From: Randy.Edwards@f105.n128.z1.fidonet.org (Randy Edwards)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: DISABLED TEXAN FIGHTS FAMINE WITH HER COMPUTER
Date: 7 Oct 92 16:42:13 GMT
Reply-To: Randy.Edwards@f105.n128.z1.fidonet.org
Organization: FidoNet node 1:128/105 - Socialism OnLine!, Colorado Springs CO
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Index Number: 24745

[This is from the AbleNews Conference]

 Via The NY Transfer News Service 718-448-2358, 718-448-2683
 Subject: DISABLED TEXAN FIGHTS FAMINE WITH HER COMPUTER
  From: Steve Askin <saskin@igc.apc.org>
  Date: 31 Aug 92 19:55 PDT

           DISABLED TEXAN FIGHTS FAMINE IN AFRICA WITH HER COMPUTER

                    By Carole Collins, U.N. Correspondent
                     National Catholic Reporter (c) 1992

For National Catholic Reporter subscription information call
800-444-8910.

Permission is hereby granted for electronic republication on
non-profit communications systems only. All other uses, print or
electronic, require permission. (Contact saskin@igc.org or call the
author c/o the National Catholic Reporter.)

New York, 4 Sept. 1992 -- Somalis that do survive the current
famine will have people like Dorothy Morse, a disabled but feisty
Texan in her late 50s, to thank for moving Western governments to
action.

"I'm pretty badly disabled by rheumatoid arthritis," Morse told
NCR, "and if it weren't for computers and 'the kindness of
strangers,' I would probably be dead under a bridge."

Morse works 40 hours a week as a typesetter for the Texas State
Bar. She uses a special transit service for the disabled to go to
and from work. It only costs her "$15 a month. Obviously some damn
liberals thought it up. Hooray for them," she said.

A self-confessed "grudger/hater of technology," ("I learned word
processing at age 45, got my first modem at age 54"), Morse has
become an electronic activist, using her home computer to mobilize
people to demand more food aid for Somalia.

She recalled first hearing of the Somalia famine on the radio: "I
was just lying there when I heard on June 25 the story of the
boatful of Somalians in 120 temperature unable to land at Yemen,
many of them jumping into the sea, many dying. The story ended up
'Most were women and children.' I'm a mother."

"I wrote a check to Oxfam," she said. "That's in general how I deal
with the unspeakable - I try to do a little positive something
about it every day, then go on about my business. But I also
listened for more news and never heard any."

"So one day I called Oxfam. They told me the overall story, said
they'd had to pull out, and gave me the phone number of Doctors
Without Borders, to whom I talked, and who referred me to the Red
Cross, who faxed me a press release that made my hair stand on
end."

It was then that Morse turned her computer on. "There are local
electronic bulletin boards aplenty here in Austin," she said. "I
uploaded an appeal there."

Her appeals for information and action sparked lively electronic
mail (or 'e-mail') responses from near and far. An Arizona student
'messaged' Morse for help locating information for a leaflet. A
Swedish academic offered to forward faxes - urging more aid for
Somalia - for free from the University of Uppsala via an electronic
network. Ghanaian Peter Mwaniki asked 'conference' readers to
please provide addresses of African ambassadors at the U.N.

Morse updates her electronic correspondents almost daily on the
relief effort, and advises how best to reach a "live person" at the
U.N. or State Department, how to word appeals ("use an earnest
tone, since some will be looking for a chance to call us 'Somalia
wackos'"), and whom to press for action.

Morse "has gotten a lot of people galvanized around this issue,"
MSN's Leah Arnold told NCR, "and around making sure that government
people don't forget this issue."

Morse is angry at the media's earlier failure to cover the tragedy.
"I feel like the government and media people who have power and do
nothing are committing 'negligent genocide with malice,'" she said,
"and 'with wanton and reckless disregard of human life.' And I do
mean the New York Times."

Given her limited mobility, said Morse, if it weren't for computer
networks, "my work for Somalia would be much less, and my anguish
much greater." But she keeps going because, "as the International
Red Cross said in July, 'millions of lives depend on our capacity
to care.'"

   (END)

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