Author: stevekuusisto

Subject: Please Vote for All Blind Children of TX

Hi folks!

Chase Bank has chosen several charities to take part in a community-giving ‘vote-a-thon’. Those charities receiving the most votes will receive a portion of the 5 million dollar cash prize donated by Chase Bank.

I’m pleased to announce that ‘All Blind Children of Texas’ has been chosen to participate in the voting process.

Please help us secure more funding for blind children and their families by casting your vote for ‘All Blind Children of Texas’ at:

www.chase.com/chasegiving (Chase customers may have to sign in)
or
http://www.facebook.com/ChaseCommunityGiving#!/ChaseCommunityGiving/app_162065369655

When you find a search box, type in ‘All Blind Children’. To vote for ‘All Blind Children of Texas’ you may have to download an application…but please vote. It only takes a few minutes of your time.

Deadline for votes is September 19, 2012.

Thanks for your help. Many blind children and their families in Texas will benefit if we can secure enough votes to share in the donation.

Yours in service,

Billy Brookshire, Board Member, All Blind Children of Texas

PS: Also, please share this with your friends. We need all the votes we can get.

Posted with Blogsy

 By Andrea Scarpino

1. Make sure the lighting is right. 

1. Wear power shoes. Even if the photo won’t capture them. 

1. Bring a change of outfit. 

1. Ask for help with bra straps, bobby pins in the hair. 

1. Sometimes, you’ll feel ridiculous. Go with it. 

1. Try smiling. Try being serious. 

1. Don’t think about wrinkles. 

1. Don’t let your earrings distract from your face. 

1. If photographing outside, listen for birds. Follow their lead. 

1. There’s a moment in the eyes when a person sees another human face : a light, a recognition, memory. You’ll know when the photograph has captured it. 

Back in 1998 I was offered the job of Commissioner of the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities in New York City. I turned it down. I chose to return to teaching and went to Ohio State. Now I'm at Syracuse University and I travel to Manhattan frequently. 

via www.planet-of-the-blind.com

I'm reposting this as it's as true today as it was last week. New York City is in wholesale decline as a place for people with disabilities.

And night and far to go. Wishful songs, some from boyhood. The one about the fish and the old man. The one about rowing. And night and far to go. The uproar of living by day and dreaming by night. Your teeth wear out. The brass buttons on father’s uniform glitter up in the attic. And night and far to go. Have I ever told you my dear, that a succession of immense birds guides all my thinking?

In Scotland, as late as the 18th century, men would send their dogs away on New Year’s morning, caste them out, if you will, by throwing bread and sweetmeats, and shouting: “Get away you dog! Whatever death of men, or loss of cattle, would happen in this house to the end of the present year, may it all light on your head!” 

I can’t explain why I like knowing this, except that the experienced dog-in-mind, the canine equivalent of facts, leads inevitably to some questions. How far would a Scotsman have to throw his bread to drive a dog away for a year? Would he have to use a contrivance, a catapult? What sorcery would then disguise his house, and thereby prevent the dog from coming home? Perhaps all superstitious Scotsmen lived in castles with moats and drawbridges? Maybe all the dogs of the common folk were the abandoned dogs of the rich? Or better yet, one pictures the dogs standing outside the pediments, howling–for another superstition held that howling dogs portend death or other calamities.

Better a dog by the fire. 

The little dog smiles by pushing his head up.

The big dog smiles by tilting her head.

The man smiles by looking down.

The man has a lot of work to do.

Posted with Blogsy

I urge you to visit Disability Power and Pride and learn about their promotion of full participation in politics and culture by people with disabilities. 

I urge you to visit Wordgathering and read poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and literary essays by top tier American writers with disabilities. The latest issue is up.

I urge you to read the following article by Rebecca Schleifer from the Huffington Post:

Rebecca Schleifer: Disabled and Disenfranchised Voters
(Huffington Post)
September 7, 2012

NEW YORK, NEW YORK– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] State efforts to restrict voting access have dominated election news this year. Since the beginning of 2011, legislators in 41 state governments have introduced at least 180 bills that would make it harder to register or to vote. At least 25 laws and two executive actions have been enacted, affecting 19 states. These include laws requiring proof of citizenship or photo identification to register or to vote; limiting voting registration opportunities; and reducing early and absentee voting.

The U.S. Department of Justice and voting rights advocates have challenged these laws for violating the Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act, and raised concerns about their discriminatory impact on low-income people, and racial and ethnic minorities. But what hasn’t been mentioned in the media coverage, and what seems of little concern to supporters or opponents of these laws, is their discriminatory impact on one of the country’s largest minorities: people with disabilities.

Federal laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Help America Vote Act require accessible voting systems, to ensure equal access and participation for people with physical and visual disabilities.

But according to a 2009 US Government Accountability Office study, more than two-thirds of polling places are not fully accessible; nearly 25 percent did not have equal access to a secret and independent ballot, and voting in a polling place, considered the “hallmarks of an effective and informed right to vote,” as voting rights expert Michael Waterstone has noted.

Entire article:
Disabled and Disenfranchised
http://tinyurl.com/ide0907124

I urge you to read the following article from the UK’s Guardian:

Catch Up With The Paralympics Vibe — Stop Excluding Disabled People
(The Guardian)
September 7, 2012

LONDON, ENGLAND– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] The London Paralympics has not only succeeded in getting out a mass message, with 21st-century skill, that disabled people can be sexy, exciting, achievers and media stars. It has also highlighted protests that have made many more people aware of some of the worst contradictions surrounding disability. These include the acceptance of Atos as a Paralympics sponsor at the same time as its heavily flawed assessment procedures are terrorising thousands of disabled people and the arbitrary closure of Remploy factories in the name of inclusion, when more and more disabled people are being excluded from mainstream employment.

Both messages may fade as the thrill of the Games recedes. But the UK’s changing demographics resulting in the presence of many more disabled people of working age and beyond are likely to have a more enduring legacy.

Currently, as can be seen with government welfare reform, the default position for public policy seems to be to treat disabled people as a powerless group to be safely stigmatised, segregated and wheeled on to be scapegoated at difficult times. But the days of such attitudes are likely to be numbered, as disabled people, helped by the Paralympics, emerge as a more substantial, assertive and self-conscious minority.

Sadly, hostility towards disabled people is not confined to politicians and press; both can still count on at least some public support. What isn’t clear is whether such populist prejudice is rooted in perceptions of people making false claims to be disabled, or enduring negative stereotypes of disabled people as dependent, unproductive and parasitic.

Entire article:
Catch up with the Paralympics vibe — stop excluding disabled people
http://tinyurl.com/ide0907127a
Related:
Are companies on track for a sustainable approach to disability? 
http://tinyurl.com/ide0907127b

Back in 1998 I was offered the job of Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities in New York City. I turned it down. I chose to return to teaching and went to Ohio State. Now I’m at Syracuse University and I travel to Manhattan frequently. 

Lately I’ve seen clear evidence that the city of New York is going backwards where disability consciousness is concerned. I have encountered numerous construction sites where sidewalks are blocked off and the feeble detours are entirely inaccessible for wheelchairs, dangerous for blind people, and when you question the man in charge he acts clueless. Clueless is not an acceptable social policy but it’s what’s now passing routinely in NYC for disability engagement and awareness. Not long ago I was denied entrance to an upscale restaurant owned by the Trump conglomerate. The doorman said he knew “all about blindness,” why by jinkies, “I had a blind aunt”–and he wouldn’t let me in because I had a guide dog. 

Admittedly these are anecdotal representations of my thesis that things are in decline in New York. But Mayor Bloomberg has been openly contemptuous of the efforts by wheelchair users who have been advocating for an accessible taxi cab fleet. He actually said: 

“If you’re in a wheelchair, it’s really hard to go out in the street and hail down a cab and get the cab to pull over and get into it.” 

The logic behind this assertion seems to work like this: It’s really hard to be disabled, so stay at home.

Stay at home is also not an acceptable social policy. 

An old friend of mine likes to say that “fish stinks from the head” –a phrase I like and yes, sometimes fish stinks all over. Right now I’d say that the city of New York is in general disability decline because the mayor has made it acceptable to sneer. Where disability and dignity are concerned he’s the sneerer in chief. 

Good or evil, success or failure rest in our hands. 

New York is the gateway to this nation for culture and business–oh, it’s so hard for the wheelchair people to have culture and business, really they should just stay home, eh?

Translation: let’s just make sure they stay home. Let’s continue to make it next to impossible for them to get anywhere. 

September 6, 2012

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] [Aditya] Ganapathiraju broke three vertebrae, one of which damaged his spinal cord, paralyzing him below the chest. It took years of therapy and rehab for him to regain some strength and movement and, most importantly, to become independent again.

A crucial element of that, he says, was in-home, state-funded health care; with both his parents deceased, it allowed the 20-something college student to stay out of elderly nursing homes, where he might otherwise be.

“There are a lot of vulnerable folks who rely on this service,” Ganapathiraju said. “It’s unfair, of course, that the situation is how it is. It’s understandable that there are political forces at work.”

Ganapathiraju is referring to state-mandated budget cuts, which slashed in-home personal health care services for the elderly and the disabled. A judge upheld that the cuts are legal, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision, arguing that the cuts violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The state has until September 17 to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, said Carl Peterson with the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network. Peterson joined with other advocates for the disabled Wednesday to call on the state and the governor to not appeal the decision.

Entire article with video clip:
Disabled residents fighting to stop health care cuts
http://tinyurl.com/ide0906121a
Related:
Conference Call of Advocates on MR v Dreyfus (ADAPT)
http://www.adapt.org/main.waolmstead.confcall
Taking Action to Protect Olmstead! (ADAPT)
http://www.dimenet.com/hotnews/archive.php?mode=A&id=7568;&sort=D