On edit - nominated for Greatest
Thank you for posting it, for making us more aware. I do not want to hear experts drone on for what is best for the disabled or any other specific group. At one time in this very country the "experts" also said that Black people were oh so happy picking cotton all day and not having a care in the world.
Despicable. Utterly despicable.
I am SO ashamed at the appalling lack of empathy coming from the so-called Liberals but to call these people Progressive is wrong. Capitalistic Democrats are latching on to that term because they noticed that a very outspoken group, truly progressive on human issues, was distancing themselves from a core that said obliterating a country to get one man was a great thing to do because oppressed women were being liberated (American-style). We look down on Muslim women, call their culture barbaric because we say they are "owned" by their men and how barbaric that is yet right here in River City, a woman is going to be mercilessly starved to death (instead of at least being given morphine or put on a heroine drip so that we can say we didn't do it like hypocritical Bhuddists who subscribe to not killing animals taking fish out of water and saying "it died all be itself therefore I broke no precept") and we raise not one voice to save her. Instead we give the choice of treatment, life and death to a man who had already replaced his chattel with a more functioning woman 1 year after the tragedy and has been in an eager rush for the last 15 years to move on- a man whose word we have reason to doubt but we don't care because seeing Terry Schiavo makes US feel uncomfortable and we want her so out of the way that we won't even entertain the thought of letting her parents attempt to get her the proper treatment she was denied by the man who owned her.
If Michael Schiavo loved that woman even one whit, he would have the minimal decency to allow her the care her parents begged for while pursuing his legal manouverings to free himself from her. I do not understand the hypocrisy. I do not understand cutting her parents off. I do not understand not asking Terry Schiavo what she wants - she can blink right? ASK HER! ASK HER EVERYDAY IF YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE THOSE AREN'T RANDOM REFLEXIVE MOVEMENTS BUT DAMN IT AT LEAST ASK HER.
I can't even talk about this without getting angry and upset at the unwillingness to believe anything except the he said/she said testimony of one man whose actions have not been consistent with love and true care. Sorry for ranting. I love this forum and welcome it as a respite from the stench upstairs. Ralph Nader, true to his progressive values, came out in support of keeping Terry alive yesterday. He is of course being crucified for once more daring to thrust our faces in our hypocrisy, but it was a bright note. Tom Harkin gets it. Jesse Jackson gets it. It's unfortunate people are so unwilling to even listen but it's not the first shameful time.
Thank you for the link and references... I just finished reading another of Mary Johnson's articles and plan to read more. Very enlightening.
Liberals and disability rights: Why don't they 'get it'?(snip)
"These are people who know that the system is willing to kill for money; that's what they deal with every day in their advocacy work; but it takes a discussion, it takes connecting the dots for most of them to see why someone like me, someone severely disabled, might have a problem with legalized medical killing and might see it as not so terribly compassionate or progressive."
(snip)
"Liberals say, 'we support the social programs that you depend on, that you agree with -- and because we do that, we should have your unqualified support,
even when we support every 'better dead than disabled' cause that comes along.' Folks on the right say, 'Look, we're out there on the protest line in Florida; we're fighting for the lives of people like Terri Schiavo, so we should get your unqualified support, no matter how much we cut the social programs you need to function and even survive.'"
(snip)
"Liberals -- and progressives, as I'd describe myself," saysBérubé, "have lost so much ground and so much public legitimacy over the past 30 years that it's quite clear we need new ways of thinking about the public sector and the common good. People need to begin to "read liberal theories of social justice in terms of disability issues -- putting the perspectives of people with disabilities front and center in a second wave of civil rights activism."
"To really 'get' disability politics means also to be a leftist," says Blaser, "to have a radical belief in human equality globally, across gender, ethnicity, sexuality -- and disability."