Opening a Dialog on Disability and the Left

I recently received an email from my old friend Mike Meiselman (who says he eschews screen names as part of his bid to get onto the "no-fly" list--I guess everybody needs a hobby). Mike wrote it after reading "The Left and Mental Health," a recent article by Bill Fletcher, Jr., posted at the website of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization / Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad.

In the interests of deepening this discussion, I asked for and got Mike's permission to publish his response. I strongly suggest reading Bill Fletcher's short piece first, and if the discussion raises questions or sparks thoughts, I hope you, dear reader, will post something in the comments section below.

Thus saith Mike Meiselman:

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 caretakers. 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 case 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 '50s and 60s 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 buses in cities from San Francisco to Chicago to Boston, they began to win increased access to so-called public transportation. In state after state, city after city, struggles like ones 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. Increasingly louder voices call for preventive detention for people with mental disorders. Where is the left in opposing these attacks on democratic rights?

I know there are revolutionaries and progressives who work with PWDs. I know there are progressives working with SEIU and AFSCME or 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, and Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract by Marta Russell. Or just google Disability rights and see what comes up. And you could do a lot worse than to check out my wife's blog, Big Noise.

Read more!