Category Archives: blaming

“There’s a suggestion that you were rolling towards the police in your wheelchair”: BBC Interviews Jody McIntyre About His Assault By London Metropolitan Police Officers

I would like you to take a moment to imagine the look on my face when I realised that the BBC interviewer in the following clip (transcript below) actually asked Jody McIntyre, a 20 year old man who uses a wheelchair and has cerebral palsy, whether or not the fact that Jody is a “revolutionary” is reason enough for the police to have assaulted him twice during the London riots last week. The following interview is full of similar gems, including a rather pointed “appear to show” what the actual footage shows.

I want to salute Joey for his calm yet firm responses throughout the interview.

BBC Jody McIntyre interview

[This is an interview conducted by an unidentified male BBC reporter Ben Brown with Jody McIntyre, a man with Cerebral Palsy who was pulled by police officers from his wheelchair during the recent protests against tuition fee increases in the UK. There is repeated footage of McIntyre being pulled from his chair, which was being pushed by his brother. The footage shows multiple London police officers pulling McIntyre from his chair and dragging him across the pavement and away from his brother and his chair while outraged bystanders shout in horror at what they’re seeing. The clip shown is a cleaned up and enhanced version of the clip that went up on YouTube – the original is full of a lot of cursing and screaming from bystanders which has been edited out by the BBC.]

Interviewer: Pictures of a disabled man being dragged from his wheelchair by police officers during the protests in London over the tuition fees have emerged online. Now these pictures appear to show Jody McIntyre, 20 year old fiscal activist and blogger who suffers from cerebral palsy being pulled out of his wheelchair and dragged across the road to the pavement. While the Metropolitan Police have released this statement on that incident, saying

In connection with the incident shown on YouTube of of a tuition fees protestor in a wheelchair the Metropolitan Police confirm that the man involved, Jody McIntyre, has not launched an official complaint. The issue has been referred by the Metropolitan Police to the Directorate of Professional Standards and the Met Police say they will contact Jody McIntyre directly.

That is the statement from the police that we’ve received, and we can speak to Jody McIntyre now whose in our Westminster Studio.

Interviewer: Good evening to you.

Jody (JM): Good Evening.

Interviewer: Could you just explain what happened to you?

JM: Well, during the demonstration I was attacked by and pulled out of my wheelchair by the police on two occasions. The footage you have just shown is of a second incident. One of the police men who had dragged me down the road in the first incident obviously recognized me, came running over, pushed me out of my wheelchair on to the road, and then dragged me across the road.

Interviewer: The police say you haven’t made any kind of complaint, so why not?

JM: I haven’t made a complaint yet but I’m in contact with a lawyer and I will be doing so.

Interviewer: It’s been a few days since this happened. Why haven’t you complained before?

JM: Because I wanted to consider my options before taking that step.

Interviewer: There’s a suggestion that you were rolling towards the police in your wheelchair. Is that true?

JM: I think justifying a police officer pulling a disabled person out of a wheelchair and dragging them across a concrete road is quite ridiculous and I’m surprised that you’ve just tried to do so.

Interview: So that’s not true, you were not wheeling yourself towards the police.

JM: Well I can’t physically use my wheelchair myself. My brother was pushing me. I think it’s quite obvious from the footage that I was 100% not a threat to anyone.

Interviewer: In the Observer newspaper you were described as a cyber radical and you were quoted as saying you want to build a revolutionary movement and that can only happen through direct action on the streets. Do you classify yourself as a revolutionary? [Anna: I think this is the article he’s referring to]

JM: I don’t classifying myself as anything but I think we all have a right to fight against what the government are trying to do. They’re trying to tier education system whereby only the rich will be able to afford it. That is something that I think we should all be fighting against.

Interviewer: Now the police have said that they have referred this incident to the Directorate of Professional Standards… what’s your reaction to that?

JM: I don’t have a reaction to that but I will be making a complaint in the near future. I would say that it’s very important not to see this as an isolated incident. This is the police’s role at demonstrations. To incite and provoke violence. They’ve done it in the past and they’re continuing to do it now. I am not the real victim here. The real victims are the students, like Alfie Meadows, who is in hospital within an inch of his life after a policeman struck him on the head with a truncheon and he needed emergency brain surgery. Now imagine if it was Prince Charles, or Camilla, or a police officer who had been within an inch of their life.

Interviewer: But I have to say, I was in Parliament Square covering that demonstration and I saw protesters throwing lumps of rock at the police, throwing missiles, various missiles, at the police. Were you throwing anything at all at the police that day?

JM: I wasn’t throwing anything at the police during that day or during any [unclear] But what is clear is that the media are trying to distract the public from the real issue, which is the cuts that the government are making.

Interviewer: Were you harmed in any way in that incident with the police?

JM: Not in that … incident, in the incident that’s being shown. There was also another incident around 45 minutes earlier when a police officer struck me with a baton and yes that did cause some injury.

Interviewer: And why then, do you think– Are you saying the police picked on your twice. Why do you think they did?

JM: I have no idea. I mean, to make one suggestion, I think in the second incident at least, I think there’s a clear element of trying to provoke protesters into violence. Personally, I see myself as equal to anyone else, but I do understand that I could be perceived as more vulnerable, so I think there was an element of trying to provoke violence from others.

Interviewer: Did you shout anything provocative or throw anything that would have induced the police to do that to you?

JM: Do you really think a person with Cerebral Palsy in a wheelchair can pose a threat to a police officer who is armed with weapons?

Interviewer: But you do say that you’re a revolutionary.

JM: That’s a word, it’s not a physical action that I’ve taken against the police officers, a word that you’re quoting from a website. I’m asking you: do you think I could have in any way posed a physical threat from the seat of my wheelchair to an army of police officers armed with weapons? This whole line of argument is absolutely ludicrous because you’re blaming the victims of violence for that violence. In fact, it reminds me a lot of the way the BBC report on the Palestinian conflict–

Interviewer: When are you going to make your compalint to the police?

JM: I will be making my complaint very shortly, in the near future.

Interviewer: Okay, Jody McIntyre, thanks very much for your time, thanks for talking to us this evening.

JM: Thank you.

Further Reading: Jody McIntyre’s blog, Life on Wheels

[ETA: Thanks to various people for letting me know the interviewer is Ben Brown.]

Howard Hyde Inquiry Ignores Ableism As Cause of Death

Note: This post discusses police violence against people with mental health conditions.

The results of the Hyde Inquiry were released on Wednesday.

Some things about the Hyde Inquiry, since I don’t think it’s been widely covered outside of Nova Scotia. I wrote this summary several months ago:

Howard Hyde had a diagnosis of schizophrenia. The treatments he was on were making him sick, so he stopped taking them. He became violent.

His wife called the mobile mental health team – a project in Halifax that will go to you rather than you needing to go to them. She then called 9-1-1.

Two days later, he was dead in police custody, having been tasered.

Various things went horribly wrong. Among them were -and continue to be – the police’s inability to deal with people who have schizophrenia, amongst other mental health related conditions.

What they should have done was taken him to the hospital. Which they did, for a bit, and then left, returning him to lock-up.

His wife had tried to contact them and make sure that he was okay, and that they were aware that he had schizophrenia.

“I really wanted him to be in the hospital and get the treatment he needed for psychosis,” she said.

He had been taken to hospital for assessment, and the hospital staff requested that he be returned to the hospital after his arraignment hearing. He was not.

Parts of the surveillance tape of the tasering itself are “missing”.

“Hyde began struggling when officers tried to cut the string from his shorts. Though images were not caught on tape, surveillance audio recorded sound of the scuffle. Edwards can be heard saying “Howard, sit down.” Fellow Const. Greg McCormack is then argued to have said “You’re going to be doing the f***ing dance next, Howard,” although his voice is muffled.

It was also revealed that more than 30 minutes of footage of Hyde in a cell waiting to be booked has gone missing.”

I’ve since learned that what was actually said to Howard as the police officers approached him with a knife:

A surveillance camera captured the moment when an officer told Hyde a utility knife would be used to remove a knot from the drawstring in Hyde’s shorts, saying: “I just have to cut off one of those balls there.”

Anyway, as I said, the results were back. After 11 months of looking into the death of a man who police were called to help, we’ve all been told that Howard’s murder was an “accident” and it had nothing to do with his mental health condition.

“The only useful approach is to understand that Mr. Hyde died because of physiological changes in his body brought on by an intense struggle involving restraint,” Derrick wrote. “He did not die because he was mentally ill.”

I suppose this is technically correct. Howard’s death was not because he was mentally ill, his death was because the police were ill-equipped to deal with someone having a mental health crisis. I don’t have statistics about the number of men having mental health crises that are murdered by police officers every year, but I do know that I can’t go a whole month without at least one report, and it’s an issue that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada feels needs to be addressed.

I think it is naive to state that Howard wasn’t murdered because of his diagnosis. I think it ignores a frightening history of people with mental health conditions being murdered by police officers. I think it ignores that the criminal justice system is not equipped to effectively deal with people with mental health conditions. I think it ignores that there are limited resources available for people with mental health conditions and their families to get the help they need to cope with crisis situations.

I think it completely ignores the fact that Howard’s wife called the police for help, and two days later he was dead.

So yes, Howard Hyde isn’t dead because he had schizophrenia. He’s dead because ableism kills.

But is she taking her medication? Movies & Myths About Crazy Roommates

Don and I went to see a movie the other night, and gosh, we had fun! I mean, there’s nothing funner than going out for a nice evening with your husband and being confronted straight on with the knowledge that one of the scariest things some people can imagine is being forced to live with someone like you! Yay, fun times for everyone!

Description will follow image
Poster for the upcoming film The Roommate. The tagline is 2,000 colleges. 8 million roommates. Which one will you get?

The particular film trailer that is paining me this month is for “The Roommate”. At first looks like some sort of “And then they went to university and had awesome adventures” sort of film, right up until that immortal line “She is taking her medications, right?”

There’s a whole genre of these particular films which take an idea that can be pretty scary – moving in with a stranger or virtual stranger – and kick it up a notch. If it’s a comedy, then obviously the problem will be someone who drinks all the milk or borrows all your clothes or is just really annoying, and that particular story will usually be about two white dudes, and in the end the hero will get the girl. When they want to really frighten people with some thriller-version, then it’ll be all about the scary white chick who moves into some other white woman’s life, kills some of her friends, seduces her boyfriend, and tries to steal everything away from her, while some family member eventually reveals that the crazy lady is on medication for some undefined mental health condition.

Gosh, I have no idea why stigma is still attached to mental health conditions!

I really hate that I can’t turn around twice without being reminded that people like me, just by virtue of existing in the world, are scary. There’s always someone reminding me of that, whether it’s a classmate telling me she’ll just say she’s crazy if she kills someone so she can get off without punishment (even though Canada’s jails are full of people with mental health conditions), the near constant repetition of the myth that crazy people are more likely to be violent (even though people with mental health conditions are actually far more likely to be the victims of violent crime rather than the perpetrators), or waiting for the next remake of Single White Female to be put into general release.

I know. They’re just films, and they really are just taking the perfectly normal fear of moving in with someone you don’t know and exaggerating them for effect. But I also know that people are really afraid of those of us with mental health conditions, and that the stigma and myths about mental health conditions can make it really hard for people who are having problems to seek out help. I have also had many discussions with people who have been honest about their mental health conditions to roommates or university officials, and suffered the consequences.

I often see the housing concerns framed as a concern for other students – being around someone with a significant mental illness might traumatize them. And I agree that finding me dead in a bathroom would have traumatized someone. But my self-harm and my mania did not seem to me to be any more potentially traumatizing for other students than my dormmates who would go to the communal bathroom to throw up after every meal, those who were using hard drugs like cocaine, or even those who would binge drink until passing out naked on the stairway, none of whom ever suffered any potential housing consequences. To say nothing of my then-boyfriend, who was then causing me active and ongoing psychological trauma through his emotional abuse and who got to stay in the dorm with all our mutual friends after I was shipped across campus. That I was the only student looked at by the university and potentially subject to penalties – and identified as potentially problematic because I sought lifesaving and appropriate care – speaks volumes about how students with mental disabilities are seen by administrators.

I hate these movies because of the stereotypes they reinforce. I hate that these stereotypes are the main reason I don’t discuss my diagnosis. I hate that I can’t just go to the movies without being reminded that my existence is scary-thriller frightening to enough people to make these movies popular.

Mostly, I’d just like to go see a movie without the reminder. It makes my popcorn taste bad.

Keeping track

One of the more bizarre stereotypes (if one can call it that) about people with fibromyalgia is that we obsess over “every little ache and pain,” to the detriment of ourselves and much to the apparent annoyance of the “normal” people around us.

Here’s the thing: If I were to obsess over my pain in the way that “obsessing” is traditionally defined, I would never get a damn thing done. This is why keeping track of my pain levels each day is so important — so I don’t have to obsess over it. It takes five minutes tops to jot down some notes at some point during the day; if that fairly small action equals “obsessing,” I shudder to think what the alternative might be.

I have a pretty full schedule. I go to school full-time (I’m getting my M.A.), and commuting to school via public transit tends to take a lot out of me even though I live somewhat close to campus; this is to say nothing of actually going to class, participating and being fully present in discussion and activities, and getting work and research done outside of class. And then there’s all of the stuff that’s not school-related: spending time with my partner and with family and friends, taking care of my dog, meal preparation, living space upkeep, creative work and hobbies, and other everyday things that are too mundane to list here. All in all, many of these things are par for the course in “mainstream” life. The ability to do all of these things and more in a given day, however, is something that many abled people seem to take for granted. Given my pain issues and the fatigue that comes with them, I have had to make quite a few adjustments as to what I can do and how and when these things get done. Often, I have to make trade-offs when it comes to what gets done or what I can do; depending on my pain levels on any given day, I might have to scale back on what I can do. There are days, too, when I can’t do much at all.

And yet, when some of us do have to keep track of our pain levels, make trade-offs when it comes to getting things done, give ourselves space to recoup, take a day (or a few) off, or acknowledge that, hey, maybe “getting everything (and more!) done” in the ways that most “normal” people are expected to is unrealistic and may actively make our conditions worse, abled culture (and many abled people) shows up to tell us that we’re Doing It Wrong, that we should be doing more, or that we should be spending our already-limited energy on other or “more important” things. You’re not doing enough, quit being lazy. If you really wanted to, you could be involved in real activism/you could get a real job/you could just suck it up and stop bothering everyone by talking about your pain. Ignore your pain and maybe it will go away. Your pain can’t be that bad! By adjusting your life to your health condition, you are letting the pain win. Positive thinking! Willpower! Bootstraps!

I have to wonder why some of the adjustments that I’ve had to make, such as keeping track of my pain levels, and then carefully planning what gets done according to how I am feeling, seems so incredibly threatening to some folks. Perhaps it’s that they want to explain away why they themselves do not have these problems and will (they think) never have to deal with illness, pain or disability firsthand, because they’ve lived their lives “right.” Maybe it’s because people living their lives in ways different than themselves is scary and weird. It could be because many people simply cannot conceptualize living with chronic illness or pain, and so they have to make people who do into an “Other” whose decidedly non-mainstream existences, life experiences and habits cannot be understood, or even given consideration, by those in the mainstream.

While small things like keeping track of pain and fatigue levels may seem incomprehensible or weird to people who are not disabled, these adjustments are very important for some of us. To an outside observer, the five minutes a day that I spend noting my pain levels — and my planning of my day depending on my pain and fatigue levels (what a concept, right?) — may seem totally alien, and like it does nothing to combat the stereotype of people with fibro as a bunch of hysterical middle-class women who are obsessed with their physical pain (hello, sexism!). For me, it’s a survival technique, however small and “alien” to people who don’t live with chronic pain or health issues.

Thyroid Cancer Treatment Affects the Abled, Healthy. Everyone Panic!

I have a little bit of a problem with people being handed down a mandate that insists they behave in a certain way or adhere to a certain set of guidelines for which they are not provided the means to do so. Usually, these rules or mandates are set by people whose lives the rules will never affect. I see it all the time here on the Garrison — rules that restrict the lives of military spouses set by Upper Brass who wear uniforms and sit in offices all day being briefed by people who don’t have to figure out how to tote around a couple of toddlers, diaper bags, strollers, car seats in case they might need a taxi while running to appointments, getting groceries, and picking up or dropping off older children at school without having a vehicle. I recently witnessed it in hospital policy regarding patients on long-term controlled substance use (something I should write another post about, eh?) — a pharmacist notices a patient prescribed a certain medication for a certain length of time, alerts a committee who sends out a generic letter triggering a “Single Provider” program without anyone actually meeting the patient involved.

Now, I read that a Congressional committee has noticed that patient being treated with radiation for thyroid cancer have been possibly exposing other people to, yes, radiation.

Well, let’s think about this for a moment. In the past, people who had thyroid cancer and who were insured and who were given this treatment were allowed a hospital stay so that the very strict regimen of sterility could be followed without putting extra strain on the patient. Then, someone got an itch and decided that it was just too costly to keep this up and that these leaches could just go home and do their own laundry every day. Not to mention, I am not sure what they are supposed to do with their garbage, how they are supposed to quarantine themselves from their families if they don’t have separate wings in their homes to live in, or how they are supposed to get home if they are weak from treatment and live alone.

The new regulations are supposed to discourage patients from taking public transportation, from staying in hotels, and from a whole slew of other things that really don’t take simple practicality into account. I think we can all agree that not exposing people to radiation is all around a good idea. I have no idea how much we are talking about, and the hyperbolic pictures of HAZMAT masks on the paper edition article I read didn’t help, but it must be significant if it is causing such a stir. Though, spokesman David McIntyre says it is “unclear” if the levels are harmful.

I remember getting a bone scan a few years ago and the tech had to wear a suit, and the dye they injected into me came in a lead tube. I was told I had to avoid metal detectors and public transit for a few days and was given a card to show that I was recently injected with radioactive substances. But I was a single mother, and a sailor, and I had no one else to help me out. Back to work I went, showing my card to security, who walked me through the non-metal detector way. I picked up my kid from daycare later, and drove myself home. I imagine that someone who has no support system who might be in a similar or worse situation would have to make similar decisions. So, I can see how people would disregard directions to go straight home.

Perhaps home is a day’s drive. Perhaps home is filled with young children and has only one car available. A hotel and train ride might be the only option, since the loosened restrictions mean that insurance will not pay for a hospital room that is no longer required. Or perhaps there is no insurance at all, and it was all a patient could manage to scrape up the cost of the treatment in the first place. There are so many reasons that these restrictions are not being followed, and I feel like this article, this committee, and this investigation are looking more at the people who are ‘violating’ the rules and less at the systemic problems that cause them to do so.

So, yes, those poor, unsuspecting people who have fallen victim to the carelessness of these cancer patients who have been so selfish to expose themselves to the world are who we should be focusing on. They are the true victims here, not the people who are trying to get healthy again, whose bodies are fighting cancer, and living with poison in them, and who are also now having to deal with the extra burden of a cumbersome set of rules of conduct for how to navigate live with a poison inside their bodies. The conversation is not, nor never is it, about them, but about the people around them whose lives are affected by their treatments, the ways those treatments impact their lives. All about the abled body, never the chronically sick or disabled unless it somehow affects the healthy and able.

Unless Congress is willing to establish a way to provide a place for these people to stay — all of them — I don’t see how a more enforced set of restrictions is reasonable. You can’t force a person to stay in a place they have to pay for against their will, and you should not be able to punish them because they had to use the resources available to them to survive.

These are just my own personal musings. I, of course, have no personal experience with these situations, but I grieve at the idea of restrictions that people might not be able to handle through no fault of their own.

I wonder if Representative Edward Markey (D – MA) and the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment are interested in hearing any of our thoughts on this matter while they re-think the policy.

The Canadian Government Is Going To Court So They Don’t Have To Make Web Content Accessible To Screen Readers

[Content Note: Not all of the links I have included in this piece have comments, but many of them do, and those comments are basically full of “Stupid disabled people wasting everyone’s time and energy by wanting the world to treat them like human beings” comments.]

If you’ve been following Canadian politics this week, you could very easily come away with the impression that the most significant – or perhaps even the only – thing going on with this week’s opening of the Federal Parliament was the Gun Registry Vote.

That there’s a federal court Charter challenge brought forth by Donna Jodhan arguing that blind Canadians are being discriminated against by the Federal Government for refusing to make their website content accessible to screen readers is not really getting a lot of attention. (Cripples these days! It’s like they don’t sell papers/make page views.)

A little bit of background information first. Canada has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which went into effect in 1982 and is the Thing against which laws and the like must be “tested” in order to be considered actually legal in Canada. To give some lovely controversial rulings, the reason Canada has no abortion law is because it was found to violate the Charter’s guarantee to security of the person (and no law has since been passed) and it was found that refusing to include “homosexuals” in protections against discrimination violated Section 15, or the right to Equal Protection Before the Law, even though sexual orientation wasn’t included in Section 15.

Section 15 is the important one here:

15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
(2) Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

Now, I Am Not A Lawyer, and it’s been about 10 years since I studied the Charter, so I’m going to leave that out there and not discuss my personal interpretations because they don’t matter. What matters is two things: 1) What the court says and 2) That the Federal Government is arguing that they shouldn’t have to be accessible to screen readers in court.

The latter is, of course, being read as Jodhan wasting tax payers money in a frivolous lawsuit, not the Federal Government for refusing to have accessible content.

From what I can tell, this is what’s going on: In 2004, Jodhan attempted to apply for government jobs online. However, the site wasn’t set up to allow screen-readers to access the site, so she was unable to do so. In 2006, she attempted to fill her Census out online, and again, the federal government website was not accessible to her screen reader.

On Tuesday [September 21], Jodhan will argue in federal court that her inability to apply for a position on the federal jobs website or complete the online version of the 2006 Census breached her equality rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

She will also argue that this violation and her ongoing inability to access the government’s online information and services constitute a breach against all blind and partially sighted Canadians, said Jodhan’s lawyer David Baker.

About 3 million Canadians have visual or other impairments that make it difficult to access the Internet.

The Federal Government is, in turn, is responding with “What, you think you should have a right to access the same information that everyone else can? Ha ha! Ha ha!”:

Internet access to government services and information is not a right guaranteed in law, the government says in its written submission to the court.

“Alternative channels available did allow (Jodhan) to access services and information independently, in a manner that respected her privacy and dignity,” it says.

With more than 120 government departments and agencies and more than 23 million web pages, “it is unlikely that the government’s web presence will ever be perfectly accessible to all,” it adds.

Frankly, if the Federal Government doesn’t think that their websites provide information in a timely fashion, and that access to that information isn’t something that they should prioritize, why are they bothering with them in the first place? And if they do think it’s important, why are they in essence arguing that “It’s important for most people, but not for the three million Canadians who won’t be able to access it?”

I support Donna Jodhan’s fight for equality of access to information for all Canadians. I hope you do, too. If so, I strongly encourage you to email your Member of Parliament and let them know. Perhaps if enough of us contact the government and let them know we value accessibility for Canadians with disabilities, they’ll start acting like we shouldn’t have to go to court just to get it.

This is the email I sent to my MP, who happens to be Megan Leslie, and cc:ed to the leader of the NDP. Please feel free to adapt it to send to your own MP. (This should give you their email address.)

Dear Megan,

I recently learned of Donna Jodhan’s Federal Court case, arguing that the Canadian Government must provide screen-reader accessible content on their websites, as reported in the Toronto Star (http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/863379–blind-woman-says-federal-websites-discriminate-against-the-visually-impaired) and the CBC (http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/09/18/to-blind-accessible-feds.html) In light both Section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and Canada’s recent signing of the Declaration of Rights of Disabled Persons, I’m appalled that the Federal Government would waste tax payers’ dollars in arguing that 3 million Canadians should not have the ability to access government services online or apply for government jobs online.

In this day and age, it’s ridiculous for the government to argue that access to the internet is not necessary. According to the Toronto Star, government lawyers are arguing “Internet access to government services and information is not a right guaranteed in law”. While I agree that this is technically true, in refusing to provide this access, the government is arguing that blind and visually impaired Canadians should have less access to government services and information than Canadians who are sighted.

Megan, every day it is clearer to me how many societal barriers are put in place that prevent people with disabilities in Canada from full participation. The time and energy the federal government is frivolously spending in defending their lack of web accessibility could be far better put to use in bringing the government’s websites up to the same standards as those in other countries, standards that are reasonable to expect in the 21st Century.

This is such an important issue, and I hope that the NDP will work to bring awareness of it to Canadians, and encourage the federal government to stop fighting against people with disabilities, but fighting for them.

Thank you,

Anna P.
cc: Jack Layton

In The News: Toronto StarUPICBCGlobe & Mail

John Stossel Wants YOU! To Be Afraid of the ADA

Not being from the US, I had this idea in my head that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) must be awesome. I mean, come on! It’s been 20 years now! Ramps to every building, disability friendly policies, accessible washrooms in every hotel lobby! I get all starry-eyed just thinking about it.

People with disabilities who have actually been in the US are probably either rolling their eyes or giggling at my naivety.

In the last few weeks, I’ve read about airlines being fined for not following the ADA, despite repeated complaints from customers that they hadn’t been, continuing issues with post-secondary education, online content, and accessibility for students who are blind or otherwise vision-impaired (no mention of blind or visually impaired teachers) and students needing to sue in order to get attention to the fact that the new content delivery system was not accessible to them (again, no mention of blind or visually impaired teachers), the Attorney General of Massachusetts needing to step in to demand movie theater chains provide accessible content in all their theaters… The list goes on, while “advocates” tell people with disabilities not to sue because it upsets the non-disabled when they do.

And maybe those “advocates” have a point. Because even though one can find example after example after example of law suits – threatened or actually carried out – before businesses, universities, and even government offices will follow the ADA and “allow” people with disabilities the “rights” they’re guaranteed in the US, some folks still feel the need to produce opinion pieces claiming these lawsuits are frivolous and that the people who take them on are parasites (Content Warning: John Stossel).

Under the ADA, Olson notes, fairness does not mean treating disabled people the same as non-disabled people. Rather it means accommodating them. In other words, the law requires that people be treated unequally.

The law has also unleashed a landslide of lawsuits by “professional litigants” who file a hundred suits at a time. Disabled people visit businesses to look for violations, but instead of simply asking that a violation be corrected, they partner with lawyers who (legally) extort settlement money from the businesses.

Some disabled people have benefited from changes effected by the ADA, but the costs are rarely accounted for. If a small business has to lay off an employee to afford the added expense of accommodating the disabled, is that a good thing — especially if, say, customers in wheelchairs are rare? Extra-wide bathroom stalls that reduce the overall number of toilets are only some of the unaccounted-for costs of the ADA. And since ADA modification requirements are triggered by renovation, the law could actually discourage businesses from making needed renovations as a way of avoiding the expense.

I feel like I’ve taken apart aspects of this argument before, mostly because it seems the arguments get repeated over and over until one wants to make a Bingo Card and be done with it. But, to save me some keystrokes: Let’s Bust Some Myths: People with disabilities just want to sue the world into compliance (there’s a transcript to the video linked there in the comments [1. Back when I wrote this I felt like I was making a very witty point by not “choosing” to be “nice” and putting the transcript up – if you wait for people to be “nice” then you wait a long time! I wouldn’t do that now because I think it’s shitty to make people sit around and wait so I can score some sort of political point.]), Needs Are Not Special and Accommodation is not “Special Treatment” (written by s.e.), Why Being Nice Isn’t Enough (which is meant to address the “just ask for accommodations!” part), “Bad Cripple” – you know, the fakers who are just scamming the incredibly generous disability system for the huge cheques they can rake in – oh, and we’ve got multiple posts just here at FWD about workplace accommodations being treated like a huge drama and a favour that doesn’t need to be granted rather than a right, people who work with actual people with disabilities assuming all people on prescription drugs are dangerous addicts, and how the opposite of disabled is not employable.

I think my favourite bit of the quote above, though, is the “If a small business has to lay off an employee to afford the added expense of accommodating the disabled, is that a good thing — especially if, say, customers in wheelchairs are rare?” I love that sentence, I want to cross stitch it on a little sampler and hang it up on my wall.

A Very Short List Of Businesses You Are Unlikely To See Wheelchair Users In:

1. Ones that don’t have a ramp to allow access to wheelchair users.

Seriously, that’s the basic criteria for shopping in this one-wheelchair-user household. We choose our restaurants, our coffee shops, our bookstores, our yarn stores, our sex toy shops, our grocery stores, our housing, our favourite tea place all on whether or not the shops themselves allow wheelchair users to enter. We don’t even go to one of the malls in the city because half the shops are too crowded to allow wheelchair user, so yes, John Stossel, if your business doesn’t accommodate wheelchair users chances are you don’t have many customers who are wheelchair users.

(Gentle reader, I cannot believe I just typed that sentence 20 years after the ADA passed into law.)

Honestly, that John Stossel is paid actual money to write opinion pieces that amount to “cripples are just sue-happy freaks, the ADA is why the Exxon oil spill happened, and service animals like snakes are ruining it for everyone else” – especially while service animals are constantly being turned away illegally – is especially irritating when we’re still fighting for something as simple as the right to be paid minimum wage for our work.

Quick Hit: Parents of Disabled Children

This is gonna be short ’cause I hurt and it’s hard to think and type and all that shit what’s good for writing.

Another parent of disabled children has killed ou children. Ou regrets having done it and immediately notified police of ou actions. Responses of shock and horror from media and across internets.

But. It doesn’t take long before there are articles like “Parents of Children With Autism: We Struggle Alone” at the Dallas Morning News. This is bog-standard parent of autistic child shit and not worth reading. (Y’all may consider yourselves warned about clicking through and especially about reading any comments that may be present.) It is easily summarised: Parents say, “Oh that was so horrible I’d never ever never even think for a moment of harming my autistic child. But…” There’s a lot of subtextual sympathy for the person who murdered ou children. Just as there always is. In the midst of all the parents-are-on-their-own there are blithe assumptions that help is available. It costs a lot of money but is available. All the accompanying photos are of apparently white people in nice homes.

Nothing we’ve not seen before.

It’s notable because I happened to come across it in the print edition of the paper and its placement there. On the front fucking page of the Sunday fucking paper. Below the fold and tucked into the bottom right corner but still. Being parents of disabled children is so hard that killing them is an option many people will sympathise with is news big enough for the front page. Of the Sunday fucking edition. This is prime newspaper real estate.

The Dallas Morning News uses it for this shit. And my wife wonders why I’m so ‘hypercritical’ of news about disabled people.

Just

My beginning is like this: I was born a full three months before my expected arrival.

I apparently couldn’t wait the whole nine months to come into the world. This early arrival was rife with complications, however: a brain hemorrhage, one collapsed lung (I still have under-armpit scars from the surgery), and, the kicker — cerebral palsy as a result of premature birth. After they found the hemorrhage, the doctors did not expect me to survive.

The hemorrhage stopped on its own. No one could figure out why.

I was in the ICU for a long time after that — in a special plastic case to protect all three pounds of me from hospital elements.

My early birth was unexpected, as was my survival of the mysterious hemorrhage. Both of these things happened for no particular reason.

*

There are a lot of people who seem to subscribe to the “just-world” theory of events — that is, anyone who has anything bad happen to them has done something to “deserve” it. One sees this attitude thrown around quite a bit in relation to disability and illness — for the smoker who gets lung cancer, for some people who become severely disabled due to accidents, for the “angry” or “repressed” person who is diagnosed with a deadly illness. One sees it in so-called New Age “theories” of illness — that illness is a physical manifestation of bad karma or some other buzz-word often appropriated from a non-Western belief system.

But what of those who are “born this way”? What could they possibly have done in their “past lives” to have disability and/or illness be a feature of their current life? Could I have been, for example, a dictator or Bathory-esque ruler in a past life? I am not one for metaphysics, so I am inclined to think that the answer is no. Besides, were there definitive proof of past lives, it’s not as if every single New Age person could have been a saint in his/her/zie’s past life. So when these folks try to utilize my CP, or my depression, or my fibromyalgia as “proof” that I am or was a bad person and they are good people who inhabit a world of unicorns pooping glitter or somesuch, I tend to get a little upset and/or snarky at their pushing pseudo-enlightened rationales as making any sort of sense.

Disability is not proof of a “just world.” It is not a punishment, nor a tragedy for those of us who live with all sorts of disabilities, or whatever dichotomous thing that various social and cultural attitudes have constructed it as. It is one facet of human experience.

For many of us, disability just exists, or just happens. And for whatever reason, this terrifies many currently-abled people.

Vulnerability Indexes, Homelessness, and Disability

(Note: this originally appeared in a modified form on my tumblr.)

Vulnerability indexing is a new trend in homelessness services. It started in LA and NYC but is now being used a bunch of cities and localities of all sizes around the country. Instead of traditional outreach services, these projects use a “vulnerability index” survey to collect data from street-based homeless folks (rather than people in shelters, living in cars, doubled up on couches, etc). The data is then used to rank the homeless people, in order, by their “vulnerability,” or likelihood of dying within the next 12 months if they remain on the street.
That ranked vulnerability list is then used as a priority list to provide the people with services, starting with housing.

In providing housing and services, these programs use a “housing first” model, which means that unlike the vast majority of homeless housing services, individuals are NOT required to be clean of drugs/alcohol or engaged in mental health services prior to moving in. Once they move in, they’re provided with all the supportive services they want, including substance abuse treatment, mental health treatment, education and job training and placement assistance, etc.

I strongly support these programs and have been very excited to see them gaining traction in LA. (we have project 50 in downtown LA, project 30 in the San Fernando Valley, and others pending right now.) I also think these programs are of special interest from a disability perspective because of the extremely high prevalence rates of mental and physical disabilities among the long-term chronic homeless, and the way these disabilities make it difficult, if not impossible, for this group of homeless people to move towards stable permanent housing.

Here are some of the reasons I think this approach makes a lot of sense:

1. It targets the population that needs it the most, re-opens discussions about serving the chronically homeless
These projects target a subset of the homeless population – the chronically homeless. This group is defined as people who have been continuously homeless for at least a year. This is a minority of the overall homeless community (about 23% of all homeless), as most people cycle in and out of homelessness in periods of 3 months or so. The chronically homeless are generally single adults, not families, and generally have some kind of substance abuse issue and/or mental disability and/or physical disability. Most policy analysts believe that nearly every chronically homeless person has either a mental or physical disability.

This population is considered extremely difficult to serve, as lots have tried to engage with services in the past and not found it useful, so are considered “service resistant.” This is a nice way to say that most people and agencies have pretty much given up on them and don’t have any hope of bringing them into services, much less into stable housing. This is also a nice way to say that these homeless folks have correctly figured out that most homeless services aren’t appropriate or beneficial for them, so there’s little point in trying to engage with service organizations. This is partly because homeless services are not really set up for people with disabilities – getting necessary accommodations in a shelter is enormously difficult because of the already extremely limited resources available. If you have PTSD and need a door that locks in order to sleep, a shelter is not for you. If you have a service animal, shelters are not for you. If you need even a minimal level of nursing or medical care, shelters are not for you. (Not that the streets are better at accommodating disabilities.)

These chronically homeless people are, unfortunately but frankly, likely to die. the vulnerability index looks at factors that “place them at heightened risk of mortality,” including 3 or more hospitalizations or ER visits in the last year, aged 60 or above, cirrhosis of the liver or end stage renal disease, HIV+ or AIDS, or co-occurring psychiatric, substance abuse, and chronic medical conditions (tri-morbidity). When this tool has been used in communities, the most vulnerable person identified by the tool usually has all of those risk factors and has been homeless for 20+ years. Can you imagine how difficult it would be for a 62 year old man who is HIV+ and has a physical and mental disability and an active substance abuse problem to enter a shelter, especially after over 20 years of street homelessness?

Traditionally, this group of the chronically homeless is a group that people have given up on. Not just the public, but even homeless service providers. But the first iteration of this program, in the Times Square area of NYC, has produced before and after stories that are flooring. A woman who lived on the streets for 20+ years as a heroin addict is now housed and working as the concessions manager at the movie theater in Times Square. Looking at the before and after pictures seemed like she’d moved backwards in time – she looked 20 years younger. These are the people who we walk by on the street and feel like they’re beyond help and beyond hope. We just don’t think people can come back from that – and these programs are proving that assumption to be absolutely wrong.

Another benefit of focusing on the most vulnerable folks is that it communicates that same message – you are not beyond help or hope, there are programs that can provide meaningful and beneficial assistance – to the homeless community itself. If folks see that the agency promised housing to someone with a substance abuse disorder, a mental disability, and 20+ years on the street, and then delivered on that promise, they’ll be motivated to participate with the agency and trust them in a way they wouldn’t trust the shelters or outreach teams that hadn’t housed that guy in the past. These programs usually see a “tipping point” once the first few, most vulnerable, people are housed – then the rest of the community believes in the promise of potential housing and is motivated to cooperate with the service agency.

2. These programs make economic sense.
These targeted programs are usually seen as an alternative to simply ignoring the homeless and continuing to not spend city and county funds on them. Because there are not a lot of homeless services or programs targeting this group, the perception is that we are currently spending zero dollars on them, and any targeted program will be a dramatic increase in funds directed to the chronically homeless. This could not be more inaccurate. Actually, this group is consuming an astounding amount of public funds, through county health programs, police and jail funding, and public benefits such as food stamps or general relief funds. A recent study by the Economic Roundtable here in LA found that these most vulnerable folks are consuming over $8,000 in county funds PER MONTH, through multiple ER visits, jail time for quality of life infractions, and health care services received in jail. When these folks are moved into housing – even fully subsidized funding with inclusive supportive services – it’s a net savings for the government.

So this popular conception that we’re not already spending a bundle on these chronically homeless folks is simply inaccurate. We, as city and county governments, are already spending an enormous amount of county health funds, justice system funds, and social system funds on this group, with no discernible improvement in their quality of life or life expectancy. (This New Yorker article is a great discussion of how these costs can mount up for a single homeless individual.)

I know that cost savings is likely not the most important aspect of these programs for this audience, but these economic arguments are extremely powerful in persuading localities who do not understand why they would benefit from targeting funds and assistance at the chronically homeless.

3. The overall economic effects of the project help those homeless who aren’t directly targeted.
The economic benefits of these programs mean that there will likely be additional homeless service dollars available for use at other places in the homeless continuum of care – meaning that the program could generate benefits for the non-chronically homeless as well. This is much needed. Currently, in LA, it’s really hard to get into a homeless shelter. that’s because the “emergency” homeless shelters – where you’re supposed to stay for 30-90 days before moving into a “transitional” shelter – are backed up. Because all the transitional shelters are full. Because there’s no permanent housing available, so there’s nowhere to transition to from the transitional shelter. So the transitional shelter is serving as permanent housing and the emergency shelter as transitional shelter and the folks who need emergency shelter … sleep in their cars, or on the floor of a friend’s apartment. This system could benefit from some more cash to build permanent housing – money that might be available were we able to reduce the significant existing county expenditures on the chronically homeless.

4. Housing First and other harm reduction policies make sense.
Currently, a lot of housing placements require that the person moving in be clean and sober and, if they have a mental disability, be actively engaged in mental health treatment services. As you can imagine, this turns into a lot of chicken and egg problems. If you are a homeless person living in LA’s Skid Row, which is overrun with illegal drugs and alcohol, and have no money to afford rehab or treatment, you are never going to be eligible for that housing, even if you actively want to stop using. You don’t have anything to lose while living on the street – even going to jail gets you a bed and some food – so there’s absolutely no incentive to stop using. If you’re likely to die within 6 to 12 months, it’s likely that being high during the interim will be more pleasant than being sober.

If you’re placed in an apartment, though, you quickly learn that ongoing abuse is going to cause financial problems in affording the apartment and social problems in not disturbing other neighbors. There’s also an incentive – you don’t want to lose the apartment. The programs have found that people are motivated to enter treatment when receiving housing, even if it’s not a requirement of maintaining housing. There have been similar results with mental health treatment.

Even aside from the incentive effects, these Housing First programs are humane. I know a bunch of people who wouldn’t be able to get apartments if they had to show clean drug tests to get the apartment and to maintain tenancy, but they’re allowed to do that because they have money.

SO, in short: even though it sometimes feels a bit squicky to be ordering homeless folks in terms of likeliness to die and priority for housing, these programs make a lot of sense conceptually and have had amazing effects on the ground. Of the 50 most vulnerable in downtown LA, all of which had disabilities of some kind, 41 are currently in housing. I don’t see how this could have been done any other way.