Liberals and disability rights: Why don't they 'get it'?

[deek]

By Mary Johnson

During the debate over Terri Schiavo last fall, disability activists and scholars groused about both right-to-life and right-to-die advocates not understanding disability rights issues. It was just the latest round of a recurring tune: activists say progressives and conservatives are equally dense when it comes to understanding, much less embracing, disability rights.

Liberals, in particular, came in for a drubbing. Whether called progressives, leftists, or liberals, these are folks who should understand and support disability rights issues and make them part of the liberal rights agenda, said almost everyone we talked to. But they don't.

~snip

One of the reasons leftists don't "get it," Chapman U. political science professor Art Blaser thinks, is that they "tend to prioritize inequalities and reason, 'if I fight most of them isn't that enough?'" For a long time, sexism wasn't considered important to the Left, he says. Nor was homophobia. Things started to change when women leftists themselves began feeling gender inequality and gay leftists came out of the closet. 'We're not there yet," he adds, echoing Russell's point that the disability movement is not only not large enough yet but that leftists who have disabilities by and large do not seem to identify as disabled and thus do not force the Left to take on the issues. "The second wave of feminists came out of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and CORE, she points out, "and they drew explicit parallels to Black Power."

~snip

Drake says neither the left nor the right truly claims disability issues as their own. Both "are really just invested in their broader culture war -- with neither side seeing us as part of the culture they're defending. We're simply collateral damage.

more http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/focus/liberals0104.html

[KamaAina]

1. They better "get it" or the right will move in and take over

supposedly more than half of Americans with disabilities voted for an evil dunce from Crawford, Tex. for pResident. (admittedly from a Harris poll commissioned by the righty Nat'l Organization on Disability, Richard DeVos, founding chairman)

Never mind that SSI, the main source of income in our community with its 70% unemployment rate (that is not a typo!) will go down along with the Social Security ship, or that the Bush** budget cuts the sole remaining federal disabled housing project in half. We've all got to make sacrifices in wartime, don't we? </sarcasm>

Meanwhile, the right is ready to pounce, using physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia and the Schiavo case as the wedge issue. See the discussion on "Million Dollar Baby":

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1259729&mesg_id=1259729

Needless to say, they're no more interested in us than the progressives are. Their only interest in the issue is to use it to erode support for abortion rights. If they got their wish and Roe were overturned, they'd drop us like a hot rock.

[deek]

2. little compassionate progressivism here either

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3163861


You're right--Pro Terri's life is considered GOP.


Where's DemBones when you need him?

[Sugarbleus]

3. I'm Pro Terri's life...

I'm not GOP. Matter of fact, I woke up this morning listening to a liberal talkshow host questioning his guest who IS a GOP pro life advocate. They were talking about Terri Schiavo's case. It was very interesting.

The woman from the right was explaining to the audience that Terri ISN'T DYING. She is disabled at most. Her life is valuable and precious to her family. I totally agreed with her and wrote in to say so.

All of you are right about the "left"..at least many on the left. There seems to be a confusion between a perceived "wanting to die" and "the right to die" and the "right to life". Oh, yeah, there's also a HUGE amount of talk about COST.......???!!! When did Dems start counting costs in terms of human need?

I am an advocate of the right to die if fully documented aforehand but I,like you don't want a "trend" to start where "disabled" individuals are assumed to "want" to end their lives or "should be put out of their misery" by doctors or society.... Geez, one caller-in this morning made the comparison between Terri and euthanizing a dog. Said that we take "better care of our ailing animals than we do human beings" He was saying that Terri was ailing so much that she needed to be put out of her misery!!!!!!!!!!!!! He got blasted by the host. :evilgrin:

[KamaAina]

4. More from Mary Johnson, hot off the presses

http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/mediacircus/scribesmistook0205.html

(neurologist and author Oliver) Sacks's recounting comes to mind every time I read a new critic or columnist pontificating on the flap over Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby. Media pundits typically leave out mention of disability rights opposition to "right to die" issues -- they do it with coverage of Terri Schiavo, too -- or mass it with opposition from the Christian Right, as though it's capable of no real agenda of its own....

Religious opposition to assisted suicide is based on "sanctity of life" arguments. Disability rights opposition comes from an entirely different sensibility. The mostly-agnostic activists we know who oppose the "right to die" are steeped in progressive leftist causes. They read "death with dignity" laws as disparate impact legislation.

The "right to die" may sound egalitarian; it may sound a though it's about nothing more than choice. In application, though, it applies only to people who are living disabled lives. And the disability rights movement continually returns to this central truth. "Since virtually all people who request hastened death have old or new disabilities, we're essential to the debate," wrote the late Barry Corbet, longtime editor New Mobility. Right to die, and death with dignity laws, Corbet wrote, "are about us."

"Many of our allies in the civil rights and health care movements have found this hard to understand. Isn't this about individual autonomy and rights, they ask?" says attorney Diane Coleman, founder of Not Dead Yet. "No, we say, it's about disability discrimination, a profit-oriented health care system, and a legal system that does not guarantee the equal protection of the law," she wrote in a 2000 article for the American Bar Association.

Ye-OW! Could the White House please be made accessible for this woman? (Come to think of it, it should've been for FDR...)

[Corgigal]

5. as the wife of a disable man

and the mother of a disabled boy, I also see Terry Schiavo case as a strike against the disabled. I do not understand how so many DU'ers see this case as a right to life/freedom to die case. Terry hasn't been able to tell us what she wants and the best we got is 2nd person information which never works in court but is fine to starve someone under.

I really don't get it. Just because right to lifers lined up to assist the Schiavo family that doesn't mean I automatically react the opposite way. I still believe Terry has worth , her father and mother love her and she doesn't appear in pain. You know, they wouldn't put their pet down if the spaniel they owned for 16 years wasn't in pain even if it just went through a stroke and they had to work a little more to keep her clean.

I just don't think a court system can handle this case and we need to leave it alone. If she was in pain or we knew for sure what her wishes were then I could change my opinion.

[deek]

6. "Lazy Eye Memory "Terri video

For those of us who know, interact, and love people with significant brain damage, this video of Terri is especially chilling.

How can anyone call Terri those horrible names?

http://www.geocities.com/Gordon_Watts32313/NewVideoTerri.html

from the website:

Correction: Sources tell The Register that this video, dubbed the 'lazy eye memory' video is not new. It is part of the "Maxfield examination" video introduced into evidence in October of 2002. We apologize for any misunderstanding caused. Nonetheless, this video is new to many, and should be read in that manner.

NEW: Added Wednesday, 25 August - Supplamental Report and Analysis by Register correspondent, Bob D.

excerpt from the website:

~snip
The Register's professionally trained investigators find that Schiavo does not meet the definitions to be classified as PVS, by the definitions set out by state law. Obvious even to an untrained observer, Terri is not braindead. However, the "legal" definition is the relevant standard in court. The law requires that a person not have either voluntary action or cognitive behavior of any kind as well as a total inability to interact purposely and communicate. Dead people clearly do not laugh at jokes, as Terri is shown doing in the video.

[DemBones DemBones]

7. Too many people here want Terri to hurry up and die, just like

they want the Pope to hurry up and die, just like they apparently want anyone who doesn't look "normal" to hurry up and die. It's frightening. And should frighten anyone who realizes how quickly any of us can find ourselves in a similar condition. I've just about had it with the so-called liberals here.

[pop goes the weasel]

8. Amen!

I have seen, both on DU and in person in local Democratic affairs, such callousness, even hatred and fear toward people with disabilities that I always think about leaving the party. But leave it for what? The GOP pwd that I know aren't any happier on their side of the line. The Greens pay good lip service, but they aren't any better on inclusion in practice. What really gets me on DU is that most people won't even follow our links. I guess they think disability will rub off on them.

[DemBones DemBones]

9. I think you're correct that they think disability will rub off on them,

and maybe that's why they want disabled people who are in the news to die -- so they don't have to see them and risk "catching" something.

Strangely enough, there were long threads mourning Christopher Reeve when he died. Of course, he was a crip who hated being a crip and had an obsession with a cure, spent a fortune trying to make his body work again, unlike many of us who live with our disability and accept that it's probably not ever going to be cured. If Terri Schiavo were trying to be cured, would she be a hero, too?

Warning: there's a new "Die, Terri, die!" thread in LBN.

[deek]

10. aaaaaaaaargh

So much misinformation re feeding tubes, feeling hungry, end of life processes, inevitable bed sores and infections, lack of quality of life.....and of course, always being accused of being a RW religious nut.

I can not call them my fellow liberals anymore.

[DemBones DemBones]

11. I hear you. Between the acting as if disabled people's lives and opinions

don't count, (like the post saying Hillary Swenk is hot so nothing else matters!) and the frequency and speed with which disability issues threads sink, the message becomes clear.

And then there are the disabled parking threads, in which some always have to say they just know some people have gotten disabled stickers under false pretenses and comment on the fat people they've observed parking in the disabled spots. I never realized until I came to this board that a disabled person couldn't also be fat! And who knew that some people disobey the law and get fake or fraudulently obtained documents?

:eyes:

The educational experiences offered by some DUers are mind-boggling, aren't they?

[Corgigal]

12. You know what worries me

and they don't see it. Most disabled people I know vote Dems because we understand the republican party is the party of the wealthy and unless our illness make them any money, they want us gone.

This might make Bush look good to some disabled people. Of course the whole time he's attempting to cut off disability funding from SS and hurting disabled people in a variety of ways. This should have never been allowed to become a republican point. Never.
Of course the DU'ers on other forums don't see what damage they are doing. They just want to pretend they have control over their destiny and want it all tidy and clean. If I'm like that I would want to die. They believe. If my loved one was like that I wouldn't want her/him to carry on the way. They believe.

They don't know shit until they live it. Not dealing with an elderly grandparent either, where it's easy to rationalize your wants.

This is a failure between a husband and his in-laws. They should have figured out a way, as adults to deal with this situation. I can't say for sure that myself as a parent, I wouldn't be doing the same thing if this did happen to one of my daughters. Of course I don't pretend to think stark black and white either. I thought we were the complicate creatures of the planet. Republicans were the black and white issue thinkers. I guess on this issue both sides are black and white issue thinkers. Stupid mistake.

[pop goes the weasel]

13. you are so right

The Republicans are very good at letting Democrats take the lead on such things, so that the public comes to associate Democrats with being pro-death. I already know many disabled people who vote Republican for that very reason. The fact that it is the Republicans who gut programs that ensure people with disabilities a right to live, as Democrats push each other out of the way to say their piece about how disabled people have a right to die. This is another way that Democrats fall into the Republican trap.

As for Terri, I don't know. Her parents wanted an MRI done as a definitive test. That seems reasonable to me. I don't understand why a mediator couldn't have gotten the whole family on the same page. Now there is so much invective on both sides that I doubt they can compromise. If it were my daughter, well, we've already agreed that we would seek an MRI for each other if there was a question of our consciousness.

[undergroundpanther]

14. I am frustrated with Du's ignorants too

I mean I tried to say the COMPLEXITIES of Terries issue and it went over their heads. I tried to speak about what this legislation would really mean(eugenics)..Kill the disabled legally..I tried to draw a line connecting the Terry case with the fact veterans coming back from Iraq have lot of brain injuries because the body armor works better.Instead of dying in explosions they get brain damage..And Bush is cutting veterans benefits and hankering for a draft.

What scares the fuck out of me is too many people don't see we are really moving twords the death camps.Bit by bit.Through hysteria laws are passed in the dead of night,on holidays where nobody can contest the republicans.Than afterwards it's forgotten or it's rationalized..If people were scared as they should be,If all thier talk about fascism holds any weight to them Gonzales should have sent people storming the WH.But no. They didn't rebel they obey and go trivial.. And I for one am horrified at this chronic complacency and ignorance with corruption.I am mental illness survivor I know what losing even the rights to the sanctity of my own body means as do alot of disabled folks do...Already..I fear the "professionals" if the law decides terrys fate can force people like me to take powerful neuroleptics,put implants that release haldol in my brain if I am too much of a pain in the ass,Kill against our will,And every person is going to be tested for mental illness.Why.If you look at disability laws medical stuff tort reform it's coming and noone is going to come for us they are not disabled..And by time they get disabled the targets will have shifted on to stripping the right to exist from gays or non christians.This should be scaring everyone.The health of a society is determined by how it treats it's disabled, old folks ,kids and minorities .And with the cuts these populations are recieving our culture is sick indeed...So if these Liberals truly can look past the surface I think they would have by now.I mean Abu Gharib was a HUGE red flag and still Gonzalas was appointed.The UN is trashing the human rights commission..But I fear they never HAD to look beyond the sound bytes so they will not start looking now thier lives are not falling apart yet..

People die from"psychiatric treatment"..and if the rights of families to advocate for each other,the right of patients to decide treatments dissapears people can be liquidated much easier especially if their advocates and families can do nothing about the states or"professionals"decisions.Heavy drugging can look like brain damage..and with that'evidence'and the idea a person who is labveled a teroruiist can be sentanced in basically what amounts to star chambers... a person can be killed just for being disabled appearing. Scary aint it.

If the courts get their way and use terry and the hysteria over her condition to get the lawmakers to have total CONTROL over a persons or families medical decisions..than we are fucked. And if the stupid liberals won't help and can't see the Forest for the trees,and the churches are full of patronizing assholes as oblivious as liberals are,or stupid control freaks,and the repugs are a lost cause waiting to steal everything they see like vultures, than it looks like it's up to us to organize and do what everyone else is failing to do...
because they are blinded by themselves.





"Psychologists have a word which is probably used more frequently than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word maladjusted. Well, there are some things in our social system to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I suggest that we ought to be maladjusted. I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic inequalities of an economic system which takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. The salvation of the world lies in the hands of the maladjusted."
Martin Luther King.


~"If you do not specify and confront real issues,what you say will
surely obscure them . If you do not alarm anyone morally you yourself remain morally asleep. If you do not embody controversy what you say will be an acceptance of the drift of a coming human hell."~
C.Wright Mills,The Power Elite.

[Corgigal]

15. Yep Hitler began with the disabled for a reason

I get what you're talking about with brain trauma being the number 1 injury to our GI's coming home from Iraq. I went and copied my post and will put it here. Of course not one person said ONE damn thing about it, nor did it get flammed. Which I expected. Must be some truth in it so they ignored it. Post is below, from this weekend.

Corgigal (1000+ posts) Sun Mar-20-05 06:38 AM
Response to Reply #4

46. Fallen for it ?


I have been a Democrat for 35 years. I give money and my talent to most Democratic cause. I also don't believe Terri Schiavo should be starved to death. However I am also for the rule of law so whatever the Florida courts decide is fine with me. Schiavo parents did a great job in lobbying their emotion to keep their daughter on this planet. I have no problem with that and I would probably try to do the same.

I have two disabled men in my life who I love dearly. To me it's a disability issue not a "right" to life. She is alive, not the way some people prefer to live but the only way Terry can live right now. Fundy arguments don't really enter my mind.

I always believed I was a Dem and a liberal because it was us, only us, that took care of the weak among us. I never thought, and still don't think a republican gives a damn but will use whatever they can to split "US" up. This issue should have been a democrat position not a republican position and lots of DU'ers don't want to see this.
I thought we were the complicated thinkers not the stark black and white thinkers but on this issue we are just as stark as the right to lifers are. We shouldn't be doing that. Love does wonderful and also awful things to us humans. Yeah I understand the science of what happened to this young lady. I also understand she has no chance of entering our world again, on our terms, but so what? We don't understand the functioning of the human brain that well yet. It wasn't too long ago when we all heard that same BS that animals don't experience pain. In fact, some people still try that one.

I didn't drink any koolaid but I can still see a beautiful person in Terry who others love. Why is that a terrible thing? If I knew that is what Terry wanted, written somewhere and the courts enforced it , then I would back it. This is a failure of both her husband and her parents who should have never allowed such a personal issue to become public. It's a failure that the republicans are using it as a right to life case when they hate most people with disabilities and think they are nothing but lazy. Their voting for the Iraq war make more disabled people on a daily basis and they couldn't give a damn and still cut funding for the VA. I also believe Democrat's are screwing up on this issue because they are using only the science and not the human bond part of this story.

The whole thing is damn shameful.

[Sugarbleus]

17. Wow, great post!

Wonderful statement here:I can still see a beautiful person in Terry who others love. Why is that a terrible thing?

Those were some of my feelings about her case as well. The LOVE factor.

You said it so well when you made the case for the repugs "splitting us up"... Dems need to rethink what's taking place here; not just Ms Schiavos plight but the greater plight of disabled and sick persons of all stripes.

I so agree; we dems were suppose to be the deep thinkers on such weighty matters. I've been blown away by the callousness in language, the "assumptions" about person's with disabilities, etc.... I had to take a break from this.

I'm happy to see you posting in this forum. Thank you for your input. It's very much appreciated.

Best, SB :hi:

[Corgigal]

18. Thank you for your kind words

In fact I just told my husband that if this happened to me I wouldn't want to stay alive either. However, if one of our children need me to be alive in this manner, then fine let me be for awhile.

This sad story made me change my opinion a bit.

[filet mignon]

16. self delete