Mark's post, especially the list of 5 basic PD objectives at the end,
may not fit into much of the academic discussion on this list... but it
does provide a refreshing reality check.
Perhaps there needs to be a disability activist' listserv, if there
isn't already one, somewhere.
Academia and activism are 2 different things, and although their
potential to overlap could be more fully realised.... hoping for DS
academics to win activist victories for PWD's, makes about as much sense
as expecting charities, or Jerry Lewis, to lobby the U.S. Congress for
Universal Health Care.
Activism gets done by activists...
...often by ones who have some personal stake in the outcome.
Professional advocates (working for charities, or even lobbying groups)
or professional DS academics, may occasionally "cross the line" and do
activist things, too, (or better yet, may help activists by bringing
certain bureaucratic "insider info" to activist groups) BUT .... one
can hardly expect a handful of paid people to get any of the 5 listed
goals, accomplished.
In this time when Margaret Thatcher says "There is no such thing as
society", which Marta Russel calls in the subtitle of her excellent book
"The End Of The Social Contract", (Title: "Beyond Ramps, 1998, Common
Courage Press, US)..... even slightly progressive activism in some
places (the U.S., and it sounds like, in the UK this month), is in a
state of nearly total failure , and worse -- demoralisation.
It's easy to build activism when there's lots of people already doing
it, you're just trying to make "big" into "bigger", and there's a "Join
The Bandwagon" effect. It's another thing, entirely, to build it up,
from a low point. Turning a room with 3 activists in it, into a room
with 30. It's a heck of a lot easier to understand why these things
shrink, than to understand how to get them to grow, again. Obviously,
there's plenty of room for new leadership, and new directions in
leadership.
Ralph Nader, speaking in New York, at the Ethical Culture Society in
1996, obseved that we've become interested only in injustice involving
discrimination agaoinst our identity group(s), and nobody's interested
in "indescriminate injustice" any more; i.e. how big corporations,
monopolies, etc., are doing much increasing injustice,
"indiscriminately" to almost all of us.
Meanwhile, some of us turn theory into what is treated like theology,
debating questions as meaningful as "How many angels can dance on the
head of a pin?"
That's partly why I'll be watching the (US) 2nd part tonight, of the
public TV documentary on Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who with Susan B.
Anthony, we're told, built the US women's suffrage & rights movement,
in the 1800's. Although it's very much the "People Magazine" version
of history, in which the leaders are everything, perhaps we can get from
it, glimpses between the lines, of what techniques it took, to make
"small" into "big".
Oddly, in those days of no electronic media, there seems to have been
more of a "public sphere". The idea that you publish some protest
writings, and then become known enough to invite people to fill up a
local church, with 400 people, to discuss "reform" issues... seems to
have been more alive then, than it is, where I live, today! Western New
York State (the part far from N.Y. City) was described as a hotbed of
radicalism, back then. Hard to imagine!
Any listservs out there, specifically focussed on disabled rights
organising?
|