From the Autistic Self Advocacy Network 

On August 22nd, 2012, The Washington Times published an editorial entitled, “Holder’s ‘Severe Mental Deficiency’“, attacking affirmative action for people with disabilities seeking to enter the federal workforce. In response, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network has issued the following statement:

The Washington Times‘ recent editorial attacking efforts by the federal government to act as a “model employer” for people with disabilities is full of both blatant factual inaccuracies and statements calculated to denigrate the contributions of workers with disabilities. Not only does the Times ignore the reality of widespread discrimination against disabled people – it also accepts such discrimination as natural and desirable.  To the Times’ Editorial Board, “most employers would balk at even minor mental disabilities in hiring a lawyer,” and federal disability hiring initiatives propose to employ “those who are teetering on the edge of sanity.” This attitude ignores the legacies of pioneering disabled attorneys like Paul Steven Miller and Evan Kemp, both of whom faced down prejudice and dedicated their careers to advocating on behalf of the disabled community. Today’s generation of lawyers with disabilities deserve no less respect.

According to The Washington Times, disabled people are hopelessly damaged goods: we are automatically unqualified or poorly qualified for positions within the Justice Department, and inherently incapable of providing taxpayers with a “superior level of public service.”  The author ignores the long-standing and deeply entrenched ableism that pervades hiring processes in the public and private sectors.  Along with perpetuating damaging stereotypes about disabled people—particularly those of us with developmental and psychiatric disabilities—the author makes bold assertions based on factual inaccuracies. Despite the author’s protestations about “special treatment” and the potential for abuse, Schedule A requires extensive documentation and has nothing to do with Standard Form 256-which asks only those who have been hired to voluntarily self-identify as disabled for statistical purposes. Schedule A also does not allow for the hiring of unqualified employees. 

Although the Times’ editorial evinces a tone of shocked indignation, as if the idea of regarding disabled people as a minority subject to historical and ongoing injustice is novel and outrageous, such affirmative action policies are neither new nor unique to the Justice Department.  The initiative to provide disabled applicants with opportunities within the federal government dates back decades, and the Obama administration’s executive order has simply increased the effective implementation of a long-standing policy across federal departments. 

Ultimately, The Washington Times grossly mischaracterizes a policy that is delivering meaningful employment opportunities to qualified candidates with disabilities, thereby improving the diversity and talent within the federal workforce.  American taxpayers are themselves an incredibly diverse population, and they deserve to be served by public employees who reflect that diversity.  That such an editorial was published at all demonstrates how sorely such policies are needed, and how far we have to go to attain equality and inclusion for the disabled community. 

Media Contact:
Melody Latimer
Director of Community Engagement
Autistic Self Advocacy Network
mlatimer@autisticadvocacy.org
(202)630-7477

Guide dogs go back so far we are surprised when we look. Paintings from Herculaneum show blind people walking with dogs in 79 BCE. The idea was always there. And why not? Everything is in motion in this world and then the dogs come running to our sides. The dogs come rushing.

When the dog arrives, some peace comes. And a new brand of pertinacious strolling comes. Even in Herculaneum, a blind man walked to the village square, received water from a fountain, told a story about two snakes and an owl. And his oversized, white dog was pleased by the words. I saw it this morning in my own dog.

I want you to understand me. I come from one or two regions beyond the blurry pasture. The dark pines are engraved with the bold eyes of my sleep. Here I am, new to this day. 

What should I do? 

I will dress, eat, drink my coffee, then take a local train far far into the suburbs where the concrete apartment buildings stand like water birds in a swamp and I will climb to the roof of a building I do not know and I will sit there for a time. 

The world is barbarous and filled with shadows. It’s proper to find a neutral spot where you can think about it. 

Late in the Day

—In late September many voices

  Tell you you will die.

  The leaf says it. That coolness.

  All of them are right.

–Robert Bly

I am troubled as shadows lengthen under the apple trees in my yard. It’s a kind of princely trouble, associational, a problem from the back of the head. According to what little I understand, the problem has nothing to do with success or failure. It’s just something that uncoils in my eyes. Then I carry it away from the window and into my house where it rests, filled with transfiguring omens among the books. This unnamable iteration is like the many armed figure of Durga waving her axe, riding a lion over a mound of skulls–but it’s the smallest Durga in the world, small and yellow as the end of September. 

Tenderness is not in the light. The air smells of fading chrysanthemums. I walk the dogs around the trees heavy with apples. 

Fathoms down, walking beneath the waves. My long, informal apprenticeship.        

What do dogs who guide the blind have? Placidity in the face of tides, knowing how to move the boat among rocks, landing softly on the shore just as we had wished.  

One night when I was visiting an artist’s colony in the woods of New Hampshire I went to a cottage with a group of writers to hear a talk. When the talk was over it was richly dark outside, a night without stars, the pine trees close as statues. No one had a flashlight and there was the kind of mild panic that always happens when people face an unpleasant option. And I said follow me, and guide dog Corky took us down the obscure paths all the way back to the big house where lights were blazing at the windows. It was just as we had wished. And those who trailed us learned a little something about trust. 

death has ten fingers over his face 

waggles them according to algebraic principles

it’s a dull job a human resources stinker

he doesn’t remember how he got it

and human longing is a storm at the window

and his neighbor, birth, sings 

behind the hedges old Viennese love songs

poor bastard, hands covering his eyes

hearing always the Merry Widow Waltz

President Obama Engages with Youth with Disabilities | The White House

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/08/24/president-obama-engages-youth-disabilities

President Obama Engages with Youth with Disabilities

As President Obama has so often said, change in America happens from the bottom up. It happens when people organize, speak out, and have a seat at the table. 

Recently, President Obama met with some youth with disabilities. He wanted to hear their thoughts about the future of disability policy. So, he sat down with participants from the American Association of People with Disabilities internship program. These future leaders spent their summer in DC, interning with various organizations. 

Today, we are pleased to release a video that recaps that meeting. Watch it on YouTube here.

These young people are passionate and strong representatives for millions of people with disabilities across the country. They represent a brighter future for America. President Obama is ready to stand and fight alongside them each and every day.

Kareem Dale is the Special Assistant to the President for Disability Policy

Related Topics: Disabilities

One day I received a phone call from a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. His class had been given an assignment–to develop a robotic guide dog. He was calling to find out what this would entail. I knew he was ahead of himself. He imagined that a guide dog is just an obstacle avoidance pulling mechanism. So I told him the story about the bird trainer who also thought he could guide blind people with birds attached to strings. (I swear it’s true!) This bird trainer demonstrated to a group of guide dog trainers that a bird would fly, attached to a string, and avoid a tower of bricks in the middle of a warehouse. “That’s  pretty good,” said the guide dog trainers, as they left. 

So I told the engineer in Rochester that guide dogs stop for curbs. Stairs. Both up and down. 

“Yes,” he said, “I think a robot can do that.”

“They also take into account low overhanging objects, branches, awnings and the like and guide their blind partners around these things.” 

“Okay,” he said.

“When a blind person commands the dog to cross the street it will refuse to go if it’s not really safe,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh.” 

“You want poetry, I’ll give you poetry,” says my uncle, who, when alive, drank vodka and welded steam radiators. This morning he is on my left shoulder and waving an obscure farming implement–a farrier’s lightning rod–I don’t know what the hell it is. So I ask him. The answer is obvious. Projective verse.