NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/9750

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Subject: 09/92 - The Disability Rag (5/6)
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/* Written  9:01 pm  Jan  2, 1993 by [e-mail] in igc:gen.diffable */
/* ---------- "09/92 - The Disability Rag" ---------- */

What???
    Writer to be hired by telethon (or, do they ever learn?)
    "He is almost totally paralyzed, speechless and wheelchair-
bound, able to move only his facial muscles and two fingers on his
left hand. He cannot dress or feed himself, and he needs round-the-
clock nursing care. He can communicate only through a voice
synthesizer, which he operates by laboriously tapping out words on
the computer attached to his motorized chair. Yet at age 50, despite
these crushing adversities, Stephen Hawking has become, in the
words of science writers Michael White and John Gribbin, 'perhaps
the greatest physicist of our time.' " Time magazine's Leon Jaroff,
leading off his review of White's and Gribbin's book on Hawking, in
the June 8 issue.
    For the Things Never Change Department: An uncannily similar
start to a Feb. 8, 1988 Time magazine story on Hawking, and a Jan. 2,
1989 People profile on him made our   "We wish we wouldn't see . . ."
issue (Winter, 1990). Time and People, by the way, are put out by
the same folks.

    Amazing what the less fortunate can do
    " . . . [N]early 7,000 disabled and handicapped people have been
trained to function as full McDonald's employees by job coaches
drawn from within the company. Before these less fortunate
employees take their places, company trainers often put young able-
bodied workers in blindfolds, gloves or dark glasses to demonstrate
the kind of handicaps their new colleagues have to deal with in doing
the same jobs." Time magazine's Edwin M. Reingold, in his June 29
article on "America's Hamburger Helper." Time was hedging its bets
here by making sure it got in both "disabled and handicapped" in the
same breath [Italics ours.].

    Unused money
    "Our board was recently informed by the [Connecticut] Bureau
of Rehabilitation Services that it would return, unused, two million
dollars allotted to it by the State. . . . [and] confirmed that a policy
decision had been made which will require a test of economic means
for those applying for services . . . . This past year, the Bureau had
approximately $6.5 million for the purchase of . . .  wheelchairs,
psychotherapy, on-the-job training . . . this money, available since
October, 1991, was not used until after the beginning of the new
year . . ." From a recent bulletin from the Connecticut Coalition of
Citizens with Disabilities.

    Our own worst enemy, cont'd.
    "I hate the term 'advocacy' because that sounds so aggressive .
. . ". Sandra Ellis, member of the Arizona chapter of the Paralyzed
Veterans of America, speaking to city officials in Alaska regarding
the Americans with Disabilities Act. Ellis was called a "well
informed volunteer" who was "diligently paving the potholes of life
in the proverbial rocky road to accessibility" by Paraplegia News
editor Cliff Crase, who reported Ellis's remarks in the June issue of
PN.
    Writer fails
    Logic 101
    "Because she died tragically (of a brain tumor in 1970, at age
34), her sculpture resonates with a kind of heroism." Time magazine
art critic Peter Plagens, writing about sculptor Eva Hesse in the May
25 issue.
article ends

    poem begins
     Three Poems by Cheryl Marie Wade
    all that sits between

    All that sits between your chrome wheeled chair and mine.
    A distance of freak names and shackled possibilities. A land of
Mother
    disappointment. Child's play locked in hospital bed rails.
    Acres of starch white indifference. Probes into private spaces
without
    introduction or permission. Cripple yearnings for whole and
romance.
    Once to be desire. Once to be pure flesh on fire.

    All that sits between your jagged bones and my gnarl attitude.
    Telethon assumptions. Prayers to granite invisibility we call
God.
    Rosary beads sewn into the lining of a coat. Shame on our
tongues
    like scales. Cartoon silhouettes in rage-lit freeze frame.
    Cripple yearnings for calm and ordinary.
    Once to be just fine. Once to be so fine.

    All that sits between your searching heart and my sarcastic
hope.
    Words that spell our names correctly. Laws that do more than
just
    token our promise. Dreams like ants crawling under our skin.
    And the reach, the reach across the distance, frail-boned hand
to twisted spine.
    These lives of passion and disturbance. Echoes in the storm.
    Still -- such a long, such a long, long way to go.
poem ends

    poem begins

        A NIGHT ALONE

    Longing
    tugs at my bones
    listens closely
    for his clumping braced footsteps
    on the gravel drive
    listens
    for the sliding of his worn shoes
    across the kitchen floor
    and the strike of the match
    Longing
    catches in my throat
    imagines
    his hands on the pipe
    his hands stroking the cat
    imagines
    his hands
    Longing
    dries my mouth
    reaches
    for the sounds of him
    moving
    room to room
    Longing
    holds his sounds
    between my thighs
    and brings him home.

    poem ends

    poem begins

        THE WAY SHE TELLS HIM

    She does not state it
    point blank
    to his green-gray eyes
    or breathe it into his neck
    She does not write it
    with childlike script
    on jasmine scented paper
    or hum it
    into his morning coffee
    She does not moan it
    to the rhythm of his tongue's tracing
    or yelp it
    mid pitch and roll
    She says it
    without a whisper
    to the velvet dawn:
    Pressing her scarred wrist against his heart
    she lets the pale vein
    pulse     know me    know me
    know me
poem ends

    article begins
    Disability Culture Rap by Cheryl Marie Wade
    Disability culture. Say what? Aren't disabled people just
isolated victims of nature or circumstance?
    Yes and no. True, we are far too often isolated. Locked away in
the pits, closets and institutions of enlightened societies
everywhere. But there is a growing consciousness among us: "that is
not acceptable."  Because there is always an underground. Notes get
passed among survivors. And the notes we're passing these days say,
"there's power in difference. Power. Pass the word."
    Culture. It's about passing the word. And disability culture is
passing the word that there's a new definition of disability and it
includes power.
    Culture. New definitions, new inflections. No longer just "poor
cripple." Now also "CRIPPLE" and, yes, just "cripple." A body
happening. But on a real good day, why not C*R*I*P*P*L*E; a body,
hap-pen-ing. (Dig it or not.)
    Culture. It's finding a history, naming and claiming ancestors,
heroes. As "invisibles," our history is hidden from us, our heroes
buried in the pages, unnamed, unrecognized. Disability culture is
about naming, about recognizing.
    Naming and claiming our heroes. Like Helen Keller. Oh, not the
miracle-worker version we're all so familiar with, but the social
reformer, the activist who tried so desperately to use her celebrity
to tell the truth of disability: that it has far more to do with
poverty, oppression and the restriction of choices than it has to do
with wilted muscles or milky eyes. And for her efforts to tell this
truth, she was ridiculed, demeaned as revolutionaries often are. And
because Helen Keller was a survivor, and that is the first thing any
culture needs -- survivors who live long enough so that some part of
the truth makes it to the next generation.
    Helen Keller was a survivor, so she pulled back from telling
the fuller truth; that's often what survivors have to do: they have to
swallow the rage, wear the mask, and, yes, pull back from telling it
exactly like it is so that there might be a next generation. And so,
Helen Keller, a survivor, we honor you as our ancestor, our hero.
    Naming and claiming our hidden history, our ancestors. Like the
thousands of mental and physical "defectives," singled out for
"special treatment" by the Nazis. Yes, disability culture is
recognizing that we were the first victims of the Holocaust, that we
are the people the Nazis refined their methods of torture on. So we
must honor these unnamed victims as our ancestors, we must raise
their unmarked graves into our consciousness, into the
consciousness of America so it never happens again. And just as
Native Americans insist the true name of discovery is genocide,
more and more of us insist that the true name of "right to die with
dignity" (without opportunities to live with dignity) is murder, the
first syllable of genocide.
    Naming and claiming our ancestors, our heroes.  Like all those
circus and carnival freaks, the first disability performance artists.
Those rowdy outcasts who learned to emphasize their Otherness,
turn it into work, a career, a life. Oh, it may have been a harsh life,
sometimes even brutal, but a life: they kept themselves from being
locked away in those institutions designed for the excessively
different that have always been such a prominent part of the
American economy.  And so we claim these survivors as our
ancestors and we honor them.
    Naming and claiming our ancestors, our heroes. Now most of
you probably know the story of James Meredith, freedom fighter,
African American, who helped break the color barrier, the racial
barrier to higher learning by insisting he had a right to an education;
insisting.
     And without that insistence, the doors of Ole Miss would have
remained closed. But do you know the story of Ed Roberts, cripple
freedom fighter, disabled man, who, armed with self-esteem and a
portable respirator, broke the disability barrier to higher learning by
insisting he had a right to an education, by insisting that the doors
to the University of California at Berkeley be opened, and by doing
so, laid a significant brick onto the foundation of the Independent
Living Movement? Independent! Living! Movement! The language of it!
-- that revolution of identity and possibilities for disabled people.
The independent living movement. Oh, you may never have heard of it.
It never made it onto prime time. Norman Mailer did not rush out to
capture its essence in 30,000 words.
    Yet it took root; it grew; it spread all across this country, all
around the world -- because there is always an underground. Notes
get passed among survivors. And the notes we're passing these days
say: there's power in difference. Power. Pass the word.
    So what's this disability culture stuff all about? It's simple;
it's just "This is disability. From the inside out."
    Culture. Pass the word. Now maybe the word is the moan and
wail of a blues. Maybe it's the fierce rhythms and clicking heels and
castanets of flamenco. Maybe it's outsider art. Passing the word.
Maybe the word is authentic movement, that dance that flows from
the real body notes of cripples. Maybe it's the way pieces of cloth
are stitched together to commemorate a life, to remember a name.
Maybe it's American Sign Language, a language the formed the
foundation of a cultural identity for a people, Deaf people, and
bloomed into ASL performance art and ASL mime.
    Culture. Sometimes it happens over coffee or on a picket line.
A poem gets said and passed along. And passed back. Amended.
Embellished. And passed along again. Language gets claimed. Ms. Gay.
Crip. Guerrilla theater becomes theater with a soul. Teatro
Campesino. The Dance Theater of Harlem. And, of course, WRY CRIPS
Disabled Women's Theater. Radical. True. Passing the word.
    Culture. Maybe so far you've been deprived. Maybe right now the
primary image you have of disability is that of victim. Perhaps all of
you know of us is Jerry's Kids, those doom-drenched poster children
hauled out once each year to wring your charitable pockets dry.
    But I promise you: you will also come to know us as Jerry's
Orphans. No longer the grateful recipients of tear-filled handouts,
we are more and more proud freedom fighters, taking to the streets,
picket signs strapped to our chairs.
    No longer the polite tin-cuppers, waiting for your generous
inclusion, we are more and more proud freedom fighters, taking to
the stages, raising our speech-impaired voices in celebration of who
we are. No longer the invisible people with no definition beyond
"Other," we are more and more proud, we are freedom fighters,
taking to the streets and to the stages, raising our gnarly fists in
defiance of the narrow, bloodless images of our complex humanity
shoved down the American consciousness daily.
    And these changes, they will happen, just as the Independent
Living Movement happened, just as the Rehabilitation Act's 504
regulations for access happened; just as the Americans with
Disabilities Act -- the most comprehensive civil rights law ever
written -- happened.
    Because there is always an underground. Notes will be passed
among survivors. And the notes we're passing these days say,
"There's power in difference. Power. Pass the word."
    Disability culture. What is it really all about?
    It's this.
    And this.
    And this.
    Yeah, this --
    coming at you from
    the inside out.
article ends
    sidebar begins
    Disability Culture Rap, says Cheryl Marie Wade,  is based on
the belief that all cultural groups, including disabled people, have
the right to create the language and images that define them. If
you're in San Francisco in October, you won't want to miss the world
premiere of  Wade's "A Woman With Juice" performance art event.
Premiering October 15 and running for three consecutive weekends,
"A Woman With Juice" is being produced by BRAVA, For Women in the
Arts, one of San-Francisco's most respected presenters of cutting-
edge women's work. BRAVA is also assisting with the tour
production of "A Woman With Juice;" a video about the making of the
show is in progress. For ticket information, call BRAVA at 415/641-
7657.
    Wade and BRAVA! are seeking support to help get these
projects off the ground. Tax-deductible contributions can be sent to
BRAVA, c/o CM Wade, 1613 Fifth St., Berkeley, CA 94710-1714.
    Also in production is Wade's second video, "Disability Culture
Rap," to be marketed to public television stations, schools and
independent living programs. Wade is seeking VHS or S-VHS footage
of crip cultural events for the video, and asks anyone who has
material to donate to the project to contact her at the above
address.
    Wade's first video, "HERE" (reviewed in the May/June Rag) has
won awards from the National Educational Film and Video Festival,
the East Bay Video Festival, the Louisville Film and Video Festival
and the Media Access Office (Wade also won its CeCe Robinson award
for artistic achievement). "HERE" can be purchased from Wade on a
sliding scale from $15 to $35 at the above address.
sidebar ends
    review begins
        Graphic Novel on Disability reviewed by John R.
Woodward
    The Spiral Cage, by Al Davison. London, England: Titan Books.
112 pages. $10.50 softcover.

    "Everybody lives in the hospital till they have lots of
operations so they can walk . . . When you are five or six you go to a
school full of people who still can't walk and are in wheelchairs . . .
I like learning to walk . . . . I start school next year. I can read. I
learned in the ambulance every day . . . . People on television don't
have holes in their hearts or asthma and they can walk . . . . but they
aren't real . . . teachers and doctors can walk, but they are old."
    These were Al Davison's observations of the world at age three
and a half, remembered by the adult Davison as he struggles to make
sense of life with spina bifida. A few pages later, the five-year-old
Davison does indeed take his first steps -- only to find that walking
will never earn his way to the able-bodied world.  He still has to
live with the realities of interminable hospital stays, segregated
education, loneliness, the thwarting of his career goals, and even
beatings from opportunistic bullies who pursue him long into his
adulthood, determined to punish the "spacka" for being different.
    Since the mid-1970's, comic book writers and artists like
Robert Crumb, Harvey Pekar and Art Spiegleman have used the comic
book medium for autobiographical adventures into satire and social
criticism. Davison is the first disabled person to tell his life's story
in the form of a graphic novel (the term used by publishers to sneak
comic books into mainstream bookstores) and he writes about the
same themes that Crumb, Pekar and Spiegleman keep returning to:
loneliness, social and sexual rejection, fear of death and the
dreadful impact of violence. Davison, of course, thinks of these
issues in the terms of his disability and what it has meant to him.
Although Davison was born and raised in England, the circumstances
of his life will be familiar to anyone who grew up with a mobility
impairment.
    Soon after his birth, Davison is nicknamed "Smiler" by the
nurses who care for him in the hospital.  Falls, endless rounds of
surgery and painful physical therapy sessions are never more than
frustrations to him, and they cannot dent his fundamental
cheerfulness. He develops a powerful imagination that carries him
outside the walls of the surgical wards where he spends most of his
time, but there is a darker side to this existence. He is separated
from the love of his parents and sister for most of his first four
years, and later he will wonder if his relationship difficulties are
rooted in the fact that he was deprived of real affection during
these crucial formative years.
    In adolescence, Davison discovers that there is more than just
frustration in the world, as he is shoved unprepared into a
"mainstream" school and victimized repeatedly by bullies. In the
mainstream school he also discovers that the able-bodied world is
not prepared to accept his sexuality.
    The grown-up Davison learns to protect himself with karate,
and becomes frighted of his own potential for violence when he first
experiences the sense of power that comes from defending himself
against yet another batch of bullies.  This sends him on an inner
quest for peace -- not just an end to his rage, but a means for finding
meaning in his world. His early explorations into Buddhism are
hampered by well-meaning fellow Buddhists who try to interpret his
spina bifida as karmic punishment for sins in a previous existence --
but Davison instinctively knows that karma is more complex than
that, and eventually finds the Way to his own piece of enlightenment.
    Davison's story is not about "overcoming" his disability,
although he did push his body farther than conventional wisdom told
him he could go. It isn't about confronting stereotyped attitudes
toward persons with disabilities, either. The people in Davison's life
lay a lot of negative stereotypes on him, but aside from defending
himself against violence (and engaging in one rather silly test of
machismo at a party) Davison prefers to deal with negative
stereotypes by exorcising them from himself, rather than
challenging them in others.  Cage is one disabled person's spiritual
struggle to find acceptance and power within himself, an inner
security the outer world denies him. Although his discussion of
Buddhism may seem obscure to some readers, there is no denying
that it was Buddhism which finally brought him the fulfillment he
had been seeking all his life.
    The Spiral Cage is done in black and white line drawings, with
a beautiful color cover drawn in colored pencil.  In the Introduction
(written by British comics superstar Alan Moore) we learn that the
first version of the book was done entirely in color. We can all hope
that if Cage does well, Titan Books will eventually risk publishing
the color version. In the meantime, Davison has provided us all with
-- dare I say it? -- a genuine bit of inspiration.
article ends
    article begins
        Ragland: Our Telethon
    The telethon to end all telethons. That's what The Rag is
holding this Labor Day, in our office in Louisville. It's our way of
having some fun with an institution we hope to see go the way of the
dinosaurs -- and let you folks know that we're deadly serious at the
same time -- not only about this telethon business, which we really
believe is at the heart of America's total lack of understanding
about access and rights, but about our desire to continue to let you,
our readers, speak truth about disability -- the real truth.
    The small ad on this page is not just a copywriter's clever
phrasing. It's true. The First Amendment to the Constitution allows
us to print what we write -- and what you write -- about things as
controversial as the Telethon. We often think that, as things get
hotter for disability rights (and they will get hotter, more difficult,
not easier, we think, in the immediate future), we need to be
grateful that we have a first Amendment that protects our freedom
to speak what we believe is the truth about things like the MDA,
about our government and its institutions, about society.
    But Constitutional protection is one thing; the ability to keep
publishing is another. You can have a free press, but unless you can
pay the press operator, and the typesetter, and the postage, and all
the other things attendant on putting out a publication, then "free
press" doesn't go very far.
    You, our loyal readers, have kept us publishing. You know that.
Last year you gave us over $30,000 -- and we could not have survived
without it. Our gratitude to you is beyond words. And yet, we must
ask you to do it again -- and again, and again. This year we hope you
can have a little fun in the process of helping us continue to give you
the voice that you want in a publication.
    Around the outside of this issue you'll find a letter explaining
our need for this year. We plan to be in our office in Louisville on
Labor Day, just like Jerry's on the television. If you've sent in your
pledge to The Rag, you can call us and we will sing you our version of
Jerry's Favorite Telethon Songs. It's our way of saying . . . . thanks.
    Of course, you don't have to call us to croon to you -- you can
just send us a donation. (Perhaps you'd prefer it that way.) To
contribute to The Disability Rag Advocado Press Labor Day Telethon,
simply send your gift to The Disability Rag, Box 145, Louisville, KY
40201.
    But if you really need that song, or some relief from the
schlock emanating from your TV set, you can still call us at
502/459-5343 between noon and 7 pm, Eastern time, on Labor Day.
You'll be in for a Telethon the likes of which you've never heard
before-- nor will want to ever again!
article ends
    article begins
        Ragtime:Fighting Handicaps by Mary Johnson
    "Most Americans are astonishingly indifferent to how
effectively charitable organizations use the money that comes their
way," says James Cook of Forbes magazine. This becomes
understandable when one realizes that the reason Americans give
money to charities is not to affect change or to save the less
fortunate, but to assuage guilt. Making ourselves feel better is what
we care about. Groups like the MDA, on some level, understand this.
    The cause we choose to give to says far more about us than it
says about the worthiness of the cause. That fact that Americans
made the MDA one of its top-grossing charities says this nation has
a lot of guilt about disability. We don't understand what we feel
guilt about, exactly -- but disability makes us feel guilty
nonetheless.
    The real truth is that we feel guilty for not helping those
people. But at the same time, we're afraid. Helping them by making
them like us -- normal, not disabled anymore-- is one thing. Helping
them to be equal and remain disabled is something entirely different
-- and scary. If we did that, then there they'd be, right in our faces,
just wanting more and more changes from us -- and they'd still be
different, taunting us with that differentness.
    At the "first flush" ceremony for New York City's inaccessible
streetside toilets last month, I heard some well-heeled bystanders
mutter it: "They're never satisfied." The "they" referred to a meekly
quiet group of protesters who gathered at the news conference to
draw attention to the illegality of the separate-but-equal facilities.
    The "they're never satisfied" complaint is at the heart of the
Telethon controversy. It was voiced on the Gil Gross show against
Laura Hershey. It is being voiced by detractors of the Americans
with Disabilities Act, against those who are now using the law as it
was intended, filing complaints and suing places that refuse to obey
it.
    The Telethon keeps disabled people in their place, serving
precisely as the Telethon machinery intends: as out-of-the-way
proof that our guilt is being expiated by contributions. When they get
in our face with their demands, all that shatters.
    Until now, giving to telethons has been one of the safest, least
controversial forms of charity. Until now, disability has remained
the one thing it's been politically correct for everyone to hate;
stamping it out, through cure, has been the one thing everyone can
agree on. Civil rights, environmental, women's and religious or
political causes all have a controversial aspects. The giver might be
criticized -- by someone who doesn't believe in civil rights, or
women's rights, or environmental issues or whatever. But everyone
has been against disability; there's been no disagreement about that.
    It seems utterly absurd to society that anyone might complain
about any kind of giving that is destined to "cure" someone of an
"affliction."
    What MDA really stands to lose as a result of Jerry's Orphans'
protests -- and they certainly know it -- is their sacrosanct position
as the Cause It's Safe To Give To. Once that understanding
penetrates public consciousness even dimly -- that understanding
that there may be things better to do for "victims of disease" than
curing them, that things like civil rights might be more important --
then the whole edifice can ultimately be toppled.
    That is the fondest hope of activists, and the deepest dread of
MDA.
    %J%J%J
    As I sat reading the paper one sunny afternoon early this
summer, I found my attention caught by an event going on in a nearby
park. It seemed to be a grade-school ceremony of some sort. From a
block away, I could hear snatches of the emcee's voice as she
announced what seemed to be different grade school classes, each
giving a performance of some sort or another.
    At one point I was startled to hear the phrase "help us fight
handicaps." I stopped to listen closer. I could only catch snatches of
phrase. I heard "special class" and "courage."
    I thought to myself: Isn't that about all that most of us hear
when it comes to disability? "Courage," special" and "fighting
handicaps?"
    "Fighting handicaps." Like Mom and apple pie, it's part of
Americana, as Bob Kafka said.  What chance does disability rights
hold against such a concept?
    "Fighting handicaps" is what Jerry Lewis is all about. He
knows he has a stranglehold on a corner of the American dream.
    %J%J%J
    The question we have sought the answer to, in all the
examining of material that went into this issue, is: why is MDA so
scared of a ragtag, motley group of fairly disorganized activists? Do
they really believe a few scattered protests here and there across
the nation can bring down the entire edifice of the Muscular
Dystrophy Association?
    Evidently. In February, Jerry Lewis wrote to President Bush
that "anyone who imagines that the Association is incapable of
gradual collapse in the face of the kind of abuse we're taking is
kidding himself."
    Lewis knew exactly what was going on when he urged Bush to
"act to protect and preserve the invaluable American private-sector
institution."
    MDA is running scared. Though Jerry's Orphans and their
followers represent only a tiny fraction of people today, their
message is rights, not charity. It's the new paradigm, as Kemp saw.
Once a new idea takes hold, nothing can stop it. MDA, we suspect,
knows this.
    The activists who demonstrated in Chicago have the potential
to break the MDA stranglehold on public perception. In that
stranglehold is held far more than just the Telethon's Kids. That's
the same stranglehold that keeps society believing that disabled
people need to live in institutions. It's the same stranglehold that
keeps disabled people in nursing homes, that keeps the American
Medical Association believing that disabled people protesting might
"hurt themselves." The stranglehold is on society's understanding.
    Jerry's Orphans are not wrong when they charge that the
fallout from the Telethon keeps them dependent. Evan Kemp was onto
it a decade ago. It's the essential truth of disability oppression, and
no matter what form it takes, disability oppression at its heart is
paternalism. It comes from the fear and loathing that dare not speak
its name, that surfaces instead as pity, masquerading as
compassion.  Make no mistake about it: "out the Jerry Lewis
Telethon, once and for all, win this one -- and you win real power.
You make society see -- for the first time, but in a way they can no
longer ignore, no longer deny -- that disabled people are not children.
    This has ramifications: in one swoop, it makes it clear why
attendant services must be a national policy. It makes it clear why
the disability rights movement fought for the ADA -- and what they
mean when they say they want "Access, now!"
    In fact, it makes almost everything clear about disability
rights. The Telethon is the false image, whose presence keeps the
truth of disability from taking hold. It is because of the Telethon's
message that the shopowner thinks the ADA can safely be ignored.
It's because of the Telethon message that the American Health Care
Association wins with the Administration, insisting that people
need nursing homes over in-home care. It's because of the Telethon,
as Kemp and activists have been saying for over a decade, that
disabled people are assumed to be incapable of doing a day's work --
and the reason, perhaps, that many disabled people themselves
believe they can't work (they have to be cured first).
    Go to Vegas, kick butt, foil the Telethon, once and for all, and
you win a movement goal long cherished but never achieved: You
change the consciousness of America. "out the Telethon, and the
nation's understanding of what it means to be disabled will never be
the same again.
article ends
    article begins
        Bills to Counter ADA Enter Congress
    Bills to substantially weaken or repeal the Americans with
Disabilities Act outright have entered Congress. Rep. William E.
Dannemeyer, a Republican from California who fought on the floor of
the House to keep people with HIV-infection from being covered
under the law, is now trying another sideswipe -- a bill to define
what he claims are the "undefined" terms of "undue burden" and
"undue hardship;" its real purpose is to keep opposition stirred up.
Dannemeyer will be retiring at the end of this term so his bill isn't
much of a threat. An aide blithely said that it was simply a way of
"throwing out an issue for the next Congress."
    Mickey Edwards, a Republican Congressman from Oklahoma City
introduced a bill June 22 to simply repeal the ADA. The fact that
Edwards is the fourth highest-ranking Republican member of the
House and Chair of the Republican Policy Committee should give us
pause -- particularly those of us who may still consider George Bush,
head of the Republican Party (Edwards is Chair of The Republican
Policy Committee ) the "ADA President."
    Edwards insists his constituent business community begged it
of him; swearing that implementing the law is bankrupting
businesses. When pressed to name a business that's been hurt
financially by compliance, however, he was unable to come up with
any examples.
article ends
    article begins
        A First for the Nation: Access Required in
Single-Family Homes when City Foots Bill, says Atlanta
    Atlanta has become the first place in the nation to mandate
basic wheelchair access features in new single-family housing. This
first was scored through the work of Georgia-based Concrete
Change, an activist group which focuses on universal, basic access
to new houses.
    The city ordinance, passed unanimously by Atlanta's City
Council in June, requires all new single-family houses which get
city funding to have a no-step entrance, doors at least 32 inches
wide throughout the house, reinforcements built into bathroom walls
to allow installing grab bars later, if needed, and electrical
controls, switches and plugs at heights and locations reachable from
a wheelchair.
    Several million dollars' worth of low- and moderate-cost
houses are expected to be covered by the new law over the next four
years, since Atlanta is funding many inner-city homebuilding
projects in preparation for the 1996 Olympics.
    The law builds on the work of disability activists in Florida,
who in 1988 got a state law passed requiring bathroom doors in all
new houses be at least 29 inches wide; this was the first law in the
country to require an access feature in single-family houses,
according to Concrete Change's Eleanor Smith.
    Concrete Change members believe that as developers construct
the access features required by the Atlanta ordinance, and discover
in the process that these features are neither difficult nor costly to
construct, developers will be less likely to believe the exorbitant
cost estimates used by the National Association of Homebuilders and
other trade groups which routinely oppose access.
    A copy of the Atlanta city legislation and other support
materials is available for $2 from Concrete Change, 1371
Metropolitan Ave., S.E., Atlanta, GA 30316.
article ends
    article begins
        Hockenberry Sues, Moves to TV
    News reporter John Hockenberry, refused the seats he wanted
to a Broadway play ("Anger and Access, July/August), has sued
theater owners under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
    His lawsuit, filed earlier this summer, alleges that the
Virginia Theater has not been made accessible under the
requirements of the ADA that require places of public
accommodation be made accessible when access is "readily
achievable."
    Hockenberry fans will soon be able to see the reporter on
television news. Hockenberry announced in July that he had been
hired by ABC News for its as-yet-unnamed newsmagazine to
premiere opposite "60 Minutes" in early 1993. He'll be doing some
reporting for World News Tonight. He told The Rag that ABC
managment found the fact that he used a chair "interesting" and that
it would add a new perspective. articleends
    articlebegins State Institutions are "Killing Freedom"
    Disability rights activists marched from Boston's Old North
Church to Concord, Mass. on a two-day "Wheels of Freedom"
demonstration in early June. The march was held in response to
reductions in state funding for services to let disabled people live in
the community, and to protest new state legislation that will
restrict closing of archaic state institutions . These state
"schools," says the Cape Organization for Rights of the Disabled,
still incarcerate thousands of disabled people. CORD, organizer of
the Wheels of Freedom march, held a vigil and camped out all night
on the grounds of the Fernald State "School" in Waltham, Mass., one
of the institutions that is still accepting "patients."
    Over 500 people still live at Fernald. The day after the all-
night vigil, protesters were invited into Fernald to talk with seven
members of the institution's "self-advocacy" group.
    "What struck me most during the ensuring meeting,"  CORD
organizer Bill Henning said, "was that as we discussed living on the
outside" -- and the discussion was led by four former residents of
state institutions, Henning adds -- we were speaking "of concepts
unknown, perhaps alien, to those still left behind.
    "We spoke of attendants to assist us to do what we want;" the
residents of the institutions spoke, instead, "of the needed care
from staff, because they believe they can't fend for themselves." Yet
Henning reports that at least one of the activists noted "they are
less disabled than me."
    Henning said the activists spoke to the residents "of being
able to go to the movies when we want." The residents said they
couldn't, "but they gave us Fernald mugs inscribed with the
Orwellian boast that the so-called school is TCommitted to quality
in providing opportunities for individuals to achieve their fullest
independence.'"
    Sybil Feldman, an activist with CORD who moved out of Fernald
years ago, told current residents of her own fight. She said that if
she had to return to an institution, "I'd kill myself." Yet one resident
responded, "I've been living here all my life; I couldn't accept living
in the community."
    "In all honesty, those who talked to us said they want to stay
at Fernald," reported Henning. "It's all they seem to know. The place
was clean, staff seemed dedicated to their tasks, and all residents
said the care was good.
    "Yet not one of us liked what we saw," Henning continued.
"Institutions, by their nature, by their design, kill freedom in all its
tangible and intangible manifestations:
    "We had to sign in when we entered the building.
    "Our conversation had to end right at 8:30, because it was time
to close shop. Staff freely walked into the room without knocking.
    "I ask, does your home have such rules, such intrusions, such
borders on the spirit?" Henning asked.
    "Fernald must be a flashpoint in the future," He said. Unlike
other Massachusetts state "schools" slated to close, where CORD
protests have been greeted with "a hostility that has frightened
me," Fernald is not among those scheduled to be phased out.
    "In fact, we fear that it will accept transfers from other
facilities as they become consolidated, much as Auschwitz did in
1943 and 1944. Fernald's future seems bright; no wonder its staff
were cheerful.
    "It remains for us to change this, to let people with
disabilities wrest control of their lives" from the institutions, he
said. articleends
    articlebegins  Getting Respectable? Denver Honors ADAPT with
Commemorative Plaque
    On July 5 and 6, 1978, ADAPT, which then stood for American
Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation, staged their first
demonstration to demand lifts on buses. That was in Denver, and the
spot where they demonstrated now sports a commemorative plaque
from the City of Denver. In a ceremony July 26, marking the second
anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act,
Denver and national officials honored the direct-action group for
their work which, 12 years later, led to the ADA and its requirement
that public transit be accessible. articleends
    articlebegins We Wish We Wouldn't See. . . Department
    Ad shown is a photo of an empty wheelchair, black background.
Headline in white reads, "A Business Deal So Good It'll Have People
Getting Up And Walking Away." This is a public service ad appearing
in the January 27, 1992 Advertising Age. The ad was created as a
public service for the Muscular Dystrophy Association by the ad
agency D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, Inc.
    Submitted anonymously.