eattherich
01-20-2009, 01:47 PM
"The left doesn't pay them much attention," Astra Taylor wrote, reporting on the march for The Nation's online edition. Taylor's sister Sunny, a wheelchair user, made the 144-mile trek; Astra joined on the march's last day to file her report. It did not seem, she wrote, that onlookers watching the group roll through the DC suburbs "saw the connection between these 200 wheeling radicals and their own lives."
Many leftists, says writer Marta Russell, simply think there is no movement; some believe the disability rights movement is too small to qualify as a real "movement." There are more substantive reasons as well. "Some leftists don't believe disability is an oppression that belongs on a theoretical par with race, gender or class. They may think disabled peoples lives are difficult and social justice lacking but they don't see basic underlying institutional relations at work when it comes to disablement."
Russell, a longtime disability activist and author of Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract, takes pains to point out that she is talking here specifically about "leftists." Although people usually use the terms "liberal," "leftist" and "progressive' interchangeably, there is distinction, she says. By "leftist," Russell means "anti-capitalist": "Liberals think capitalism is largely a beneficial thing needing but a few reforms to iron out the crinkles," she explains. "Lefties think capitalism is the problem." However, her comment that leftists "don't see basic underlying institutional relations at work when it comes to disablement" applies to progressives and liberals as well.
"I wish they understood that it was civil rights," says Cyndi Jones, head of the Center for An Accessible Society. "Talk to progressives or liberals (which I use interchangeably): they just don't see it as civil rights."
Jones talks about attending progressive media conferences and being the only one there concerned with disability rights. "They never think about making sure the meeting site is accessible, either," she says. " When you complain, though, you're seen as a 'whiny cripple.'"
One of the reasons leftists don't "get it," Chapman U. political science professor Art Blaser thinks, is that they "tend to prioritize inequalities and reason, 'if I fight most of them isn't that enough?'" For a long time, sexism wasn't considered important to the Left, he says. Nor was homophobia. Things started to change when women leftists themselves began feeling gender inequality and gay leftists came out of the closet. 'We're not there yet," he adds, echoing Russell's point that the disability movement is not only not large enough yet but that leftists who have disabilities by and large do not seem to identify as disabled and thus do not force the Left to take on the issues. "The second wave of feminists came out of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and CORE, she points out, "and they drew explicit parallels to Black Power."
"Leftists have the same problem everyone else has with new civil rights movements," says philosophy professor Ron Amundson of the University of Hawaii. "They believe in the same rights and protections for 'everyone', but they're not sure who 'everyone' includes. Thomas Jefferson didn't include slaves in his 'everyone,' for example.
"I was on the fringe of the anti-war movement in the 1960s, and the leftist men of that era were mostly male chauvinist pigs, just like feminists said we were." They needed to broaden their analysis of oppression to include women back then, he continues, and "leftists today need to broaden their concept of 'everyone' to include disabled people." This is "no more radical than broadening it to include women and non-white races." But, he adds, including women took lots of agitation from women themselves.
"One problem with American leftists is that their ideology includes a dose of libertarian thought mixed in with their social conscience," says Amundson. "And they don't notice the difference between their social-conscious-based beliefs and their libertarian beliefs. They tend to be libertarian on things like drug use and sexual morality, on the theory that these crimes have no victims.
"When they start to recognize that social policies actually do have social consequences and victims (because drug addiction harms people, or certain kinds of sex are exploitative) they may start to reconsider, and their socially-conscious tendencies may allow them to accept social restrictions on exploitation.
"At the moment, leftists are libertarian on things like assisted suicide," he continues. "They don't notice it -- they think they're thinking 'progressively.' But they're only buying the childish 'you're not the boss of me' doctrine of libertarianism."
Coleman points out that few liberals have "taken their understanding of health-care issues and applied it" to the context of what she calls "legalized medical killing." Among progressive organizations working for healthcare reform, she says, "the first reaction they have is that assisted suicide and 'right to die' issues are a matter of personal choice. They've bought that rhetoric.
"These are people who know that the system is willing to kill for money; that's what they deal with every day in their advocacy work; but it takes a discussion, it takes connecting the dots for most of them to see why someone like me, someone severely disabled, might have a problem with legalized medical killing and might see it as not so terribly compassionate or "
http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/focus/liberals0104.htm.
Many leftists, says writer Marta Russell, simply think there is no movement; some believe the disability rights movement is too small to qualify as a real "movement." There are more substantive reasons as well. "Some leftists don't believe disability is an oppression that belongs on a theoretical par with race, gender or class. They may think disabled peoples lives are difficult and social justice lacking but they don't see basic underlying institutional relations at work when it comes to disablement."
Russell, a longtime disability activist and author of Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract, takes pains to point out that she is talking here specifically about "leftists." Although people usually use the terms "liberal," "leftist" and "progressive' interchangeably, there is distinction, she says. By "leftist," Russell means "anti-capitalist": "Liberals think capitalism is largely a beneficial thing needing but a few reforms to iron out the crinkles," she explains. "Lefties think capitalism is the problem." However, her comment that leftists "don't see basic underlying institutional relations at work when it comes to disablement" applies to progressives and liberals as well.
"I wish they understood that it was civil rights," says Cyndi Jones, head of the Center for An Accessible Society. "Talk to progressives or liberals (which I use interchangeably): they just don't see it as civil rights."
Jones talks about attending progressive media conferences and being the only one there concerned with disability rights. "They never think about making sure the meeting site is accessible, either," she says. " When you complain, though, you're seen as a 'whiny cripple.'"
One of the reasons leftists don't "get it," Chapman U. political science professor Art Blaser thinks, is that they "tend to prioritize inequalities and reason, 'if I fight most of them isn't that enough?'" For a long time, sexism wasn't considered important to the Left, he says. Nor was homophobia. Things started to change when women leftists themselves began feeling gender inequality and gay leftists came out of the closet. 'We're not there yet," he adds, echoing Russell's point that the disability movement is not only not large enough yet but that leftists who have disabilities by and large do not seem to identify as disabled and thus do not force the Left to take on the issues. "The second wave of feminists came out of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and CORE, she points out, "and they drew explicit parallels to Black Power."
"Leftists have the same problem everyone else has with new civil rights movements," says philosophy professor Ron Amundson of the University of Hawaii. "They believe in the same rights and protections for 'everyone', but they're not sure who 'everyone' includes. Thomas Jefferson didn't include slaves in his 'everyone,' for example.
"I was on the fringe of the anti-war movement in the 1960s, and the leftist men of that era were mostly male chauvinist pigs, just like feminists said we were." They needed to broaden their analysis of oppression to include women back then, he continues, and "leftists today need to broaden their concept of 'everyone' to include disabled people." This is "no more radical than broadening it to include women and non-white races." But, he adds, including women took lots of agitation from women themselves.
"One problem with American leftists is that their ideology includes a dose of libertarian thought mixed in with their social conscience," says Amundson. "And they don't notice the difference between their social-conscious-based beliefs and their libertarian beliefs. They tend to be libertarian on things like drug use and sexual morality, on the theory that these crimes have no victims.
"When they start to recognize that social policies actually do have social consequences and victims (because drug addiction harms people, or certain kinds of sex are exploitative) they may start to reconsider, and their socially-conscious tendencies may allow them to accept social restrictions on exploitation.
"At the moment, leftists are libertarian on things like assisted suicide," he continues. "They don't notice it -- they think they're thinking 'progressively.' But they're only buying the childish 'you're not the boss of me' doctrine of libertarianism."
Coleman points out that few liberals have "taken their understanding of health-care issues and applied it" to the context of what she calls "legalized medical killing." Among progressive organizations working for healthcare reform, she says, "the first reaction they have is that assisted suicide and 'right to die' issues are a matter of personal choice. They've bought that rhetoric.
"These are people who know that the system is willing to kill for money; that's what they deal with every day in their advocacy work; but it takes a discussion, it takes connecting the dots for most of them to see why someone like me, someone severely disabled, might have a problem with legalized medical killing and might see it as not so terribly compassionate or "
http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/focus/liberals0104.htm.