Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University

Social Security Fraud and Disability Rights

The Department of Justice has announced the indictment of five people who allegedly held victims with mental disabilities captive in subhuman conditions to carry out Social Security fraud. The indictment alleges the defendants used victims with mental disabilities as part of a racketeering enterprise to steal disability payments from the victims and the Social Security system.

 

See full article here: http://www.examiner.com/article/doj-claims-mentally-disabled-adults-were-abused-used-for-social-security-fraud

Euthanasia: Let's Look At The Bigger Picture

(Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

January 22, 2013

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] Like many people, I was struck by last week’s story about 45 year old deaf twin brothers killed by “legal euthanasia” in Belgium. According to reports, they were both going blind and were frightened of losing their independence and had “nothing to live for”.

An excellent piece by Leah Hobson published on Ramp Up last week makes the case against stacking judgments on brothers Marc and Eddy. However our view on legalising euthanasia here in Australia needs to weigh personal rights, disability rights, financial, emotional and other pressures which we may experience to take our own lives.

It is significant that the focus of articles about euthanasia and end of life planning like this one in The Australian hastily drift into how much it costs the community to keep people with intensive support needs going. How quickly compassion dies and the calculators come out.

In the current world of rationed care and economic rationalism, it is not hard to imagine a situation where the availability of euthanasia becomes seen as a cheaper, easier, ‘rational’ option to providing intensive support, community living and care for those most vulnerable. Instead of having the support to make well-considered choices, the services that make life bearable could fall away and people with disabilities could be levered into taking their lives as the default option.

Entire article:

Euthanasia: let’s look at the bigger picture

http://www.abc.net.au/rampup/articles/2013/01/21/3673497.htm

Related:

In pursuit of good lives, and good choices

http://www.abc.net.au/rampup/articles/2013/01/16/3670700.htm

Nothing Uncomfortable At All

Because I have an apparent disability I’m often in front of audiences that only like me conditionally. If you have a disability and you’re in public in ways either great or small you’ll automatically know what I’m talking about–there’s an unspoken appraisal as the person with a disability begins speaking, a collective, silent, projective gentlemen’s agreement that nothing uncomfortable shall be spoken.

My friend Gary calls this the “don’t piss in the shrimp dip” phenomenon. (He’s from Texas.) You know of course what I’m talking about. We know that Franklin Roosevelt lived his post-polio life this way. The agreement is that if you never mention the profound, compensatory ardor that’s required to live, to really live, then the audience gets to imagine that living is relatively easy. Instead of “gentlemen’s agreement” we might call it “the Hallmark agreement” after the commercial greeting card company famed for its commercialization of easy sentiment.

I am invited to speak at all kinds of venues and I’m lucky to have these opportunities. But I have been trying for some time now to resist the Hallmark agreement, to simply encourage my audience to imagine that disability is easy. (That script goes like this: ‘If a person with a disability simply has the right accommodations, then disability is nothing more than a minor nuisance, etc.)

Ah but the biggest problem is that disability still troubles the public nerve. (A public nerve besotted with advertising, hence, a nerve that believes–for in America the nerves believe–that there’s an easy road ahead if we just whistle or lip synch like Beyonce.) So we are expected to say that even the most difficult and perilous things are easy. Forget that the New York City subway system is inaccessible to people who use wheelchairs; forget that the meager elevators in that system are often malfunctioning, so a man with a wheelchair will, should he actually get on the subway, find himself trapped, unable to exit. Or forget that blind people still have no access to movies or television or public performances. Or forget that the majority of American universities don’t teach sign language or, if they do, don’t recognize it as a language that might meet the university’s advertised foreign language requirement.

Each if threes failures will, in turn prevent people from getting ahead, And my job is to cheer up the audience?

Beware the Hallmark. I like uplift as much as the next man or woman but I don’t think it can come at the expense of communitarian politics.

If you create what the disability rights movement likes to call ‘an even playing field” you lift up your black brothers and sisters, and your deaf ones, and your Latino ones, your blind ones. And please stop pretending Its easy.

Poetry and Politics

By Andrea Scarpino

President Obama’s second inauguration: his family’s brightly colored coats, thousands of American flags waving beyond a bullet-proof wall, the bright and open sky.

 

And a poet alone at the podium. Turning printed pages. Standing before the biggest audience he’ll ever see. A poet. Richard Blanco: the youngest inauguration poet, the first openly gay inauguration poet, the first Latino inauguration poet. Of course, there haven’t been many: Robert Frost, James Dickey, Maya Angelou, Miller Williams, Elizabeth Alexander. Only Democratic presidents and only since Kennedy.

 

As if Republican presidents can’t bear to be seen supporting the arts.

As if poetry doesn’t always belong in the world of politics.

 

A poet alone at the podium. And I thought of Robert Frost, the first inauguration poet, chosen by Kennedy. How the winter sun made it difficult for him to read from his printed page, how he stopped short and recited, instead, an older poem, a poem he knew by heart. A poem, many agree, that was much more interesting than the one he had written for that day. A poem with the line, “The deed of gift was many deeds of war.”

 

Poetry and politics. How does a poem say something as big as politics demands? How does it not?

 

As if poetry has ever been divorced from public life, from the realm of the political.

 

“The personal is political” Carol Hanisch taught us. A Latino, openly gay poet standing behind a bullet-proof wall, reading his poetry. How could that not be political?

 

The political is personal: our President behind a bullet-proof wall.

 

And Robert Frost. How old Frost had become by Kennedy’s inauguration. How suited men rise to shield his papers with their hats. A decidedly American poet at a decidedly American event.

 

Because Kennedy understood that poets bring something important to the political sphere, say something important about who we are. Who we could be. That poetry is personal and political, political and personal. That one short poem—16 lines—can say more than a political speech. That a poet belongs standing next to a president.

 

President Obama’s second inauguration. A poet named Blanco standing behind a bullet-proof wall, standing in front of the biggest audience of his life. Reading, “one sun” and “one light,” “one ground” and “one sky.” Repeating it: one sky.

 

Send Work to Red Wheelbarrow

 

I’m writing to invite you (and your friends, students) to submit work for our 2013 Red Wheelbarrow.

You can e-mail submissions (see below) and we’re currently reading manuscripts. Send something today…!

See complete guidelines below and please pass along to friends and students. We’re explicitly open to both well established and less established writers. The 2012 issue has been another success with a great mix of voices, regional, national, young & old.

Thanks so much and here’s to a creative, inspirational and productive year.

Yours,

–Ken Weisner

GUIDELINES & DEADLINES/ Red Wheelbarrow, 2013

The 2013 Red Wheelbarrow National Edition submission deadline is February 15th.

As you probably know, Red Wheelbarrow, formerly known as Bottomfish, has been publishing annually out of De Anza College in the South Bay for nearly forty years and consistently featuring emerging and South Bay/ Central Coast writers alongside more established California & nationally known voices such Adrienne Rich, Lac Su, Marilyn Chin, Al Young, Ed Pavlić, Karen Yamashita, Stephanie Dickinson, Ellen Bass, Steve Kuusisto, Dorianne Laux, Joseph Millar, Francisco X. Alarcon, and many others.

Please submit up to five poems, one short story, or three short-shorts either by e-mail to weisnerken@fhda.edu (pasted and/or attached), or by post to: Red Wheelbarrow, c/o De Anza College 21250 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino, CA, 95014. Digital submissions encouraged! Simultaneous submissions accepted; please indicate in cover letter. Send previously unpublished work only. See more detailed guidelines at: http://www.deanza.edu/english-writing/creative/redwheelbarrow.html

We also consider creative non fiction & short plays and seek cover art. Our normal response time is 2-6 months. Address all questions and submissions to weisnerken@fhda.edu.

Ken Weisner

English Instructor

Creative Writing Committee

Faculty Advisor, Red Wheelbarrow

De Anza College

21250 Stevens Creek Blvd.

Cupertino, CA 95014

408-864-5797 (w)

weisnerken@fhda.edu

Something Rotten in the State of Ohio

Secrecy To Shroud School Seclusion, Restraint Use Under New State Rules

(Columbus Dispatch)

January 18, 2013

COLUMBUS, OHIO~– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] New state rules would require schools to keep records of how often and why educators place children in seclusion rooms or physically restrain them.

Those records would be private, the rules say: Only the parents of the child who was secluded or restrained, or the Ohio Department of Education, can know about it. Making information about seclusion private could prevent the public, including other parents, from knowing whether their schools have improperly secluded kids.

The Dispatch and StateImpact Ohio used incident reports like the ones that would be declared private in the new policy to expose the misuse of seclusion rooms in Ohio’s public schools.

The State Board of Education plans to adopt the state’s first policy governing seclusion and restraint in public schools on Tuesday. Until now, public schools have decided whether they want to use seclusion rooms — often small, cell-like spaces meant to hold violent children — and the circumstances in which they use them.

The state knows virtually nothing about seclusion in Ohio’s public schools because it never has asked which schools have rooms, how often they’re used or why.

Entire article:

Secrecy to shroud school seclusion, restraint use under new state rules

http://tinyurl.com/ide0118133

Related Series:

Locked Away (Columbus Dispatch)

http://tinyurl.com/ide0118133a

Responding to Euthanasia of Deaf Blind Twins in Belgium

The National Association of the Deaf and the American Association of the Deaf-Blind have released a formal statement on the euthanizing of twins in Belgium who preferred death to becoming deaf-blind. 

You can read the statement here. 

Apparently the Belgians would imagine Helen Keller’s life to be of no apparent value?

 

Thanks to the Folks at Ollibean

Two days ago I wrote a fierce post about a specious and cruel article by Amy Lutz over at Slate and I’m grateful to the folks at Ollibean for reposting it. We at Planet of the Blind urge you to read Shannon Des Roches Rosa’s piece over at Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism. 

Ms. Des Roches Rosa wonders what would possess Amy Lutz, a mother of a child with autism, to attack the concept of neurodiversity and writes: 

 

Autism parent Amy Lutz did her damnedest to verbally maul the Neurodiversity movement last week, at Slate.com. I’m still trying to understand her rationale, because why would she publicly attack disabled people for the crime of appearing less disabled than her own child? Especially the very advocates who are fighting to ensure a better future for all autistic people — including her son?

I’m used to seeing questionable writing at The Huffington Post, but was surprised to see Lutz’s baldly biased reporting in the Slate.com Medical Examiner section. She only cited sources — outraged parents like herself, mostly — who also believe “…that those who argue the Neurodiversityposition do so out of ignorance.” A statement which is not merely offensive but untrue: those who support Neurodiversity tend do so because Neurodiversity is their reality, and the neurodiverse their community. 

 

Of course the answer to the question regarding Lutz’s attack lies with the discomfort that able bodied people have with non-speaking people, a discomfort that is not lessened by the act of parenting children with autism. That there is ableism in the autism parenting community is unquestionable, that there is so much of it is horrifying.