U.S. acts to keep minority, disabled students out of jail

http://goo.gl/OecsBF

Attorney General Eric Holder said the guidelines were aimed at giving direction to school law enforcement officers, protecting the civil rights of students, and disrupting what he called "the school-to-prison pipeline."

"Effective discipline is, and always will be, a necessity. But a routine school discipline infraction should land a student in a principal's office - not in a police precinct," Holder, joined by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, said after meeting students at Baltimore's Frederick Douglass High School.

He said many students were suspended, expelled or arrested for minor lapses such as school uniform violations, schoolyard fights or laughing in class. Black students and those with disabilities often received different and more severe punishment than others, Holder said.

The guidelines came after the Justice Department sued Mississippi state and local officials in 2012, saying they violated the rights of children, especially black and disabled youths.

First Deaf-Blind Student At Harvard Law Pursues Dreams

http://goo.gl/MUruKP

Girma: As someone who had never gone to law school before, it was hard to anticipate the challenges. And Harvard Law had not had a deaf-blind student before. They couldn't quite anticipate all the challenges. But we met early on before I started and discussed potential challenges and potential solutions. And we continued to work together to figure out how I would do oral arguments, how I would take my exams, how to do internships over the summer. It was just constant positive creative thinking, optimism, and we--we made it. We got through it.

Weird & Wonderful

http://weirdandwonderful.net/

Weird and Wonderful a feature-length documentary that tells the story of the rise and fight of the disability rights movement from the late 1960s until today. Why did people with disabilities rise up and start complaining about their lot?  Who were the leaders of this rights movement and how did they get this message out?

Filmmaker Sarah Barton has been working on this documentary for more than four years and is now in the editing phase.  Earlier this year we raised $25,000 from crowd funding via Pozible.com which has enabled us to do a full length edit of the film.  We are now seeking $35,000 to complete the film and are still aiming for a completion date early in 2014.

Wheelchair icon revamped by guerrilla art project

http://goo.gl/ee2NQe

One image is the wheelchair symbol, which has become one of the most familiar icons in the world since it was introduced in 1968. The other is an edited version, with the human distinct from the chair, in an active position, with a feeling of forward movement.

In the three years since Sara Hendren, a Cambridge artist and writer who teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design, and Brian Glenney, an assistant professor of philosophy at Gordon College, began placing their version over the existing one, the Accessible Icon Project has gone from an artistic statement to a global movement.

Ritual Humiliation in the Hospital

As always, a great post by Bad Cripple....

http://goo.gl/HHDEM3

At issue is the measure of control. Do not buy into the jargon spewed by those that work at institutions--the core issue is always control. At a military base or prison the control is extreme and obvious. All wake up at the same time. All eat at the same time. All go to the bed at the same time. A hospital is not much different. Once admitted to a hospital, a patient has no control over their life and liberty. Choices exists but they are limited. One is given an ID bracelet--an identity marker at multiple levels symbolically and practically. Time slows down. Control of your time, when and where you will be seen is not possible. You are at the mercy of the vagaries of the system. Violate that system and you are branded a "difficult" or "noncompliant" patient. If you earn this designation you are going to get inferior care. 

Activism

From: EveryBody: An Artifact History of Disability in America. Great Pictures!

http://goo.gl/obPkO8

"The notion that any one  person is the single cause of any significant social change—that Abraham Lincoln alone freed the slaves—is a devastating stereotype which robs individuals of responsibility and credit, and actually inhibits social change.... You can be a revolution of one. In your living room, in your family, in your community."—Justin Dart, 1998

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My Place in This Conversation

http://goo.gl/Zo6BIK

It’s notable to me that intellectual disability is sometimes left out of these conversations—feminist conversations as well as disability studies conversations.  I suspect this is in part because people with intellectual disabilities don’t often write their own memoirs or analyses. I believe only two books on the market were written—not co-written, not extensively edited, but written or dictated—by people with Down syndrome:  Jason Kingsley and Mitchell Levitz’s Count Us In:  Growing Up with Down Syndrome (Harcourt, 1994) and Megan Adler’s recently released Up Sydrome:  It’s All About the Attitude (self-published, 2013).  Because people with Down syndrome aren’t attending the conferences, writing in the academic journals, or heading up activist efforts, they’re often ignored—not with hostility, but with a subconscious invoking of what Peggy McIntosh calls “the

Disability 
myth of meritocracy.”  There’s a way in which other issues related to disability—mobility issues, Deafness, blindness, the “freak” show—are seen as more important, and perhaps as more easily addressed.