From: ADAPT <cyanosis@igc.apc.org>
Subject: 09/92 - The Disability Rag (5/6)
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 08:19:42 GMT

/* Written  9:01 pm  Jan  2, 1993 by cyanosis@igc.apc.org in igc:gen.diffable */
/* ---------- "09/92 - The Disability Rag" ---------- */

What???
	Writer to be hired by telethon (or, do they ever learn?)
	"He is almost totally paralyzed, speechless and wheelchair-
bound, able to move only his facial muscles and two fingers on his 
left hand. He cannot dress or feed himself, and he needs round-the-
clock nursing care. He can communicate only through a voice 
synthesizer, which he operates by laboriously tapping out words on 
the computer attached to his motorized chair. Yet at age 50, despite 
these crushing adversities, Stephen Hawking has become, in the 
words of science writers Michael White and John Gribbin, 'perhaps 
the greatest physicist of our time.' " Time magazine's Leon Jaroff, 
leading off his review of White's and Gribbin's book on Hawking, in 
the June 8 issue. 
	For the Things Never Change Department: An uncannily similar 
start to a Feb. 8, 1988 Time magazine story on Hawking, and a Jan. 2, 
1989 People profile on him made our   "We wish we wouldn't see . . ."
issue (Winter, 1990). Time and People, by the way, are put out by 
the same folks.
	
	Amazing what the less fortunate can do
	" . . . [N]early 7,000 disabled and handicapped people have been 
trained to function as full McDonald's employees by job coaches 
drawn from within the company. Before these less fortunate 
employees take their places, company trainers often put young able-
bodied workers in blindfolds, gloves or dark glasses to demonstrate 
the kind of handicaps their new colleagues have to deal with in doing 
the same jobs." Time magazine's Edwin M. Reingold, in his June 29 
article on "America's Hamburger Helper." Time was hedging its bets 
here by making sure it got in both "disabled and handicapped" in the 
same breath [Italics ours.].
	
	Unused money
	"Our board was recently informed by the [Connecticut] Bureau 
of Rehabilitation Services that it would return, unused, two million 
dollars allotted to it by the State. . . . [and] confirmed that a policy 
decision had been made which will require a test of economic means 
for those applying for services . . . . This past year, the Bureau had 
approximately $6.5 million for the purchase of . . .  wheelchairs, 
psychotherapy, on-the-job training . . . this money, available since 
October, 1991, was not used until after the beginning of the new 
year . . ." From a recent bulletin from the Connecticut Coalition of 
Citizens with Disabilities.
	
	Our own worst enemy, cont'd.
	"I hate the term 'advocacy' because that sounds so aggressive . 
. . ". Sandra Ellis, member of the Arizona chapter of the Paralyzed 
Veterans of America, speaking to city officials in Alaska regarding 
the Americans with Disabilities Act. Ellis was called a "well 
informed volunteer" who was "diligently paving the potholes of life 
in the proverbial rocky road to accessibility" by Paraplegia News 
editor Cliff Crase, who reported Ellis's remarks in the June issue of 
PN.               
	Writer fails 
	Logic 101
	"Because she died tragically (of a brain tumor in 1970, at age 
34), her sculpture resonates with a kind of heroism." Time magazine 
art critic Peter Plagens, writing about sculptor Eva Hesse in the May 
25 issue. 
article ends

	poem begins 
     Three Poems by Cheryl Marie Wade
	all that sits between
	
	All that sits between your chrome wheeled chair and mine.
	A distance of freak names and shackled possibilities. A land of 
Mother
	disappointment. Child's play locked in hospital bed rails.
	Acres of starch white indifference. Probes into private spaces 
without 
	introduction or permission. Cripple yearnings for whole and 
romance.
	Once to be desire. Once to be pure flesh on fire.
	
	All that sits between your jagged bones and my gnarl attitude.
	Telethon assumptions. Prayers to granite invisibility we call 
God.
	Rosary beads sewn into the lining of a coat. Shame on our 
tongues
	like scales. Cartoon silhouettes in rage-lit freeze frame.
	Cripple yearnings for calm and ordinary.
	Once to be just fine. Once to be so fine.
	
	All that sits between your searching heart and my sarcastic 
hope.
	Words that spell our names correctly. Laws that do more than 
just
	token our promise. Dreams like ants crawling under our skin.
	And the reach, the reach across the distance, frail-boned hand 
to twisted spine.
	These lives of passion and disturbance. Echoes in the storm.
	Still -- such a long, such a long, long way to go. 
poem ends

	poem begins

        A NIGHT ALONE
	
	Longing
	tugs at my bones
	listens closely
	for his clumping braced footsteps
	on the gravel drive
	listens
	for the sliding of his worn shoes
	across the kitchen floor
	and the strike of the match
	Longing
	catches in my throat
	imagines
	his hands on the pipe
	his hands stroking the cat
	imagines
	his hands
	Longing 
	dries my mouth
	reaches 
	for the sounds of him
	moving 
	room to room
	Longing
	holds his sounds
	between my thighs
	and brings him home.

	poem ends

	poem begins

        THE WAY SHE TELLS HIM
	
	She does not state it
	point blank
	to his green-gray eyes
	or breathe it into his neck
	She does not write it
	with childlike script
	on jasmine scented paper
	or hum it
	into his morning coffee
	She does not moan it
	to the rhythm of his tongue's tracing
	or yelp it
	mid pitch and roll
	She says it
	without a whisper
	to the velvet dawn:
	Pressing her scarred wrist against his heart
	she lets the pale vein
	pulse     know me    know me
	know me 
poem ends

	article begins 
	Disability Culture Rap by Cheryl Marie Wade
	Disability culture. Say what? Aren't disabled people just 
isolated victims of nature or circumstance? 
	Yes and no. True, we are far too often isolated. Locked away in 
the pits, closets and institutions of enlightened societies 
everywhere. But there is a growing consciousness among us: "that is 
not acceptable."  Because there is always an underground. Notes get 
passed among survivors. And the notes we're passing these days say, 
"there's power in difference. Power. Pass the word."
	Culture. It's about passing the word. And disability culture is 
passing the word that there's a new definition of disability and it 
includes power.
	Culture. New definitions, new inflections. No longer just "poor 
cripple." Now also "CRIPPLE" and, yes, just "cripple." A body 
happening. But on a real good day, why not C*R*I*P*P*L*E; a body, 
hap-pen-ing. (Dig it or not.)
	Culture. It's finding a history, naming and claiming ancestors, 
heroes. As "invisibles," our history is hidden from us, our heroes 
buried in the pages, unnamed, unrecognized. Disability culture is 
about naming, about recognizing. 
	Naming and claiming our heroes. Like Helen Keller. Oh, not the 
miracle-worker version we're all so familiar with, but the social 
reformer, the activist who tried so desperately to use her celebrity 
to tell the truth of disability: that it has far more to do with 
poverty, oppression and the restriction of choices than it has to do 
with wilted muscles or milky eyes. And for her efforts to tell this 
truth, she was ridiculed, demeaned as revolutionaries often are. And 
because Helen Keller was a survivor, and that is the first thing any 
culture needs -- survivors who live long enough so that some part of 
the truth makes it to the next generation. 
	Helen Keller was a survivor, so she pulled back from telling 
the fuller truth; that's often what survivors have to do: they have to 
swallow the rage, wear the mask, and, yes, pull back from telling it 
exactly like it is so that there might be a next generation. And so, 
Helen Keller, a survivor, we honor you as our ancestor, our hero.
	Naming and claiming our hidden history, our ancestors. Like the 
thousands of mental and physical "defectives," singled out for 
"special treatment" by the Nazis. Yes, disability culture is 
recognizing that we were the first victims of the Holocaust, that we 
are the people the Nazis refined their methods of torture on. So we 
must honor these unnamed victims as our ancestors, we must raise 
their unmarked graves into our consciousness, into the 
consciousness of America so it never happens again. And just as 
Native Americans insist the true name of discovery is genocide, 
more and more of us insist that the true name of "right to die with 
dignity" (without opportunities to live with dignity) is murder, the 
first syllable of genocide.
	Naming and claiming our ancestors, our heroes.  Like all those 
circus and carnival freaks, the first disability performance artists.  
Those rowdy outcasts who learned to emphasize their Otherness, 
turn it into work, a career, a life. Oh, it may have been a harsh life, 
sometimes even brutal, but a life: they kept themselves from being 
locked away in those institutions designed for the excessively 
different that have always been such a prominent part of the 
American economy.  And so we claim these survivors as our 
ancestors and we honor them. 
	Naming and claiming our ancestors, our heroes. Now most of 
you probably know the story of James Meredith, freedom fighter, 
African American, who helped break the color barrier, the racial 
barrier to higher learning by insisting he had a right to an education; 
insisting. 
	 And without that insistence, the doors of Ole Miss would have 
remained closed. But do you know the story of Ed Roberts, cripple 
freedom fighter, disabled man, who, armed with self-esteem and a 
portable respirator, broke the disability barrier to higher learning by 
insisting he had a right to an education, by insisting that the doors 
to the University of California at Berkeley be opened, and by doing 
so, laid a significant brick onto the foundation of the Independent 
Living Movement? Independent! Living! Movement! The language of it! 
-- that revolution of identity and possibilities for disabled people. 
The independent living movement. Oh, you may never have heard of it. 
It never made it onto prime time. Norman Mailer did not rush out to 
capture its essence in 30,000 words.
	Yet it took root; it grew; it spread all across this country, all 
around the world -- because there is always an underground. Notes 
get passed among survivors. And the notes we're passing these days 
say: there's power in difference. Power. Pass the word. 
	So what's this disability culture stuff all about? It's simple; 
it's just "This is disability. From the inside out."
	Culture. Pass the word. Now maybe the word is the moan and 
wail of a blues. Maybe it's the fierce rhythms and clicking heels and 
castanets of flamenco. Maybe it's outsider art. Passing the word. 
Maybe the word is authentic movement, that dance that flows from 
the real body notes of cripples. Maybe it's the way pieces of cloth 
are stitched together to commemorate a life, to remember a name. 
Maybe it's American Sign Language, a language the formed the 
foundation of a cultural identity for a people, Deaf people, and 
bloomed into ASL performance art and ASL mime.
	Culture. Sometimes it happens over coffee or on a picket line. 
A poem gets said and passed along. And passed back. Amended. 
Embellished. And passed along again. Language gets claimed. Ms. Gay. 
Crip. Guerrilla theater becomes theater with a soul. Teatro 
Campesino. The Dance Theater of Harlem. And, of course, WRY CRIPS 
Disabled Women's Theater. Radical. True. Passing the word.
	Culture. Maybe so far you've been deprived. Maybe right now the 
primary image you have of disability is that of victim. Perhaps all of 
you know of us is Jerry's Kids, those doom-drenched poster children 
hauled out once each year to wring your charitable pockets dry.
	But I promise you: you will also come to know us as Jerry's 
Orphans. No longer the grateful recipients of tear-filled handouts, 
we are more and more proud freedom fighters, taking to the streets, 
picket signs strapped to our chairs. 
	No longer the polite tin-cuppers, waiting for your generous 
inclusion, we are more and more proud freedom fighters, taking to 
the stages, raising our speech-impaired voices in celebration of who 
we are. No longer the invisible people with no definition beyond 
"Other," we are more and more proud, we are freedom fighters, 
taking to the streets and to the stages, raising our gnarly fists in 
defiance of the narrow, bloodless images of our complex humanity 
shoved down the American consciousness daily.
	And these changes, they will happen, just as the Independent 
Living Movement happened, just as the Rehabilitation Act's 504 
regulations for access happened; just as the Americans with 
Disabilities Act -- the most comprehensive civil rights law ever 
written -- happened.
	Because there is always an underground. Notes will be passed 
among survivors. And the notes we're passing these days say, 
"There's power in difference. Power. Pass the word."
	Disability culture. What is it really all about? 
	It's this. 
	And this. 
	And this. 
	Yeah, this --
	coming at you from 
	the inside out. 
article ends
	sidebar begins
	Disability Culture Rap, says Cheryl Marie Wade,  is based on 
the belief that all cultural groups, including disabled people, have 
the right to create the language and images that define them. If 
you're in San Francisco in October, you won't want to miss the world 
premiere of  Wade's "A Woman With Juice" performance art event. 
Premiering October 15 and running for three consecutive weekends, 
"A Woman With Juice" is being produced by BRAVA, For Women in the 
Arts, one of San-Francisco's most respected presenters of cutting-
edge women's work. BRAVA is also assisting with the tour 
production of "A Woman With Juice;" a video about the making of the 
show is in progress. For ticket information, call BRAVA at 415/641-
7657.
	Wade and BRAVA! are seeking support to help get these 
projects off the ground. Tax-deductible contributions can be sent to 
BRAVA, c/o CM Wade, 1613 Fifth St., Berkeley, CA 94710-1714.
	Also in production is Wade's second video, "Disability Culture 
Rap," to be marketed to public television stations, schools and 
independent living programs. Wade is seeking VHS or S-VHS footage 
of crip cultural events for the video, and asks anyone who has 
material to donate to the project to contact her at the above 
address. 
	Wade's first video, "HERE" (reviewed in the May/June Rag) has 
won awards from the National Educational Film and Video Festival, 
the East Bay Video Festival, the Louisville Film and Video Festival 
and the Media Access Office (Wade also won its CeCe Robinson award 
for artistic achievement). "HERE" can be purchased from Wade on a 
sliding scale from $15 to $35 at the above address. 
sidebar ends
	review begins 
        Graphic Novel on Disability reviewed by John R. 
Woodward
	The Spiral Cage, by Al Davison. London, England: Titan Books. 
112 pages. $10.50 softcover.
	
	"Everybody lives in the hospital till they have lots of 
operations so they can walk . . . When you are five or six you go to a 
school full of people who still can't walk and are in wheelchairs . . .  
I like learning to walk . . . . I start school next year. I can read. I 
learned in the ambulance every day . . . . People on television don't 
have holes in their hearts or asthma and they can walk . . . . but they 
aren't real . . . teachers and doctors can walk, but they are old."
	These were Al Davison's observations of the world at age three 
and a half, remembered by the adult Davison as he struggles to make 
sense of life with spina bifida. A few pages later, the five-year-old 
Davison does indeed take his first steps -- only to find that walking 
will never earn his way to the able-bodied world.  He still has to 
live with the realities of interminable hospital stays, segregated 
education, loneliness, the thwarting of his career goals, and even 
beatings from opportunistic bullies who pursue him long into his 
adulthood, determined to punish the "spacka" for being different.
	Since the mid-1970's, comic book writers and artists like 
Robert Crumb, Harvey Pekar and Art Spiegleman have used the comic 
book medium for autobiographical adventures into satire and social 
criticism. Davison is the first disabled person to tell his life's story 
in the form of a graphic novel (the term used by publishers to sneak 
comic books into mainstream bookstores) and he writes about the 
same themes that Crumb, Pekar and Spiegleman keep returning to: 
loneliness, social and sexual rejection, fear of death and the 
dreadful impact of violence. Davison, of course, thinks of these 
issues in the terms of his disability and what it has meant to him. 
Although Davison was born and raised in England, the circumstances 
of his life will be familiar to anyone who grew up with a mobility 
impairment. 
	Soon after his birth, Davison is nicknamed "Smiler" by the 
nurses who care for him in the hospital.  Falls, endless rounds of 
surgery and painful physical therapy sessions are never more than 
frustrations to him, and they cannot dent his fundamental 
cheerfulness. He develops a powerful imagination that carries him 
outside the walls of the surgical wards where he spends most of his 
time, but there is a darker side to this existence. He is separated 
from the love of his parents and sister for most of his first four 
years, and later he will wonder if his relationship difficulties are 
rooted in the fact that he was deprived of real affection during 
these crucial formative years.
	In adolescence, Davison discovers that there is more than just 
frustration in the world, as he is shoved unprepared into a 
"mainstream" school and victimized repeatedly by bullies. In the 
mainstream school he also discovers that the able-bodied world is 
not prepared to accept his sexuality.
	The grown-up Davison learns to protect himself with karate, 
and becomes frighted of his own potential for violence when he first 
experiences the sense of power that comes from defending himself 
against yet another batch of bullies.  This sends him on an inner 
quest for peace -- not just an end to his rage, but a means for finding 
meaning in his world. His early explorations into Buddhism are 
hampered by well-meaning fellow Buddhists who try to interpret his 
spina bifida as karmic punishment for sins in a previous existence -- 
but Davison instinctively knows that karma is more complex than 
that, and eventually finds the Way to his own piece of enlightenment. 
	Davison's story is not about "overcoming" his disability, 
although he did push his body farther than conventional wisdom told 
him he could go. It isn't about confronting stereotyped attitudes 
toward persons with disabilities, either. The people in Davison's life 
lay a lot of negative stereotypes on him, but aside from defending 
himself against violence (and engaging in one rather silly test of 
machismo at a party) Davison prefers to deal with negative 
stereotypes by exorcising them from himself, rather than 
challenging them in others.  Cage is one disabled person's spiritual 
struggle to find acceptance and power within himself, an inner 
security the outer world denies him. Although his discussion of 
Buddhism may seem obscure to some readers, there is no denying 
that it was Buddhism which finally brought him the fulfillment he 
had been seeking all his life.
	The Spiral Cage is done in black and white line drawings, with 
a beautiful color cover drawn in colored pencil.  In the Introduction 
(written by British comics superstar Alan Moore) we learn that the 
first version of the book was done entirely in color. We can all hope 
that if Cage does well, Titan Books will eventually risk publishing 
the color version. In the meantime, Davison has provided us all with 
-- dare I say it? -- a genuine bit of inspiration.
article ends
	article begins 
        Ragland: Our Telethon
	The telethon to end all telethons. That's what The Rag is 
holding this Labor Day, in our office in Louisville. It's our way of 
having some fun with an institution we hope to see go the way of the 
dinosaurs -- and let you folks know that we're deadly serious at the 
same time -- not only about this telethon business, which we really 
believe is at the heart of America's total lack of understanding 
about access and rights, but about our desire to continue to let you, 
our readers, speak truth about disability -- the real truth.
	The small ad on this page is not just a copywriter's clever 
phrasing. It's true. The First Amendment to the Constitution allows 
us to print what we write -- and what you write -- about things as 
controversial as the Telethon. We often think that, as things get 
hotter for disability rights (and they will get hotter, more difficult, 
not easier, we think, in the immediate future), we need to be 
grateful that we have a first Amendment that protects our freedom 
to speak what we believe is the truth about things like the MDA, 
about our government and its institutions, about society. 
	But Constitutional protection is one thing; the ability to keep 
publishing is another. You can have a free press, but unless you can 
pay the press operator, and the typesetter, and the postage, and all 
the other things attendant on putting out a publication, then "free 
press" doesn't go very far.
	You, our loyal readers, have kept us publishing. You know that. 
Last year you gave us over $30,000 -- and we could not have survived 
without it. Our gratitude to you is beyond words. And yet, we must 
ask you to do it again -- and again, and again. This year we hope you 
can have a little fun in the process of helping us continue to give you 
the voice that you want in a publication. 
	Around the outside of this issue you'll find a letter explaining 
our need for this year. We plan to be in our office in Louisville on 
Labor Day, just like Jerry's on the television. If you've sent in your 
pledge to The Rag, you can call us and we will sing you our version of 
Jerry's Favorite Telethon Songs. It's our way of saying . . . . thanks. 
	Of course, you don't have to call us to croon to you -- you can 
just send us a donation. (Perhaps you'd prefer it that way.) To 
contribute to The Disability Rag Advocado Press Labor Day Telethon, 
simply send your gift to The Disability Rag, Box 145, Louisville, KY 
40201. 
	But if you really need that song, or some relief from the 
schlock emanating from your TV set, you can still call us at 
502/459-5343 between noon and 7 pm, Eastern time, on Labor Day. 
You'll be in for a Telethon the likes of which you've never heard 
before-- nor will want to ever again! 
article ends
	article begins 
        Ragtime:Fighting Handicaps by Mary Johnson
	"Most Americans are astonishingly indifferent to how 
effectively charitable organizations use the money that comes their 
way," says James Cook of Forbes magazine. This becomes 
understandable when one realizes that the reason Americans give 
money to charities is not to affect change or to save the less 
fortunate, but to assuage guilt. Making ourselves feel better is what 
we care about. Groups like the MDA, on some level, understand this. 
	The cause we choose to give to says far more about us than it 
says about the worthiness of the cause. That fact that Americans 
made the MDA one of its top-grossing charities says this nation has 
a lot of guilt about disability. We don't understand what we feel 
guilt about, exactly -- but disability makes us feel guilty 
nonetheless. 
	The real truth is that we feel guilty for not helping those 
people. But at the same time, we're afraid. Helping them by making 
them like us -- normal, not disabled anymore-- is one thing. Helping 
them to be equal and remain disabled is something entirely different 
-- and scary. If we did that, then there they'd be, right in our faces, 
just wanting more and more changes from us -- and they'd still be 
different, taunting us with that differentness. 
	At the "first flush" ceremony for New York City's inaccessible 
streetside toilets last month, I heard some well-heeled bystanders 
mutter it: "They're never satisfied." The "they" referred to a meekly 
quiet group of protesters who gathered at the news conference to 
draw attention to the illegality of the separate-but-equal facilities.
	The "they're never satisfied" complaint is at the heart of the 
Telethon controversy. It was voiced on the Gil Gross show against 
Laura Hershey. It is being voiced by detractors of the Americans 
with Disabilities Act, against those who are now using the law as it 
was intended, filing complaints and suing places that refuse to obey 
it. 
	The Telethon keeps disabled people in their place, serving 
precisely as the Telethon machinery intends: as out-of-the-way 
proof that our guilt is being expiated by contributions. When they get 
in our face with their demands, all that shatters.
	Until now, giving to telethons has been one of the safest, least 
controversial forms of charity. Until now, disability has remained 
the one thing it's been politically correct for everyone to hate; 
stamping it out, through cure, has been the one thing everyone can 
agree on. Civil rights, environmental, women's and religious or 
political causes all have a controversial aspects. The giver might be 
criticized -- by someone who doesn't believe in civil rights, or 
women's rights, or environmental issues or whatever. But everyone 
has been against disability; there's been no disagreement about that.
	It seems utterly absurd to society that anyone might complain 
about any kind of giving that is destined to "cure" someone of an 
"affliction." 
	What MDA really stands to lose as a result of Jerry's Orphans' 
protests -- and they certainly know it -- is their sacrosanct position 
as the Cause It's Safe To Give To. Once that understanding 
penetrates public consciousness even dimly -- that understanding 
that there may be things better to do for "victims of disease" than 
curing them, that things like civil rights might be more important -- 
then the whole edifice can ultimately be toppled.
	That is the fondest hope of activists, and the deepest dread of 
MDA. 
	%J%J%J
	As I sat reading the paper one sunny afternoon early this 
summer, I found my attention caught by an event going on in a nearby 
park. It seemed to be a grade-school ceremony of some sort. From a 
block away, I could hear snatches of the emcee's voice as she 
announced what seemed to be different grade school classes, each 
giving a performance of some sort or another. 
	At one point I was startled to hear the phrase "help us fight 
handicaps." I stopped to listen closer. I could only catch snatches of 
phrase. I heard "special class" and "courage." 
	I thought to myself: Isn't that about all that most of us hear 
when it comes to disability? "Courage," special" and "fighting 
handicaps?"
	"Fighting handicaps." Like Mom and apple pie, it's part of 
Americana, as Bob Kafka said.  What chance does disability rights 
hold against such a concept?
	"Fighting handicaps" is what Jerry Lewis is all about. He 
knows he has a stranglehold on a corner of the American dream.
	%J%J%J
	The question we have sought the answer to, in all the 
examining of material that went into this issue, is: why is MDA so 
scared of a ragtag, motley group of fairly disorganized activists? Do 
they really believe a few scattered protests here and there across 
the nation can bring down the entire edifice of the Muscular 
Dystrophy Association?
	Evidently. In February, Jerry Lewis wrote to President Bush 
that "anyone who imagines that the Association is incapable of 
gradual collapse in the face of the kind of abuse we're taking is 
kidding himself."
	Lewis knew exactly what was going on when he urged Bush to 
"act to protect and preserve the invaluable American private-sector 
institution."  
	MDA is running scared. Though Jerry's Orphans and their 
followers represent only a tiny fraction of people today, their 
message is rights, not charity. It's the new paradigm, as Kemp saw. 
Once a new idea takes hold, nothing can stop it. MDA, we suspect, 
knows this.
	The activists who demonstrated in Chicago have the potential 
to break the MDA stranglehold on public perception. In that 
stranglehold is held far more than just the Telethon's Kids. That's 
the same stranglehold that keeps society believing that disabled 
people need to live in institutions. It's the same stranglehold that 
keeps disabled people in nursing homes, that keeps the American 
Medical Association believing that disabled people protesting might 
"hurt themselves." The stranglehold is on society's understanding. 
	Jerry's Orphans are not wrong when they charge that the 
fallout from the Telethon keeps them dependent. Evan Kemp was onto 
it a decade ago. It's the essential truth of disability oppression, and 
no matter what form it takes, disability oppression at its heart is 
paternalism. It comes from the fear and loathing that dare not speak 
its name, that surfaces instead as pity, masquerading as 
compassion.  Make no mistake about it: "out the Jerry Lewis 
Telethon, once and for all, win this one -- and you win real power. 
You make society see -- for the first time, but in a way they can no 
longer ignore, no longer deny -- that disabled people are not children. 
	This has ramifications: in one swoop, it makes it clear why 
attendant services must be a national policy. It makes it clear why 
the disability rights movement fought for the ADA -- and what they 
mean when they say they want "Access, now!" 
	In fact, it makes almost everything clear about disability 
rights. The Telethon is the false image, whose presence keeps the 
truth of disability from taking hold. It is because of the Telethon's 
message that the shopowner thinks the ADA can safely be ignored. 
It's because of the Telethon message that the American Health Care 
Association wins with the Administration, insisting that people 
need nursing homes over in-home care. It's because of the Telethon, 
as Kemp and activists have been saying for over a decade, that 
disabled people are assumed to be incapable of doing a day's work -- 
and the reason, perhaps, that many disabled people themselves 
believe they can't work (they have to be cured first). 
	Go to Vegas, kick butt, foil the Telethon, once and for all, and 
you win a movement goal long cherished but never achieved: You 
change the consciousness of America. "out the Telethon, and the 
nation's understanding of what it means to be disabled will never be 
the same again. 
article ends
	article begins 
        Bills to Counter ADA Enter Congress
	Bills to substantially weaken or repeal the Americans with 
Disabilities Act outright have entered Congress. Rep. William E. 
Dannemeyer, a Republican from California who fought on the floor of 
the House to keep people with HIV-infection from being covered 
under the law, is now trying another sideswipe -- a bill to define 
what he claims are the "undefined" terms of "undue burden" and 
"undue hardship;" its real purpose is to keep opposition stirred up. 
Dannemeyer will be retiring at the end of this term so his bill isn't 
much of a threat. An aide blithely said that it was simply a way of 
"throwing out an issue for the next Congress."
	Mickey Edwards, a Republican Congressman from Oklahoma City 
introduced a bill June 22 to simply repeal the ADA. The fact that 
Edwards is the fourth highest-ranking Republican member of the 
House and Chair of the Republican Policy Committee should give us 
pause -- particularly those of us who may still consider George Bush, 
head of the Republican Party (Edwards is Chair of The Republican 
Policy Committee ) the "ADA President."
	Edwards insists his constituent business community begged it 
of him; swearing that implementing the law is bankrupting 
businesses. When pressed to name a business that's been hurt 
financially by compliance, however, he was unable to come up with 
any examples. 
article ends
	article begins 
        A First for the Nation: Access Required in 
Single-Family Homes when City Foots Bill, says Atlanta
	Atlanta has become the first place in the nation to mandate 
basic wheelchair access features in new single-family housing. This 
first was scored through the work of Georgia-based Concrete 
Change, an activist group which focuses on universal, basic access 
to new houses. 
	The city ordinance, passed unanimously by Atlanta's City 
Council in June, requires all new single-family houses which get 
city funding to have a no-step entrance, doors at least 32 inches 
wide throughout the house, reinforcements built into bathroom walls 
to allow installing grab bars later, if needed, and electrical 
controls, switches and plugs at heights and locations reachable from 
a wheelchair. 
	Several million dollars' worth of low- and moderate-cost 
houses are expected to be covered by the new law over the next four 
years, since Atlanta is funding many inner-city homebuilding 
projects in preparation for the 1996 Olympics. 
	The law builds on the work of disability activists in Florida, 
who in 1988 got a state law passed requiring bathroom doors in all 
new houses be at least 29 inches wide; this was the first law in the 
country to require an access feature in single-family houses, 
according to Concrete Change's Eleanor Smith. 
	Concrete Change members believe that as developers construct 
the access features required by the Atlanta ordinance, and discover 
in the process that these features are neither difficult nor costly to 
construct, developers will be less likely to believe the exorbitant 
cost estimates used by the National Association of Homebuilders and 
other trade groups which routinely oppose access. 
	A copy of the Atlanta city legislation and other support 
materials is available for $2 from Concrete Change, 1371 
Metropolitan Ave., S.E., Atlanta, GA 30316. 
article ends
	article begins 
        Hockenberry Sues, Moves to TV
	News reporter John Hockenberry, refused the seats he wanted 
to a Broadway play ("Anger and Access, July/August), has sued 
theater owners under the Americans with Disabilities Act. 
	His lawsuit, filed earlier this summer, alleges that the 
Virginia Theater has not been made accessible under the 
requirements of the ADA that require places of public 
accommodation be made accessible when access is "readily 
achievable." 
	Hockenberry fans will soon be able to see the reporter on 
television news. Hockenberry announced in July that he had been 
hired by ABC News for its as-yet-unnamed newsmagazine to 
premiere opposite "60 Minutes" in early 1993. He'll be doing some 
reporting for World News Tonight. He told The Rag that ABC 
managment found the fact that he used a chair "interesting" and that 
it would add a new perspective. articleends
	articlebegins State Institutions are "Killing Freedom"
	Disability rights activists marched from Boston's Old North 
Church to Concord, Mass. on a two-day "Wheels of Freedom" 
demonstration in early June. The march was held in response to 
reductions in state funding for services to let disabled people live in 
the community, and to protest new state legislation that will 
restrict closing of archaic state institutions . These state 
"schools," says the Cape Organization for Rights of the Disabled, 
still incarcerate thousands of disabled people. CORD, organizer of 
the Wheels of Freedom march, held a vigil and camped out all night 
on the grounds of the Fernald State "School" in Waltham, Mass., one 
of the institutions that is still accepting "patients."
	Over 500 people still live at Fernald. The day after the all-
night vigil, protesters were invited into Fernald to talk with seven 
members of the institution's "self-advocacy" group.
	"What struck me most during the ensuring meeting,"  CORD 
organizer Bill Henning said, "was that as we discussed living on the 
outside" -- and the discussion was led by four former residents of 
state institutions, Henning adds -- we were speaking "of concepts 
unknown, perhaps alien, to those still left behind.
	"We spoke of attendants to assist us to do what we want;" the 
residents of the institutions spoke, instead, "of the needed care 
from staff, because they believe they can't fend for themselves." Yet 
Henning reports that at least one of the activists noted "they are 
less disabled than me."
	Henning said the activists spoke to the residents "of being 
able to go to the movies when we want." The residents said they 
couldn't, "but they gave us Fernald mugs inscribed with the 
Orwellian boast that the so-called school is TCommitted to quality 
in providing opportunities for individuals to achieve their fullest 
independence.'"
	Sybil Feldman, an activist with CORD who moved out of Fernald 
years ago, told current residents of her own fight. She said that if 
she had to return to an institution, "I'd kill myself." Yet one resident 
responded, "I've been living here all my life; I couldn't accept living 
in the community."
	"In all honesty, those who talked to us said they want to stay 
at Fernald," reported Henning. "It's all they seem to know. The place 
was clean, staff seemed dedicated to their tasks, and all residents 
said the care was good. 
	"Yet not one of us liked what we saw," Henning continued. 
"Institutions, by their nature, by their design, kill freedom in all its 
tangible and intangible manifestations:
	"We had to sign in when we entered the building.
	"Our conversation had to end right at 8:30, because it was time 
to close shop. Staff freely walked into the room without knocking.
	"I ask, does your home have such rules, such intrusions, such 
borders on the spirit?" Henning asked.
	"Fernald must be a flashpoint in the future," He said. Unlike 
other Massachusetts state "schools" slated to close, where CORD 
protests have been greeted with "a hostility that has frightened 
me," Fernald is not among those scheduled to be phased out.
	"In fact, we fear that it will accept transfers from other 
facilities as they become consolidated, much as Auschwitz did in 
1943 and 1944. Fernald's future seems bright; no wonder its staff 
were cheerful.
	"It remains for us to change this, to let people with 
disabilities wrest control of their lives" from the institutions, he 
said. articleends
	articlebegins  Getting Respectable? Denver Honors ADAPT with 
Commemorative Plaque
	On July 5 and 6, 1978, ADAPT, which then stood for American 
Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation, staged their first 
demonstration to demand lifts on buses. That was in Denver, and the 
spot where they demonstrated now sports a commemorative plaque 
from the City of Denver. In a ceremony July 26, marking the second 
anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 
Denver and national officials honored the direct-action group for 
their work which, 12 years later, led to the ADA and its requirement 
that public transit be accessible. articleends
	articlebegins We Wish We Wouldn't See. . . Department
	Ad shown is a photo of an empty wheelchair, black background. 
Headline in white reads, "A Business Deal So Good It'll Have People 
Getting Up And Walking Away." This is a public service ad appearing 
in the January 27, 1992 Advertising Age. The ad was created as a 
public service for the Muscular Dystrophy Association by the ad 
agency D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, Inc.
	Submitted anonymously.


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