JFActivist

"The Autism Rights Movement"

Excerpts from New York Magazine (May 25):

The Autism Rights Movement
A new wave of activists wants to celebrate atypical brain function as a positive identity, not a disability. Opponents call them dangerously deluded.

By Andrew Solomon

On December 1, the NYU Child Study Center came out with advertisements in the form of ransom notes. One said, “We have your son. We will make sure he will not be able to care for himself or interact socially as long as he lives. This is only the beginning.” It was signed “Autism.” Another said, “We have your son. We are destroying his ability for social interaction and driving him into a life of complete isolation. It’s up to you now,” and was signed “Asperger Syndrome.” Harold Koplewicz, director of the center, hoped the ads would propel undiagnosed children toward competent professionals. But they repelled and upset a subset of the very population they were meant to assist: people with autism-spectrum disorders.

Autism activists spearheaded a huge protest. The chief organizer was 20-year-old Ari Ne’eman, who has an Asperger’s (autism without speech delay) diagnosis...

.... Less than three weeks after they appeared, the ads were pulled. It was a signal triumph for the neurodiversity movement, the self-chosen name for the autism-rights brigade...

...Read more.

Billboard Alert!

The billboard depicted here (which reads, "Think seatbelts are confining? Try a wheelchair. Buckle up") was erected by the Ravalli County DUI Task Force in Montana. The Task Force reports to the Ravalli County Board of Commissioners.

We are told that in general, the Task Force does good work, however, this billboard demonstrates that they could take stand some lessons on disability culture and etiquette.

REACT!

Advocates interested in sharing their opinions can do so in a number of ways:

• Email the commissioner of Ravalli County and tell him that while perhaps well-intended, the billboard is an insult to people with disabilities.
• Write a letter to the editor of the local newspapers. Send letters to the Ravalli Republic  Managing Editor, Perry Backus and to Missoulian using their online form.
• Post a reaction on the JFActivist blog.

Have you seen or heard an ad lately that you find shocking? Share it with the JFA Moderator.

What Do You Think? Fundraising Tactics...

What do you think of fundraising tactics that hook off of miraculous recoveries - ones that "sell" hope for cures? In a recent email solicitation for donations, one foundation started their message off this way:

Dear Supporter,

Twenty years ago, no one believed that individuals with injured spinal cords could ever recover and possibly even walk again.  But indeed they are! ...

The email went on to link to a video in which a toddler with a spinal cord injury walked unassisted the last 100 feet of a mini-marathon and a link to the donation page of their website with a message that donors can help thousands of others just like this toddler regain function and "even walk again" with tax-deductible contributions.

What Do You Think?
Is this fundraising technique any different than the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon style? Is it offensive to people with disabilities? Does it perpetuate pity and reinforce notions of brokenness or is this just a harmless fundraising tactic?

Panel Backs Amputee Sprinter's Olympic Quest

From the International Herald Tribune (May 16):

Panel backs amputee sprinter's Olympic quest
By Joshua Robinson

Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee sprinter who was barred from able-bodied competition in January, will be allowed to pursue his dream of qualifying for the Olympic Games after an unexpected decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The Court, an international panel which has final say over legal matters in sport, overturned the International Association of Athletics Federations' ban, ruling in effect that Pistorius' carbon fiber prosthetic blades do not give him an unfair advantage...

...Read more.

"Mad Pride" Fights Stigma around Psychiatric Disabilities

From The New York Times (May 11):

‘Mad Pride’ Fights a Stigma
By GABRIELLE GLASER

IN the YouTube video, Liz Spikol is smiling and animated, the light glinting off her large hoop earrings. Deadpan, she holds up a diaper. It is not, she explains, a hygienic item for a giantess, but rather a prop to illustrate how much control people lose when they undergo electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, as she did 12 years ago.

In other videos and blog postings, Ms. Spikol, a 39-year-old writer in Philadelphia who has bipolar disorder, describes a period of psychosis so severe she jumped out of her mother’s car and ran away like a scared dog.

In lectures across the country, Elyn Saks, a law professor and associate dean at the University of Southern California, recounts the florid visions she has experienced during her lifelong battle with schizophrenia...

...Read more (free registration may be required).

Students with Disabilities Design Less Institutional-Looking Products

From The News-Gazette (April 14):

Disabled students helped design products featured in exhibit
By Melissa Merli
Monday April 14, 2008

URBANA – University of Illinois senior psychology major Ji hae Lee, who uses a wheelchair to get around, said most products designed for people with disabilities focus on function.

"They're really ugly and institutional looking," she said. "I am not willing to use the products because they're so stigmatized."

That's not true of two products designed by UI students in collaboration with Lee. She finds them "functional and cool-looking," like merchandise in an IKEA store...

...Read more.

The Last Wish of Martin Luther King

From The New York Times:

Op-Ed Contributor
April 6, 2008

The Last Wish of Martin Luther King

By TAYLOR BRANCH

FORTY years ago on March 31, at the National Cathedral, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered what would be his last Sunday sermon, on his way back to Memphis. That same night in 1968, President Johnson shocked the world by announcing that he would not seek re-election.

I was a senior in college. My mother was visiting four nights later when all conversation suddenly hushed in a busy restaurant. A waiter whispered that Dr. King had been shot.

Civil rights, Vietnam, Dr. King, Memphis — these are historic landmarks. Even so, this year is a watershed. Because Dr. King lived only 39 years, from now on, he will be gone longer than he lived among us. Two generations have come of age since Memphis...

...Read more.

Neither Political Party Represents Us

Guest Column
By Rahnee Patrick

Somewhere on the Internet (I ♥ Google) is a picture of my face hanging over a large piece of red poster board, hand painted, with the word LIFE.  The photo is for sale, right now.  I imagine how the picture will be used: my round face protesting legal abortion.  I envision the photo placed on websites and other propaganda that strives to criminalize abortion and other reproductive health even further.  I do not want to limit access to reproductive health for women in the United States and around the world although the photo floating around the Internet could tell a different story.

Actually, I made the sign I held but the words I painted read: LIFE + DISABILITY = LIFE WORTH FEEDING.  If you’ve ever made a sign to hold at a protest, you know you only have so many square inches to send a message.  I was referring to Terri Schiavo, whose stomach tube that delivered nutrients to her disabled body was being removed.  I do not agree that her feeding tube should have been removed so I joined other disability rights activists to protest and celebrate all the tubes that the disability community uses to live our lives – tubes for breathing, for hearing, for feeding, for peeing.  However, there I stood, next to a man holding a sign with a photo of the fetus – a pro-life protester.  I quickly moved away from him but the collective effect was present for the media and passers-by: we wanted to not only keep Terri fed but that we also supported making abortion illegal in this country.  The overall effect made my stomach turn. 

I support women to be able to feely make choices about our own bodies, especially when it comes to our reproduction.  Women with disabilities cannot afford to ally ourselves with criminalizing abortion in our country and in our world.  Our country’s limited access to abortions and general reproductive health services has endangered so many women’s lives.  Three years after Roe V. Wade, Congress decided Medicaid dollars cannot be spent to cover the cost of an abortion.  The decision leaves those of us in poverty and on Medicaid to often forego abortion services, when we need them.  Mississippi has only one clinic in its entire 898 square miles to provide abortions and is not the only state to limit its women’s rights to reproductive health services.  We are grinding back to a time when women had to depend on a loose, underground network of people to access abortions, at the risk of the woman’s life and dignity.  Other countries in the world, such as Romania, where abortion is illegal, leave women powerless, without any control or self-determination in their own lives. 

Media coverage of Senate Bill 609, the Prenatally Diagnosed Condition Awareness Act, co-sponsored by Senators Brownback – R (KS) and Kennedy – D (MA) strikes a chord.  The bill aims to amend the Public Health Service Act to increase the provision of scientifically sound information and support services to patients receiving a positive test diagnosis for Down syndrome or other prenatally diagnosed conditions.  Too many times, disability or even its possibility, in a fetus has been cause for support of legal abortion.  Disability is a part of the natural diversity of our human and animal lives.  Its eradication diminishes the genetic diversity of our world and devalues the disability experience.  People’s worth cannot be measured by whether s/he has a disability, whether we can work, do step aerobics or appreciate a Woody Allen movie.

Please note the phrase, “support services.”  We disabled folks use a lot of support services, to feed, bathe, dress ourselves, to provide respite to our caregivers and families and to pay our bills.  Support services means having government-funded help to improve the quality of our lives with our disabilities.  Past and looming cuts to S-CHIP, educational acts, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security threatens our lives as much as a mother and father who fear disability in their child’s life.

The disability community’s issues must bring the two political parties together, as Senators Brownback and Kennedy have done.  But neither camp solely represents us.  It’s important that we, women with disabilities, do not ally ourselves with either political party on the issue of reproductive health.  They don’t quite understand our position.  Yet.

Rahnee Patrick is one of AAPD's 2008 Paul G. Hearne / AAPD Leadership Award recipients.

Oregon Candidate for U.S. Senate Uses Size, Hook with Humor in Ad Campaign

Steve Novick, an environmental lawyer from Portland, is running for U.S. Senate in Oregon, and he's decided to direct attention toward his disabilities rather than away from them in his political ad campaign.

Novick, who was born without the leg bones between his knees and feet as well as without the lower part of his left arm, says he's spent his life using direct humor to ease people's discomfort with his disabilities and decided to employ the same approach in his ad campaign.

In a recent ad, which Novick posted on YouTube, which has already logged over 75,000 views, Novick uses his metal hook to open a bottle of beer for a supporter.

[Read an article on Steve Novick's YouTube approach to ad campaigning in The Oregonion].

Two of the ads, which are uncaptioned, can be viewed below, with a transcript of each following.


Ad #1: "To Tell the Truth"

Visual description: Music begins and three dark sillouettes of men in suits walk forward against white backdrop.

Light illuminates first man: "I'm Steve Novick, and I'm running for U.S. Senate. I gradauted Harvard Law at age 21."

Camera pans right and illuminates second man: "I'm Steve Novick. I sued big polluters and recovered millions for taxpayers, and I'll fight for real change in healthcare and education."

Camera pans right again and illuminates third man: "I'm Steve Novick, and I'll stand up for everybody, not just the richest 1%."

Camera pans right and down, illuminating Steve Novick: "Actually, I'm the real Steve Novick, and I approved this message because, everything these guys said about me is true. I don't look like the typical politician, but I won't act like one either. I will fight for the little guy."

Camera pans out and "Steve Novick for U.S. Senate" logo appears overtop the three men to Steve's right.


Ad #2: "A Beer with Steve"

Visual description: Steve Novick, right, and a male supporter sit talking in a bar.

Narrator: "U.S. Senate candidate Steve Novick fought corporate polluters and defeated Bill Sizemore, but would you want to have a beer with him?"

Steve Novick to supporter: "I agree, I think most Democrats are still pretty frustrated. We're just not seeing real progress on the big challenges we're facing. If we're going to get out of Iraq, fix the broken healthcare system, stop global warming, we can't afford just politics as usual..." <trailing off>

As Novick continues, he observes his supporter struggling with a beer bottle cap. He takes it, uses his hook to pry off the cap, and hands it back to his supporter while still talking.

"Steve Novick for U.S. Senate" campaign logo appears at the bottom of the screen.

Healing a Troubled Mind Takes More Than a Pill

From The Washington Post (2/10):

 

Healing a Troubled Mind Takes More Than a Pill

By Charles Barber

Feeling depressed? No problem, pop a pill.

That's what more and more Americans are doing these days to quell what ails their troubled souls. The use of antidepressants in the United States has exploded in the past couple of decades, and drugs such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, which didn't even exist 20 years ago, are household names, almost household staples.

And why not? The television ads make it seem so easy: An agonized man or woman stares listlessly into space or slumps on a bed or couch, holding their head in their hands. Then they take a pill and suddenly morph into a happily engaged and joyous being, back on the job or walking in a park, awash in sunshine, surrounded by grandchildren, a golden retriever nipping at their heels, while lush music plays in the background.

But recovering from mental illness is rarely that simple. I know...

...Read more.