PhilosopherCrip

In Michigan, it snows in the winter. I knew this when I moved, but didn’t think it could be any worse than CT’s “Nor’easters”. This week, it dropped to negative teens at night (negative 20’s with windchill) and snowed at least a few centimeters every single day. This is all a round about way of saying that I did something kind of rare and took the time to watch a DVD today because I was snowed in at my girlfriend’s apartment. We watched Last King of Scotland, which is hardly a date movie with its very graphic violence. However, we aren’t exactly like many couples and so it fit our tastes.

It is the true story of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s brutal regime that caused the deaths of over 300,000 of his own people. One of the striking parts of the story was that these deaths were not a part of a systematic racial cleansing per se, but were the killings of the factions of his political opponents. Amin’s warped psychology justified this violence in the name of stability, because his was one of the first African governments that were completely independent of colonial rule. His was a message of black power, unity, independence, and pride. The unified stability he sought was a response to hundreds of years of racist colonial oppression and exploitation. These ends were not themselves horrifying and could, in fact, be seen as a very good consequence for the people of that nation. After all, independence from colonial power is the same end that our country’s founders were aiming for during the war that created our nation.

Of course, the scope and nature of the violence visited upon his people was outrageous and not at all justifiable by this end. As the movie portrays, many of the killings were the executions of unarmed civilians, not war casualties. Amin was no patriot but a brutal murderer who was drunk with his own power. His absolute commitment to an ends that was not altogether morally bankrupt brought him to the use of means that are among some of the most horrific in history.

Also, Amin is not alone in his brutalities. History is ripe with examples of governments bringing about unthinkable tragedy in these ways. We are often quick to point at the Nazis or the Communists, but even our own government used such logic as it stood alone as the only entity to ever unleash the devastation of a nuclear weapon. Perhaps we may even look to the contemporary torture of terrorism suspects at Gitmo as an example of justifying violence and ignoring basic human rights in the name of a seemingly beneficial ends.

Perhaps I should start using this pattern of thinking as an explanation when I find myself discussing Jerry Lewis and his many offenses. One of the stock responses I get is “i understand why YOU don’t want to be pitied, but he has raised a lot of money to conduct research that will cure people who don’t want to suffer with MD.” Of course, I could and probably should challenge the notion that a medical cure is more desirable than a social one. However, this may be a much harder line of reasoning for someone to follow who has been so deeply socialized to believe that pity is an appropriate and virtuous response to disability. Instead, it may be better to really latch on to the deeply bigoted statements Lewis has made, and point out that the ends of funding for research cannot possibly justify the harms he visits upon the crip community with his very public words and attitudes.

Now, this is not to say that Lewis can be justifiably compared to a murderer like Amin in every way.  Surely, the harm Lewis does can not compare in scope.  Arguably, bigoted attitudes like his lead to the incarceration, abuse, and untimely death of thousands of people with disabilities in nursing homes, institutions, and the like.  Yet, he cannot be held directly responsible as the primary cause of this outrage, because he is a washed up comic, not the head of a government.

However, the means-ends reasoning that people use to defend this hack is quite similar:  “But what does the money go toward?” . . . “Doesn’t the money he raises help children?” . . . etc. etc.   My question is, what ends are good enough that the disability community should be asked to tolerate this man when he says in an article he wrote for Parade magazine that wheelchair users “just have to learn to try to be good at being a half a person?”  What amount of money is worth awarding a humanitarian award to someone who says on national TV, immediately after the passage of the ADA making employment discrimination against crips illegal, that people with disabilities “cannot go into the workplace. There’s nothing they can do?”  He may not be a dictator, but millions of people watch Jerry and are “touched” by his words and cannot understand why we can’t look past his old fashioned views because he has done so much good.  These supposedly good ends cannot be justified by the means of promoting the most basic element of ableism that keeps us as second class citizens almost 2 decades after the passage of ADA, pity.  I couldn’t possibly come up with the words that link pity with our oppression and marginalization better than Jerry did himself in a TV interview in 2001: “Pity? You don’t want to be pitied because you’re a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house!”

Not satisfied with handing out Best Picture Awards to deceptive and small minded films like Million Dollar Baby, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences intends to give Jerry Lewis its Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Oscar Awards ceremony on February 22, 2009.

Many people with Muscular Dystrophy and other disabilities strongly object to the way Lewis uses dramatic images of helplessness and pity to beg for money. There is an entire organization called “Jerry’s Orphans” that is made up of former Telethon poster kids who have grown into adults that understand how pity obscures and thwarts demands for justice, respect, and civil rights.

How many of us cringe when someone feels “terrible” that we are LPs/deaf/chair users/learning disabled/autistic/etc? That cringe is what this petition is giving voice to. The Academy Awards plan to present Lewis with their Humanitarian Award for his work with the telethon. The petition describes in more detail why this is problematic and was written by one of Jerry’s Orphans, Laura Hershey. I can say for sure that everything in it is factually accurate. I know the author personally and have researched all of the cases she describes in the petition (I am thinking about writing a dissertation about how pity harms folks with disabilities, so Mr. Lewis provides me with a lot of material).

Jerry Lewis, looking dismayed and surprised...

Anyway the petition against presenting Lewis with the award can be found at: http://www.petitiononline.com/jlno2009/petition.html

The full text of the petition is:

To:  The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

This petition has been launched to object to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ announcement that it will give Jerry Lewis its Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Oscar Awards ceremony on February 22, 2009.

During his decades of hosting the Labor Day Telethon, Jerry Lewis has helped to perpetuate negative, stereotypical attitudes toward people with muscular dystrophy and other disabilities. Jerry Lewis and the Telethon actively promote pity as a fundraising strategy. Disabled people want RESPECT and RIGHTS, not pity and charity.

In 1990, Lewis wrote that if he had muscular dystrophy and had to use a wheelchair, he would “just have to learn to try to be good at being a half a person.” During the 1992 Telethon, he said that people with MD, whom he always insists on calling “my kids,” “cannot go into the workplace. There’s nothing they can do.” Comments like these have led disability activists and our allies to protest against Jerry Lewis. We’ve argued that he uses the Telethon to promote pity, a counterproductive emotion which undermines our social equality. Here’s how Lewis responded to the Telethon protesters during a 2001 television interview: “Pity? You don’t want to be pitied because you’re a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house!”

Jerry Lewis has also made derogatory comments about women and gay men. His outdated attitudes and crude remarks are dehumanizing, not humanitarian.

Therefore, we the undersigned support the actions and arguments of the coalition group The Trouble with Jerry. We protest the Academy’s characterization of Jerry Lewis as a “humanitarian.” And we ask that the Academy cancel its plans to give Lewis the Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

Not that he or anyone remotely close to him will read this obscure web-log post, but I wanted my first post since going into the “hibernation” of finals season to be in honor of the Honorable David Paterson, governor of New York.  Recently, SNL did a sketch with Paterson as its subject.  I was busy frantically writing a seminar paper last Saturday and missed the show’s live airing, but caught it on youtube more recently.  Admittedly, parts of the sketch are quite funny, particularly the parts where their portrayal of Paterson “craps on New Jersey.” 

However, the sketch was quite upsetting in their caricature of this articulate, politically savvy leader as a bumbling idiot, merely because he happens to be blind. Typically, SNL is funny in its mockery of politicians because it picks up on personality quirks and contextual absurdity to poke fun at them. For example, Will Ferrell’s famous southern drawl, silly smirk, and ill-imagined SAT words made “strategery” a favorite of my generation. More recently, Tina Fey’s spot on impersonation of Sarah Palin in several opening sketches, with her winking, apparent ignorance public policy, and outright annoying “folksy” demeanor surely had a much bigger influence on people’s political sensibilities than a short spot on Weekend Update, after the show is half over.

Governor David Paterson of New York

So, why would Palin and others keep silent, while Paterson risks the appearance of being an oversensitive, bitter blow hard? The answer is simple, this SNL was not about Governor David Paterson, it was about disability. The sketch does not pick up on any personality quirk of Paterson’s as an individual, but stereotypes him as a blind man. Holding charts upside down, wandering about in front of the camera, and generally appearing confused, these jokes were not about Paterson but about blindness. It is as egregious as if SNL decided to mock Barack Obama, not for being a media darling, as they did, but for being a black man, complete with those stereotypes. I am not trying to engage in the “oppression olympics” here, but mean to point out that this sketch spent a good deal of time mocking a stereotype of disability, not a particular political figure.

Paterson’s response was simply heroic. It is unquestionable that speaking out against the SNL sketch was against his political interest. The associated press reports that Lee Miringoff, an expert pollster that gauges public reaction to politicians, said that the reaction against the skit was “unwise” and explained “I can’t recall the last time a politician has reacted negatively to being lampooned on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ . . . It humanizes them. At least your name is on the marquee.” What this Miringoff doesn’t get is that Paterson was not trying to react in a way that would serve his political interests. What is “unwise” politically can be straight-up valiant when you look beyond the narrow political picture. For once, a politician was not thinking just of himself, but of his community.

Governor Paterson took a strong stance in support of the disability community, showing his moral medal as far as I am concerned:

“Now that [Alaska Gov. Sarah] Palin’s not around, they seem to have run out of material . . . The idea of a person rolling around the stage in a chair, being disoriented, can’t find anything, bumbling, in a sense looking like a clown is a way disabled people are portrayed all the time. . . . The perception that disability equals inability to be responsible is totally wrong . . . There is only one way that people could have an unemployment rate that’s six times the national average — it’s attitude . . . And I’m afraid that the kind of third-grade depiction of individuals and the way they look and the way they move add to that negative environment . . . I don’t mind that they make fun of me, but I thought it was important to speak up for those who don’t have a voice and don’t have a job.”

These, my friends, are the words of a true hero of Crip Town. He is not merely a politician who happens to have a disability. He is one of us.

Thank you David.

Recently, there has been a court case in the news about Jarek Molski.  He is a Californian that has recently been told he can no longer bring lawsuits against public businesses that are in violation of the ADA by not allowing for access to their services by wheelchair users.  These violations are of the sort where businesses do not have wheelchair ramps or accessible parking.  The US Supreme court upheld the decision to ban Molski from filing any more law suits — by refusing to hear his most recent case — because he has filed more than 400 of them.

I have no legal training, so my analysis and opinion should be taken with a grain of salt.  However, strangely enough, I agree with the US Supreme court on this one, not because of the NUMBER of cases but because of the OUTCOME of many of these 400 cases.  The LA Times reports, “Fear of adverse judgments compelled many to settle out of court, earning the Polish-born plaintiff hundreds of thousands of dollars in less than two years.”  That is, these businesses were not becoming accessible as a result of these law suits, but paying this man settlements instead.

To me, this is completely absurd.  In fact, I don’t think personal payments should even be allowed in these kinds of ADA cases.  I don’t have a law degree, but it seems to me that these kinds of cases involving access to public space (as opposed to cases that have to do with something like employment discrimination) have very little to do with harms to an individual, but rather harm an entire community or class of people.  It makes absolutely no sense for a harm being visited upon a large group of people to be “settled” by a payment to an individual.

I find the notion that any one individual should have personal gain from these kinds of cases completely and utterly despicable.  This is because he is essentially making a profit of off our community’s marginalization and oppression.  In my opinion, he is no better than a nursing home industry lobbyist that makes a profit off of the isolation and incarceration of our people, who want to live in the community but are stopped by his work manipulating health care benefit laws to exclude community choice.  Somehow, it feels even more repugnant because Molski is supposedly “one of us.”  He knows what it feels like to be excluded from a restaurant or a bar or a barber shop or a book store or any number of places, but chooses to line his pockets and preserve that feeling for others.  This is the ultimate act of selfishness and exploitation.

Perhaps, in the most egregious of cases, it would make sense to award punitive damages to punish the offending business (especially when that business has very deep pockets and could have easily been accessible).  Even then, I feel uncomfortable at the idea of making a payment to an individual as a way of mitigating a harm suffered by an entire community.  I wonder if it would be possible to pay such fines to non-profit organizations that fight for the good of people with disabilities as a whole, like Centers for Independent Living.  Perhaps payments could be made to a scholarship fund for students with disabilities who want to attend college or a fund that helps individuals with disabilities to afford modifications to their living space or transportation to make it accessible?  Maybe these are all pipe dreams, but the thought of paying a single person money to somehow make up for the marginalization of an entire people turns my stomach.  This is NOT what Justin Dart had in mind when he devoted his life to freeing our people with the passage of the ADA.

I don’t have a great deal of time to write this afternoon, but wanted to weigh in on Obama’s speech last night.  A lot of my friends were very pleased he mentioned disability as a difference that, while relevant and important, cannot stop us from uniting as one people.  He said, “It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and always will be, the United States of America.”  Of course, in a world where disability is so often swept under the rug as an issue that is not as “sexy” as the others — it’s sad when the tax code is perceived as more interesting — it was encouraging to hear our next president call out to us with his message of unity and hope.  Let’s look at it a bit more carefully.

Obama delivers his victory speech on on November 4, 2008 in Chicago before an estimated 200,000 people

First and foremost, disability was listed among a series of human traits that have historically been separated out and marginalized as the “Other.”  That is, Obama’s message of unity is closely bound up with a message of justice.  Unity cannot merely be a sweeping under the rug of oppressions and marginalizations.  We cannot IGNORE how folks are treated differently in the name of “unity.”  Sometimes, unity must be sacrificed in order to deal with injustice (like the civil war or the civil rights movement).  However, at the end of the day, true unity CAN be achieved if we address these differences head on and right the wrongs that have divided us.  For me, the reason Obama’s mention of my community brought up a swell of emotion has to do with this recognition of injustice and his call to achieve unity through its demolition.  Unity should not be achieved by excercizing top down power that ignores or suppresses difference and forces conformity, but through grassroots change that renders such differences as close to harmless as possible.

Closely tied to this recognition of a need for justice to achieve unity was an implicit call to action.  He was saying that these marginalized groups have the power to address their own oppression, take back what is rightly theirs as Americans (civil rights), and unify our nation as one people.  If the key to unity is to address injustice, we ourselves as marginalized, divided people must take action to do just this.  While John McCain enjoyed talking about HIS personal responsibility and HIS record of putting country first, Obama called upon an entire people to, themselves, take responsibility for our nation’s fate.  The difference here is key to why Obama was able to win in such a big way.  It is the key to his political genius.  John McCain talked about “the government” as if it was some hulking, mysterious force that acted upon our lives while Barack Obama called us to be involved in understanding and shaping how this force affected our country.  He called us to remember that the government is not some great evil, but rather a creation of the people, for the people, and by the people.

The rhetoric that surrounded disability was no exception.  McCain wanted to talk about how his government would help children “with special needs.”  Obama, on the other hand, called our entire community to his side, recognizing our collective voice and our power to ourselves create change.  As evidenced by his very informed, thoughtful disability policy platform and his recognition of us on his diversity “short list” last night, Obama did not set us apart as an other to be pitied, but asked for our help to change the social landscape of a nation.

At the end of the day, Barack Obama’s electoral college landslide was nothing short of the greatest COMMUNITY ORGANIZING effort ever to be conceived and executed.  YES WE CAN!!!!

My last post highlighted the idea that we, as human beings, belong to certain communities and play certain roles that limit or determine the possibilities of how we can respond to certain issues. That is, our social position and the relationships we have with others shapes how we think and act. However, I don’t want readers to think that I am some kind of moral relativist who believes that one way of thinking and acting is no better or worse than another. Philosophers may sometimes hold this view, but activists, surely, do not.

So, I’d invite you to watch the above youtube video that outlines McCain’s response to the Community Choice Act, which is perhaps the most important crip legislation to face the nation since the Americans with Disabilities Act. It calls into question Palin’s claims about her knowledge of and loyalty to disability politics by linking her to McCain’s hard line stance against this bill. I thought it was well made and summarizes a lot of what has happened with disability politics in recent history.

Also, look for my friend Amber being arrested at McCain’s office last spring (whose blog called this video to my attention at http://ambertracker.blogspot.com/) .

Recently, my very good friend Amber took a trip to South Korea to understand how their disability movement in general and their feminist disability movement in particular have developed (http://ambertracker.blogspot.com/). This has gotten me thinking about how culture and political history have shaped our movement in the US. Typically, I tend to be as ethnocentric as the next American and my judgments are certainly still biased by my privilege as a US citizen. However, I have been on a kick the last few days, thinking about how American liberalism shapes our ideas about what it means to resist the oppressive structures that have marginalized us.

When I refer to liberalism, I am not talking about the “liberal left” but rather the political philosophy that tells us that the purpose of government is to preserve our individual freedoms. This is the notion that laws are in place to ensure that our freedoms do not infringe upon the freedoms of others.

Laws like the ADA seem to be directly connected to this notion. Access to public space and employment anti-discrimination are justified by their effects on individuals. Like the romanticized settlers of the western frontier, folks with disabilities are blazing a trail into a new territory, as rugged individuals. Relying on their own mettle, they take risks and reap rewards accordingly.

Of course, this is also somewhat problematic. This emphasis on the value of the individual is a double edge sword as it largely contributes to the very core of the bigotry of ableism. Interconnectedness and interdependence are the values that will free our people, not individualistic, libertarian ideology. In fact, these values are realities for all Americans that are often ignored. American culture tells us there is shame in having someone help you dress if you need it, but having someone else cut your hair is par for the course. We have this mythology that we are individuals that survive in a harsh world on our own. When folks with physical and cognitive differences need help in different ways, their lives are disvalued as having less quality or dignity.

While our freedoms have a uniquely American flavor, so do some of our oppressions. We need to look elsewhere if we are to understand how we can think outside of this box and move away from this kind of marginalization.

Yesterday, NY congressman Chuck Rangel referred to Sarah Palin as “disabled” during a news interview. His point was to highlight Palin’s gross inexperience and inadequacey when it comes to foreign policy. Later, he tried to backpedal and claimed that he meant to say Palin was “disadvantaged” and “is an obviously healthy person who in no way fits the description of disabled.”

I agree with Rangel that Palin isn’t qualified to be vice president and has been tokenized by the Republican party in a not-so-subtle attempt to appeal to the white, suburban, female demographic. What I have a hard time with is the notion that someone who DOES “fit the description of disabled” is somehow unworthy of our respect and lacking authority. Rangel’s comment — and pathetic attempt at retraction — was deeply ableist in that it hinged on the premise that people with disabilities deserve our pity and charity, but not our respect and obedience. We must be “kind” to someone who is disabled, but we should not take them seriously if they are in a position of authority. I would challenge Rangel to share what exactly he means by “the description of disabled.”

I have returned now to the “real world” and am coming down off of the natural high of the ADAPT action. The adrenaline of that 5 days was pretty extraordinary. I heard several stories explaining why and how the arrests went down at Dodd’s office — and several other offices of members of congress, apparently. Rather than relate them here, with the inaccuracies of sleep deprived memory, let me point you to ADAPT’s press releases: http://duhcity.org/duhpress.html. They are all informative, but the first on the list — http://duhcity.org/press/duh004.html — is the most relevant to the action that happened on Tuesday on Capitol Hill.

One thing of note that you won’t find on the press release pages is a description of how I spent my Tuesday night.

DUH City was erected as a political statement of solidarity with folks with disabilities who are, in essence, homeless because of the lack of availability of affordable, accessible, integrated housing. Many folks with disabilities are either homeless in the traditional sense of lacking shelter or homeless in the sense that they do not have a home, but are warehoused in institutions and nursing homes. While such arrangements meet the minimal requirements of permanent shelter from the elements, it is argued that they are not homes because the people living their do not have the security and freedom that is essential to calling something a home. That is, a home is not a place where every moment of your day is controlled by someone else’s regimental routine. So it is that ADAPT tried to call attention to these unacknowledged homeless by living as close to homeless as we could for a few days on the front patio of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

ADAPT button with our standard slogan!

In a personal statement of solidarity with people with disabilities who are homeless, I chose to tweak this idea slightly and sleep in a cardboard box on Tuesday night, at the fringes of DUH City. This was intended to be both a political statement, contributing to the overall message of DUH City and an attempt at an exercise in empathy. Since doing this, I have decided these are separable ideas and that I may have succeeded in the one and failed in the other.

As a statement of political solidarity, it probably went mostly unnoticed, but was genuine. However, I don’t think it really worked as a way of building any kind of real personal empathy for those who face this kind of situation as a crisis. As my friend Dominic pointed out in a comment on my post “That could have been me…,” it may be impossible for genuine empathy to be developed between folks who are embedded in systems of drastically disparate power relations. His basic idea was that true empathy — rather than pity — could not exist between able bodied people and folks with a disability because the power differential is too permanent and too absolute for anyone to be capable of truly thinking outside of it.

I am starting to understand Dom’s point here. Like disability, class is a system of power relations. While I can sleep in a cardboard box for a few hours, this will not be a genuine understanding of an impoverished person with a disability’s experience of the world. Firstly, I had a CHOICE of where to sleep. This in itself means that I can not understand the most important aspect of the oppression of poverty and homelessness, power relations. I cannot get outside the fact that I could have gone back to my 200 a night hotel room at any time. How can I understand homeless on anything but the most superficial of levels while retaining this position in society’s power structure? In addition, I had the luxury of a sleeping bag and plenty to eat and plenty of hope for my future. This cannot be a genuine exercise in empathy.

This post will not be about my day today. I spent almost all of it sleeping. However, I can update folks about some stuff that went down yesterday and last night and today, while I was sleeping.

I don’t think I mentioned how, yesterday, some HUD officials came uot and asked for a meeting with ADAPT leadership, probably because we were making such a ruckus. Word is that HUD told leadership that they could not comply with our list of demands for the following reasons:

1. They believe in incremental change rather than large scale reform (this is the excuse given to every activist in the history of the activism and is really code for “f off things are staying as they are”).

2. They are trying to deal with the hurricane right now (also a bogus reason, our demands were for systems change that can be implemented after hurricane season, all we wanted was a promise for action.)

3. We have a lame duck president (this may be a bit more plausible, but there are still a few months lefts in the administration and at least some of our demands could have been met in that time.)

At the end of the meeting, the HUD officials told our leadership “see you next year.” I’m sure they find it funny that uor people suffer while they sit on their hands and we return each year with our demands, trying to chip away at their opwer structure. I wish we all had time to stay in tent city indefinitely. At least they got some more today. Friends that were at the meeting tell me that the HUD building has thin walls and they heard our chants clear as day. For a time, we will be heard.

Yesterday, there were also 8 or 9 arrests at McCain’s office. 2 ADAPT teams (of 5 I believe) broke off and paid his campaign headquarters a visit. 8 or 9 chair users got through the door before they could lock it and were able to shut down an entire day of fund raising calls with chants. Then police moved in. I am always troubled by how rough the police are with ADAPTers that don’t appear disabled. “TABs” (temporarily able bodied), “uprights,” or “walkies” always get hit the hardest when the police come and it is hard for us to watch or hear about. One friend had his shorts torn up from being dragged.

The word is, there are more arrests today at Sen Dodd’s office. Senator Dodd is a co-sopnsor of Community Choice Act, so I find it strange that he would be an ADAPT target and that they would resopnd with police force. Apparently the arrests were not as violent as at McCain’s office, btu I still fiond it strange that the liberal senator from my home state of Connecticut would be an ADAPT enemy. I trust leadership because I know they use direct action only after many attempts at traditional negotiation, but am I am anxious to hear the story of how this all happened.

DUH City was calm last night. The police were present at our perimeter but everyone stayed cool and they let us spend the evening chatting and joking. It was actualyl quite a beautiful experience, if not exactly what I expected. We ADAPTers enjoyed each other’s company in our home made crip ghetto, talking about politics and love and life. We slept under the stars and were happy. I hope tonight will be the same, but am ready to defend our DUH City with non violent direct action if iot comes to it. This has all been a pretty profound experience.