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Disability Rights Activists Are Even Invisible Getting Arrested on Capitol Hill
Elite media’s selective disdain for public activism is well known. Still, you’d think some things would garner a word or two. Like 300 disability rights activists, a couple hundred in wheelchairs, occupying the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C. The May 2 demonstration was organized by the rights group ADAPT to protest Republican budget plans for Medicaid. Ninety-one people were arrested and carted off by Capitol police.
Yet days after the rotunda protest, and another action the next day in which 300 demonstrators gathered outside the Longworth House Office Building, many getting inside to Rep. Paul Ryan's second floor office where 10 were arrested, the country's big media have taken no notice. Accounts in Politico (5/2/11) and the Hill (5/3/11) were all a search turned up.
ADAPT organizer Mike Ervin explained that it’s not just the roughly 35 percent funding cuts to Medicaid in the GOP’s budget proposal that concern the disability community, but the plan to convert states' federal shares into block grants. Many people with disabilities rely on Medicaid “for the assistance we get every day to live in our communities," rather than institutions.
As for the claim, from Ryan's Roadmap Plan, that block granting "allows states maximum flexibility to tailor their Medicaid programs to the specific needs of their populations," Ervin says, "That's like saying Jim Crow laws give states more flexibility to decide who gets to drink at their water fountains. Flexibility is basically a code word for abandonment."
People with disabilities (one community that anyone can join at any moment) and their advocates are right to worry their concerns won't be heard by lawmakers, to the extent that that involves dealing with a press corps that, evidently, can't even see them.
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13 Comments so far
Show AllIt's as clear as can possibly be: our government (both state and national) views average citizens purely as criminals who have no rights at all. We no longer have any say at all, much less any recourse for the misdeeds of our leaders in dealing with citizens' complaints/demonstrations
In the right wing/libertarian/Ayn Rand world view, you are on your own, social Darwinism is the order of the day and greed is god. If you are disabled, too old or too poor, then tough luck for you, you should have made better choices in life. No social safety net for you, try charity, the poor houses or debtors prisons. Ron Paul is all signed up for that kind of cold heartless libertarian world.
In their thinking, the unfortunate man who was left a quadriplegic after some yahoo rear-ended him in an auto accident should have CHOSEN not to be in front of that yahoo. The inhumanly cruel society we live in is evidence of that libertarian logic wielded in the centers of power.
As pointed out, it isn't just the government but the media too...well, I'm here to tell you...society in general shuns us as well because of what they've been taught. Ask any Vet. that's coming home with the gift of PTSD, a gift that keeps giving. Or you were born with birth defects. Get that? Defects. We must be perfect here, if you are broken you are disposable, throw-a-way; just like the container your morning juice comes in.
The thing is. The media owners, who are in favour of cutting everything for everyone, (except themselves of course) know full well that if this became too public then the conservatives would have a harder time axing social programs than they already do. It's one thing to talk about taking away the bennies from the mythical welfare collecting Cadillac driver, but to take it away from crippled people?
Remember, during the holocaust, the Nazis had to stop putting the mentally ill to death because it outraged everyone in Nazi Germany. The elite remembers that story, which is why this story isn't going to get much coverage from the M$M
If they'd had tea bags hanging from their hats, braces, and wheelchairs, the networks would have given it ample coverage.
Just leave it up to the repuglycons for arresting disabled people. What are they afraid of, getting run over by a wheelchair, getting hit by a cane, having to look at so much suffering in their marble temple? These gopers are no longer human they are monsters.
Tactics should be based on the current reality and change accordingly. Large scale protests that aren't going to be heard beyond the immediate surroundings lose their impact. Large-scale protests that do more than just invite arrest but actually shut down important parts of the empire may be the next step. I wonder if the MSM would have failed to notice if the protests had been happening in their own offices and studios?
Exactly! I thing a 2-pronged strategy is needed:
1. We are LONG overdue for protest, CD actions and direct actions at the offices, presses, studios, transmitters and satellite head-end facilities of the media.
2. We need to get over this squeamishness over property-damage or property-denial actions - as long as such actions are accompanied by clear, published communiques, commmunicating the purpose of the action, furnished to the media and on every convienient vertical surface in the city.
We need to get over this squeamishness over property-damage or property-denial actions - as long as such actions are accompanied by clear, published communiques, commmunicating the purpose of the action, furnished to the media and on every convienient vertical surface in the city.
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How would you connect the dots for people on the property actions, P?
There's no intuitively-obvious connection between, say, dumping a half-tonne of horse doings to block a corporate doorway and getting medicare for all, a reduction in military adventurism, or more trees.
There is, though, a connection in the experience of vandalism. Many people have experienced vandalism or theft and would automatically identify emotionally with the corporate 'victim'. How would you short-circuit that connection and replace it with the one you want?
And given the amount of interest in this column, based upon the number of responses, apparently they're invisible here too. What a pity but it speaks volumes.
Did Pelosi push this kind of legislation? No, she had to cave and compromise to get lousy healthcare, not single payer, because she didn't have the votes. The Dems need the majority in both the House and the Senate and not just a simple one. They need 2/3 or better. I think the only non-violent, non-overthrow the gov't or non-long-shot 3rd party solution to the current push for gutting the social safety net is to vote for the Democratic candidate.
These were the only buildings they could get into I bet! Much of D.C. is stairs and the easy entrances are closed for (SECURITY) so you have to go around thru a small door at the side originally deemed as a construction entrance. As I learned on my last visit to D.C wheelchairs, canes and walkers are discuraged. If not by entrance restrictions then by security checks, I have seen the goons take wheelchairs and canes apart, and can't get them back togther again.
>^^<