Blogging Against Disablism Day 2008

Ableism, Homelessness, Jail, the Church, & Privilege

I feel like I could say a lot about my observations of ableism in the last month of working with long-term homeless and hungry people who all experience ableism, corresponding with a friend who is serving a federal sentence in an IL jail for her actions protesting the SOA (interesting link in even the sentencing and ableism), sharing our work and space with organizations that haven't thought much about disability beyond the elevator that you need a key to enter, and even more having recently been to a large conference and church assembly with a lot of glaring ableism. Currently I'm working on some resources to share with a senior center about the connections between ableism and ageism, much of which I've gleaned from conversations observing the center and church, which I hope to post when finished. Hmm, maybe I can try to make this a BAD Year with all of this ableism material.

Expanding on last year's post, here are a few new signs of hope...
Mia Mingus accepting Creating Change award video, and the text of her whole speech including the parts where she calls out the ableism we were experiencing

Eli Clare's new website

Ballasexistenz returned after restoring the blog from back-up, and posted for BADD.

At the Autistic Spectrum Flickr group, we've been collecting Autism Pride photos...slowly, but there are some fun ones.

On the disability culture front, Ouch! podcast continues to entertain us while washing dishes or driving from Minnesota to San Francisco.





Sorry to all that this post is really just a few links, and that I haven't posted since last Blogging Against Disablism Day. I'm excited about my new job and move to San Francisco, and am just trying to tame the chaos to not-so-overwhelming levels for our aspie-addy household.
Hopefully that means I'll post again before Blogging Against Disablism Day 2009!

Blogging Against Disablism: Hope

The thought of blogging about Disablism (Ableism, in my usual language) today seems a bit overwhelming. Instead, here are some signs of hope.

Hope, originally uploaded by Transguyjay

I have hope against Disablism when I see:

-Parents and kids working against Disablism, like Norma Desmond & Knight Lloyd (My favorite of their collaborations is Gifted with Asperger Syndrome)

-A person pulling me aside saying, "I've been thinking about what you shared, and I think that I might identify with neurodiversity***." Second moment of hope when the person identifies publicly. I've seen it happen twice this month alone.
***variations include Autistic Spectrum, Disablism/Ableism, or Scent-Free Spaces

-A person comes to my office for advocacy, and self-advocates to make a change in their own life.

-My partner says that he loves how Aspie I am when I am talking non-stop about Star Trek, making laser noises, rocking about something unjust that I just saw happen, standing on my head, or singing along with completely different notes to a different rhythm.

-At the churches I attend where I see persons with developmental disabilities participating in music leadership, invocation, hospitality, reading sacred texts, and greeting without being limited, or patronized. On Easter at one of the communities, we saw an exceedingly joyful liturgical dance to a gospel song by a young person with Down's Syndrome, which the congregation clapped along to.

-Intentional efforts towards community building of disabled people, such as
Breaking Isolation, Building Community at FORGE Forward Conference

-In a meeting or a social gathering and someone corrects their own Ableist statement. This week, it was a friend/colleague who questioned using the word lame.

-A young person from my former internship site is sharing her excitement about getting a new arm with people who were feeling sorry for her.

-The following blogs/sites:
Pitbull Poet
Ballastexistenz
Chewing the Fat
Ragged Edge Online

-Progress in searching for Anti-Ableism resources for work and finding more and more new good resources every day.

-The person I've corrected when repeatedly saying handicapped with a look of concern finally spontaneously says disabled without grimacing.

-My friends gather for Wednesday breakfast, and we vent about the Disablism we've experienced and seen, challenge our own internalized Disablism, and support each other in living with Disabled Pride and hope.

Feel free to add more examples in the comments.
I'm going to bed so that I can get to breakfast in the morning.

Chaos

Life has been chaotic lately, explaining the lack of posting in the last few months.
Moving across the river has been exciting. Where we're living is great, although we're just now finally getting completely unpacked.

Grandma had a stroke and has aphasia. Grandma also has post-polio syndrome, and has arthritis and a blood disorder, so she's taught me a lot about living with disabilities.
The process of walking through this with my family has been illuminating. Lack of information on part of medical staff, lack of technological familiarity, ageism, ableism, and other people's unmanaged/unacknowledged disabilities converge in a very different situation for people over retirement age who experience disability. It's the same disfunctional societal systems, but amplified and hidden.

I've been working as an Individual Advocate at a CIL for the last few months. Work is very challenging. I love being able to work with people's disability advocacy requests, especially when I'm teaching skills, facilitating communication, assisting to resolve conflicts, or showing people how to get through the system. Yet, it would be so much more effective if I didn't spend hours on the phone just waiting to talk to the hostile case worker or SSA. We're understaffed too, along with the dilemma of getting more referrals when you do a good job. But it's amazing to see things get resolved that seemed overwhelming and impossible. Yet, some of them don't, and I'm frustrated and angered by the lack of services/support that some people get left with. I can hope that they learned some self-advocacy skills in the process, and maybe one of the referrals I gave might have some better ideas, but ultimately there are still millions of people that are living without control over basic life decisions.

My new favorite blog:
Chewing the Fat

What I'm absorbed in at the moment...

Absorbed in reading these books:


Absorbed in watching:

Absorbed in listening to:

More from Seward Breakfast

A few more from Seward Wednesday Breakfast last week.
They must have been tired.