Author: stevekuusisto

Sue Marsh: The Culture Of Hatred For The Disabled Comes From The Top
(The Guardian)
September 19, 2011

LONDON, ENGLAND– [Excerpt from Inclusion Daily] There is little doubt that disability hate crime is on the rise. A recent Equality and Human Rights Commission report concluded that "people with disabilities in the UK face harassment, insult and attack almost as a matter of routine, while a collective denial' among police, government and other public bodies means little is done to challenge the situation". 

This is strong language. It seems so shocking that we might decide that it cannot possibly be true. Turn then to the Mencap study that found police were consistently failing the victims of disability hate crime, or to the Scope report that concluded that "widespread casual and institutional disablism in Britain creates the conditions where disability hate crime can flourish without being recognised or challenged". 

According to a ComRes, some 47% of disabled people surveyed said that attitudes towards them have worsened over the past year while 66% claimed that they had experienced "aggression, hostility or name-calling". Taken to its extreme, this bullying leads to the tragic deaths of people such as Fiona Pilkington and Francecca Hardwick, Gemma Hayter and Keith Philpott.

But while the causes of hate crime are hard to fathom, we should look first to the attitudes of those who govern and inform us. A recent select committee report criticised both the press and the department of work and pensions over the way in which the media covers statistics on sickness benefits. Articles referring to "the shirking classes", "scroungers" and "skivers" led the chair of the committee, Dame Anne Begg, to write to the DWP urging staff to be careful how they present statistics.

Entire article:
The culture of hatred for the disabled comes from the top 
http://tinyurl.com/6f2qwwa
Related:
Disability hate crime begins with verbal abuse
http://tinyurl.com/42l82z4

Medicaid Disability Activists At White House Gates As President Presents Debt Plan
(ADAPT)
September 19, 2011

WASHINGTON, DC– [Excerpt provided by Inclusion Daily Express] As the President unveiled his debt plan this morning, hundreds of activists with disabilities stormed the White House to demand a voice in the structuring of Medicaid reform. ADAPT, the national disability rights directaction group, is asking the administration to work with them to ensure that Medicaid dollars are invested in cost-saving community supports. 

"The President says that he expects all Americans to share the burden of controlling the budget, but Medicaid recipients are already shouldering the burden for balancing budgets at the state level," said Randy Alexander of Memphis ADAPT. "States have already made significant cuts to Medicaid. How many more people with disabilities and seniors must lose our basic freedoms and lives in order to have done our share?" 

Bruce Darling, an ADAPT organizer from Rochester, New York, pointed out that states have already reduced or eliminated vital home care services and forced seniors and people with disabilities into nursing facilities against their will. "People are already experiencing reduced or eliminated access to basic health care, including medications. Jobs have already been eliminated for home care and direct care workers."

ADAPT recognizes the need for new tax revenue and supports the President's proposed so-called "millionaire's tax." Unlike Congressional Republicans who believe the burden of deficit reduction should only come from spending cuts to critical programs like Medicaid, the President has called for $1.5 trillion in new tax revenue.

ADAPT has reached out to the White House and Congress to offer proposals on how we can contain Medicaid spending that wouldn't negatively impact on Medicaid beneficiaries.

Entire press release:
Medicaid Disability Activists at White House Gates as President Presents Debt Plan
http://www.dimenet.com/hotnews/archive.php?mode=A&id=7409;&sort=D
Related:
Hundreds of Disability Medicaid Activists Storm Offices of House Republicans Hensarling and Camp
http://www.dimenet.com/hotnews/archive.php?mode=A&id=7410;&sort=D
Open Letter About Medicaid to President Obama from ADAPT
http://www.dimenet.com/hotnews/archive.php?mode=A&id=7408;&sort=D
ADAPT Urges Super Committee Not to Gut Medicaid 
http://www.dimenet.com/hotnews/archive.php?mode=A&id=7406;&sort=D
My Medicaid Matters!
http://www.adapt.org/freeourpeople/mmm/

To understand how human rights keep declining in these United States–declining as a lived and shared proposition. Our jails are filled with people who are poor, black, disabled, mentally ill, whose crimes are insufficiently dire to warrant such hopelessness–we no longer believe in rehabilitation in our criminal justice system. Just so, the death of Troy Davis signifies the intentionality of our penal system, for even a man whose crime is in doubt will be put to death without care for human rights and due process. We are not, as GOP types endlessly propose, a nation in spiritual decline, we are worse–we are a country in moral decline. I walk around. Like Pablo Neruda I hope to not become dried up, like a swan made out of felt. These are perilous times. If a writer's blog has any value it's this–to send up a cris de couer. My nation is very ill indeed.  

—–
Sent from the CNN App for iPhone

  We like Jimmy, always have..

Jimmy Carter: Troy Davis Execution Exposes Flaws In Death Penalty

ATLANTA — Former President Jimmy Carter says the execution of death row inmate Troy Davis in Georgia shows that the nation's death penalty system is…

Sent from my iPhone

We have received the following announcement from Gabriela McCall Delgado:

I would like to share with you the link to the We Connect Now website.
http://weconnectnow.wordpress.com/ The website was created while I was
a college student with a grant I received from YP4 to develop a
website to serve college students with disabilities. The website was
developed in an effort to connect and integrate college students with
disabilities as a virtual community with a voice on important issues.
The We Connect Now website has been up and serving college students
with disabilities since April of 2008.

I wanted to share the We Connect Now website with you so that you may
post it as a resource in your website or otherwise share it with
students that you serve or have contact with. The website has been
used as a resource by institutions of higher learning and has been
linked to by colleges and universities and groups serving people with
disabilities in 50 states and at least 9 foreign countries.

The We Connect Now website has been featured in the press
http://www2.hernandotoday.com/content/2011/jul/14/HBNEWSO1-college-students-with-disabilities/
http://theadvocate.com/utility/homepagestories/441855-98/site-offers-community-for-students.html
and in publications of various professional organizations
http://www.nacacnet.org/PublicationsResources/KnowledgeCenter/Pages/NewOnlineCommunity.aspx

I thank you for any and all help that you and your office may give me
in promoting this project as a service to all college students with
disabilities.

Sincerely,

Gabriela McCall Delgado

Editorial: For Mentally Ill, Justice Fails Again
(Denver Post)
September 16, 2011

PUEBLO, COLORADO– [Excerpt from Inclusion Daily Express] The news of a lawsuit alleging unconstitutional delays in evaluating mentally ill inmates by the state hospital in Pueblo is enough to leave Coloradans with the disoriented feeling that they're in a time warp. 

How many times must the courts be called in to protect the rights of this state's mentally ill? How often will budgetary pressure be cited as a reason for apparent neglect? 

"You can't use the budget crisis to justify violating people's constitutional rights. You don't dump the problem on the most-disenfranchised population in Colorado," exclaimed defense attorney Iris Eytan. "You fix it. You saw this coming. We sued you five years ago."

In response to that earlier legal action, the state agreed to provide mentally ill inmates in county jails with competency evaluations within 28 days of a judge's order. But Eytan and others maintain the state abandoned the terms of that deal in recent years.

As a result, they say, inmates who need an evaluation may languish for months behind bars before they get one. Only then, if they're found incompetent to stand trial, will they finally get the treatment they require.

Entire editorial:
Editorial: For mentally ill, justice fails again
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_18887501

“You have to decide what kind of writer you want to be,” my friend Kate Gale told me at a recent conference. “You have to decide what career path you want to follow.” If anyone would know about these kinds of things, it would be Kate, who has created for herself a pretty amazing writing and publishing career.

But it’s challenging for me to think in those terms, in making clear-cut decisions towards a particular type of career. I know of writers who do, of poets who decided they wanted to become respected, so set about publishing only their very best poetry, then moved on to an important translation, then published some important works of theory or criticism. They become, shall we say, academic poets, poets who want to be remembered in academia for their intelligence, for their long and storied careers. Sometimes they speak in stentorian voices. They command attention. Non-poets may or may not know their work, but that’s really beside the point. The point is that other poets adore them.

On the other extreme, there are writers who go the pop culture route, who value big book contracts over carefully constructed plot development, who make their livings churning out murder mysteries or romance novels year after year. They are the writers with fancy houses and cars, the writers whose books have words like “diamonds” in their titles. They’re not usually poets, of course, but they seem to make nice lives for themselves even if respected writers turn down their noses at their work.

Of course, there are many grades in between. There are writers with B-list careers, for example, the Matthew Perry’s of the publishing world who write books that many people like, but who don’t win big awards or command huge audiences. Modest careers, one might say. But still, they spend their lives doing the work they love. There are writers with pop culture success who are also incredibly respected in academia. There are writers other writers love to read, but almost no one outside of the writing world would recognize their name. There are writers who self-publish, writers who never publish. Even, once in a great while, a recluse writer locked away in her attic changing posterity.

I like to think of myself as a poet of the people, as someone engaged with the stuff of everyday life—with atrocity, with war, with the harm one human will do to another. With nature, with fairy tales, with the human body. I love giving poetry readings, engaging with other poets and with an audience. I love meeting with other writers to share their words.

But when I’m being honest with myself, I realize that most readers wouldn’t consider my work “of the people.” I write mostly lyrical poetry, I reference the Oxford English Dictionary, I say thing like, “Readers should have to work hard to understand a poem” and “If you don’t know a word, look it up.” It’s true that I’d prefer respected writers enjoy my work, but it’s also true that I’d like my poetry to be something non-poets would like to read. I’d love, one day, to be riding a bus in Boston and see some random woman opening my poetry collection, some non-poet on her way to a 9-5 job diving into my words.

I don’t expect to be a pop culture poet (I don’t even own a TV) and I don’t expect to begin speaking in a stentorian voice. But I’d like some in between without, necessarily, having Matthew Perry’s career. I guess I’m saying I want more categories, more ways to be and write and work in the world. I want to keep writing and publishing in as far-ranging journals as will have me. I want to keep performing my work aloud. To meet with small groups of people and share their stories. Share my own. I’d like a career that lasts my lifetime, that continues to challenge me, continues to grow an audience. I’d like to continue working hard, every day.

Andrea Scarpino is a poet and essayist and a frequent contributor to POTB. You can visit her at:www.andreascarpino.com 

There are some things I believe without the irritable searching after the incitements of thought. For instance, John Wayne in The Searchers is crafty, brash, full of doubt, and accordingly believable as a man who is searching for his niece on the 19th century American frontier. I believe in doubt. Admire it in fact. Each day I invariably doubt my own capacities. I wonder if I can change the things that are in my immediate vicinity and influence those things that are ostensibly beyond me–the global. I recognize that I'm a searcher. I want the places where I work to be accessible to people with disabilities–want them to go beyond compliance as we like to say in the disability advocacy world. Yet, like John Wayne I feel rained on, sometimes find myself taking shelter under a tree. Just a few days ago I complained about a broken wheelchair ramp at Syracuse University. SU doesn't have an ADA Coordinator who counsels individual departments and facilities personnel. Everything is decentralized which means, alas, that access gets left behind and so I come along, newly minted, the fresh faculty face, and complain. Now there are meetings scheduled. The good townsfolk are gathering. This is good. I am capable of advocacy–the brashness, the inexorable crafty and pushy qualities of the activist are mine. But I am doubtful too. Syracuse University should be farther along with its accessibility initiatives. I doubt my efficacy. I'm tired of ADA failures in the places where I work. I've seen it all before. I doubt the system. Doubt myself. Keep moving. Keep talking. Where's Vera Miles? Where's Natalie Wood? 

"What sort of person do governments want as the secretary general of the United Nations? For all the tributes pouring forth on this anniversary, there is no evidence that the members of the Security Council have ever tried to find another Hammarskjold. Can it be that eight years of dynamic leadership half a century ago was enough for them?"

See Brian Urquhart's superb commentary in today's NY Times.