Category Archives: politics

Why I Am Not a Libertarian

19 May, 2010class issues, disability activism, justice, news, policy, politics, poverty, race, reproductive justiceabby rant, libertarianismabby jean

Here in the U.S., there’s been a lot of buzz about Rand Paul, son of Ron Paul, winning the primary for Republican senator in Kentucky. Paul is a darling of the Tea Party and largely espouses libertarian values of decreased taxes and decreased government regulation and intervention.

There are some things about libertarianism that I like and agree with. I’m against state interference in romantic and/or sexual relationships between consenting individuals with full capacity. I’m in favor of strong civil liberties and freedom from search or surveillance by the state.

But I do not trust the free market to take care of civil rights issues, primarily because I’ve seen the free market fail to take care of civil rights issues for hundreds and really thousands of years. And I believe that getting the government out of the business of defining and enforcing civil rights would have disastrous results for all but the most privileged among us. And Rand Paul’s espoused views bear that out. Here’s what he’s got to say about LGBTAI rights and women’s health:

Not only is Paul perfectly fine with government prohibiting marriage between gays and lesbians, it bears mentioning that Paul’s anger towards the government for “betraying the medical privacy of ordinary citizens” doesn’t extend to women, whom he believes should be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term if state legislators deem it so. He also wants to offer legislation “restricting federal courts from hearing cases like Roe v. Wade.”

This isn’t even a consistent position – Paul is in favor of government intervention in personal relationships, as long as it’s “only” LGBTAI relationships. He’s also in favor of government intervention in personal medical decisions, as long as it’s “only” affecting the decisions of women considering whether to terminate a pregnancy. What he has to say about protections for people with disabilities is even more troubling:

You know a lot of things on employment ought to be done locally. You know, people finding out right or wrong locally. You know, some of the things, for example we can come up with common sense solutions — like for example if you have a three story building and you have someone apply for a job, you get them a job on the first floor if they’re in a wheelchair as supposed to making the person who owns the business put an elevator in, you know what I mean? So things like that aren’t fair to the business owner.

Yes! Let’s let the free market take care of rights for people with disabilities! Because it’s for damn sure that even with the existing governmental protections for civil rights, companies are taking an unbiased and totally not ableist at all approach to employing PWDs and even accommodating them as customers! So eliminating those marginally adequate and woefully underenforced protections would surely have the effect of enhancing overall liberty and freedom! That is, if you are looking only at the liberty and freedom of the already privileged.

There has been a lot of discussion on this site of how entrenched institutional ableism results in discrimination against PWDs, makes them more likely to live in poverty, lack employment, and have disproportionately negative health outcomes. That’s the status quo that would be preserved if government intervention and regulation of the rights of PWDs were to end. But there are definitely people who are benefiting from the status quo – white, cis, hetero, TAB men, predominantly. And we should be very clear that limiting government intervention would primarily preserve the status quo that benefits them.

Which is why you should not be surprised by two facts: 1) Rand Paul is a white cis hetero TAB man, and 2) I strongly disagree with these political ideas. While there are some areas in which I support limiting government intervention, my overall goal is to maximize rights of historically disadvantaged and relatively unprivileged populations, whether it takes more or less government to reach that end.

Slam after slam for people with disabilities in Australia’s new Budget

13 May, 2010politicsaustralia, australia budget, breach, budget, disability, disability and poverty, disability pension, federal budget, homelessness, kevin rudd, media, newstart, offset, pension, people with disabilities, pharmaceutical benefits scheme, political media, politics, poverty, pwd, rudd, safety net, tax, threshold, treasurer, unemployment, wayne swan, welfarelauredhel

The Australian Federal Budget is out, and it’s being feted in the media as a sober, sensible fiscally reasonable budget in which there are no really big winners or losers. “No frills, no thrills, no spills”, says the ABC.

Except for people with disabilities. What has received a little bit of coverage is the fact that there is no improvement in funding for public mental health, despite lots of rhetoric in that direction from Rudd and his cronies. There is apparently nothing toward practical improvement for Indigenous health, and $380M in cuts for disability pensions.

$380M in cuts for disability pensions.

Applicants for the Centrelink disability pension who are considered “borderline” will be routinely denied, put onto Newstart (unemployment payment), compelled to stand in line every fortnight and job-search on an ongoing basis, and sent to “up to 18 months” of mandatory job training.

Let me guess – “borderline” means “the probably currently-nondisabled official making the assessment will decide that they can’t see the disability concerned”. I expect this to disproportionately affect people with mental health issues, fatigue based disabilities, autoimmune problems, chronic pain, and so forth.

And let me guess again: if PWD are too sick to get to their training courses but can’t “prove” that to some random douchebag’s satisfaction, they’ll get breached (decreed as being in breach of Centrelink requirements) and, in the absence of substantial family support and the ability to organise themselves through a litany of appeals and assessments, end up on the streets.

This combination of further increases in the already huge pension obstacles for people with “less clear” disabilities, along with no improvements in mental health and Indigenous health programmes, is, in my opinon, a recipe for a huge increase in homelessness.

But Treasurer Wayne Swan is spinning this as being for PWD’s own good.

The Sydney Morning Herald explains further:

New applicants will first undergo a ”job capacity assessment”, as they have always done. But the government is reviewing the impairment tables to make it a tougher assessment and harder to get to first base. After that unless people are manifestly incapable of any paid work, or clearly incapable of working even 15 hours a week, they will be put on the Newstart Allowance. Then they will be sent on a training course, either with a special disability employment agency or a regular one. The training is meant to increase the numbers who can work at least 15 hours a week, thus disqualifying them from the pension.

Efforts to curb the growth in the numbers going on the pension would be admirable, given people mostly stay on the pension for life. But the move is not admirable in the absence of an increase in the level of Newstart Allowance, or a loosening of its income test, which exacts harsh punishment on those who get a little work.

On the disability pension a single person can live a frugal life on $350 a week. On Newstart a single person is plunged into poverty on $231 a week. How many of the 25,407 people who might once have qualified for a disability pension will end up, not in work, but unemployed and in poverty?

The comments at the Herald, enragingly but unsurprisingly, are full of people flailing around about how people on disability pensions are big bludging fakey fakers.

Another slam for taxpaying people with disabilities is the change in the tax offset for medical expenses. There will be a big jump in the offset threshold and indexing after that, expected to take away from PWD almost much again as the funding cuts for disability pensions.

Lastly, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, Australia’s mostly very good pharmaceutical subsidy and safety net programme, will be “reformed” to the tune of $2 billion in government savings – but we’re not told how.

In other news, there are huge boosts in funding for elite sports and for ‘border security’. So crips will be paying for Olympians and for the harassment and prolonged detention of immigrants – while many can’t afford wheelchairs, homes, or medication.

This budget, just to make my disgust even more perfectly clear, is coming from a nominally LABOR government.

On twitter I summed the budget up thus:

@ilauredhel Aust’s priorities: $237 M boost for elite sport; $1.2 B boost for ‘border security’; $380M CUT for disability pensions #budget

I’m still gaping. At the budget itself, and at the nodding, satisfied happiness of most of the political media at there being supposedly “no big losers”.

BADD: Why I Write

3 May, 2010activism, intersectionality, justice, make the world a better place, politics, poverty, resistance, social attitudesabby jean

(This was originally posted as a BADD contribution at my tumblr.)

I spend a lot of time blogging about and against ableism, about being a person with a mental illness, about the way policies and cultural attitudes and assumptions act to disadvantage people with disabilities. But for some reason, I was having a lot of trouble coming up with a topic for[BADD] . I got some good suggestions – issues of ableist language (and I’ve written in the past about the words ‘retarded’ and ‘hysterical’ and their ableist roots and effects), issues about the enormous intersection between poverty and disability (poverty leads to bad health outcomes and disability often leads to poverty, making a self-reinforcing cycle), and disability tropes in pop culture (I don’t watch family guy but have talked about 90210!).

I thought of some other topics I could address – why I see today’s immigration protests and related activism as a disability-related issues and the importance of intersectionality issues in meaningful social justice work, or even an info piece on how PWDs should take steps to prepare for emergencies such as natural disasters. but I didn’t feel excited about any of those.

So I’m going to go back to the beginning, and talk a little about why I identify as a person with a disability, why I talk about disability issues, why I’m a contributor to a blog about feminist and disabilities, why I spend so much time and emotional energy on these topics. (Which are, frankly, often personally distressing, what with all the info about how I’m going to die poor and alone.)

I write because I want things to change. I’m not always sure the writing helps me individually – it is hard to focus on these issues, to perpetually remind myself of the limitations caused by my disabilities, of the societal attitudes that assume that I am lazy and worthless and dangerous to be around, of the innumerable policies and laws that reinforce and ensure the unequal status of PWDs. And while I see the value of creating a space where other PWDs can discuss their personal circumstances and struggle and receive support instead of judgment and blame, the internet is a big enough place that I think that role is being filled, well, by lots of blogs and LiveJournal/Dreamwidth communities.

I write because I want people – both PWDs and TABs – to recognize the larger cultural and political forces that create and maintain societies that use disability as a punchline, as an insult, as a reason to keep people unemployed, poor, disempowered, and sometimes leading directly to their deaths. I want PWDs in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and other “first world” countries to understand that lobbying their governments to abandon use of land mines can directly affect the prevalence of disabilities in poorer countries like Cambodia (thanks to s.e. smith for that great post!). I want people to think about how recovery efforts in disaster-affected areas like Haiti need to include specific focus and attention on the unique and disproportionate needs of PWDs.

But for me, it’s not enough to just help people understand. I desperately want them to act. To get involved in the political process to advocate for the rights and needs of PWDs. To get involved in social justice issues as a whole, because issues affecting immigrants are going to fall heavy on immigrants with disabilities. To tease out how a national policy can and will affect PWDs in other, poorer, countries. To vote, to talk to their elected representatives, to encourage others to act.

I believe that change is possible. And I blog to facilitate, encourage, and promote that change.

Go educate yourself (please!)

2 May, 2010101, activism, blaming, bodies, disability activism, feminism, gender, i'm right here, identity, intersectionality, justice, othering, politics, race, shaming, social attitudesally, ally work, anti-racism, derailing, disability 101, education, exclusion, feminism, intentions, internet, intersectionality, marginalisation, myths and misconceptions, privilege, problematic attitudes, race, racism, social treatment, things people say, this all sounds awfully familiar, white privilegeAnnaham

[Image via Tlönista in this comment thread at Flip Flopping Joy. Description: A shocked-looking cat perches on a chair, staring straight at the camera. Text reads: “Concerned cat is just looking out for your best interests when she says that your tone might be alienating well-intentioned potential allies who just need a little polite education.”]

One unfortunately common response to marginalized people saying that there’s a problem is the “Educate me NOW” demand from “well-intentioned allies” who totally mean well, but they just lack education on these issues and so just can’t understand what the fuss is all about.

I am using the following example not to appropriate from the awesome anti-racist work that Jessica Yee and the fabulous Racialicious crew (and countless bloggers around the web!) do on a daily basis, but rather for two specific reasons: 1.) I have already talked about my personal relationship with this oft-used derailing tactic rather extensively, and could probably talk about it ’til I’m blue in the face; 2.) anti-racist activism and disability activism are not completely separate, independent social justice strains — many of us who are involved in these activist projects are, in fact, fighting similar (though NOT completely analogous) battles. For me, claiming an identity as a feminist disability activist has entailed doing my best to fight racism and white privilege alongside fighting for disability rights. This is because disability and race intersect in many, many ways — sort of like how disability and gender, and race and gender, intersect. In other words, this is not just a disability issue, or a feminist issue, or a trans* issue, or an anti-racist issue; it affects many of us in the social justice blogosphere, if in differing ways.

The “educate me now because I want to learn, marginalized person!” response played out, yet again, fairly recently in the comments to a post on Bitch authored by Indigenous activist and writer Jessica Yee. [Full disclosure: Some of us here at FWD guest blogged for Bitch as the Transcontinental Disability Choir.] Jessica had written a post on white hipster/hippie appropriation of native dress and why it’s not only ridiculous, but racist. Makes sense, right? (If it doesn’t, you might be at the wrong blog. Or go read this. I don’t know.) Overall, this piece seems like it would fit right in on a website for a magazine that is dedicated to showcasing “feminist response[s] to pop culture.”

And then the comments started rolling in, and so did the “but you have a responsibility to educate people who mean well!” trope:

I’m sure this is in fact extremely annoying. However, you might consider that when people bring that up, they’re not saying, “Hey I’m just like you and I totally understand what you deal with,” they’re trying to make a connection and learn something. Ignorant people are a pain in the neck, but they’re mostly not trying to be ignorant on purpose.

I‘m merely suggesting that if this is a cause you deem worthy of championing, then you should have a prepared source of information for them—be it this blog, book titles, or documentaries. Encourage them to learn more about THEIR history and perhaps you’ll draw a new soldier to your army.

It seems somewhat contradictory to put stickers on your laptop that indicate a Mohawk heritage and then rudely dismiss a stranger who expresses an interest in your advertisement. Perhaps a better way to accomplish your agenda (whatever it is) would be to engage in polite and open-minded conversation with those who mistake your stickers for an invitation.

Thea Lim at Racialicious pretty much nailed it in her recent post on what went down, entitled “Some Basic Racist Ideas and some Rebuttals, & Why We Exist” (which I highly recommend that you read in full, by the way). An excerpt:

This kind of hey-let-me-help-you-achieve-your-goal-by-suggesting-you-be-more-radio-friendly response totally misunderstands (and appears disinterested) in the anti-racist project, because it assumes that anti-racism is all about convincing white people to be nice to people of colour. In other words, it assumes that anti-racism revolves around white folks. Like everything else in the world.

Anti-racism and people of colour organizing is not about being friendly, being appealing, or educating white folks. While individual anti-racist activists may take those tacks to achieve their goals, the point of anti-racism is to be for people of colour.

I completely agree with Thea here — and I believe something similar applies to disability activism. That is: Those of us with disabilities are not here to make abled people feel comfortable, to hold their hands as they have a Very Special Learning Experience (most often, it seems, at our expense), or to make them feel good about themselves. I, personally, don’t care how “good” your intentions are, or that you reallllllly wanna learn, or if you think I’m being mean by not dropping everything to educate you when you demand it. While I definitely don’t want to speak for Jessica, Thea, or any of the Racialicious contributors — or for people of color who do anti-racist work — I suspect that they may feel similarly about white people who come into PoC, WoC or other anti-racist spaces and demand that whoever is doing the activist work must halt whatever discussion is going on and educate them, now, because they are good “liberal” white people and have such good intentions, and you PoC want white people like me as allies, right? And if you don’t drop everything and rush over to educate me, well, you’re just a big meanie who must not want my support after all (such “support” is often conditional, and based upon whether the marginalized person can make the non-marginalized feel comfortable at all times), or you just want an excuse to be racist toward white people! Or some other ridiculous thing.

For me personally, the willingness that I “should” have to help well-meaning folks learn is also an energy issue. I am a person with disabilities, several of which I have written about at length on this website — and one of which is a pain condition subject to flare-ups. Thus, I have to manage my time and energy extremely carefully. Having to explain basic concepts over and over again to strangers on the internet because they’ve deigned to tell me that they “want” to learn — and some of whom may think, by extension, that they are somehow entitled to my time and energy — takes work. Writing takes work; additionally, a lot of bloggers do the blogging and responding to comments thing for free, on their own time.

And sometimes, those of us with conditions that intersect with our ability to do this work end up burnt out, frustrated, or we lose our patience. Though these end results are often nothing personal, they might read like it, and we end up paying the price energy-wise only to have that person who realllllly wanted to learn petultantly respond with something like, “You must not want to educate me, then, if you’re not up to answering all of my questions!” and leaving in a huff. But they reallllly want to learn. . . that is, if someone else does the brunt of the work for them and/or gives them good-ally cookies for just wanting to be educated about all this social justice stuff. Merely wanting is not enough; you have to actually follow through for your good intentions to matter.

There is, thankfully, a solution to this problem: those people who say, or comment, that they realllly want to learn must take responsibility for their own learning. There are several ways that this can be accomplished, among them lurking on blogs for a while before one starts commenting, reading a site’s archives (and most sites have them!), picking up a book (or two), reading some articles online or off. Certainly, there are a lot of things that are privileged about this assertion; of course, not everyone has the time to read about social justice, lurk on blogs, or take similar steps. But what is also privileged is the putting the responsibility for your own 101-type education onto someone else — someone who might not have all of the energy, time and patience that you might.

[A slightly different version of this post has been cross-posted at ham blog.]

Food.

29 April, 2010bodies, class issues, introspective, life changes, politicsAnna

Earlier this week, Don started his “low-iodine diet” in preparation for exciting radioactive iodine therapy next month. He tells me he’s not allowed to eat milk or milk-products, soy or soy-based products, egg yolks, anything from the sea, iodized table salt, and all restaurant foods.

Food restrictions are pretty common for people with disabilities. A friend of mine discovered her chronic pain and fatigue was influenced, at least in part, by her wheat allergy, and described at length to me the perils of “hidden wheat” in things like Twizzlers, which is a brand of red liquorish available in North America. Another gets flair-ups if she thinks about stepping away from her gluten-free diet. Some people have serious allergies to corn, and must avoid any and all things with corn and high-fructose corn syrup. There are very specific diets required for people on certain types of medications, with certain types of short-term and long-term medical conditions, people with diabetes, and people preparing for types of surgeries. Many people recovering from Cancer treatments, surgery, or eating disorders, as well as people on certain types of medications that cause dramatic weight loss, are pushed (or required) to consume those “nutritional shakes” or other forms of meal replacements.

You know what’s fun for most of the above?

How incredibly expensive all of this stuff is.

So, let me go back to Don. Right now, all of Don’s favourite foods, and everything we’ve had stocked in the freezer, are off-limits. He tried to pick up rice milk so he could have some cereal, but surprise! Most rice milk in Canada is made with salt, except a very specific (expensive) brand that isn’t sold at our grocery store. So, either we need to go to the more expensive store downtown, I need to make rice milk (I have a recipe), or he needs to not have milk with his cereal for the next two weeks. We can’t find any bread we can guarantee is made without salt, so either he goes without bread at all, or someone makes him special salt-free bread. Today, while I was away, I think he ate some special, expensive, peanut-only peanut butter and salt-free rice cakes.

Because I’ve been busier than anyone probably should be, we’ve mostly been relying on very cheap, easy-prep frozen meals that are basically salt with food in between. I’m no less busy, but now Don needs to be eating so-called “real” foods that are time-consuming to prepare, and often very expensive to purchase, especially in comparison to how we normally do the food-thing.

If you’re not on a restricted diet, I recommend checking out some of the “special” foods that people on restricted diets need to purchase. See how expensive gluten-free foods are. Compare prices of cow milk, soy milk, rice milk, and nut milk. See how many things have “corn” in the ingredients list, and try and sort out how expensive it would be to try and eat nothing with corn in it, while still eating enough. Look at some of the stuff on the shelf and try and sort out what has “hidden” wheat in it.

The cost of these items is especially relevant because so many people with disabilities live near, at, or below the poverty line for their respective countries. Don and I are able to afford to spend extra money on this restricted diet because of family support, but this isn’t an option for very many people. If you do not have a restricted diet, imagine trying to afford the foods that allow you to eat without causing flare-ups in your chronic pain condition.

Imagine as well – and this, of course, applies even when one doesn’t have restricted diets – trying to put the energy and time into preparing these foods when dealing with second shift for the sick. Imagine trying to balance it all while some stranger tells you that your, or your kid’s, disability can be magically cured if you put your family on a special, expensive, restrictive, time-consuming diet.

Don and I are incredibly privileged in this. I can take the time and make him rice milk so he doesn’t have to eat dry cereal, and we can afford to run out to the store and buy those pricey egg-whites in a carton things. And this is a restricted diet he needs to be on for a little over two weeks, and then it’s done. So many people with disabilities do not have these options. It’s eat stuff that makes you sick, or don’t eat enough at all.

I wish I had some solution I could offer to this problem, some nice little bow of hope I could tie this post up with. All I have is the knowledge that these restrictive diets aren’t things people are on for fun, but because the alternatives for them are sickness or pain. And yet, the foods people are required to eat are priced like they’re luxuries.

Why SF’s Proposed Sit/Lie Laws Are a Terrible Idea

23 April, 2010bodies, class issues, invisibility, justice, news, normality, othering, policy, politics, poverty, social attitudes, Uncategorized, violencehome, homelessness, invisibility, poverty, San FranciscoAnnaham

In San Francisco currently, there is something of a debate brewing about Mayor Newsom’s proposed sit/lie laws, which would make it illegal for anyone to sit or lie on any public curb or street in San Francisco (with a couple of exceptions).

The intersections with disability here are rather clear. For one thing, there are some intersections between homelessness and disability, because some homeless people are, for example, mentally ill or have disabling physical problems. Do either of these things make them unworthy of compassion, or not human? Of course not, but from the way this proposed ordinance is designed, it is, on a very basic level, criminalizing homelessness even more than it is already criminalized (not to mention socially stigmatized), while taking extra “common sense” steps to avoid citing non-homeless people for an offense. Observe the following response to concerns that SF police would begin to crack down on non-homeless people were the laws to go into effect:

During a heated, five-hour Board of Supervisors public safety committee hearing on the issue Monday, Adachi showed photographs of behavior that would be illegal under Newsom’s proposed law: a well-heeled tourist sitting on her luggage as she waits for a cab, a little boy sitting on a sidewalk clutching his skateboard, and tourists sitting on a curb and gazing up at the sights.

Assistant Police Chief Kevin Cashman said all of those people would be warned first to move and that none of them would probably receive a citation.

“Obviously common sense is going to be part of the training with enforcement of this statute,” he said at the hearing.

Ah, yes, “common sense.” Common sense, apparently, still makes the further stigmatization of homeless people de rigeur. Because apparently, they don’t deserve to sit down in public, unlike “well-heeled” tourists and neighborhood residents. I wonder what the response to a person with disabilities — tourist or not — needing to sit down on a public street might be? Someone waiting for an ambulance? While that is approaching a bit of a slippery slope argument (which I generally like to avoid), it is worth considering, simply because “common sense” will mean different things to different people — those whose job it is to enforce the statute included.

Also interesting is the framing of this ordinance in terms of concern for children. From one of the SF Gate articles:

Newsom, who bought a home in the Haight recently, was convinced to support an ordinance after walking along Haight Street with his infant daughter and seeing someone smoking crack and blocking the entrance of a business.

Certainly, children need to be protected from dangerous situations or potentially dangerous situations, but is an ordinance that criminalizes the poor and homeless — not all of whom are recreational drug users or addicts — really the way to do it?

Additionally, nowhere have I seen any plan to increase the number of homeless shelters or services for homeless people attached to this ordinance. The implicit message behind these proposed sit/lie laws seems clear: It’s too bad you’re homeless, but don’t you dare be homeless on our streets, because it might make our city look bad. Oh, and you certainly shouldn’t expect the city to help you not be homeless — even after it cites you for breaking the sit/lie law.

(Cross-posted to ham blog)

This Terrifies Me

19 April, 2010accessibility, blaming, intersectionality, invisibility, justice, news, othering, policy, politics, race, social attitudesabby jean

Here in the U.S., there’s been a lot of buzz about a new immigration law passed in Arizona (including on meloukhia’s tumblr, where I first saw it). Their state legislature just passed a bill that “makes it a crime to lack proper immigration paperwork and requires police, if they suspect someone is in the country illegally, to determine his or her immigration status. It also bars people from soliciting work as day laborers.”

This is a big change from the current situation. Because immigration is a nationwide issue, the federal government makes the immigration laws. There is a federal Department of Citizenship and Immigration Services that administers applications for immigration status. There is a whole department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement with quasi-police enforcement agents that put people in quasi-jail immigration detention facilities. It’s a whole federal system that runs parallel to the police and sheriffs who work for individual cities and counties.

For a long time, not only were local police not solely responsible for enforcing federal immigration laws, it was a longstanding rule that state and local police did not have the authority to enforce those laws. State and local police actively tried to distinguish themselves from immigration enforcement so that community residents who were immigrants would continue reporting crimes and helping the police with investigations. The split between responsibilities serves an important purpose in protecting overall public safety.

This is why it’s a big deal that this new law would require local police to determine the immigration status of anyone they suspect to be in the country illegally. Given the vague description of what would be an acceptable reason to suspect someone to be undocumented, it’s extremely likely this is going to translate to “check the papers of anyone who is Latina/o.” “A lot of U.S. citizens are going to be swept up in the application of this law for something as simple as having an accent and leaving their wallet at home,” said Alessandra Soler Meetze, president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona.

Certainly a police officer fulfilling their requirements under this new law might in fact discover that someone is undocumented. But this law also gives every police officer carte blanche to insist on immigration paperwork from anyone they want – another tool for harassment and intimidation that will surely be deployed selectively. It warns not only undocumented people, but all immigrants and anyone who might appear to be or resemble an immigrant in any way – stay inside. Disappear. Vanish. We do not want you here and if we see you we will hassle and interrogate and judge you.

This law just used the official voice of the state to tell this whole group of people – most of them people of color, most of them legally present in the U.S. – that they are not wanted.

That message of not being wanted, that directive to become invisible and disappear, that clear desire that a whole group would just go away and stop being a bother. That’s the same feeling I get when reading articles like this one in the Fresno Bee bemoaning an effort to get local businesses to provide accommodations for people with disabilities. Just think of the economic effect on local retailers! They’ve been open for 20 years! How dare the PWDs file lawsuits instead of just asking the proprietor who I’m sure is very nice and would just love to help out voluntarily! The message is the same – having PWDs here is too expensive. Too much work. Something to be given only out of the generosity of those in charge, not demanded. If only the PWDs would just go away our local businesses would be fantastic!

In one instance, popular opinion and the business community are telling PWDs to go away or be invisible. In the other instance, the state government is telling immigrants to go away or be invisible. Both are premised on the acceptance of the idea that it’s ok to look at a minority group of people and reject them, as a group. That’s why I reacted negatively to both those news articles – it is not ok to oppress people as a group. If it’s ok to treat immigrants that way in Arizona, that legitimizes treating PWD that way in Fresno. And this law is such a big step in the wrong direction that it makes me worried about similar erosions for other groups – including PWDs.

Idaho Revises State Laws to Remove Ableist Language

13 April, 2010disability activism, justice, language, news, politicsIdahoabby jean

Exciting news! On March 29th, Governor C.L. Otter signed a law removing ableist language from Idaho’s state code. From the Idaho Statesman:

The new law replaces outdated language in 73 different laws – including those addressing health and welfare, education and corrections – with more accepted phrases such as “intellectually disabled.”

Disability rights advocates said the revisions send a message to regular Idahoans that their government doesn’t tolerate disrespect, since words like retarded are used, especially among teenagers, to insult others or describe distaste. Officials in several other states, including Washington and Oregon, have enacted similar laws.

Here are a few examples of changes made by the law (from the bill text of Senate Bill 1330, available here)

A law giving interpreters to people appearing in court or witnesses in court cases says interpreters will be given to anyone “who does not understand or speak the English language, or who has a physical handicap which prevents him from fully hearing or speaking the English language.” The word “handicap” has been changed to “disability.”
A law ordering criminals on probation or parole to pay for the cost of supervision allows exemptions if “the offender has an employment handicap, as determined by a physical, psychological, or psychiatric examination.” The term “an employment handicap” has been changed to “a disability affecting employment.”
A law requiring fire safety plans and procedures defines an ‘institution’ as including “facilities for the mentally ill or mentally handicapped.” The description now reads “facilities for people with mental illness or intellectual disabilities.”

On one hand, this isn’t a huge change, and it can be argued that these are cosmetic changes when people with disabilities would be better served by changes to the actual laws, not just their wording. But I believe removing this ableist language from the official law of the state is a meaningful step to take. Governor Otter made a statement when signing this law:

Otter compared words like retarded to racial slurs Americans used during World War II to describe Japanese people.

“We refer to people as Asians now, as Japanese,” he said. “During the Second World War, we always used the most derogatory terms that were possible at that point. It suggested the anger in our society at Pearl Harbor.”

What an amazing quote! It’s clear recognition that ableist language like “retarded” in a state law is simply codifying oppression. Removing those words is an important achievement.

FWD/Forward

FWD (feminists with disabilities) for a way forward

Category Archives: politics

Why I Am Not a Libertarian

Recommended Reading for May 13, 2010

Slam after slam for people with disabilities in Australia’s new Budget

Food.

Idaho Revises State Laws to Remove Ableist Language