Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability - accommodations

Fighting Shame with History

Visitor — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 22:37:36 +0000

By: Katie Murphy

Getting ready to start a new semester is a bit different for me. Like everyone else, I have to buy my books and readjust to a less nocturnal schedule. But, as a disabled student, I have the added preparation of having to work through a lifetime of internalized ableism at the beginning of each semester. You see, at the start of each term, I have to meet with my professors and explain to them my accommodations. And no matter how awesome and with it my professors are, requesting accommodations makes me a wee bit anxious. Before I even walk into office hours, I have to go to battle with all the awful ideas about disability that I’ve been exposed to since birth.

I have to engage in a little mental boxing match with self-doubt: “Do I really even need those accommodations? I could get by without them, right? I did before.” And guilt: “I’m wasting my professor’s time. They’re going to hate me. I’m such an inconvenience.” And shame: “A good student and a stronger person wouldn’t need all this stuff. I guess I don’t deserve any praise I get from my family about going to grad school. I guess I’ll have to give my Uncle Jimmy back that sweet card he sent me when I graduated from Berkeley. Oh my god, where did I put that card? Where did I put that card?”

And I’m guessing a lot of other disabled students go through the same thing. (Minus the card from my Uncle Jimmy part.)

But we don’t have to. We really, really don’t have to.

And I think most of us know this. Intellectually, I know that accommodations are my right and I’m not getting some unfair advantage over everyone else. My accomplishments are my own, and I don’t need to torture myself by going without accommodations.

And yet...

Pure logic isn’t always the best tool for fighting feelings like self-doubt, guilt, or shame. Disabled people grow up learning to hate themselves, to hate their disability, because the world we live in hates disability for no logical reason. And sometimes the best way to fight that kind of illogic is with more illogic.

If I can’t completely get rid of that part of me that demands I feel bad for being a disabled student, I can at least trick it. “Hey ‘Part of Me That Demands I Feel Bad for Being a Disabled Student’! I don’t owe you any feel bads. Somebody else already felt bad on my behalf. My bill is paid. My debt is settled. You can stop leaving harassing voicemails.”

You see, in 1977, years before I was born, 150 disabled people occupied the old federal building in San Francisco to force the government to enact the first civil rights legislation for disabled people in US history. As I’ve learned going over interviews with some of the occupiers for the Longmore Institute's Patient No More exhibit, one of the major motivations for occupying the building was the right for people with disabilities to get an education. Some of the sit-in participants went to segregated schools—separate schools for disabled children. Some were lucky enough to go to one of the few universities that admitted disabled students. They all sat-in so I could go to school and have the accommodations I need.

Just think: For twenty-six days, around 150 disabled people lived in a single floor of an office building. Only a handful were aware that they would be occupying the building at all, let alone for a month, so most participants didn’t have any bedding or a change of clothes with them. Many participants required attendant care for eating, using the bathroom, or preventing pressure sores. All of that care had to be improvised inside the building with everyone helping wherever and whoever they could. Some protesters had medicines that needed refrigeration, so a makeshift fridge was created with a window air conditioner and a plastic sheet. When the phone lines were cut, they communicated with the outside world by signing to people picketing in front of the building. Their struggle was supported by the Black Panthers, who made the protesters (including Black Panther Bradly Lomax and his attendant Chuck Jackson) two hot meals a day. When a bomb threat was called in, they didn’t leave the building. The protesters were in such close quarters with such limited opportunities for personal hygiene that many of them got crabs.

Crabs.

On top of all that, the building was completely inaccessible. The protestors were fighting for the implementation of the Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which made it illegal for entities receiving federal funding to discriminate on the basis of disability. Under Section 504, the very building the protestors were occupying would have to be made accessible to disabled people. Yet they stayed in this inaccessible building for nearly a month to demonstrate the need for disability rights legislation, showing the nation the strength of the disability community and its allies.

If you, like me, ever find yourself feeling guilty or ashamed about being a disabled student, doubting whether you really need or deserve accommodations, I encourage you to think back to the 504 protests. If you ever feel society tugging at you to “get by” without accommodations, “toughen up,” “suck it up,” “stick it out,” because “the whole world doesn’t cater to you,” remember that you are part of a community that has spent enough time living in an inaccessible world. If you feel tempted to do an ableist society’s work by torturing yourself for being disabled, remember that over a hundred protestors (and an infestation of crabs) stayed in a building for nearly a month without the comforts of home or any accommodations or accessible structures. Remember that all the discomfort and indignities they faced as protestors were so that you wouldn’t have to go through the same thing. You’re relieved of any duty to feel guilty or ashamed about being a disabled student.

At the same time, you’re not completely off the hook. Remember that you have a legacy to uphold—a legacy that was forged in part at the 504 protests. Remember to honor the qualities that made the 504 sit-in so successful and such a life-changing experience for those involved: community pride, collaboration, and commitment to education.

Remember that the 504 sit-in did not occur so that one disabled person could scale the social ladder while the rest of the disability community remained on the bottom rung. The 504 sit-in was an effort by the disability community for the disability community. Remember that when you next come across fellow students who might be eligible for accommodations but are unfamiliar with the disability services offered by your school. Remember that you have knowledge worth sharing about disability services when a friend discloses that they are struggling due to a disability or medical condition. Remember to honor the confidentiality of anyone who confides in you.

Remember the invaluable work performed by the Black Panthers, the Grey Panthers, the Butterfly Brigade, and the International Association of Machinists. Remember that their support, supplies, and expertise enabled the sit-in to last. Disabled students gained the right to an education in part because of the different social justice groups that collaborated with the protestors. Remember that when students aren’t getting a fair shake at an education for reasons other than disability. Remember the power of collaboration when you come across women facing isolation in STEM fields, working class students going into debt to afford textbooks, trans students being referred to by the wrong pronouns, or students of color having their names mispronounced or mocked. Remember that as someone who has benefitted from different groups coming together to support disability rights you have the responsibility to pay it forward and support the right to an education for everyone.

If you can do all that without getting crabs? That means you’re one step ahead of the 504 protestors.

Katie Murphy is a graduate student in Women and Gender Studies at San Francisco State University and student assistant at the Longmore Institute. She also runs Space Crip, a blog about disability in sci-fi/fantasy.

Tags:

504 Protests

ableism

accommodations

disability

The Americans with Disabilities Act: Nowhere to Go but Up for Local Fox News

Visitor — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 20:43:48 +0000

Recently, the Longmore Institute was contacted by KTVU, our local Fox affiliate, about how a “SF firehouse gets costly ADA compliant makeover” to the tune of approximately $400,000. What is it with all the cheap shots at the expensive ADA? It’s incredible how the media is filled with stories of the outrageous and the egregious – the $1000 grab bar ripped out for being an inch too low, the small business forced to close its doors because of having to redo its counter or seating area. Sure, one can always find the most extreme and costly transgressions that hitch a ride along with anything big-ticket and far-reaching, be it the recent scandals over the Bay Bridge bolts, the bloated costs of California’s High Speed Rail, or – for that matter – big banks’ behavior since new finance laws went into effect in recent decades.

But the root of the resentment at the ADA suggests something more profound, a simmering sense that when it comes to disability, it’s somehow wrong to fix the environment rather than the person. Where are the stories of disabled people really benefitting from the ADA to go to school, be able to work, eat in restaurants, ride public transportation, and who now, thanks to access contribute to the US economy as innovators and taxpayers? Where are the stories of able-bodied people who benefit from this same law every time they follow a sports event thanks to closed captioning in a noisy bar or effortlessly push a stroller over the curb? And where are the stories that explore links between these curb cuts and the construction jobs they created or the great increase in product development and sales of rolling suitcases and other urban devices with wheels?

According to the Fox news story the Alleycats of Fire Station #1 south of Folsom Street couldn’t discern any advantages either, having been left “shaking their heads” after moving into their new $12-million facility. The controversial renovations included three ADA-accessible restrooms on the second floor “where the general public is not allowed to go,” features that “won’t even benefit injured fire-fighters who aren’t allowed in the station.” To reach these accessible facilities, they needed to install an especially roomy ADA-compliant elevator. The camera pans over extra-large lockers with wheelchair symbols on them and shows footage from upstairs, “where hallways are wide and for wheelchairs.” The story ends with a lingering shot of a toilet as it mentions “advocates for the disabled at San Francisco’s Longmore Institute on Disability [who] state that ADA compliant features also help able-bodied people, and say it’s better to make space universally accessible now than have to upgrade in the future.”

The reporter, David Stevenson, got our message right. But were we made to seem ridiculous as my Dad later claimed?

I struggled with his reprimand. I’d been pleased that our message came through unaltered, figuring that even if the not-so-subtle association between us and a toilet said one thing, surely our enlightening words prompted some viewers to think differently. But here was my 87 year-old father, one of my most vocal advocates, finding this as yet another case of Fox News and the right-wing media skewing stories at his daughter’s expense. His visceral reaction to the segment’s using the Longmore Institute to show disability advocacy at its most extreme suggested that our case for finding unintended benefits for everyone in disability accommodations remains completely foreign. Even though our message wasn’t taken out of context and was presented on its own terms, the report on Fox appeared to confirm the outrageousness of our stance and with it, our naïveté.

As with any news story, our message got distilled down to a shadow of its bare essence from a much longer interview. David Stevenson seemed genuinely open to our examples, not in a preparing for a “gotcha!” but in a “whoa, never thought of that!” way. Assistant director Emily Beitiks described the ADA’s gifts to her when she was pregnant, which she blogged about on “Disability Remix” several weeks ago. I invoked the history of curb cuts in the early 1970s, which most city officials initially decried for similar reasons to those concerning the firehouse renovations; for such huge costs, few would use them. An official in Berkeley, home of one of the first curb cuts, allegedly argued that they were useless because one never saw disabled people in wheelchairs on the streets.

Such chicken-or-egg reasoning suggests profound ambivalence about the places people with disabilities should and shouldn’t occupy in US society. The ADA has brought us out in larger numbers with greater expectations and louder demands. People with disabilities have crossed a threshold that is simultaneously visible and invisible, a transgression that leaves some – disabled and nondisabled – uncomfortable without realizing it or knowing why.

The Fox story touched on this by opening with the hook that these were “renovations for those who might never become firefighters.” True enough, at least for those on active duty. But who wouldn’t appreciate more space in a locker and locker room, airy hallways (probably meeting basic safety standards as much as ADA ones), and an elevator that not only had made moving in easier but that might one day hoist a giant fridge, water heater, or any number of awkward-to-transport, costly objects useful in a fire station, from the hefty to the fragile? Possibly these accommodations reminded these brave men and women of their own vulnerability, as if enjoying the same benefits as “the handicapped” would be tantamount to being one of them.

Often, disability reveals how all of us come with largely unexamined preconceptions about the world around us, to the point that we sometimes miss some obvious questions. In the case of KTVU and Fire Station #1: if they expected public visitors on the ground floor, wasn’t it surprising that the architect hadn’t planned for an accessible toilet downstairs? Surely the hardworking staff servicing the trucks and preparing to race out to fight fires would have found it a godsend. And what about that grateful little wheelchair-riding kid with a full bladder and a love of fire engines visiting the station with classmates?

Link to the news segment here.

Tags:

Americans with Disabilities Act

Planning Accessible Events

Visitor — Wed, 15 May 2013 20:54:05 +0000

By: Emily Smith Beitiks

The Longmore Institute recently hosted a panel and reception honoring the work of Paul K. Longmore (in case you missed it, you can watch the captioned video here). Leading up to the event, my mind was rushing with all the things to keep track of: adequate space for wheelchair riders that doesn't block the path but also doesn't quarantine them to one section of the room; tracking down the comments from all the speakers to give to the captioners; directions and signage that clearly lead attendees to the event, preventing attendees from accidentally ending up in the Westfield mall, the Bermuda triangle of consumerism. Now that we've planned a few events that strive for maximum accessibility, we like to think we're getting the hang of it, but the concern is still always lurking: if we can't put on an accessible event, what right do we have to ask it of other events and organizations?

Much to our delight, nearly eighty people of all shapes and sizes quickly filled the room. In fact, it was so packed that we rushed to put out additional chairs [an accommodation for the leg users who did not bring their own], spilling into the open space we had reserved for the reception.

The panel was deeply emotional, filled with both laughter and sorrow as close friends and colleagues shared their memories of Paul Longmore. While the panelists were speaking, Longmore Institute friend and supporter Corbett O'Toole passed me a note. Since she has already saved us from many unanticipated pitfalls of inaccessibility, I immediately unfolded the note with a sense of foreboding. The note read: "I'm concerned about these chairs in the back. You don't want anything in the way of a crip and their food and wine." Grateful, we whisked away the chairs the moment the panel ended, and whew, our refreshments were accessible for all.

I offer these behind-the-scenes moments for they illustrate an important lesson that often gets neglected when we talk about access for people with disabilities: thinking about access only gets you half way there. To go the rest of the way, you must also think about culture. Many have argued that disabled people have a culture, just like other minority groups (the institute's founder Paul Longmore liked to say that this culture even involves a cuisine: fast food!). Corbett's friendly reminder - this crowd will not be shy about grabbing those hors d’oeurves you're offering, so plan accordingly! - provided yet another example to back this up.

As we continue to push our events to make each one more accessible than the last, may they also be supportive of and contributing to disability culture.

Tags:

Organization of American Historians

Paul K. Longmore

Paul Longmore

Uncategorized