The First Few Steps

by Cilla Sluga & Mike Meiselman

It’s unusual to have such an in-depth conversation with a total stranger. But, we liked her almost immediately. She was tall, in her twenties and had a cute three cornered smile. She asked pointed questions and was not the least bit interested in chit-chat. Pretty remarkable since Jen was our server at a semi-fast food restaurant.

We’re not quite sure how the conversation started; however, within no time at all, Jen was asking us about our politics. She didn’t believe we were as lefty as we claimed. She asked if we knew any leftist anthems. Mike obliged her, there in the small restaurant dining room, by singing The Internationale, clenched fist in the air.

Eventually, she wanted to know what kind of activism we were currently involved in; when we told her we were disability rights activists, her eyes widened. Her sister had spina bifida.

Jen, was not just our server, it turns out she was the restaurant manager. She asked if our group needed money. What? Someone was offering to help our organization with cash. We tried to tell her we weren’t an official 501(3) C; that we probably weren’t eligible. However, she would not be deterred. She said, “If we can have a fundraiser for the local high school cheerleaders, surely we can have one for an organization that works for the rights of disenfranchised people.”

So, we promised to provide her with the information she required.

A week or so later, we took requisite documents to the restaurant and she sat down with us again. Her intensity and inquisitiveness had grown. She confessed she was not much of an activist, but was angry about a lot: School of the Americas, the wars, the budget crisis, poverty, racism, bigotry, and Rush Limbaugh to name a few.
She wanted to know what our group was doing right now. We told her about projects great and small. We talked about an accessible fishing pier at the lake. We told that the statue of Lincoln at the state capitol was still inaccessible, on this the bicentennial of “the great emancipator’s” birthday. When talked about involuntary sterilization act being debated in the state legislature; and other mutilations that children with disabilities have gone through, all at the hands of parents and guardians. She cried tears of anger and sadness.

She reminded us of others we know. They care, deeply, about the world and its people, but feel powerless to change it. She said she felt unable to change things… so rather than stay angry, she confessed, she put it out of her mind as much as she could.

We told her that anger was a good motivating force, and to use it; but it would not sustain her. The only real antidote to frustration and/or anger is activism. Jen said it was all so overwhelming; how could she just pick one or two things when so many things were wrong?

Both of us also remember feeling that way. The frustration Jen and others feels is like burning rubber off the tires; it makes a lot of smoke, just doesn’t get you anywhere. We found progressive groups of people and started working together to change things. We felt less angry because we were actually doing something. In fact, it was invigorating.

One thing you quickly learn once you start fighting back is that is that the enemies turn out to be the same entities. If you are fighting for a clean environment, you learn that the people behind the pollution are also responsible for derailing regulations on Wall Street. The same forces that profit from keeping institutions open are the same ones who profit from prescription drugs that are priced out of reach for people of poor and moderate means. They don’t want regulation either… they want profits. They don’t want equality, they want it all.

The ruling class wants us to fight with one another for limited resources so we don’t focus on them and their system of wealth for the rich and crumbs for the rest of us. We must continually fight, not just for the daily needs of our people, but also to knock chunks of power out of their hands and put it in ours.
She still wasn’t sure. We believe there are a lot of people in the same position. For them the most difficult step of a journey isn’t the first one. It’s more like the second or third step. Once you stick your toe into an issue, you can feel the power on the other side. What usually happens after that; people get scared, put blinders on and refuse to look at injustice any longer. It also requires us to examine our system of equality, wealth distribution and privilege. Once you start doing that, you get called names, like “red” and “socialist”. It is enough to scare most people away.

We want to say do not be deterred. Take Barack Obama’s story about grassroots organizing in Chicago. He saw the poverty; he knew the issues; he spoke to the people; yet at his first meeting, no one showed up. That’s pretty devastating. He was disheartened and thought about quitting. Then he thought that quitting and realized that wasn’t going to improve anything for the people he cared about. He felt he had no choice to but to try and try again. He succeeded in building leadership from the community where little existed before. That enabled him to go on to create or sustain other social movements.

Find your passion. Bring about change in your neighborhood, or city. Fight for women’s rights, or cleaning up the superfund site down the road, or racism, or disability equal rights. Change a neighbor, or local council’s idea about how to deal with people who are disfranchised and you are changing the world.

Crossposted at Big Noise.

Capitalism has Outlived its Usefullness

I watched the Minnesota Interstate Highway bridge collapse. I watched the amazing pictures of the New York City steam pipe explosion; and I watched the levees crumble and saw New Orleans flooded.

I wanted to write about how America’s infrastructure is falling apart. I was going to point out that there is insufficient money in the Federal Budget to upgrade and maintain the roads, bridges and utilities we all share and are imperative to our standard of living.

I was going to close by making the point that the war in Iraq is costing us well over two billion dollars a week and that the money could pay for rebuilding our infrastructure. I was going to show that it could go a long way to making good on the promise of decent health care service for us all.

But I started thinking; if we weren’t involved in a catastrophic war where would we spend the $300 million a day the war is costing us? Would this money go to rebuilding our power grid? Would prescription drugs be available to those who need them? Would our roads, bridges, rail roads, air traffic control systems be improved? Would health care for all be affordable?

Nahhh! I don’t think so. Since 2001 the Department of Transportation, the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s have all received budget cuts of up to 4%. The Corps of Engineers, despite what they were doing in New Orleans, receives almost 2% less than in 2001.

These are the federal departments most directly responsible for the upkeep of our national infrastructure; they are not even close to staying even with the degeneration of our national infrastructure. The physical degeneration of our country didn’t start under the current administration. The infrastructure was crumbling under previous administrations as well.

Why? Isn’t our government supposed to meet the needs of we, the people? The truth is, government sees to the needs of those who control the national purse strings. The Investment Bankers, Wall Street Tycoons, Oil Company Magnates and the others who control 80% of our country’s wealth call the shots. If they want a tax cut, they get a tax cut. If they want less regulation, they get ‘em. If they want to increase their control over the world’s oil, the government does its best to accommodate them.

There are men and women in government who are decent and actually try to represent the interests of the majority of people. But the rich and powerful are winning the ideological class war; and large numbers of us who are not part of the economic elite have bought into their lies.

The big lie is that the rich deserve everything they have and if you are not happy; it’s your own fault. Not happy with your lack of health insurance? Eat healthier and you won’t need it. Not happy because your workplace closed and now you’re forced to work two jobs to make as much as one used too? It’s your own fault for not getting that Masters Degree in Business. Not happy because the color of your skin seems to draw the attention of the police as you drive? Quit whining – You should be more careful where you drive. You’re not happy because it’s impossible for your power chair to negotiate the curb cuts in your neighborhood? Blame your Mother for taking thalidomide. Not happy because it’s getting more expensive to gas up your car? Blame the environmentalists for blocking drilling off the coast of Florida. Not happy because that low paying job you had laid you off to hire new immigrants? Don’t blame the owners, blame the new immigrant. And so it goes.

They’ve got us so turned around that for the first time in history the have-nots are blaming folks who have less for our dissatisfaction. In fact, many of us are more likely to identify with the rich and powerful than with our neighbors and co-workers.

History is filled with examples of how economic systems become obsolete and are replaced. It was only a couple of hundred years ago with the start of the industrial revolution that the feudal system was replaced by capitalism. That was a good thing. Feudalism became a brake on the ability of society to move ahead. Capitalism filled the historical bill. People who had a stake in maintaining feudalism fought hard against the budding capitalists. There were revolutions aimed at overthrowing or restricting the power of the feudalists in Germany, France, England, the United States and just about the rest of the industrializing world. Back then it was the capitalists who were the revolutionaries.

It is time to end capitalism's reign. It no longer is capable of moving the standard of living for all forward. It is incapable of providing the breakthroughs to benefit humanity. Those who profit from capitalism are engaged in a giant war to maintain their privilege and make us think that these inequalities are right and just.

Let’s get over our fear of being called names and open our minds and our hearts to create an economic system where greed is not good but concern for our co-inhabitants of this planet is.

Disability and the Left, Part Deux

Note: This article is a reaction to a paper by Bill Fletcher, Jr. You can read it here.

I want to thank Bill Fletcher, Jr. for his recent note concerning mental health concerns. Coming from an individual as well respected as Brother Fletcher I hope his message will not be lost.

Yet even a person as respected as Bill has to start his paper on mental health by asking people to take what he says seriously…to hear him out before laughing.

Mental illness, cognitive and physical disabilities have not and are not taken seriously by the left. In fact, most all on the left do not see any place for people with disabilities (PWDs) except as wards of the state.

Last year at the annual meeting of Jobs with Justice in St. Louis the National Action planned a demonstration in favor of keeping a state institution for people with disabilities open. One of Jobs with Justice’s major supporters, AFCSME, wants to keep these state run institutions open as the employees are AFSCME members. When challenged whether this was in the best interest of the residents, comrades and friends deferred to a parent’s organization that supported the institutionalization of their children. Parents often do not represent the wants and needs of their children, disabled or not. But, one can hardly fault the parents for their thinking. The financial and emotional stigma attached to raising children with severe disabilities is multiplied by the lack of supports available for the care takers. Unfortunately, AFSCME’s interest and the interests of some parents took precedent over the desires and needs of the prisoners in these state institutions. No one contacted the residents, nor were any disability advocacy organizations, it was enough to get some parents approval.

Locking people with disabilities up in institutions has a history. The initial establishment of these institutions was progressive. Now they have become regressive. In the 1960s, faced with shrinking budgets, many state institutions were closed and the residents kicked out with no supports whatsoever. These closings and evictions had nothing to do with the welfare of the people with disabilities. They were simply measure taken in accord with capitalism. Economically they were unable to justify their existence.

We know now, however, that the overwhelming numbers of people with disabilities thrive outside traditional state institutions when they receive appropriate supports. In fact, a major goal of the disability rights movement is implementing “Olmstead” legislation (after a Supreme Court Cast of a couple of years ago). The Olmstead decision orders that money spent on an individual incarceration in a state institution should follow each person into the community and appropriate supports follow them.

The upsurge in the struggle for the civil rights of Black people in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s inspired many liberation movements. PWDs were also inspired. Berkeley, California gave rise to the Independent Living Movement. First fighting to gain admittance to the University and then facing many hurdles in being able to attend classes, people with disabilities took on the Administration and the attitudes of the campus community. Inspired by their success, Independent Living movements sprang up all across the USA. People in wheelchairs and their supporters took on public transportation. Chaining themselves to busses in cities from San Francisco, to Chicago, to Boston, access to so-called public transportation began to increase. In state after state, city after city struggles such as to make voting stations accessible, to allow people with disabilities to attend court without the humiliation of being carried up flights of stairs, for an end to segregated schools. People with disabilities fought for basic democratic rights. We support the struggle for Democratic Rights. We are active participants in many such struggles. For the most part though, we are absent from the struggles of PWDs. Why are PWDs fighting these struggles without the broad support of a concerned people? Because of the stigma attached to people with disabilities. It’s similar to white skin privilege. “At least I have it better than that poor soul” is what we say when we send money in to “Jerry’s kids” every Labor Day. We look at people with deformities, developmental disabilities, injuries and illnesses and turn away.

Today, especially after the tragedy at Virginia Tech there is more fear being spread about how dangerous people with disabilities are along with cries that more people need to be housed in state run institutions as a matter of public safety. Increasing louder voices call for preventive detention for people with mental disorders. Where is the left in opposing democratic rights?

I know there are revolutionaries and progressives who work with PWDs. I know there are progressives working with SEIU and AFSCME or are trying to organize the workers who serve PWDs. We should be uniting with the aspirations of the people who we work for and be very careful about the unity we have with those who profit off the institutionalization of PWDs.

I am not going to attempt a full-blown declaration concerning the disability rights movement here. It is long and complex. In fact, my own disability does not allow me the concentration needed to write much more.

Do some research. I suggest these books Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment by James I. Charlton, or Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract by Marta Russell. Google Disability rights and see what comes up. Check out my wife’s blog, mybignoise.blogspot.com/

Coney Island

When I was not quite three years old, my family moved from Brooklyn, New York to Chicago. We would visit family on our week vacation every summer. It was on one of those trips that I first went to Coney Island. My Uncle Zuskie took me the first time. The subway trip was memorable. The train route took us on an elevated trip through Brooklyn. Looking out the train window and seeing no guardrail keeping us from falling to the street below got the adrenalin flowing. Good preparation for the thrills that lay ahead.

My brother and I drove miniature racecars – we rammed each other with the magnificent bumper cars – we played pinball and ski-ball in the arcades where we also watched penny movies. We gawked as the rickety steeplechase where riders rode mechanical horses around a buildings roof. We stood in line forever gladly soaking up the smells of the French fries and hot dogs grilling at Nathan’s. We stared in awe at the crowds on the beach from the boardwalk.

I only visited Coney Island a few times after that. It was always as exciting.

As I grew older, Coney Island grew from an amusement park into a cultural icon.

The history of the place entered my consciousness. To “the huddled masses” Coney Island was a blessing. It was a place for rest and relaxation. When my Aunt Bess and Uncle Sam retired from the cloak industry they took an apartment on Ocean Ave. My Mother tells how the family would visit them for pinochle (and it was often) they would give my Mother a quarter and instruction to go to the arcade and win a couple of packs of cigarettes. She never disappointed. My father-in-law talked of standing on a soapbox on the boardwalk in the 1930’s and raising money for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade fighting the fascists in Spain.

It was the playground, recreation center and propaganda center for this country’s greatest concentration of the working class.