On Frustration and Being a Disabled Activist

I came across this excellent two-part piece by Krystalline Kraus, a regular columnist over at rabble.ca. This one's a bit different from most of her writings in that it centers largely around her personal experience as both an activist and a person with a disability. The first part can be read here, the second part here.

The first part details her experience as an activist and the seeming apathy and indifference of her fellow progressives. I'm sure they don't mean any harm, but that still doesn't negate the negative effects and further marginalization and erasure of PWD within the very community which should know better.

Part 2 recounts her experience as a journalist at demonstrations and more specifically, her treatment at the hands of the Toronto Police. Not too surprising. Then again this is the same police force that violated peoples rights and civil liberties at the G20 and also produced a high ranking officer who's advice on how women can avoid being raped is for them to not dress like sluts.

When Push Comes to Shove

As I sat down in front of the computer with a cup of coffee to skim the news,  this article was one the very first one I had the misfortune of reading. The article contains a link to a video, but videos at Yahoo! don't always load and play as they should. So I've linked to the same video at YouTube.

You can see it clearly... three big burly cops, walking alongside each other, in a big swaggering macho fashion taking up much of the space on the sidewalk. A young woman with an obvious physical disability is walking in the opposite direction, trying to navigate around them. The cops can see this well in advance. They make no attempt to move out of her way, even though her mobility is obviously impaired. But that doesn't stop one of them from offering a helping hand - by giving her a big 'ol shove out of his way, and sending her to the ground before continuing on his way with his buddies. A passerby rushes to the woman's aid. I wonder why those cops seemed in such a hurry to get away from the scene Maybe they were in a hurry to to get to the donut shop while the bavarian cream, jelly filled and honey glazed crullers were still plentiful.

I wish I could say I was shocked by this video, but I'm not. Angry and saddened, yes. But not surprised as I've seen too many videos and read too many news stories like this one to the point that when it comes to police misconduct, I don't think there's much that would surprise me any more. But I'm not desensitized to them either. And it's certainly not going to discourage me from speaking my mind about them because people need to be more aware (as more and more are) about the magnitude of the problem of police brutality. Look, I don't hate cops. Hate is a pretty strong word so it's not one I'm going to use indiscriminately. So while I don't necessarily hate them, I think it would be fair to say that I don't trust them. And more people don't these days, and not without good reason. And if you belong to a disadvantaged/marginalized group, that mistrust factor can only increase. People of colour - particularly young men of colour - know this all to well. And I'll bet if you asked people with mental illness or other disabilities, a lot of them could probably recount similar stories as well. I know I certainly had my share of encounters with cops, particularly when I was younger and I'd get stopped by them for no apparent reason and they'd start asking me questions - most likely because of the way I looked and walked. I looked odd spacey or like I was on drugs and being a young male in the 16-25 age group probably had something to do with it as well. And the naive and not very street saavy young dude I was, I answered all their questions. I had nothing to hide after all, so why not? Thankfully I'm a lot smarter now and if I do get stopped by cops now (which is less often than it used to be) I just politely and firmly tell them that I won't be answering their questions.

Look I'm not going to deny that there are good cops out there. Of course there are and I've met some of them. But for a number of reasons, the bad ones are just too many and the whole unspoken code of ethics (or lack thereof) in their departments, commonly known as "the blue wall of silence" - guaranteed to produce a consistent pattern of abuse and misconduct.

So maybe it would be fitting to end here with a quote from the article:

"The officer didn't like the fact that we used the word police brutality - he said things have changed,...[b]ut when you see that video, you know there is a lot of work to be done."

Yeah, no shit. I'd say that's putting it mildly. And I fear the whole institution of police may be past the point of reform anyway.

One way or another, there needs to be a change. Maybe it'll come, maybe not.

In the meantime, I guess cops are going to continue to push people around - literally and figuratively.

A PSA on the use of 'retarded'

I know that as of yet, I haven't really introduced myself. Or talked about the nature of my own disabilities. So with this entry, I'm going to try kill two birds with one stone; I'm going to write about the latter while at the same time venting about something related that I've always had a huge bug up my ass about.

If you've been keeping up to date with issues that keep arising in the small but rapidly growing disability issues blogs, then you may have noticed some seem to come up more frequently than others. One is the use of ableist language and the role it plays in perpetuating the oppression of PWD. Certain terms are 'off limit's. And one among these is the word 'retarded'. Why? Because using it as in insult stigmatizes people with this condition and only reinforces a system of privilege and oppression.

But there's another reason I personally dislike the word retarded as pejorative. And that's the fact that many people using it in such a way really haven't the first fucking clue as to what it actually means.

Mental retardation -- according to wikipedia -- is defined as "a generalized disorder, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors with onset before the age of 18. It has historically been defined as an Intelligence Quotient score under 70." The entry also notes that although at one time the definition "focused almost entirely on cognition, [it] now includes both a component relating to mental functioning and one relating to individuals' functional skills in their environment." So while the definition has broadened a bit as a result of better clinical understanding, it's still a very specific and limited definition. But that hasn't stopped a lot of willfully ignorant fucksticks from throwing the term around casually not only to use it as an insult, but somehow they've also got this notion that it's an appropriate term to assign to someone with ANY kind of disability. Not only have I seen it done to others, I know this all too well from my own personal experience.

I have more than one disability. At the age of three, I was diagnosed as having bengin congenital myopathy (or benign congenital hypotonia). In a nutshell it's a rare condition characterized primarily by weakness of muscles or lack of Type 2 muscle fibers. It's unlike muscular dystrophy in that it doesn't get progressively worse over time, and actually in many cases improves with the onset of puberty (as it did in my case). But it's a permanent and lifelong condition. I also have attention deficit disorder without hyperactivity. And I have also struggled with depression. The cumulative effect of having these conditions is that each one excaberates the other, thus impairing my overall functioning in a way more severely than just one of these conditions would in isolation. This meant I had a myriad of symptoms that manifested themselves. On was my eyelids, which often had a tired, droopy appearance.

"Are you retarded?" was a question I got asked very frequently, usually from my peers, and not in the pejorative sense, but asked as serious inquiry, albeit with undertones of othering, reminding me that there was something visibly different about me. These were invariably the same ones who would subject me to harassment and discrimination.

But it wasn't just me. As a teen, I also knew two other kids with visible disabilities. One had a mild form of cerebal palsy, the other one had a condition I can't remember the name of, but part of his symptomology was protruding eyeballs and some speech difficulties. In the eyes of many other kids, were "retarded". Their indiscriminate use of the word was a lot like their indiscriminate use of the racial slur 'Paki', to describe any person of colour from south Asia or the middle east. And it's not just kids or people who are simply uneducated. I've heard all manner of people using the term in this way.

Sometimes I don't know which is worse...using a legitimate word like retarded in an ableist, derogatory way or using it in earnest without really knowing what the fuck it means in the first place. Either way, to those of you reading whom this applies, I would like to ask a favour...

Stop. Doing. That. Shit - Seriously.

A few words about the banner/logo

I realize some of you might be intrigued and curious about the logo that's part of my banner. And then some of you might not give a rat's ass. But since this blog is my little corner of the internet, I'm gonna talk about it anyway. ;-)

Symbols, emblems, flags are fascinating in that they can evoke feelings of pride, anger, resistance and passion.

People have known this since time immemorial and incorporated them into their movements of resistance. Women have the universal Venus symbol denoting female (sometimes with a raised fist in the middle of the circle.) LGBT people have the pink triangle and the pride flag. And people of colour have had a variety of different emblems denoting their resistance. African-Americans have the fist of black power. First Nations people here in Canada have had various emblems denoting their resistance. And of course, the national flags of many third world countries started out as emblems of resistance against the colonial powers.

In short, they're a great way of saying "fuck you" to kyriarchy and the status quo.

So shouldn't PWD have one of their own? I don't know of one, but I think it's high time we did. So I designed one completely original. I know some of you might like it others might not. Why the wheelchair symbol, you may ask. Some may see that as being a bit too narrow, since that doesn't cover people with invisible disabilities and even for people with physical disabilities, many of them don't need wheelchairs. I thought about this, but in the end I decided the wheelchair was the one to go with because of its universal recognition for disability.

Constructive criticism is welcome.

The Grand Opening

And so this is it...

The debut of my new (and for that matter first) blog. I think the banner along with the title gives you some idea what this blog will mostly be about. I am a PWD. For those that don't know, that's an acronym for 'Person With a Disability, or 'People With Disabilities', if you're referring to the general PWD community.

That's right - 'community'.

If you've found your way here, chances are there's some of you who already identify as a PWD. And many of you probably are just as aware of something I've been for a while now; that compared to other oppressed/marginalized groups like women, people of colour, LGBT people, disability is far too often not acknowledged as a factor that determines one's status in society as a result of discrimination and inequality. I'll be writing a bit more about this in greater detail, but this article by Marta Russell does a good job of explaining what I'm taking about, and the greater implications for the PWD community:

To be fair, I do see small signs of this changing, but there's still a ways to go.

But I expect I'll also be blogging about the other 'isms' racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, transphobia and sizeism, as they naturally concern me as well. Of course, there's the whole issue of intersectionality as well. I'll also be writing about other miscellaneous subjects of interest as they come up. My job is to inform and educate, but I hope I learn more in the process too.