Category Archives: politics

Bad Behavior, continued: More on School Discipline

s.e. smith recently wrote about abuse of autistic students in Pennsylvania and the distressing rise in abusive ‘discipline’ for students with disabilities. Ou mentioned a recent study from Delaware that found that students with disabilities are more likely to be suspended for ‘behavior’ problems than students without disabilities. Ou discussed some easy ways that a disabled student’s behavior could be categorized as disruptive and make them subject to discipline:

Are students suspended for not using modes of communication familiar to teachers? For needing to stand or pace while learning? For needing a quiet environment for learning, and for becoming upset when one is not provided? For needing orderly and precise schedules? For not completing assignments they don’t understand or find impossible to finish? For attempting to create and maintain personal space? For expressing any number of needs and needing a space where they are accommodated? For tics in the classroom?

I had all this fresh in my mind when, at work, I came across a recent report on school discipline in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Although one of the organizations involved in researching and preparing the report is an organization focused on mental health disabilities, the executive summary does not have any data or recommendations about students with disabilities. But it did have a couple of points that I found very interesting and thought were worth discussing.

The first underlines the point that s.e. smith was making in ou’s previous post – that disproportionate discipline demonstrates broader societal disregard for the targeted group. The report re-frames the student dropout crisis as a “student ‘push-out’ crisis,” arguing that discipline reform “requires respect for children’s dignity, meaning schools will not exclude, get rid of, or criminalize them for misbehavior or underachievement… If the policies and practices of every school were geared to fulfill their human rights, our children would not be excluded, tracked, and pushed out… [nonconforming] students are more likely than other students to be ‘pushed out’ of school and ultimately find themselves in the juvenile delinquency or adult criminal justice systems.”

s.e. said the same thing in ou’s earlier post:

This is a reflection of a lot of problems with the way society views and treats people with disabilities, and of serious inadequacies in the education system. Teachers who abuse students clearly should not be in the classroom, yet they are, and they are sometimes allowed to remain even after abuse is reported. Teachers who have received no training in working with disabled students shouldn’t be assigned to classrooms with disabled students, yet they are.

The primary focus of the report was highlighting the extreme racial disparities in LAUSD discipline. African-American students make up 22% of LAUSD students, but about half of disciplinary actions involve African-American students. These students were also more than twice as likely to be suspended than other ethnic groups. As the report concludes, “the gross disparities apparent in the past and current application of suspension to African-American students by LAUSD make clear that … the District employs practices that are inconsistent with federal, human rights, and state mandates.”

Although the report highlights racial disparities, it seems that one of the primary recommendations of the report would benefit all students targeted for discipline, including those with disabilities:

Priority: Share Power with Parents.

Recommendation: Share the first signs. Schools shall contact parents at the first sign that something is wrong with a student’s behavior so there is an opportunity to take preventative measures rather than wait until an issue escalates into a major problem.

Recommendation: Share planning and decision-making. Schools shall include parents on their [discipline] teams and give them equal say in decision-making and planning related to [discipline policy.]

Recommendation: Create shared trainings. The District and schools shall conduct [discipline policy] trainings jointly with administrators, teachers, and parents in the same room.

Recommendation: Enable parents to enforce accountability and transparency by schools. Schools shall establish parent committees to observe discipline practices, especially in the classrooms, play areas, and cafeteria. Schools shall make disciplinary data, practices and procedures, and outcomes and benchmark data available on a monthly basis to parents and the community so they can also monitor implementation of [discipline policy] and do whatever necessary to hold LAUSD accountable. The District shall effectively inform parents of what schools are required to do according to [discipline policy], and what parents should do if their schools are not following through.

A final thought: it would be very interesting to see data of discipline rates of disabled students of color. They must be through the roof.

A conversation

Recently, I was on the commuter train home. I happened to be reading Susan Schweik’s book Ugly Laws: Disability in Public for a research paper. Two middle-aged women sat down opposite me, and one inquired as to what book I was reading.

Me: It’s a book about 20th-century ugly laws in the U.S.

Woman #1: What’re those?

Me: Oh, they were regulations that prevented people with visible disabilities from panhandling in public, but more generally, they also kept people with disabilities out of the public eye.

Woman #2: Wow, that is so interesting! Are you in school?

Me: Yes, I’m reading this for a grad school paper.

Woman #1: You’re lucky you’re in grad school! The great thing about being in school is that you get to learn about things you might otherwise never learn about.

Me: Yeah, I suppose so.

Woman #1: And…why are you interested in that topic?

Me: I’m interested in feminist theory and disability, and how those things intersect with race, gender and class, and other stuff. That’s the short version, anyway.

Woman #1 [After a long pause]: Of course, I didn’t mean to imply that you are disabled or have a deformity

Me: Uh, okay. [Pause] You can’t see it, but I do have chronic pain.

And the conversation sort of stopped after that. For some reason, I suspect that this is not an uncommon occurrence.

Recommended Reading for June 15, 2010

dhobikikutti (DW): This is also needed: A Space In Which To Be Angry

And what I have realised is that there is a sixth component to [personal profile] zvi‘s rules, and that is that complaining about and calling out what you do not like does help, slowly, painfully, get rid of it.

Every time I see friends who make locked posts about fic that Others them, that writes appropriatively and ignorantly and dismissively and condescendingly and fetishistically about their identities, I think — there needs to be a space where this can be said.

damned_colonial (DW): Hurt/comfort and the real world [warning: derailing in comments]

Writing a short ficlet in which someone who has been abused/injured/disabled/etc is “comforted” and feels better seldom bears much relation to the reality of abuse/injury/disability/etc. Which, OK, we write a lot of unrealistic things. The problem with this one is that the idea of hurts being easily cured/comforted is one that also exists in the real world and harms real people. Almost anyone with a real-world, serious “hurt” has had people dismiss and belittle their experience on the assumption that they “should be over it by now” or that “if you just did X” the problem would go away. People are often treated badly or denied care on these grounds.

Pauline W. Chen, M.D. (New York Times): Why Patients Aren’t Getting the Shingles Vaccine

“Shingles vaccination has become a disparity issue,” Dr. Hurley added. “It’s great that this vaccine was developed and could potentially prevent a very severe disease. But we have to have a reimbursement process that coincides with these interventions. Just making these vaccines doesn’t mean that they will have a public health impact.”

Trine Tsouderos (Chicago Tribune/L.A. Times): The push and pull over a chronic fatigue syndrome study

Nine months later, the joyous mood has soured. Five research teams trying to confirm the finding have reported in journals or at conferences that they could not find the retrovirus, known as XMRV, in patients diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, casting grave doubts on the connection.

Kjerstin Johnson at Bitch Magazine’s Sm{art} blog: Riva Lehrer’s body of art

To Lehrer, who has spina bifida, “Disability and art are natural partners. In order to have a good life with a disability, you have to learn to re-invent your world almost hour by hour. You discover ways to re-imagine everything, and how not to take the average answers to everyday questions…”

Quoted: Audre Lorde

The supposition that one [group] needs the other’s acquiescence in order to exist prevents both from moving together as self-defined persons toward a common goal. This kind of action is a prevalent error among oppressed peoples. It is based upon the false notion that there is only a limited and particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between us, with the largest and juiciest pieces of liberty going as spoils to the victor or the stronger. So instead of joining together to fight for more, we quarrel between ourselves for a larger slice of the one pie.

— “Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving” (1978), in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (The Crossing Press, 1984)

Kids these days! The “Generation Y” panic, privilege, and erasure

Recently, I read this odd article, penned by Judith Warner, in the New York Times–one in a stream of many that detail how excessively awful the current generation of young people (read: young workers) is at putting its collective nose to the grindstone, sucking it up, and generally not acting like a bunch of brats, or something.

Many of us have heard about, or come into contact with, some of these bright young things. They are heralded — or, more commonly, blasted — as naive, entitled, too optimistic, and over-confident. In many of these articles, their numerous faults are listed: They don’t know how to dress professionally! They expect to march into the workplace of their choice and immediately start making a six figure-salary! They think they are perfect! They want praise all of the time! (Does no one who writes these sorts of articles stop to consider that many human beings want praise when they complete a task to the best of their abilities?) They have tattoos, dyed hair, and iPods! EVERYBODY PANIC, because the American workplace is apparently going to be dragged down by Generation Y’s entitlement, narcissism and laziness! This narrative, however, seems to apply mostly to a very specific subset of the population (and even the picture that accompanies the NYT article reinforces this): young, able-bodied, middle to upper-middle class, college-educated white people.

This erases, or conveniently ignores, a hell of a lot of folks who are not young, abled, middle/upper-middle class, and white. It erases young workers who may not have had the “expected” educational opportunities (such as college), or who had to take more than the expected four years to finish their degree, or who did not finish school. It erases people whose parents or family members may not have been quite so “involved” in their education, or in their lives at all. Of course, it also erases young people with disabilities — both those who cannot work, and those who want to work but who may be bumping up against various narratives such as that of the “entitled” Generation Y kid. Some of us have psychological issues or disabilities that put us completely at odds with the “overly-confident” and “entitled” stereotype that apparently befits the current generation — because we cannot stop worrying despite the fact that we are supposed to be totally optimistic and confident all of the time, always thinking that the roads leading to our perfect job will be lined with rainbows, fluffy bunnies, and gold.

Some of us have physical disabilities, chronic pain, or chronic illnesses that prevent us from working 40-hour weeks (or more); asking for accommodations or disclosing our condition(s), we fear, may make us look “entitled,” or like we do not want to put in the time necessary to work our way up — even if this is not the case. The fact is that many people, and many young people, with disabilities are already at a tremendous disadvantage when it comes to the labor market and making a living. Not only are many people with disabilities, at least in the U.S., more likely to face lengthy stretches of unemployment and/or live in poverty regardless of age, but many face additional hostility, discrimination, and unreasonable demands, both in the workplace and from society at large because of their disabilities.

While I am not saying that these over-entitled Generation Y-ers don’t exist (I’ve had run-ins with quite a few of them, myself), I am struck by the fact that the narrative surrounding them is so dependent upon erasing or ignoring certain people whose bodies and experiences do not fit the “expected” attitudes about labor that have been traditionally upheld by American culture. Many of these attitudes, furthermore, rely heavily on binaries that reinforce who “counts” and who does not: You either work full-time, or you’re lazy. You’re willing to be mistreated in the workplace and do whatever it takes “for the job,” or you’re a wimp. Suck it up, or go home. If you’re not making enough money to live on or are poor, you just aren’t working hard enough. If you ask for “accommodations,” you’re asking for too much — just do your job! You have to work hard to “make it,” and if you don’t work hard enough, it’s your fault. If you don’t like your job or face daily mistreatment, you can always quit and find another one, right? But if you can’t, it’s your fault, and why did you quit that job, anyway? These attitudes surrounding work affect people with disabilities in a wide variety of age groups and generational cohorts, and this is a crucial part of why they are so important to critically question and examine.

The message for Generation Y, in general, may be “Get over yourself,” but the message for those who do not fit the characteristics of the “average” Generation Y worker is more severe — and ultimately more dire.

[Cross-posted at ham blog]

Where About Us But Without Us Leads

On 1 June 2010, E. Fuller Torrey MD wrote an op-ed column for the New York Times, “Make Kendra’s Law Permanent.” Dr Torrey is the founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), a nonprofit group whose sole purpose is to lobby states for the passage of so-called assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) laws like Kendra’s Law in New York and Laura’s Law in California. The New York law is named after Kendra Webdale, who was killed by Andrew Goldstein in 1999.

Dr Torrey and TAC will tell you Mr Goldstein had untreated schizophrenia. They’ll tell you people like him are dangerous, they’ll tell you people like Mr Goldstein are often so sick they don’t understand they’re ill and need treatment, and they’ll tell you they know best. They won’t tell you that Mr Goldstein had been seeking treatment desperately and been turned away repeatedly.[1. Source: Time Magazine, “Will the Real Andrew Goldstein Take the Stand?”] Continue reading Where About Us But Without Us Leads

Call to Action: Tell Parliament to Stop Discrimination against people with disabilities who immigrate to Canada

An awesome way to guarantee that you will not be allowed to immigrate to most countries – even if you otherwise completely qualify – is to have a disability, or have a disabled immediate family member.

Despite the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms explicitly guaranteeing that laws in Canada cannot be written to discriminate against people with “mental or physical disabilities” (Section 15 of the Charter), Canada’s Immigration Act allows someone who otherwise passes all of Canada’s immigration requirements to be denied immigration because they “might reasonably be expected to cause excessive demand on health or social services”.

What has this meant in practice? Well, in 2009 Chris Mason, an immigrant from the UK who was injured on the job while working legally in Canada, was deported back to the UK because of his disability. In 2010, Ricardo Companioni was initially denied immigration to Canada from the US because of his HIV-positive status, but managed to argue in Federal court that he and his partner would pay for their drug treatments and thus not be part of Canada’s care system – a solution that is not available to many people. In May, the Barlagne family lost their appeal to be allowed to stay in Canada, as their youngest daughter has Cerebral Palsy. The reasoning was that the court did not believe the Barlagnes would be able to pay for their daughter’s care.

None of these stories are unique. Even when the Bill was being debated in Parliament, Members were bringing up concerns about how the “excessive demand clause” would affect people whose families had disabilities. In 2000, when Wendy Lill, a Member of Parliament, asked:

We have a charter of rights which talks about each Canadian being entitled to equality under the law. The Will to Act Task Force, which was established several years ago, talked about equality of citizenship for persons with disabilities.

Clause 34 talks about how a foreign national or other permanent resident would be inadmissible on health grounds if their health condition might reasonably be expected to cause excessive demand on health or social services. This is the only clause in the bill which seems to me would in any way relate to a person with a disability making an application to come to Canada.

I would like to know if a family with a child who has a disability such as Down syndrome or cerebral palsy would be accepted in this country. [emphasis added]

She was assured by the then-in-power Liberals that:

I think it is internationally accepted, in the Geneva convention and other statutes, that the best interests of the child can indeed be defined. In the case of a disabled child, I believe that the intent is to prevent abuse. The abuse might be that the only reason for someone wanting to come to Canada would be to seek free health care of some type.

However, in the case of family reunification, if we are talking about bringing a new family to Canada, if a child has a disability, frankly, I am absolutely confident, having met the men and women who work in citizenship and immigration, that we would take all of that into account and we would not allow it to stand in the way. [emphasis added]

I’m very happy for the no-longer-in-power Liberals that they were certain situations like the Barlagnes would never happen in Totally-Awesome-To-People-With-Disabilities Canada, but since we live in this Canada, I think their optimism was misguided. As has been amply demonstrated by reality.

The Council of Canadians with Disabilities has recently written yet-another-letter urging the Hon. Jason Kenney, Minister of Immigration, to review the “excessive demand clause”. You can read the letter in full at their website.

I have adapted their letter to send to Mr Kenney, as well as my MP, and provide that letter for my fellow Canadians to adapt or use in any way they see fit.

This is a discriminatory policy. People with disabilities and their families are not drains on the Canadian economy. We are people, and we should not be denied equal rights because of our disabilities.

My letter is below:
Continue reading Call to Action: Tell Parliament to Stop Discrimination against people with disabilities who immigrate to Canada

Recommended Reading for June 1, 2010

fiction_theory (LJ): The internet IS real life

The problem with impeaching someone’s anti-racism based on attendance at a specific march or even public rallies and protests in general is that it assumes that a) attending such events is a more real, valid, and important means of expressing anti-racism than any other means, specifically online and b) that attendance is a feasible option for everyone.

Marching at a rally or attending a protest is all well and good, but it’s not something that is an option for everyone. It’s quite ablist to ask such a question as though the privilege of being able to attend excludes the antiracist work of those who use other venues.

Mattilda at Nobody Passes: Closer

Somewhere between sleep and awake, a new day and last night and tomorrow, like they’re all in a circle around me but I’m somewhere in bed where I can almost read the sentences except they blur away from me, and I keep thinking maybe sleep, maybe this is more sleep except I don’t know if I want more sleep.

thefourthvine (DW): [Meta]: The Audience

I will not bring up my disability, because I don’t talk about it here, except to say that if that part of me appears in a story, it will be as either a clever gimmick (and a chance for a main character to grow as a person) or a sob story (and a chance for a main character to grow as a person). (No, there will never be a main character just like me. Most of the time I think that’s normal, and then I look at, say, SF and think standard-issue straight white guys must have a whole different experience on this issue. How weird would it be, to have basically all mainstream media written for you like that?)

Ian Sample (at The Guardian online): Bone marrow transplants cure mental illness — in mice

The team, led by a Nobel prizewinning geneticist, found that experimental transplants in mice cured them of a disorder in which they groom themselves so excessively they develop bare patches of skin. The condition is similar to a disorder in which people pull their hair out, called trichotillomania.

lustwithwings at sexgenderbody: Do I Owe Everything I am to The Internet?

Despite their lack of a body, my friends are still quite active in the world of Social Networking which acts on the physical world in much the same way things on our mind do. The contents of the Internet affect the physical world through many of the same processes as the contents of a mind, yet the contents of the Internet as a public mind can affect many more minds, and many more bodies than a private mind.

Ableist Word Profile: Crazy (to describe political viewpoints or positions)

  • Ableist Word Profile is an ongoing FWD/Forward series in which we explore ableism and the way it manifests in language usage.
  • Here’s what this series is about: Examining word origins, the way in which ableism is unconsciously reinforced, the power that language has.
  • Here’s what this series is not about: Telling people which words they can use to define their own experiences, rejecting reclamatory word usage, telling people which words they can and cannot use.
  • You don’t necessarily have to agree that a particular profiled word or phrase is ableist; we ask you to think about the way in which the language that we use is influenced, both historically and currently, by ableist thought.
  • Please note that this post contains ableist language used for the purpose of discussion and criticism; you can get an idea from the title of the kind of ableist language which is going to be included in the discussion, and if that type of language is upsetting or triggering for you, you may want to skip this post.

We just ran an ableist word profile on the word “crazy,” written by the lovely guest poster RMJ, who discussed how the term is used in a variety of contexts and situations. This follow up is sparked by what I’ve seen as a recent resurgence here in the United States in use of the term in a political context, to describe or characterize an individual with a particular set of political views. Every time I see it, it grates on me, and I thought it was worth a focused discussion here at FWD.

Before I begin, I should make clear that I personally identify as “crazy” sometimes. Not always, but when the depression gets overwhelming and I can tell my thoughts are getting tangled, or especially when I’m in the grips of a manic episode. (More accurately, I identify as a “crazy bitch,” but that’s neither here nor there.) I’ve also been consistently described by others as “crazy,” in contexts ranging from affectionate to outright hostile and dismissive. So when I see this term tossed around in the media, it feels personal to me.

And it’s been tossed around a whole lot lately, largely by traditionally liberal or progressive media outlets. I first started seeing it show up at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall’s blog that combines “breaking news, investigative reporting and smart analysis.” Marshall doesn’t mention it on the site, but it also contains a big heaping spoonful of ableism with that political analysis. Here are some recent examples:

This is just a sampling of the posts with headlines including the term “crazy” and is not at all comprehensive. Even within this sample, we can see that the term is used to describe viewpoints with which TPM does not agree (like revising history textbooks or arguing, like Gaffney, that the Pentagon logo indicates a secret plan to subject the United States to Shariah law) and thinks are biased, bigoted, racist, or otherwise offensive (such as the protests about Obama speaking to schoolchildren or the racial laws in Arizona).  None of the posts, though, engage or critique those viewpoints or speakers in a substantive way – simply describing them as “crazy” is seen as self-evident and no further discussion is needed to demonstrate these views or people should be excluded from reasonable political discussion.

There’s been an even more recent explosion of use of the term to describe Rand Paul and Paul’s views, after he won a Republican congressional primary in Kentucky.[1. An earlier version of this post had stated, in error, that Dr Paul won the Republican congressional primary in Virginia. Thanks, Katie, for the catch.] Paul favors the free market and freedom of private business, to the extent that he seems to believe that anti-discrimination laws are an unreasonable restriction on businesses. Now I am no fan of Mr. Paul – and wrote about my problems with him previously on FWD – but that doesn’t mean I approve of political cartoons like this:

A political cartoon portrays Rand Paul as the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland. Added to the original Tenniel illustration are a 'Don't Tread on Me' flag, a Rand Paul button, and an I Heart BP button.
A political cartoon portrays Rand Paul as the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland. Added to the original Tenniel illustration are a 'Don't Tread on Me' flag, a Rand Paul button, and an I Heart BP button.

To my mind, characterizing Rand as “mad” or “crazy” and not saying anything further is a lazy way to dismiss him and his ideology without actually having to engage with it. There is a lot to say about Rand’s ideas: how prioritizing private business over human rights preserves existing institutional structures that will continue to perpetuate racism, sexism, ableism, and other oppression if not checked by a larger force like the government; how the line between private and public realms is a lot fuzzier and less distinct than Paul implies it to be; that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and BP’s seemingly inadequate safety protections and near complete inability to effectively respond are strong indications that business will prioritize profits over public goods like environmental safety; how an attitude of business before anything else will influence Rand’s views on everything from the minimum wage to immigration policy to climate control to internet neutrality. Those are all important discussions to have, discussions where we can’t assume that everyone in the audience will come down on the same side, but calling him “crazy” or “mad” and leaving it at that elides all of those complicated issues. Even more strongly, it implies that those discussions are not even worth having because it is so evident that the views or person being dismissed are wrong and absurd and laughable.

In Newsweek, Conor Friesdorf made an interesting observation about the policies and people who are dismissed as “crazy”:

Forced to name the “craziest” policy favored by American politicians, I’d say the multibillion-dollar war on drugs, which no one thinks is winnable. Asked about the most “extreme,” I’d cite the invasion of Iraq, a war of choice that has cost many billions of dollars and countless innocent lives. The “kookiest” policy is arguably farm subsidies for corn, sugar, and tobacco—products that people ought to consume less, not more.

These are contentious judgments. I hardly expect the news media to denigrate the policies I’ve named, nor do I expect their Republican and Democratic supporters to be labeled crazy, kooky, or extreme. These disparaging descriptors are never applied to America’s policy establishment, even when it is proved ruinously wrong, whereas politicians who don’t fit the mainstream Democratic or Republican mode, such as libertarians, are mocked almost reflexively in these terms, if they are covered at all.

What I conclude from that is that the media doesn’t consistently use “crazy” and other ableist terms to refer to absurd policies or those that lack rational support, but instead reserves those terms for people outside of mainstream politics. Which in turn implies that the term is used primarily to further marginalize and dismiss people who don’t fit expectations of what a politician is or what are common or popular political arguments. To me, this is even more evidence that the implicit subtext of terming a person or policy “crazy” is “shut up and go away, or start blending in better.” Which, again, is exactly the message leveled at people with mental illness when they’re called “crazy” or “loony” or “unhinged” or any number of synonyms.

This selective usage is even more reason the term “crazy” shouldn’t be used in the political context – partly because it’s a lazy out for commentators who refuse to engage with the actual policy issues or political ideas being proposed on a substantive level, and partly because it fiercely underlines and reinforces marginalization and dismissal of people with mental illness. It reminds me that when people call me “crazy,” what they really mean is “stop existing in my consciousness – either disappear or become normal.” To see progressive writers and organizations rely on the marginalization of people with mental illness to score easy points against unpopular politicians is upsetting not only because of their perpetuation of ableism, but also because it puts me in the extremely uncomfortable position of defending people like Palin and Paul against this kind of criticism.

Recommended Reading for Thursday May 20 2010

An image of a beach with blue sky, dotted with clouds. A figure sits in the sand by the waves. In the foreground, a wheelchair sits on the sand.
An image of a beach with blue sky, dotted with clouds. A figure sits in the sand by the waves. In the foreground, a wheelchair sits on the sand.

“….” by mataikan, seen at binary canvas.

Ghana News Agency – Mental Health System on the verge of collapse

Dr Akwasi Osei, Chief Psychiatrist of the Ghana Health Service, on Monday said the mental health system would soon collapse if the Mental Health Bill was not passed to correct the abuses and injustices in mental care. He said it was unfortunate that the Bill, drafted in 2004 and completed 2006, was still lingering at the Ministry of Health. Speaking at a workshop on the State of the Mental Health Bill and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, (UNCRP) for media practitioners, in Accra, he stressed that there was the need for the law to protect the rights and interest of patients and to overhaul the entire mental health system.

Guernica – Jonathan M. Metzl: In Medical Records, a Story of the Racialization of Schizophrenia

Ionia held these men using little-known loopholes in deinstitutionalization amendments that stipulated that the hospital would continue to receive or contain patients deemed too violent for state correctional institutions, or who posed “dangerousness to the community” even after most other patients were set free. The word negro appeared on the upper right corner of the face page in eight out of every ten of these charts. And schizophrenia, paranoid type was overwhelmingly the most common diagnosis applied to these men, these institutionalized black bodies that deinstitutionalization left behind.

the personal hurricanes of kirsty mitchell – quote from siri hustvedt, the shaking woman

the DSM does not tell stories. It contains no cases of actual patients or even fictional ones. Etiology, the study of the cause of illness, isn’t part of the volume. Its mission is to be purely descriptive, to collect symptoms under headings that will help a physician diagnose patients. there is a companion DM-IV casebook, but notably, these narratives about real doctors and patients are gathered in their own volume, seperate from the diagnostic tome.The fact is that all patients have stories, and those stories are necessarily part of the meaning of their illnesses. This may be even more true for psychiatric patients, whose stories are often so enmeshed with the sickness that one can’t be untangled without the other.

Toronto Sun – Family denied residency because of disability

A French family denied permanent residence in Canada because one of the kids has cerebral palsy may have to leave the country following a federal court decision Tuesday. David Barlagne has been working in Montreal since July, 2005. He applied for permanent residence status for his family but was turned down because of the extra costs of putting his daughter Rachel, who has cerebral palsy, through elementary and secondary school. Under Canadian law, immigration officials have no choice but to deny applicants whose health condition could cause excessive demand on social services. Barlagne appealed but the federal court upheld the original decision.

Caltics – Don’t Fall For Arnold’s Wedge [California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently issued a proposed state budged with drastic cuts to essential programs for low income Californians and Californians with disabilities.]

Now it must be said that it’s not just the poor who will suffer under this budget. But the budget cuts are quite obviously calculated to hit those Californians without a voice, who are seen as marginal, whose funding can be cut with the least public outcry. The elderly who will lose some or all of their IHSS benefits and the children who will lose health care services are not necessarily “poor”; those cuts will hit the middle-class as well. We can’t fall for Arnold’s wedge. Arnold is shifting tactics because he’s scared of us – scared of the public reaction against three years of austerity. Now is the time to ramp up the attack on that austerity, to move beyond tired old Reaganite claims that there’s some difference between the needs of the middle-class and the needs of the poor. Many middle-class families have benefited from the very safety net programs Arnold now proposes to cut or eliminate, and many more middle-class families benefit – at their jobs and businesses – from less fortunate families having at least some state assistance.