world, to make clear what our values are, but in reaching this point in my angry lesbian screed, the particulars of the conviction that I needed to be called to live at this moment in my life seem less important than reminder that you who seem so eager to be let off the hook for yours have given me that it’s ALWAYS going to be hard. That waiting until it’s easier is a cop out; is unjust. That discomfort we feel? We can try to make it go away, hide in being apolitical, drug ourselves on carbonated sugar water, or the very real suspicion that one person’s act won’t make a difference; we ask those who are being discriminated against to tell us its okay. Or, we can be better. You choose.

(Mashable)
July 31, 2012

NEW YORK, NEW YORK– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] In 2010, Zach Anner submitted an audition tape to Oprah’s “Your OWN Show” contest. When the Internet got wind of it, the web couldn’t stop laughing. The wheelchair-bound comic charmed the online communities of Reddit and 4chan with self-deprecating humor that poked fun at his own affliction — cerebral palsy.

More than nine million votes later (despite an alleged voting rig, which Redditors debunked), the Internet convinced one of the biggest cultural influencers in cable television, and arguably America.

The show, Rollin’ With Zach Anner, was a travelogue for the disabled. Four episodes later, it was canceled due to poor ratings.

Despite a short-lived cable career, Anner is asking his web audience to give the travel show a second chance, and he has help from Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.

The new web series Riding Shotgun With Zach Anner lets Reddit users decide where Anner will travel. He will shoot in eight cities over the course of six weeks.

Entire article:
Reddit-Powered Show Gets Disabled Comedian Rolling Again
http://mashable.com/2012/07/18/zach-anner-show-reddit/

(The Guardian)
July 31, 2012

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND– [Excerpt via Inclusion Daily Express] The US and the EU are blocking a treaty that would give the world’s blind and visually impaired people — 90% of whom live in the developing world — easier access to published works in formats they can use.

A “treaty for blind people” has been under discussion at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo) since 2008, but negotiations have made little progress. In the latest round of talks in Geneva, which ended on Wednesday 25 July, negotiators deferred a decision on the issue once again, to the dismay of activists.

“This is not just a legal issue — for us, this is a moral issue. It’s about human rights,” said Teresa Hackett, programme manager at Electronic Information for Libraries, a non-profit group based in the Netherlands.

There are about 256 million visually impaired people in the developing world, according to an estimate by the World Health Organisation. In many rich countries, blind people have ready access to works that have been translated into braille and other accessible formats such as audio and large-print books, although, according to the EU, only 5% of books are accessible to blind people in wealthy states.

However, under existing copyright law, poorer countries can’t access those translations without getting the express permission of the copyright holder.

Entire article:
US and EU blocking treaty to give blind people access to books
http://tinyurl.com/ide0731122

By Andrea Scarpino

“So, did Dad talk your ear off?” my step-mother asked when I returned to her house from the cemetery. “Wouldn’t shut up,” I replied. We like to banter like this, about how much trouble Dad is causing, what he’s been up to since our last visit. He’s been dead five years this summer, and there’s some comfort in talking about him in the present tense, as if he’s holding court in the cemetery like he did in life. The truth is, I had a hard time finding his grave. I had never visited without my step-mother, and only had vague recollections about where in the cemetery their plot is located, how far from one of the intersecting streets. It was stifling hot in Cincinnati, muggy and humid in a way only Ohio summers can be. Cicadas chirped in the trees and grasshoppers leapt from the ground as I walked among the graves looking for his reddish gravestone with the heart shape. When I finally found it, I sat in the muggy grass looking at the engraved birth and death dates, the engraved “Scarpino,” wondering how five years could have already passed. Five years. My grandmother died at the start of that summer two days shy of her 92nd birthday. My father died two months later, only 30 minutes before I reached the hospital. I had flown across the country and driven two hours trying to get to him. Exactly three weeks later, a dear friend was shot and killed while outside his home painting. The Summer of Death, I came to call it. A summer in which nothing made much sense. I remember sitting in my office between teaching summer classes with my head between my knees, trying to work up the courage to go to my next class. I remember driving to work and suddenly realizing I was completely lost, the route I knew by heart suddenly unfamiliar—I had driven a dozen exits past the one I needed. I remember care packages from friends, trying to read even the goofiest magazines they sent without any ability to follow the words on the page. I remember lying in bed. I remember running—and crying as I ran. I remember my left eye twitching constantly—for almost a year, it twitched. I sat in the grass in front of my father’s grave, five years since the Summer of Death, and listened to the cicadas, watched the grasshoppers, thought about how much I still miss him, my grandmother, my friend. How much I would like them all to still be here. And I talked to my Dad, told him some news I thought he would enjoy, asked him to keep visiting me in my dreams, the only time I still feel his presence. But the truth is: he never responds, no matter how much I would love to hear his voice. Unlike in life, it seems he has nothing more to say.

Back then, 1959, he couldn’t distinguish between dreams and daylight. Even in sleep there were wings. Also the trail of shadows or the footprints of shadows, he didn’t know which–he simply understood the soft stirrings were caused by his brother. The twin who goes to heaven is a talker.

(UPI)
July 27, 2012

WASHINGTON, DC– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] The number of severely disabled people in the United States appears to be increasing, the Census Bureau said in a report released Wednesday.

In 2010, 56.7 million people, 19 percent of the total population, had a disability, demographers said. That was 2.2 million more than in 2005, with the percentage of the population considered disabled statistically the same.

But the number and percentage of people with severe disabilities and of those requiring assistance for ordinary tasks was up, possibly because of the increase in the number of elderly residents in the United States, the report said. About 15 million people have difficulty with at least one activity of daily living like eating, preparing food or answering the telephone, and 12 million need assistance to get through the day.

“Americans with Disabilities: 2010” was the first report on the subject the Census Bureau has done since 2005.

Entire article:
Census: More severely disabled in U.S.
http://tinyurl.com/0727122a
Related:
Profile America Facts for Features: Anniversary of Americans with Disabilities Act: July 26 
http://tinyurl.com/0727122c
Americans With Disabilities: 2010 (United States Census Bureau)
http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p70-131.pdf

It has always seemed to me that poetry enters our lives by way of astonishment hugging stealth. This is different from simple persistence:  much of comedy depends on the aggregate absurdities of postural beings who live in a high gravity world. But poetry is another matter: poems are in part a demonstration of steadfast attention, a childlike idea that if we stay long enough in the old boathouse, and peer down into the water with enough hopeful attention, we will see the old turtle who lives in the shadows of the pilings come out like a sorcerer from the woods. And when he appears at last like a mobile and dark piece of crockery, we know that patience, forethought, and the beautiful absurd are all the same. I have always thought of this as comedy raised to a higher dimension, analogous perhaps to the playing of three dimensional chess. Or simply chess by Marcel DuChamps rules. Have it how you will.

(KTSM)
July 26, 2012

EL PASO, TEXAS– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] It may be hard to imagine the same people celebrating and protesting at the same time but that’s exactly what happened today at El Paso City Hall.

Advocates of the Americans With Disabilities Act led a protest in front of City Hall to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the act’s passing.

As part of the demonstration, the Paso del Norte Civil Rights Project announced a series of lawsuits against city and county governments, claiming they have violated the ADA.

The lawsuits follow the death of an El Paso man struck by a vehicle as he crossed a street near the eastside bus terminal in his wheelchair. ADA advocates blame local government for the incident for failing to provide accessible pathways near the terminal.

Entire article:
Celebration/Protest At El Paso City Hall Over Disabilities Act
http://tinyurl.com/ide0726123a
Related:
Conference Shines Light on Local ADA Lawsuits
http://www.ktsm.com/news/conference-shines-light-local-ada-lawsuits
Disability Rights Group Files Lawsuits
http://www.ktsm.com/news/disability-rights-group-files-lawsuits