SHAME ON THE UN FOR PERPETUATING TOXIC ABLEISM

ISRAELI ENERGY MINISTER NOT ABLE TO ATTEND CLIMATE CHANGE SUMMIT BECAUSE SHE USES A WHEELCHAIR FOR MOBILITY

Israeli Energy Minister Karine Elharrar was not able to attend the UN climate change conference in Glasgow because it is not fully accessible by wheelchair.

Failure to be inclusive is not an accident or oversight.

Hatred toward people with disabilities hurts all of us.

Once a week, some place has a hideous lack of wheelchair access and they say it's an oversight and won't happen again and 99% of the world gives them a pass and forgives the toxic ableism.

Then the next week comes and more dignity is stripped from people with disabilities and the place with the barriers says "sorry, it was just a little oversight, won't happen again..."

Then it does, again and again.

Will I live long enough to see ALL people outraged by lack of accessibility?

Read my column on this in Medium:

https://stevewright-1964.medium.com/shame-on-the-un-for-perpetuating-toxic-ableism-c4a22cd7ccb3

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY

SADLY, PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES STILL ARE SEEKING

EQUALITY, INCUSION, ACCESSIBILITY AND INDEPENDENCE

“Disability discrimination is not a lesser form of discrimination. It is not benign. It is not understandable. It is not rational and there is no rational basis for it. A civil rights agenda is hollow without a commitment to combat disability bias and ableism.” -- Gregory Mansfield, Disabled Lawyer. Disability Rights and Disability Justice.                  Twitter: @GHMansfield

I wish I had written those words in italics. The end line, posted on Twitter by activist Gregory Mansfield, capture exactly what I have been trying to express for more than a year.

In the past year, politicians and corporations have scrambled to up their equity and inclusion games.

I have read thousands of diversity and inclusion statements, but saw disability mentioned maybe once or twice.

I wondered why a commitment, if genuine, to uplift marginalized people via hiring, promotion and other programs -- didn't seem to include people with disabilities.

I recently read a story about Senator Tammy Duckworth sponsoring legislation to fund the retrofitting of every transit station to include access for disabilities.

This is great. And about time. Only a fraction of subway and elevated trains are accessible to wheelchair users in New York, Chicago and many other places where movement by transit is essential to getting to work, home, medical appointments, shopping, recreation and all other daily needs.

For more than a century, this nation has been content with that kind of exclusion.

Imagine if we dictated that people who are Black, Hispanic, Jewish, Catholic or part of the LGBTQ community could only access a fraction of the essential public transit in their dense urban cites.

No one would accept it. But disabled people have had to accept that second class status.

We all most bond together to continue the struggle for true independence.

Read a full-length piece on Medium at:

https://stevewright-1964.medium.com/happy-independence-day-7817bb78d955

https://stevewright-1964.medium.com/happy-independence-day-7817bb78d955

STOP DISABILITY-BASED MURDER

A MOTHER WHO KILLS HER OWN IS A MONSTER

Alejandro Ripley: Drowned (my his own mother) for daring to live with a disability?

Murdering mother's quote: "He's going to be in a better place" -- implies death is favorable to being disabled.

That mindset justifies nothing less repugnant than genocide of people with disabilities. 

I predict her defense attorney will try to mitigate her sentence, playing the "suffering caregiver card." 

Decent and rational people would reject killing a child on basis of child's race, religion, sexual orientation. 

But "worn out, suffering parents" sometimes get very little prison time for murdering disabled children. 

This must stop.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article242952751.html

WE CELEBRATE 100,000 UNIQUE VISITORS

THANK YOU FOR BEING ON OF THE 100,000 WHO HAVE CHECK OUT THIS BLOG

We almost never put captions on our photos. But this one demands that we do. It was taken in the former Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. Once home to Al Capone, it now hosts visitors in a largely wheelchair-accessible setting. It also hosts art students and displays art in former cells. The observant woman in the photo was concentrating on her art when we took her portrait from afar. Thanks to a great Nikon telephoto lens and some cropping, we have this beautiful image without disturbing her while she focused on creative pursuits. We are proud to live in a nation of diversity.

We started in May 2010 -- writing about sustainability in Las Alpujarras, south of Granada in Spain.

We posted almost daily back then.

Not quite six years later, we have had 100,000 unique visitors to the site.

The total number of visitors is nearly double that number.

They have read serious stories about disability rights.

They have seen whimsical photos of Miami, Latin America and Europe.

They have gleaned over 1,200 posts.

They have read enough words to fill three books.

We thank you.

We promise to keep writing about Urban Travel, Sustainability and Accessibility.

ON INTERNET MEMES...

...AND OTHER UNQUESTIONED ACTS OF BIGOTRY 

by Heidi Johnson-Wright

EarthBound Tomboy

Perhaps by now you’ve seen the Internet meme making the rounds of a drawing of a guy in a wheelchair. He’s looking back over his shoulder, a sad, pathetic expression on his face. Surrounding him are the following words: “If you're (sic) spouse became disabled for the rest of there (sic) lives, would you still be with them???”

Yes, dear reader, it is taking all of the strength I can muster to resist calling the meme’s creator a moron incapable of knowing the difference between "you're" and "your" and “their” and “there,” or even knowing how to use a software grammar check function. And, yes, I am irritated with the use of the pronoun “them,” as if the question poses the hypothetical situation that this is a pluralist marriage that includes multiple partners who “became disabled” all at once. Perhaps it’s implying the crash of a plane on which the multiple marital partners were flying, or they all contracted a rare tropical disease while on safari together.

I also believe it is quite likely that anyone who uses three question marks in a row probably dots every letter “i” with a tiny heart. For that reason alone, the meme’s creator should be placed a stockade in the village square and bombarded with rotten produce.

 

Nevertheless, it’s not the meme’s grammatical atrocities that have inspired me to write this post. It is the sheer butt-puckering bigotry of the question being posed. Why is it an acceptable question worthy of an answer?

 

Would it be appropriate to ask: “If your spouse sent in DNA to 23 and Me and learned he/she had African ancestry, would you divorce him/her?” Or “If your spouse told you his/her grandparents emigrated from Uruguay, would you make him/her relocate permanently to the guest bedroom?” Or perhaps “If your spouse converted to Judaism, would you toss him/her off a cliff?”

 I’d like to think that most decent human beings would be appalled by questions about whether a spouse remains worthy of love even if he/she is of a different race, religion or country of national origin. Yet when it comes to disability, many people – such as those that actually answered the question on Facebook – feel it’s fine to weigh the option of giving walking papers to the person they married.

I’m not sure whether to be pissed off or profoundly sad that a quarter century after the passage of the ADA – the most comprehensive civil rights statute ever enacted to protect disabled folks from discrimination – societal attitudes remain in the Dark Ages. We continue to deny that illnesses and health issues are inextricably part of the human condition. We still cling to hierarchies, to notions of “us versus them,” to assigning value to other human beings based on their ability to meet an often unattainable ideal.

 Perhaps I should buy a more comfortable mattress for the guest bedroom.

http://earthboundtomboy.blogspot.com/2016/01/on-internet-memes-and-other.html 

KYLIE JENNER: GIMP GIRL WANNABE

BY HEIDI JOHNSON WRIGHT, AKA EARTHBOUND TOMBOY

By now, you’ve probably seen the fruits of the Kylie Jenner photo shoot in the current issue of Interview magazine. The teenage reality TV star is dressed provocatively in leather bondage gear. In some of the shots, even her delicately-curved derriere is exposed.

But with all of the photos we average folks are bombarded with on the Internet – celebrities posing in little more than body paint and glitter, fashion models striding nearly nude down catwalks – Ms. Jenner’s photos are not terribly remarkable. You, dear reader, have probably seen much more revealing stuff on your friends’ Instagram accounts.

So why am I even mentioning this? Well, it seems that Ms. Jenner has revealed something intimate about herself that goes beyond bare skin.

Kylie Jenner is a gimp girl wannabe. 

In two of the shots, Kylie is wearing a black leather strapless onesie and a black leather collar while sitting in a gold-tone manual wheelchair.

Looking at the shots left me flummoxed. You see, I thought Larry Flynt was the only gimp out there rocking a gold chair.

Then I tossed that thought aside. I mean, if anybody else could acquire a golden gimp-mobile, it would be a member of the storied Kardashian-Jenner family.

Next, my eyes went to the expression on Kylie’s face. In one photo, she stares off into space as if she’s perhaps experiencing a petit mal seizure. My cynical side wanted to dismiss this as the typical empty gaze of a high fashion model. You know, that look that says “I am insanely gorgeous and make $10 grand an hour, yet I’m so misunderstood.”

But then I realized that Ms. Jenner is really trying out the look of someone who has a disability. She wants to live it, to feel it.

Kylie’s tired of her incredibly privileged, affluent, non-disabled life. She wants to know what it’s like to have precarious health, to struggle to find employment yet keep her government benefits so she can pay for attendant care. She longs to spend weeks trying to find an accessible apartment she can afford, only to have the landlord tell her that the “no pets” policy means she can’t bring her service dog. She yearns to sit in the rain waiting for a bus, only to find that the one that stops has a broken lift and she has to wait another 20 minutes for the next one.

Kylie Jenner, I pronounce you an honorary gimp girl. Welcome to the club. 

http://earthboundtomboy.blogspot.com/2015/12/kylie-jenner-gimp-girl-wannabe.html