By Anna on 14 December, 2010
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.
Posted in activism, blaming, media and pop culture, news, resistance, Videos, violence | Tagged budget cuts, cuts, jody mcintyre, police violence, transcript, tuition increase, UK
By Anna on 9 December, 2010
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.
Posted in blaming, deaths, justice, news, politics, social attitudes, violence | Tagged abuse, canada, halifax, Howard Hyde, hyde inquiry, mental health, murder, nova scotia, police violence, schizophrenia
By abby jean on 8 December, 2010
s.e. emailed me an alert to this Atlantic post by Derek Thompson about the potential hidden costs of failing to extend unemployment insurance benefits, with a warning that I would likely ‘enjoy’ it. So I clicked through with trepidation. Rightfully so. I’ll excerpt the relevant piece here so you don’t need to reward this nonsense [...]
Posted in blaming, news, policy, poverty | Tagged abby talks policy, wonk time
By abby jean on 26 October, 2010
Last time, we talked about three main areas of a policy where things can go wrong: drafting a written policy to match the envisioned goal or mission of the policy (articulation), creating an administration or structure to carry out the policy (implementation), and making sure that people are actually following the policy (enforcement). These three [...]
Posted in news, policy, politics, poverty | Tagged abby talks policy, wonk time
By abby jean on 19 October, 2010
The United States government recently disclosed that in the 1940s, American public health doctors deliberately infected almost 700 Guatemalans, including some people institutionalized for mental illness, with syphilis. Although those infected were given antibiotics, it’s impossible to say how many died or experienced long term health consequences from the infection. The research was performed by [...]
Posted in news, policy
By Anna on 6 October, 2010
This list of September media reports about people with disabilities murdered or dying under strange circumstances is presented without commentary, but that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing people may want to discuss about it in comments. I do not believe for a moment that this list is complete. It is sorted alphabetically by last name. Almost all links are to news reports.
Posted in deaths, domestic violence, news, Record of the Dead, violence
By Anna on 23 September, 2010
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?”
Posted in accessibility, Accessible Tech, activism, anna rants, blaming, disability activism, how to be accessible, justice, make the world a better place, news, normality, othering, policy, politics, signal boost, social attitudes, technology | Tagged canada, canadian
By Anna on 21 September, 2010
I spent most of my weekend pretty much glued to Twitter following ADAPT’s latest action in Washington, DC and wondering where the media was, especially after a huge group of wheelchair users blockaded one of the White House gates and 16 people were arrested. I actually thought that the White House security arresting a group of people with disabilities would surely be the sort of thing that the media would pick up on.
Foolish me!
Posted in activism, autonomy, disability activism, events, i'm right here, invisibility, justice, make the world a better place, news, policy, politics, resistance, social attitudes
By Anna on 7 September, 2010
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.
Posted in accessibility, Accessible Tech, anna rants, blaming, disability activism, i'm right here, identity, invisibility, media and pop culture, news, normality, othering, policy, politics, representations, shaming, social attitudes, work
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