Disability & Occupy: Disability Blog Carnival #79

The Disability Blog Carnival Badge

I’m delighted to be hosting the seventy-ninth Disability Blog Carnival. I chose the theme of Occupy (as in Occupy Wall Street/#ows) for this edition. I have to say that I’m proud of this post. It makes it abundantly clear what we have to teach each other and ourselves, and what we have to learn.

I posed a lot of questions for people to respond to for this carnival. However, the majority of the posts in this edition were written before my call for entries, indicating that Occupy is on the minds of many who blog about disability already.

One of the pictures from the Facebook photo album, "Faces of the 99%"

Occupy Activists with Disabilities

I enjoyed a great deal reading posts by people with disabilities who found joy, meaning, liberation, or other empowerment by participating in Occupy activism.

I thought it would be appropriate to start the carnival off with a post by Penny at the Temple University Disability Studies blog — the home of the disability blog carnival! — has a blog post up called Disabled and Proud at Occupy Oakland. It is mostly a short Youtube video of the General Strike called by Occupy Oakland, and it includes people with disabilities who are activists there. Penny has transcribed the portion of the video where the people with disabilities are being interviewed.

Rocking (and Flapping) at a 1000 Revolutions a Minute is definitely one of my favorite posts on disability and Occupy. It is a must read! This incredibly powerful, liberating post by Savannah Logsdon-Breakstone of Cracked Mirror in Shalott includes a captioned video Savannah took of herself at an Occupy DC event, off by herself, rocking, and how doing that contradicts the harmful messages she’s been subject to based on others’ responses to her being an Autistic:

The week before I sat in the park and rocked, feeling my defiance, I spent several nights wishing I didn’t exist. I knew all the things I talk about here intellectually, but that base part of me is still filled with the remembered abuse of my past. The most prevalent are those that were excused at the time as treatment while speaking words describing me as a burden and my being as a barrier.

Denise Romano spoke at the #OccupyWashingtonSquare Park General Assembly, addressing worker’s rights, in which she included the rights of people with disabilities. As someone with an intermittent speech disability, I was excited to read Denise’s opening sentence to the GA where she essentially tells them to ignore her speech disability and then goes on to deliver a comprehensive, kick-ass labor rights teach-in. The text of her speech is up at her blog, Workplace Credible Activist, in the post, Occupy Your Workplace (scroll down to where it says “My name is Denise Romano” to read the speech).

When we demand zero harassment
we must not engage in harassment

When we demand zero discrimination
we must not engage in discrimination

When we demand zero retaliation
we must not engage in retaliation….

Connections and Intersections

In her post, Decolonizing Our Voices, Savannah Logsdon-Breakstone of Cracked Mirror in Shalott describes the parallels she sees between the 99 percent movement and her activism against oppression of Autistics. In fact, she published this post on Autistics Speaking Day, an annual event to counteract the messages of pity and misinformation coming from certain autism organizations (which are run by non-Autistics).

After some thought, I’ve decided that there’s too much of a cross over for me in the work of Decolonizing Wall Street and of our voices as Autistics to not write this post today. While people in general are seeing their demands of their political representatives co-opted or diverted by corporations, Autistics routinely have our voices co-opted by our allies and diverted by large ‘non’-profits such as Autism Speaks.

In her post, Why I write… yes, fibromyalgia and Occupy in the same post, Kathy of The Fibrochondriac admits that blogging just didn’t feel fulfilling for her, didn’t give her a sense of purpose, when she was focused on fibromyalgia information and resources:

Then purpose found me… I started looking for things to talk about with John (domestic partner/husband). And I found a lot of things I didn’t like about how our government worked. Then I started meeting people who are just as concerned as I am. And it felt good to get out and listen to what they had to say. Yeah, Occupy. Again.

Lynette, who blogs at The World As I See It, My Life As It Happens, takes us on a journey of her initial lack of interest in Occupy Halifax to a ripening consciousness of what the movement could become and the role of disabled activists within it. In her post, Occupy your Heart, Occupy Your Mind, Occupy Your World, she begins her discussion of the role and burden of the disabled activist in this way:

But if I stepped back and did not get involved, i could not expect anyone in the occupy movement to represent my interests as a disabled woman. A homeless addict or a third-year college student who has never met a blind person isn’t likely to understand how society should change to include me and others like me. If I don’t make my voice heard, then I can’t expect the movement to recognize my needs.

Deciding Against Occupy

Like Lynette, Brooke at Ruled by Paws started out leaning in one direction and ended up in the other. Whereas Lynette started out skeptical and ended up being drawn in by the movement, Brooke initially thought the movement had appealing ideas, but upon reflecting on what a successful Occupy movement would mean, she has decided she is not in favor of it. In The Occupy Movement, she starts out her ponderings with questions:

I have found myself more and more skeptical of its effectiveness and continue to wonder if the ‘99%’ includes people like myself. If the Movement were successful, would I benefit? Would the world become more accepting and accommodating of people with disabilities? Or would we be pushed aside, and left to fend for ourselves in an even more undemocratic and economically unbalanced society.

Exclusion and Alienation

Even among pro-Occupy activists, the relationship between Occupy and disability rights is not all shiny-happy-people-holding-hands! Some who have participated — or tried to participate and been thwarted — in Occupy activities have met with ableism.

One of the most powerful posts I’ve read about Occupy and disability — and which has been much discussed and ranted about in the disability activist community — details the infuriating, heart-wrenching, and all-to-familiar experience of Big Noise in her post, Who Are My Brothers and Sisters in the Struggle for Justice? So many amazingly appalling things take place, I couldn’t decide what aspect to tease: That the organizers picked a meeting space up three flights of stairs? That they booed the blogger’s allies when they raised access concerns? That they used sexist comments to try to shut up her husband? That try tried to turn things back around on her and give her a sob story? If you are an Occupy activist who is not familiar with disability access issues, you seriously need to read this post!

Noah’s post, Dear Ableist Assholes in Occupy Seattle, gets right to the point in his first two sentences: “I am a wheelchair user who took part in the December 12th West coast Port shutdown. I want to say fuck you to all the people who belittled me and talk down to me while I was out there.” Along with his link for the carnival, Noah provided some interesting information about how the post was received and why it’s at Our American Generation:

This is an open letter I posted in the Occupy Seattle Facebook. It has since been removed from the group page because of the controversy it started. The comments it received were very harsh and offensive to many people. The letter was a response to the way I along with my friends were being treated. The harsh language was used on purpose to show that people with disabilities are not submissive and to question how people view myself.

Anonymous, posting at Occupy at Home (#OAH), urges members of the movement to become aware of multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) access, as well as to make the connection between the 99 percent movement, MCS, and corporate interests. To the Other 99%: Dump the Corporate Toxins & Let Us Join You! Anonymous declares:

We see how corporations have been making, marketing, and selling everyday products with cheap, unnecessary, harmful, toxic ingredients derived from fossil fuels, while they claim these pollutants are safe. We see their efforts at blocking legislation to ban toxic ingredients and preventing warnings to consumers to keep their cell phones at least an inch away from their bodies at all times and to keep them off when not in use.

Educating Occupies about Disability and Access Issues

Some bloggers are addressing nondisabled members of the 99 percent in an attempt to raise disability rights consciousness and provide disability access education.

One of my favorite efforts in this area is by Occupy On Wheels: Awareness, Inclusion, Solidarity. OOW is actually a group with a Facebook page, not a blog, but they created an incredibly spiffy video that I’m considering a vlog and posting it here. It is a funny, easy-to-understand, and very engaging 17-minute video about wheelchair access: What makes a location wheelchair accessible or not, why camping out is not powerchair accessible, how to find accessible locations, etc. It is close captioned and narrated. A transcript of the video is here on Facebook or here at the Occupy at Home blog. I’ll edit this post to put in the link to the transcript when it’s ready.

OOW also has many excellent articles, including, “Tips: Is your GA meeting accessible?” “Protest Signs & Alternative Ways to Show Your Solidarity,” and “Mini Occupies: A Day-Time Alternative to Camping Out.”

The reason I’m happy that I’m a day late in publishing this carnival is that it allows me to include this just-posted link on a really crucial issue for the Occupy movement. At Pushing Limits, the blog of the KPFA radio show by the same name, Adrienne Lauby introduces the topic for her next show, Mental Disability Within Occupy. The show airs tomorrow, Friday, and will feature three guests:

Herbert Darren spent a month at the Occupy L.A. encampment. David Parks and Eve are heavily involved in Occupy Santa Rosa. All three live with mental disabilities. All are (or have been) homeless.
The stereotyping of people living with mental disabilities and homeless people during the Occupy encampments could have set our mutual liberation back for decades.  If it doesn’t, it will be due to a radically different story from those who came to the Occupy camps to protest and meet each other face to face.

My entry for this carnival is Corporate Control of People with Disabilities, which I posted at Occupy at Home (#OccupyatHome). I’ve been very pleased with the reception this post has gotten so far; the comments section is like reading a second post on the topic!

If you do not have a disability, it probably does not occur to you that you need permission from someone in authority to take a bus, to read a book, to go to the bathroom, to talk on the phone, to leave your house, to enter a public space. Corporate control over our lives in conjunction with government authority is not a shocking new concept; it is what we are used to. In fact, for some of us, it literally comes down to needing a doctor’s approval to take a shit.

An earlier post of mine, also at Occupy at Home (#OAH), is Occupiers: How Do/Will You Represent Me?

I frequently hear people say, “I, a person at an encampment, represent many people who aren’t here.” I appreciate the recognition that there are many of us who want to be there, but cannot. As someone whose disability causes me to be isolated and invisible to a great extent (partly due to the disabilities, themselves, and partly due to structural/societal ableism), it’s very important to me to be “counted.” For the same reason, I often feel uncomfortable when I hear that someone is representing me. I wonder how much these other occupiers really are representing my interests. Do they know what it’s like to live in a society where they are considered by many to be disposable — where, when someone with a disability is killed by their parent or caretaker, it’s considered justifiable, a mercy killing? Where their lives are viewed as a tragedy or a “human interest story” of inspiration?

Other Posts Pertaining to Disability and Occupy

I’m running out of time, space, and energy, so here are more links, all from Occupy at Home (#oah), which hopefully speak for themselves!

• Disability and Deaf Decolonize/Occupy Groups
• How to Support the Strike Even if You’re Unemployed/Disabled/Work from Home
• Disabled Raleigh Woman Arrested for Staying Seated: Take Action!

Thank you so much to everyone who contributed links for this blog carnival. Thank YOU for reading this. Please go to the posts, read, be enlightened, and give the bloggers some love in the comments section.

– Sharon, the muse of Gadget, and Barnum, SDiT (currently occupying his crate)

Barnum’s First Service Skills!

I’ve been really sick lately, so not up to much of anything, including blogging.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, an almost wordless blog!

Barnum’s first service skills — shutting cabinet doors. And because we were on a roll, I added shutting a couple of drawers, too.

Please note: My voice was not working when I made this video, so what little language occurs is in (sloppy, distracted) American Sign Language. If you just want to see the action and don’t care about what I’m saying, watch the YouTube version, below.

If you want to watch the captioned version, please view the video at dotSub.

Enjoy!

– Sharon, the muse of Gadget, and Barnum (That’s Mr. SDiT to you)

P.S. Instead of doing a transcription on another page, for those who don’t watch videos, here is a transcript and description of the action in the video:

Title: Barnum’s First Service Skills: Shutting Cupboards & Drawers

Sharon: Today I’m showing you Barnum’s first real service skill.

Sharon laughs as the sound of cabinet doors slamming is heard.

Cut to Barnum shutting a cupboard without being asked.

All the cupboards are natural pale solid wood, poplar, with shiny chrome-colored round metal knobs.

CLICK!

Barnum returns to Sharon for a piece of meat. Sharon laughs.

Sharon: He’s ready! Let’s try again.

Cut to Sharon in the kitchen, opening a wood cupboard. Barnum is so eager to get his nose in there and shut it that Sharon can’t open the cupboard.

Sharon: Excuse me!

Barnum backs up but is still in the way. Sharon cues him to sit, which he does.

She opens two cupboards. He shuts them both, getting clicks and treats for each.

Sharon moves to a cupboard where one door opens against a wall.

Sharon: This is a hard one.

Barnum moves in too close again. Sharon and the camera person laugh.

Sharon: Excuse me.

She cues a sit. Barnum sits. When both doors are open, she cues, “Shut the door.” Barnum closes both easily and gains two clicks and treats.

Sharon moves to the other end of the kitchen, next to the stove. She opens a cupboard under the sink that partially blocks a very narrow cabinet door next to the oven, which she also opens. Again, she has to ask Barnum, “Excuse me.”

He right away shuts both doors. After clicking and treating, Sharon gets another handful of meat from a tray on the counter and goes to a large pantry door, as tall as the refrigerator and almost as wide. This door has no knob.

Sharon: This is a hard one.

She opens it. Barnum goes right over and shuts it on the first try. Pleased and surprised, Sharon vocalizes, “All right!”

Sharon [to camera person]: Want to try drawers? Come around here, we’ll do this one.

She opens a drawer that is nose height for Barnum. The drawer is large and filled to the top with pot holders and cookbooks.

Barnum shuts it with one quick nudge. Sharon clicks and treats.

She opens the drawer beneath it, which contains empty plastic containers. It comes to about knee height for Barnum. He shuts it with a flip of his nose. Sharon clicks and treats.

Sharon looks at the camera and raises her hands in the air, making the “applause” sign and saying, “Yay!”