Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability - disability history

A Telethon Revival in 2020, Seriously?

Nathan Burns — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 20:42:32 +0000

By: Cathy Kudlick

The Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) will proudly revive its iconic Jerry Lewis Telethon on October 24. Coming in the midst of a pandemic and polarized political climate, the decision is both a brilliant move and a blow to the disabled people who make up 1 in 4 Americans.

Everyone knew of the extravaganzas that dominated American television each Labor Day weekend in the 1960s through early 2000s. A blend of “television” and “marathon,” the variety shows featured cheesy comedy, magic acts, gospel choirs, big name entertainers, and CEOs with household names who joshed with emcees like comedian Jerry Lewis as they celebrated rising donation numbers on giant glistening tote boards.

By many measures, this is a perfect time for a revival. People across America are anxious, depressed, and bored. An opportunity to support scientific work that leads to understanding disease while improving someone’s quality of life seems refreshingly non-partisan and humane. Not only that, but according to MDA, over a half century Jerry Lewis raised over $2 billion for research, equipment like wheelchairs, and life-changing summer camps for kids with disabilities.

So why are many disabled people and our allies worry that the telethon’s revival could do more harm than good?

The simple answer: despite significant gains symbolized by the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), these fundraising efforts draw on outdated stereotypes that rob us of dignity, and ultimately of options. The program’s return threatens precarious gains on mainstream TV with shows like “Speechless” and “Glee” starting to chip away at telethon-inspired ideas directly descended from pitiful Tiny Tim and freak shows that displayed human oddities for profit. Because telethons set a stage with stories scripted by the nondisabled, we rarely get to be heroes in stories of our own telling, which leaves us one-dimensional, damaged strangers.

While on the surface the October 24 event may look updated with today’s latest tech, keeping the name and favorably mentioning Lewis (abruptly fired from MDA in 2012) suggests little has changed. We’ll be pleasantly surprised to find evidence of boldly-expressed lessons learned from the disabled people who protested against being used on the shows to inspire pity and who condemned Lewis for his contempt for disability rights; a-political framings of hopelessness and tragedy are hard to shake when it comes to disabled people, especially after decades of repetition in successful fundraising.

Here’s the thing: attitudes like these sneak in unawares, for people with and without disabilities. They’re passed down through generations to media influencers, to presidents and policy makers, to teachers, to doctors, and to potential dates. They surface in too many Hollywood hits where people with disabilities (played by non-disabled actors who unnervingly often win Oscars) are angry, sad, bitter, but “fortunately” choose suicide. They arm the playground bullies and fuel the giddy horror of TikTok’s recent “New Teacher Challenge” where parents shared images of their own children reacting in horror after seeing a photo of someone’s facial disfigurement and told this would be their teacher.

Let’s face it: stories that inspire donors to give money to seek a cure for childhood diseases aren’t the ones that convince those same donors to hire, include, date, or learn more about the person with a disability they’ve just met. Telethons have no incentive to show the resourcefulness people with different disabilities bring to crossing a street, communicating, figuring out a bureaucracy, using technology, cooking a meal, or framing ourselves as competent to someone unaware that they’ve been brainwashed by telethons.

In the spirit of a truly forward-looking telethon that would improve more than a handful of disabled lives, here’s my dream for the October 24 event. It would raise money to undo the afflictions visited upon millions of people with disabilities and our families by fifty years of propaganda. To test my theory that telethons need disabled people more than disabled people need telethons, it would be run by and for people with disabilities — nothing about us without us! It would seek a cure for bullies and shame and prejudice. It would foreground our unique expertise on the fragile points in the healthcare system and government assistance programs. It would educate viewers about how much more rewarding it is to live in solidarity and interdependence than clinging to false dreams of independence. Alongside pain and frustration, it would share the exuberance and joy of the disability community.

If so moved, give to the MDA Telethon on October 24. But don’t be lulled into thinking “mission accomplished.” Pair this with learning more about what disabled people are doing in the arts, politics, and education to make society better, then donate to them too. Fighting for a medical cure is an especially worthy cause in a pandemic. But until that cure arrives, so is supporting dignity, opportunity, and a decent quality of life for every human being.

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Telethons

disability history

activism

ADA

Remembering Paul Longmore Ten Years Later

Emily Beitiks — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 21:47:57 +0000

By: Cathy Kudlick

Monday, August 9 2010 - It’s hard to believe that it’s been ten years since we lost the friend, mentor, scholar-activist provocateur for whom the Longmore Institute was named. Paul would have turned 74 on July 10. The author of The Invention of George Washington would probably have found a way to wrangle a ticket or two or three to “Hamilton” on its first night at San Francisco’s Orpheum Theater in 2017. He’d have applauded the multiracial twist on American history and would have wondered within earshot of many why Gouverneur Morris (the man with significant disabilities responsible for “We the People” preamble in the US Constitution) didn’t have a central role and even romantic lead. To the line “Revolution is messy but now is the time to stand,” he would have cheered louder than the rest, then quipped: “standing can be messy too.”

The author of Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability would have much to say about the present world. He’d have read multiple papers cover to cover, though most would be online because he’d have replaced his big newspaper-reading table and page-turning contraption with dozens of news apps he’d check in with on a daily basis. On Facebook he’d fume about the lack of leadership in Washington and would have penned and phoned scores of messages to politicians about the need for affordable healthcare—especially in the age of COVID-19, equal distribution of medical equipment, and how important it is to include the disabled perspective in every conversation about resources, medical rationing, workplace protections, and the meaning of life. He’d also rail against the magical thinking and denialism of those in Washington and in some state legislatures that have created and exacerbated the coronavirus spread and blocked its proper management.

The author of Telethons: Spectacle, Disability, and the Business of Charity would caution against quick fixes led by the private sector and the decades-long defunding of the public health sector. He’d also worry that in this age of renewed scarcity and economic retrenchment the charity model would become the central way for Americans to find medical and economic relief. He’d zero in on failure and greed within the nursing home industry, the push to limit resources, be they physical such as crowded conditions or personnel who are under-trained and under-paid. He’d also urge people with disabilities to keep pushing for better representations in the media that would forever erase images of pity and helplessness, instead emphasizing our creativity and productive challenges to the status quo so we’re seen as indispensable rather than disposable. For example, he’d point out that the resourcefulness of people with disabilities remains a coveted strategy amongst the non-disabled in this moment. To launch the next thirty years of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), he’d cue people with disabilities to learn everything they could about the late Civil Rights Activist, Congressman John Lewis, particularly his invitation to make “good trouble.”

We desperately need the incisive analyses of Paul Longmore at this moment, his understanding of the past, the present, and the future and his advocacy of social justice. So our charge is clear: keep our collective fires burning for generations to come.

And here’s a teaser for anyone who read this far: a recently discovered scrap of Paul’s writing is about to be published in an exciting new anthology. Stay tuned!

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"The Past Permeates the Present:" An Interview with Disability Historian Laurie Block

Visitor — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 21:42:56 +0000

Laurie Block, Becoming Helen Keller, Producer & Director. Founder, www.disabilitymuseum.org

Recently, Longmore Student Fellow Anna Goose sat down to talk with Laurie Block, about her two-hour film biography work-in-progress, Becoming Helen Keller. This long-term project first started about 16 years ago when Block began searching for a way to “look at disability history in a documentary film that…would bring the general public closer to understanding why the disability rights movement was needed.” Block explained that 60 years ago, the two most famous disabled people in the world were Franklin D. Roosevelt and Helen Keller, both of whom graduated from Harvard University in 1904. “FDR’s life and work has been studied extensively, but it was disability advocates who brought his disability into public focus.”

Block added, Keller’s fame relies largely on an “overcoming disability” narrative; what she did to earn a living and her role as a pioneering advocate are largely overlooked.

Block chose Keller as a subject in her ongoing media work in disability history because “everybody knows her name and something about the legend” and in seeking government and foundation grants to make her film, she thought, “Who could say ‘no’ to a well-researched documentary film about Helen Keller?”

Annie & Helen reading, lantern slide, Courtesy A.G. Bell Association Archives

Helen Keller’s story is one that many people think they know, Block says, but “the quality of the knowledge and attention that [Keller] has received…is very limited,” and “it often reduces her story to the first three weeks after Ann Sullivan arrived.” Keller lived from 1880-1968, and she worked well into her 70s. Most people encounter a snippet of Keller’s life story, and depending on their own life experience and opinions, they think it’s the whole story, Block explained. “It could be the fact that she supported suffrage, or Eugene Debs--the socialist candidate for president, or that she did Vaudeville. It could be the innumerable jokes about her, or her supposed saintly optimism. Becoming Helen Keller exposes the backstory to the mythology. It looks at Keller’s life within the historical context of people with disabilities, women’s rights, the development of then-new media, the methods of advocacy available in her lifetime.” In this way, Block hopes, a broad audience will come to “see Keller differently, come to know and understand newly what her experience was.” Keller Portraits across Keller's lifespan, age 7-mid 80s, Photos Courtesy Perkins School for the Blind & American Foundation for the Blind

So how exactly does this film make its case? “In the early part of the film, we look at her education, and at the books that were available to her—what was in raised print and braille. How her education was paid for, who made the choices in Keller’s learning to speak, to go to this school or to that one. Helen Keller and Polly Jones, at UN Meeting at Lake Success, Courtesy American Foundation for the Blind

We show how her celebrity was established in the media, and in the second hour the same themes continue about agency, celebrity and media power, access to or the lack of accommodations in education and employment. How Keller earned a living as a college-educated disabled female celebrity and adult-disability advocate lets us look at the obligations and responsibilities of society to people with disabilities that prevailed in her lifetime and vice versa: what was expected of people with disabilities to society? These obligations and expectations change over time for many reasons.”

Another way Becoming Helen Keller is different from other versions of Keller’s story is the involvement of the disability community in the making of the film.

In the earlier stages of the project, Block engaged with Kathi Wolfe, a blind poet who has written about (and sometimes in the voice of) Keller—how she received Keller’s story and what she made of it for herself. Several leading scholars of disability history advised and some also speak in the film. Block conducted interviews with Deaf advocates in New England, and others from Gallaudet University. She interviewed over a dozen blind people from all walks of life in the Massachusetts area about how they first encountered Keller’s story and what, if anything, about her influenced them, and how their understanding changed over time. There were hard aesthetic problems to solve as well. “How do we keep the audience from ever forgetting that the way Keller received information and conversationally expressed her thoughts was never typical?” A palette of motifs was developed: tactile sign language and braille are projected as an element of the film’s environment. Cherry Jones, On the Becoming Helen Keller Set, Disability History Museum

“The hands you see in these film elements belong to members of the Gallaudet University and Perkins School for the Blind communities… The on-camera host-narrator will use American Sign Language. We are hoping that Howie Seago will take this role.” Becoming Helen Keller is currently in its final funding effort, and a Kickstarter fundraiser (http://kck.st/2F8YaWf) is underway to raise $45,000 to finish editing the second hour of the film. When asked why people with disabilities should support this project, Block’s response was this:

“The past permeates the present, and knowing how we got to this present, how it was shaped broadly, means thinking not just about us and what we do today, but about the generations that came before us. Historical thinking is essential for understanding who we are within identity communities, but also who we are as a nation.”

Keller using tactile sign with (from left to right) Anne Sullivan when Keller was a child, then adolescent. Keller in the 1930s with Nella Braddy Henney and Polly Thomson. Keller in her late career with Polly Thomson

To check out the Kickstarter, visit: http://kck.st/2F8YaWf For more information about Becoming Helen Keller, visit: https://www.becominghelenkeller.org/

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Anna Goose

Becoming Helen Keller

Longmore Institute Director's NY Times Op-ed: The Price of 'Disability Denial'

Visitor — Wed, 24 May 2017 19:39:44 +0000

By: Catherine Kudlick

The following piece is cross-posted from the New York Times Op-Eds; see the original post here.

It was 1989 and I was immersed in my first teaching job, a one-year gig at Barnard College, with the possibility of something long-term. During that time, I had become friendly with a senior colleague named Bill. On our many walks along Broadway to grab deli sandwiches, we’d talked about our grad school days at Berkeley, the high rent of tiny apartments in New York and how to get the Barnard women to share our passion for European history in the small classes they’d asked me to teach.

One morning outside his office something felt off. Bill, who would be part of the team deciding whether to hire me, seemed nervous. Then he came out with it: “I’m wondering if you’d be able to guest lecture in my 100-person western civ class.” As I took this in, he added, “It’s part of, um, your interview for getting a permanent job here.”

I always knew my day at the podium would come. In fact, on one of our walks I’d asked Bill for advice about teaching larger classes. I told him about the details of my lifelong vision impairment and of my terror of public speaking, and asked about how I’d deal with calling on students when I couldn’t see them. In smaller classes, I learned quickly where people sat, and the give-and-take of conversation told me who was engaged. But applying this to more than 30 people seemed overwhelming.

I have nystagmus, a condition in which involuntary, jumpy movement of my eye muscles makes it difficult to focus, a chore that constantly challenges my brain as it frantically tries to keep up. As a child, my thick bifocal glasses and lack of confidence made me the brunt of cruel names and pranks, like being surrounded by kids who threw things on the ground and forced me to look for them. Later there were awkward, sometimes hostile encounters with potential landlords, dates and employers who I tried to brush off as a few gross kids who never grew up.

It had been a huge step to “come out” to Bill about the lifelong vision impairment that I thought I could hide. Starting in a new place with my doctorate safely in hand seemed like the perfect time to try on a new identity, one where I could be more upfront with others — and with myself — about what I could and could not see.

I remember the door frame with its chipped paint, Bill’s messy desk, the scuffed linoleum, the fluorescent lights that made us both ghastly as we stood on the threshold. I imagine an old clock ticking in the background. A soft, cracking voice — mine but not mine — finally broke the silence: “Is this something all job candidates have to do?”

“Um, well uh, no. It’s just that there’s, uh, concerns we don’t have about other candidates, about how you’d handle a large class, you know, because of your … well, you know.”

Of course I knew. At the same time, I didn’t want to know.

I paused, sensing that whatever I said next could destroy my chances for this job, and even future ones.

“I won’t do something that nobody else is required to do,” I said at last with a quiet force that surprised me. It was my first awareness of a visceral complicity between my body’s memory and my soul’s need to cry out — a feeling that one day I’d call conviction.

“I’m disappointed,” Bill said, “but of course it’s up to you.”

All at once, my nystagmus was on a rampage, not just in my eyes but throughout my body, from the hair on the back of my neck to my toes digging into the front of my shoes. I’m frozen. I’m tangled. I’m powerful from the force of it, oblivious and achingly hyper-aware. I want to vomit. I want to lash out. I want to run screaming.

Bracing against the door frame, I wondered how much of this was apparent to Bill. I said nothing, even as words formed: This is betrayal. This is wrong. This is discrimination.

It’s a painful revelation. The mind and the body fuse into one ugly knot of humiliation, anger, fear, doubt. You’re at this crossroads: You can suck it up and carry on as before. Or you can fight back.

All this happened the year before the Americans With Disabilities Act was passed. One of the little-recognized side effects of disability denial is that it inhibits the firing of the synapses that enables people to think of themselves as having rights. In other words, I was still many years away from believing that laws like the A.D.A., or any precursors that were in effect, applied to me.

But Bill and I — like most people around us and too many Barnards then and now — had been brainwashed in the same well-meaning society that still fails disabled people. We sat through tear-jerking movies where helpless blind girls groped and stumbled. Our heartstrings were pulled by fund-raisers showing blindness at its worst to raise money for cures that could be many years away. Images like these isolate people with disabilities not just from society but also from one another.

Though I am not fully blind, my vision impairment, and the challenges it presents, has made me particularly attuned to how others perceive blind people. Our words equate blindness with being out of control and clueless — phrases like “love is blind,” “blind rage,” “blind to the possibilities,” to “blindly carry on.” Such ideas slip quietly into our souls. They find their way onto playgrounds and into news stories, and before long they’re floating inside and outside of doctor’s offices, in sports competitions, film studios, policy debates. And in job interviews.

For the decade after Barnard it would be three steps forward, two steps back: a therapist who helped me ask if I’d rather imagine myself as an incompetent sighted person or a competent blind one; finding an exciting research topic in the history of blind people; discovering I’m a real ham when it comes to lecturing — the bigger the crowd the better.

But at my core I remained haunted and hurting. I couldn’t find a healing way to tell the Barnard story: Either every little detail poured out in a frightening rant or I clammed up, wondering if I really wasn’t qualified after all. Even as I researched and learned more about blind people’s history, I did everything I could to avoid being seen as “one of them.” Using a magnifier in public mortified me as much as the white cane I shoved into the back of my closet.

Then one day I met Bryan, a dynamic blind guy on the other coast who was several steps ahead of me on the journey. Each intense phone conversation upended years of denial and self-loathing. A wall I’d unknowingly constructed between me and the world began to crumble as I found strength and beauty in places I’d assumed to be off-limits.

He introduced me to the National Federation of the Blind’s Kernel Books, matter-of-fact stories told by blind people explaining how they did things nobody thought they could do: babysit, barbecue, teach. Each concluded that blindness isn’t the real problem; society’s responses to it is. Reading the first few, I began to sob uncontrollably. I had spent my life avoiding blind people, and in these pages I met scores of them living life with dignity. Now I was open to anything or anyone who would actively challenge my self-imposed limitations by encouraging me to embark on exciting adventures.

If Bill were still alive, I’d strut up to him with my white cane and proudly lead him to “Patient No More: People W ith Disabilities Securing Civil Rights,” the disability history exhibition I spearheaded. I would take him to the yearly Superfest International Disability Film Festival that my organization co-hosts with Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco to experience real camaraderie among disabled people and our allies. At both he’d discover captions and audio descriptions that he’d appreciate as someone entering old age.

Future Bills and Cathys need more fresh ideas like these about disabled people. Once freed from prejudice and shame, they can teach the largest class of all — society — to imagine people with disabilities as innovators, problem-solvers and true agents for change.

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Americans with Disabilities Act

Catherine Kudlick

disability history

education

LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired

op ed

Patient No More

Superfest: International Disability Film Festival

Uncategorized

“Save Changes”: Telling Stories of Disability Protest (via Nursing Clio blog)

Visitor — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 18:06:21 +0000

This is a cross-post from the Nursing Clio blog originally posted here.

By: Catherine Kudlick

At first, it was a simple case of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” as I worked with WikiEducation Foundation to teach a methods course in which students created disability history content. But the more I learned, the more it became clear that we were engaging in multiple forms of protest, especially once I began working on my own contribution.

My past warnings to students not to rely on content created by the crowd were perhaps a vestige of anxieties that had led authorities to suppress Wikipedia’s precursor, L’Encyclopédie in the decades leading up to the French Revolution. Its impresario, the Enlightenment thinker Denis Diderot, had already been imprisoned for challenging established knowledge.

Diderot would have been pleased by Wikipedia’s mission, “to bring about a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge,” at the same time that he would recognize its flaws. Most editors are young white men who, consciously or unconsciously, ignore those on the margins. And Wikipedia’s “notability” requirement (“significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject”) inherently favors information from establishment sources. Such rules reinforce existing ideas about which topics merit coverage.

My class faced real challenges. First there’s a daunting set of Wikipedia codes and hierarchies. And I was surprised to discover that even a generation weaned on social media fretted about public feedback from strangers.

Then there was the focus on disability history. A field that began to coalesce around 2000, it seeks to expand thinking about a group that makes up nearly one fifth of the US population today. Unfortunately, a prevailing belief that disability is a static biological condition prevents most from understanding it as something shaped by society and culture much like race, gender, class, and sexual identity. At the beginning of my disability history courses, I tell students that they’re on the cutting edge of history, much like those a generation ago who learned about women’s history and the history of African Americans.

I told this class that they were making history by writing it.

Pointing out that history has a history, I invited them to consider how putting a group in context can combat prejudice and stigma. An entry that tells the story of your people on the world’s seventh most visited website can’t help but catapult you from being an individual struggling alone to being part of something far bigger. With belonging comes a sense of pride, a sense of having something to contribute.

Learning along with my class, I wrote an article on the longest nonviolent occupation of a federal building in US history, the “Section 504 protest” in April 1977. Through an exhibit called “Patient No More: People with Disabilities Securing Civil Rights,” I’d helped bring this little-known disability Stonewall to life. The successful month-long occupation by over one hundred disabled people and their allies would pave the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

HEW employee Bruce Lee posted a sign, reading “504 is law now make it reality,” in his office supporting Section 504 during the protest. (Photograph by HolLynn D’Lil)

Four years before the protests, congressional staffers had slipped anti-discrimination language from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into a vocational rehabilitation bill that was up for reauthorization. This countered views of “the disabled” as pitiful wards of charity. Rights included making public spaces accessible to people in wheelchairs and mainstream education open to qualified students with disabilities. This “Section 504” applied to nearly all public spaces, including government offices, universities, schools, hospitals, and transportation systems.

Disability activists understood 504 as their bill of rights that still needed one signature from the Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) in order to be put into effect. Worried about costs, officials from the Nixon, Ford, and the newly-elected Carter administrations had stalled. After four years of trying every legal channel, activists snapped. On April 5, 1977 people with disabilities took to the streets in cities with regional HEW offices. Almost everywhere protests were either cut off or fizzled.

In San Francisco things were different. With little warning, over 100 people streamed into the Federal Building and refused to leave for nearly a month.

504 protesters occupied the HEW offices at 50 United Nations Plaza, making them the headquarters of the “Section 504 Emergency Coalition.” (Photograph by HolLynn D’Lil)

The protests succeeded in part because of the Bay Area’s unique climate. Since the 1960s disabled people had been drawn to the rich mosaic of minorities who challenged the status quo: gay men and lesbians, students, artists, and practitioners of new religions, all that included people with disabilities. Decent weather made it easier to participate in antiwar protests, civil rights demonstrations, and the Free Speech Movement gathering momentum at UC Berkeley. In this electrifying environment disabled individuals came to think of themselves as people with rights, while putting them in touch with potential supporters.

The 504 occupation also succeeded because savvy organizers, including Kitty Cone, Judy Heumann, and others, had spent years cultivating relationships and building coalitions. In addition to galvanizing disabled people themselves, they had educated politicians. Mayor George Moscone helped with portable showers while Congressmen Phil Burton and George Miller had the 4th floor of the federal building declared a temporary “satellite office of congress,” a theatrical stunt that allowed them to hold a public hearing about the protesters’ concerns to garner media attention. City officials allowed hundreds of people to gather each day on Civic Center Plaza below to cheer on the occupiers.

The protest also enjoyed wide support from local community groups. In line with its popular food programs, the Black Panther Party brought in hot meals for all 100+ occupiers, including BPP members Brad Lomax and his attendant Chuck Jackson.

Protesters gathered in front of City Hall in support of the 504 occupiers. (Photograph by HolLynn D’Lil)

And the disabled people inside risked their jobs and even their lives to be there. Amidst office furniture, people from different races, social classes, and with a variety of disabilities and their allies created a makeshift society. Some were seasoned protesters while others had never slept away from home before. Spending so many hours together forged cross-disability coalitions rooted in true interdependence — such as when someone who couldn’t speak could dial a phone so that someone without use of her hands could make a call. Just like in any community, there was bickering and intrigue and romance, but here there was also a sense of purpose and a political awakening.

I teared up as I hit the “save changes” that would make this story public on Wikipedia for the first time, knowing a hard-fought victory was now part of electronic history and of course up for grabs.

But how permanent is it? Even before the November 8 election ushered in an era ever more hostile to minority rights, I sensed something like 504 would now be hard to pull off. Everyone is on guard, literally and figuratively, in a national climate of building walls rather than alliances.

I imagined my students hitting “save changes” buttons of their own. Future activism will likely be about occupying virtual spaces and other tactics we can’t yet imagine. History inspires us and the next generations to take heart that the seemingly most disenfranchised can — in the words of 504’s Kitty Cone — “wage a struggle at the highest levels of power and win.”

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Introducing, our new WikiPedian: Jackie Koerner!

Visitor — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 20:07:25 +0000

We had previously posted about a search for a WikiPedian, and now we have one! Image Courtesy of Jackie's blog Jackie Koerner completed her PhD at Saint Louis University in Higher Education in August 2016, where she wrote a dissertation titled, “An exploration of the lived experiences of college students with disabilities.” She is passionate about disability, education, and the free knowledge movement.

When not tackling education questions, you can find her rescuing furry friends, at the gym, or in a suburb of St. Louis where she lives with her husband, daughters, and clan/flock/pack of rescued pets. -- We are eager to get her work started, so if you have noted any problematic disability entries, let us know, either in the comments or via email (pklinst@sfsu.edu). Image courtesy of Jackie's blog

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Commander in Health: Why We Can’t Have a Sick President

Visitor — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 22:38:19 +0000

By: Robyn Ollodort

When you imagine a leader, what characteristics, qualifications, and attributes do they have? Is physical fitness or overall wellness one of them, and if so, why?

The current preoccupation with presidential candidate ‘health’ follows Clinton's pause in campaigning after fainting and receiving a diagnosis of pneumonia. In response, the Trump campaign has arranged to apparently prove his health via television interview with Dr. Oz tonight, and his doctor has promised that Trump will be the "healthiest president ever elected." This debate has eclipsed any generative discussion of who our next president should be, instead focusing on measuring and quantifying bodily integrity. Following Clinton’s collapse, the Democratic candidate released her health documents in hopes of saving face, though the ordeal underscores a trend in this presidential election of candidates’ avoiding coverage to keep their health issues relatively secret. Of course, this is not the first time that those vying for the oval office have practiced some level of attempted discretion: see President Eisenhower and the 2016 Candidates ages.

Even our current President has faced scrutiny regarding his well being. This recent scandal reveals that presidential candidacy, and indeed serving as Commander in Chief, is not just about age, but about proving some overall standard of health and fitness to rule the free world. Of course our disabled president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, also faced intense scrutiny and some claimed that he tried to hide it.

Having to prove your ‘health’ status as a qualification for a job is: a) illegal, and b) impertinent. Insisting that the President, or any leader, have their health proven according to some arbitrary, needlessly rigorous standards have been demonstrated unnecessary by FDR’s effective leadership during one of the most trying times in US history, and by many disability rights movements, most notably Section 504. Indeed, this year’s candidates should be considered according to the WHO’s definition: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” There were then, and continue to be now, people in leadership positions (yes, even high up ones!) with diverse bodies and relationships to medicine. Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth Special Adviser for International Disability Rights

We need to realize, as Americans who can vote, that our decisions should be based not on people’s bodies and their relationships to them, but on their carefully considered positions and carefully-articulated plans to address our nation’s ailing social body. #cripthevote

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Subversive Access: Disability History Goes Public in the United States

Visitor — Tue, 24 May 2016 18:28:11 +0000

Disability History is taking off in Western Europe, as evidenced by the Public Disability History Blog started in January 2016 that has already surpassed 10,000 visitors. In the guest blog shared below, Catherine Kudlick joins the conversation by introducing the “Patient No More” exhibit.

In summer 2015, the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University mounted an interactive, multi-media exhibit “Patient No More: People with Disabilities Securing Civil Rights". We faced several daunting challenges that ultimately made our installation like no other. In fact, we have been sharing our process with museum professionals and continue to learn as we go. 1977 disability protests in San Francisco. Photographed by Anthony Tusler

First, the story itself: on April 5, 1977, more than 100 Americans with and without disabilities began a twenty-six day occupation of San Francisco’s Federal Building to insist on getting civil rights. Four years earlier, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 made it illegal for any facilities or programs funded by the national government to discriminate against disabled people. One official’s signature stood in the way of the law taking effect. After four years of waiting, a coalition made up people with different disabilities launched protests across the country. San Francisco’s occupation proved the most involved and successful. In fact, thanks to support from local community groups like the Black Panther Party, Glide Memorial Church, the Gay Men’s Butterfly Brigade, as well as local and national politicians, it remains the longest unarmed take-over of a federal building in US history. The occupation itself and subsequent victory gave birth to a national disability rights movement and helped pave the way for passing Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) thirteen years later in 1990.

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What the 504 Protest can Teach about Activism Today

Visitor — Tue, 10 May 2016 21:42:14 +0000

The following letter to the editor appeared in the SF Chronicle in response to this column:

By: Emily Beitiks

Regarding “Inflexible protesters are failing Politics 101” (May 5): C.W. Nevius accuses the Frisco Five of “failing Politics 101.” However, his critique seems oblivious to the truth that when the system has completely failed your group, playing a game of compromises (which leaves the system intact) might not be desirable. To understand this better, we can look back at an all-but-forgotten San Francisco protest from 1977, where 150 disabled people and their allies occupied a federal building to demand the first disability civil rights legislation.

After 25 days, the protesters left victorious. Some of the occupiers also held a hunger strike throughout. My organization recently conducted oral histories with people affiliated with the protest. With each participant, I asked: “What was your plan B? What would you have done if your demands were not met?” and repeatedly, I received the same answer: There was no backup plan. They were going to just stay in there until they got what they were asking for. Period. What Nevius forgets is that when your government makes you feel as though your people are under attack (let alone when you have suffered literal casualties, as the Frisco Five have), buying into that same power structure is not an acceptable option.

(SF Chronicle "Letters to the Editor" post here)

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The Paul K Longmore Papers

Visitor — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 00:51:56 +0000

By: Meredith Eliassen

Meredith Eliassen serves as the Curator of the Frank V. de Bellis Collection University Archives and Historic Collections. She stewards the collection of Paul's personal and professional papers, which offers insight into his research and life. She spoke about the collection at the launch of Telethons hosted at the SFSU Special Collections and Archives.

The Paul K. Longmore Papers have been open for about two years, and they have drawn international scholars to the University Archives. They contain his papers related to research and teaching, and researchers have particularly been interested in material related to the League of the Physically Handicapped active during the Great Depression. Longmore was not just a pioneering historian focused on disability studies and bioethics; he was a noted scholar on the colonial period of American history and George Washington.

Archivist and former student of Paul Longmore: Meredith Eliassen

I got to know Paul as one of his students. I grew up in a family where disability was part of the conversation, so after he came to San Francisco State in 1992, I sought him out. In putting together the display in the back of the room, I was also struck by the communications from his students. I was wowed contemplating the profound impact that his teaching and mentoring had on my own career. Paul recruited me to get materials from our Archer Collection into the Disability History Museum... this became my first experience digitizing our collections. I realized that the projects related to my work here that I have been most proud of came right out of his teaching... in particular, a guide I compiled for our KPIX AIDS Collection in the Television Archive. When I described the project to Paul and told him my doubts about doing the work (I am not a medical historian), he responded: “Meredith, if you don’t do it, who will.” And that was enough for me.

The Longmore Papers also demonstrate how scholars with disabilities use this library. Longmore really worked our Inter-library Loan Department to get documents; what we have here in his archive, we don’t hold copyright to. However, what we have here is Longmore’s fantastically strategic logic that never wasted time or effort. I continue to partner with Inter-library loan to deliver access to researchers in other regions who need access to this material.

Longmore was an activist and he taught activism. We have a photograph of him participating in a book-burning protest. Longmore started teaching his “Disabilities in America” class as part of the History 490 series “Topics in American History.”

However, Longmore did not just teach students about history, he taught students about their own life and times. We reviewed his VHS recordings of telethons and discussed what they really meant.

As Kate (archivist of the Longmore Papers) mentioned, Longmore recorded telethons taking copious notes that were transcribed. Longmore taught students to engage with and interpret moving image primary sources with a disability lens utilizing multiple perspectives.

Longmore was an ardent critic of popular culture, fearless and unrelenting in confronting networks, editors, (you name it) when necessary. He introducing his students to all kinds of media related to disability in order to teach critical thinking skills.

In 2006, Longmore received the prestigious California State University Wang Family Excellence Award in recognition for his pioneering work in the field of disability students and exemplary work as a teacher and mentor.

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