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DISABILITY-RESEARCH  February 2003

DISABILITY-RESEARCH February 2003

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Subject:

Did any "Anti-.. Rally" organisers include DR leaders in speakers?

From:

Jim Davis <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Jim Davis <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Mon, 17 Feb 2003 16:04:39 -0500

Content-Type:

Text/Plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

Text/Plain (116 lines)

I am not asking a rhetorical question, I really would be interested in
knowing if anyone around the world knows of a rally where disabled
rights leaders were among the diversity of the invited speakers, and if
anybody out there knows of any rallies that bothered to include in their
general announcement publicity, information to make it PWD-friendly.

My experience with these sorts of rallies is that they'll say they're
big on having a "full" diversity of people represented among the
speakers, but then they proceed to define "diversity" in a narrow manner
that leaves out half of the stigmatised classes / identity groups that
the term diversity actually encompasses.  They act out pecking orders
and exclusion.

Not to mention, then I always see these inaccessible stages.  And other
details of how these things are often planned in a way that
discriminates among people with certain disabilities in the audience.

And the planning question of -- "march or rally?"  As if everyone can do
a long march.

The huge LGBT Rights march-rally in Washington DC in I think it was '93
promised that since it was a long march, a couple of busses would be
chartered to take people with disabilities who couldn't do the march, to
the rally site.  It turns out that when the two charter bus drivers
heard that it was a L/G/B/T/ march, at the last minute they decided they
both didn't feel like showing up for work that day (AIDS-phobia? I
suspect, more than homophobia alone), and the bus company didn't bother
to replace them; so the promised busses did not exist.  (I had to take a
subway & taxi to get to the rally site; and still did so much more
walking than I am able to do with several kinds of arthritis, that the
next day I just stayed in bed to get the severe joint pain to go back
down so I could walk.)  A written contract, simply ignored.  I urged the
march organisers to file a discrimination complaint against the bus
company to reduce the likelihood of this happening next time, but the
organisers never responded.

At a recent anti-war rally in the US, I happened to hear that an
acquaintance of mine was selected a the one token LGBT speaker
associated with the LGBT rights movement; and he said he was told to
limit his remarks to 60 or 90 seconds or something like that.  This at a
rally with scores of speakers, many of whom as it turned out, had no
time limit, one I heard of the radio went on for over ten minutes.
A few years previous to that, before a rally on the anniversary of the
'63 March On Washington, negotiations to have at least one speaker out
of dozens, be a LGBT rights movement-associated person, ended with a
lesbian getting a minute or so of stage time to speak, who was told that
she could mention in passing that she was a lesbian, but she was
pressured to agree in advance NOT to mention that such a thing as a
lesbian or LGBT human rights  movement struggle even existed.  In
exchange for getting the tiniest of time slots for her micro-speech, she
agreed to this utterly humiliating anti-free speech condition which was
imposed on no other rally speakers, and her group (that had sat in in
non-voting District of Columbia's congressional representative's office
to get this semi-tokenism) then, rather improbably, declared victory.
And who was the primary organizer of that '63 March on Washington which
was being commemorated?  An 'out' gay man named Bayard Rustin; who was
rewarded for his efforts by being squeezed out of the movement by the
preachers...  (Out historian John D'Emilio has been researching a
biography on him, for many years...)

It is not easy to make progress on getting political orgs to be
disability-friendly, because firstly - nobody seems to be in charge when
these human rights / equal access concerns are brought up, and secondly
- these groups often have no institutional memory at least for for these
things, so as a rights advocate you're always starting at square one;
and they're always acting like you're the fist person who ever mentioned
this stuff to them, in their whole lives.  And as soon as any given AB
political org. leader leaves that job, any agreements vanish with him /
her as the new leader predictably says: "...well, I didn't agree to
that; nobody told me anything about it..." etc. ; the orgs seem to lack
enough organisational stability to even make such agreements as orgs.,
and will even deny that there is any such thing as an org. (not just a
leader) agreeing to such things.

What to do?  Where to start?

The tiniest most cost-free first-step thing these AB political orgs
could do is just include accessibility status information in
announcements of meetings and events.  Instead of making some people,
PWDs, go through endless telephone tag or e-mail tag to find out basic
accessibility info.  (I find that announced info is far more reliable
then accessibility info you phone up / write to them for; the person
returning the call often doesn't understand the question and blithely
gives false reassurances.  Then after some difficult and expensive
travel, you get there and find out the true facts...

Has anyone ever written about this whole topic of AB political
organizations and how they are or are not disability-friendly?  I recall
only one article, in a disability magazine, about a particular case I
think in Berkeley.  But an article looking at the larger status question
across many orgs, would certainly be a useful thing if somebody would
like to tackle this topic.

We have a human right to partipate without discrimination in the public
accomodations of the public sphere, and in political events in public
space.

Do disabled rights leaders ever get put on a mostly-AB rally speakers'
list to make the list more diverse, and then get told it's on the firm
condition that they don't mention even in passing that the DR movement
even exists?

Maybe I'll write it myself.... any research bits or photos anyone can
offer (sent direct) would be greatly appreciated.

Jim

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