Recommended Reading for January 22nd

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post. I attempt to provide extra warnings for certain material present in articles, but your triggers/issues may vary.

eruthros: air security and the normal body

This isn’t the first time this has happened; it happens every time there’s a security scare, and suddenly people are being told by airport security that they can’t take their meds on the plane, that they can’t take the things that make flying bearable, that they can’t have a pillow or a blanket.

And it makes me so angry, because it’s completely obvious that there are millions of people who can’t do the things air security tells us to do, and who are willing to tell TSA so at length. But they’re ignored, they’re transformed into suspicious bodies because air security defines “normal” bodies.

Laura Hershey: More about Haiti and Disability…

Americans should continue giving generously, and always respectfully. Let’s not leverage our largess to lecture Haitians on the proper attitude toward disability. Let’s ensure that our aid programs don’t discriminate, or deny access, thus aggravating disabled people’s isolation.

Chronicle Online: LCT cuts strand disabled riders

Carol Dennison and Adrian Linden have been completely dependent on Lorain County Transit to get to work and other places they need to go. Starting this week, the two women, each of whom contends with a disability, have to find alternate means of transportation in the wake of severe cuts in Para-Transit service. […]

For Linden, the news is especially bitter, as she has served as facilitator for a number of Lorain County Multiple Sclerosis Support Groups in Lorain, Amherst, Sheffield and Wellington for the past several years. “I used to get to those meetings on the bus, and now I’m not going to be able to handle them anymore,” she said. “Someone else will have to take over.” […] She was looking forward to starting up an MS support chapter in Elyria “but that’s out now.” […]

Dennison learned Monday her LCT service was ending because her destination — Crestwood Elementary School — was well outside the three-quarter-mile limit. “They must have known about these cuts for a while,” Dennison said. “They didn’t get informed on a holiday with less than 24 hours notice for people who have to get to a job in the morning. I have no idea what I’m going to do tomorrow,” Dennison said Monday. […] “The bus is my only means to get to work,” she said.

Bloomberg.com: Haiti’s ’Shunned’ Disabled Kids Cope With Loss of Their School [about how the only school for children with disabilities in Haiti has been destroyed]

Church officials are trying to move the pupils to Montrois, a city north of Port-au-Prince, to house them temporarily in a former Episcopal seminary, Sadoni said. The Rev. Lauren Stanley, Episcopal missionary to Haiti, said by telephone today that Duracin confirmed the information provided by Sadoni. “The urgent now is to feed them,” Sadoni wrote. “And we don’t have any materials (cloths, toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap).”

Even then, the struggle is far from over, Nelson said. “Most of the kids there are in wheelchairs, blind or deaf, and much of the staff is handicapped, too,” she said in a telephone interview last week. “But it’s not just the physical problems. Handicapped children are also shunned by society there. It is really very scary.”

Washington Post: Up to 10 percent of Iraqis disabled by war, sanctions

Iraq’s health ministry said it has no specific figures but it estimates the number of physically and mentally disabled people at between 2 million and 3 million.

U.S.-based Mercy Corps considers 2 million conservative. It said a 1977 census put the disabled population at that time at 9 percent of Iraq’s 12 million people, or about 1 million. The government now estimates the population at 30 million. […]

Only a quarter of amputees who need artificial limbs get them because the raw materials are not available, it said.

Media dis & dat: Report on Latinos with disabilities now available for free download

Three years ago, Proyecto Visión released a report that examined the low employment status of disabled Latinos and recommended ways to improve their job and other opportunities. Latinos with Disabilities in the United States: Understanding & Addressing Barriers to Employment presents a snapshot of this growing population, outlining factors affecting the extent of participation, and degree of success, of disabled Latinos in the service delivery system; highlighting innovative research and employment projects that are working to reduce barriers; and presenting profiles of individuals and families who have attained success and others who have fallen between the cracks.

One thought on “Recommended Reading for January 22nd

  1. Grr, the article about transportation cuts… I should not have read the comments. I really shouldn’t.

    Seriously, how is it possible for people not to realize that not everyone has the social network to be able to ask someone for a ride when transit service is cut? I suppose these sorts of people would rather someone take the risk of hitchhiking with random dodgy strangers than have an actual safe alternative, if it means that taxpayers have to pay a dime for that alternative. How… altruistic.

    And also, not everyone may have access to the information that bus service is being cut off. I’ve seen this one personally: the announcements here tend to be made on rather small signs posted inside the bus, which, of course, a blind rider would never see (and naturally, this fact is somehow never considered). It all reminds me of the bit at the beginning of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where the plans for the earth’s destruction were on display on another planet that we puny Earthlings couldn’t even get to.

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