Author: stevekuusisto

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

Huffington Post: AL FRANKEN: Net Neutrality Is Under Attack… Again

See Al Franken's important message at Huffington Post:

  This week, the free and open Internet millions of Americans have come to depend on is under attack.

AL FRANKEN: Net Neutrality Is Under Attack… Again

I've said that net neutrality is the most important free speech issue of our time. It's true. If Republicans have their way, large corporations won't just have the loudest voices in the room. They'll be able to effectively silence everyone else.

 

Sent from my iPhone

Chicken Pox Lollipops

The following story at Huffington Post convinces me that the utter decline of our nation has already occured, that we're living in the greasy and smeared streets of what once was a decent nation:

Here's the opening of the Huff Post article:

"KPHO in Phoenix reports that a Facebook group is offering parents the opportunity to receive lollipops in the mail that have allegedly been infected with chicken pox. The parents seeking these disease-riden sweets want their children to get chicken pox when they're young so they can become immune to the disease and avoid getting it later in life.

KPHO also found parents looking for people to send measles, mumps and rubella."

 

 

 

 

Judge Rotenberg Center Banned From Using Electric Shock on People with Disabilities

 

 

JRC Banned from Shocking New Admissions
 
 

Dear Supporters,

This week we can celebrate a major victory against torture of people with disabilities in the United States.   The Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services (DDS) adopted new regulations last week that greatly restrict the intentional use of pain as a form of treatment – including the use of electric shock, seclusion, and restraints on young children and adults with disabilities. As documented by a recent report by Disability Rights International (DRI), Torture Not Treatment, The Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC), based in Canton, Massachusetts, has used these practices, called "aversive treatment" for decades.

Facilities licensed by the DDS in Massachusetts can no longer subject new admissions to severe behavioral interventions including electric shock, long-term restraint, or aversives that pose risk for psychological harm – in other words, mainstays of JRC's "treatment" program. 

 

No other institution in the country – or the world, as far as we can tell – uses such barbaric practices. DRI's investigation found that the pain caused by this is so severe and outside accepted professional norms, that these practices constitute nothing less than torture. By permitting such treatment, the United States violates its obligations under international law, as defined by the UN Convention Against Torture. DRI filed our report, Torture Not Treatment, in 2010 as an urgent appeal to the United Nations. The top official on torture at the United Nations agreed with DRI, and when asked by ABC Nightline if the practices were torture, he declared, "Yes…I have no doubts about it. It is inflicted in a situation where a victim is powerless…a child in the restraint chair, being then subjected to electric shocks, how more powerless can you be?"

 

We applaud Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick on taking a courageous stand by issuing an executive order for the Massachusetts DDS to review their policies regarding electric shock and other severe aversives.

The resulting new policy puts an end to the use of JRC's electric shocks on new admissions.But we can't declare success yet. While hundreds of children will be spared from JRC's behavioral experiments in the future, the new policies do not stop JRC from shocking and causing psychological damage to children already placed in the center. These children and young adults remain prisoners in a very dangerous environment. The center has been repeatedly investigated for suspicious deaths and physical abuse. JRC has been fined for identifying some clinicians hired by the school as psychologists, when in fact, they were not licensed psychologists. And as a result of an investigation into a case of abuse at the facility, JRC's director was forced to resign earlier this year after being charged with misleading a grand jury about the investigation.  

 

DRI is encouraged by the bold statement by the US National Council on Disabilities, a federal advisory body, which cited DRI's report, as well as the international definition of torture, to call for the use of painful shock aversives to be brought to an end. 

 

DRI urges the Department of Justice and the Obama Administration to fullfil its obgligations under the UN Convention Against Torture. DRI calls for a blanket ban on the use of electric shock as aversive treatment for children or adults with disabilities across the nation. There is nothing stopping JRC from shocking kids already in their center — or moving their facility to a different state to avoid the new Massachusetts regulations. The Department of Justice has an open investigation into the treatment of children at JRC. We ask you to  write a personal appeal to the investigators to help ensure that this torture is put to an end once and for all, and is never allowed to be duplicated anywhere else in the United States.

 

We are one large step closer.

Thank you for your continued support, 

Laurie Ahern,

President

 

 

 

Eric Rosenthal,

Executive Director

   

 

 

 
 
 

   
This email was sent to kantera@law.syr.edu by info@disabilityrightsintl.org |  
Disability Rights International | 1156 15th Street, NW | Suite 1001 | Washington | DC | 20005

 

 

New York is Still Everyplace

Here is a photo of my friend Gary Whittington with my guide dog Nira outside a NYC pub, after the Iowa Hawkeyes defeated the Michigan Wolverines yesterday. There are bars in NY devoted to just about any sporting culture. There's even a Boston Red Sox drinking establishment. You can pretty well bet that there's no New York Yankees pub in Boston. Here is "Herky the Hawk" on the corner of 2nd Avenue and 50 something. Nira seems unimpressed. It's hard to impress a globe trotting guide dog.
As for me, I'm endlessly impressed by Gary who is running today in the NY marathon–his 6th. He will likely finish the event with a time somewhere around 3 hours and 20 minutes. Not bad for a 56 year old dude who works by day as an attorney in Cedar Rapids, IA. Notice his fancy forward stride running shoes. Nowadays he's into barefoot running. He also runs stage races. Two years ago he ran across Costa Rica. Gary is one of my heroes because he has tremendous compassion and a superb intelligence and he thinks Rick Perry is a walking toxin.

I will meet Gary today after the race. And the amazing thing is that he will still want to walk around New York after running all the boroughs.

I have many friends in the New York metro area who I'd like to see. In particular I'd like to see my friend Bill who hosts the blog "Bad Cripple" but this trip is too quick. I have to come back here for a disability pals get together and now that I know that Syracuse University has its own center on E 61st St, I think this will be possible. I'm thinking about a disability studies related event in NY. No Herky the Hawkeye for that crowd. Disability studies needs its own mascot. Here's to the fighting crips!

SK

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:New York City

After Traveling, How to Relax

This is a recipe. Kick at your glass house while singing old Scandinavian folk song.  Add an optical splinter, image of circus elephants lumbering down main street. Throw in a pearl. If you have a leftover memory of teenage glory, toss it in. I remember dancing with a mannequin after hours in a shop, just for the amusement of my friends. Stir the odd angles of existence with a thermometer. Invite your ancestors. 

 

Notice if your sleeves seem longer or shorter.

 

 

Dog Ghost Afternoons

My friend has dog ghosts in his house. He does not feel haunted he says. One can surmise that dog ghosts have no envy. In life dogs only wanted what was coming to them. In life a dog has appetite, wishes, tall grass, clotted fragments, serviceable memories, instincts, and fast dreams. But no vituperative ideas. The latter may belong to the cat ghosts. The dog spirits aren't saying. They are stretched out in the sunbeams in what we know is a very real house.

The Old Cockroach Shuffle at the Crown Plaza

Outside the hotel with my guide dog. I had no choice bot to have her relieve herself in a stripped flower bed–no flowers there, just dirt unplanted. The door man screamed at me, then blew his whistle like the Keystone cops. I ignored him. Old civil rights move: stay unengaged.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Chicago