After linking this blog to a co-worker's Facebook page, I got more than I expected.
The following is a response directed towards the NYT article post from last Thursday. Note: This is coming directly from the Facebook link, it has not been edited or changed!
-- Ann Patterson, San Francisco
You asked, so I'm sharing my personal experience as a disabled person. Yes. People who live in areas that are high crime...which tends to be because those are the cheap apartment areas, too, get clobber quite often.
And disabled people who take public transportation and who are slightly slower than the flow of foot traffic are more likely to get clobbered....and this is not for the purpose of robbery or anything like that, its just because SOME people need to make other people "less" in order to feel good about themselves. And this is not limited to disability...just recall you last run-in with the boss at work.
I've been disabled since I was a baby so I know all the ways that slightly more crazy people do this stuff. I've always defended myself when attacked, sometimes even to the point of purposefully making the original attacker utterly terrified of disabled people. I'm thinking in particular of one incident where a young woman (30 years my junior) decided to try to kick me to the curb so, with one arm, I flipped her over my shoulder on to her back and kicked her back, once. A few minutes later, I got on another bus, and the woman was there, and she started screaming. I laughed. Not because it was funny, but because I defended myself quite adequately...enough so that I don't think that she will ever raise ANY limb to another human being.... Read more
I have been advocating for equal access since I was three when some elitist dance teacher refuse to allow me to participate in her class. ALL of the 3-year-old kids in that class were as spastic as I was. But this teacher had her mental health problems.
The basic problem is that disabled people, when they are discussed out of their own earshot. by 'able-bodied' folks are labeled as "less".
But those who would attack people with mobility disabilities need to understand that when one has lifted one's own weight for approximately 17 miles of "walking" per day, these people are so strong from that experience that, by comparison, people without disabilities are disabled.
(I won a lot of arm-wrestling money in bars in my college years on this basis of this)
The final thing that I want to say about this is: judges should not see the act of clobbering a disabled person as solely a criminal act. They should see it as something that REQUIRES effective mental health incarceration. Because, in my experience, doing something like this is an "entry level" crime.
Y'all know the kind of people who torture cats and then kill dogs. The kind of people who harass the disabled at work and then "go postal" for no discernibly good reason.
Criminal justice will never truly be justice until it recognizes the mental states behind the discrimination against all 'special' groups of people. It happens every day, every minute. And YOU could be one of those people.
Work on your problem, please.--
Please refer to the comment section below for my personal ongoing commentary and other comments from Ms. Patterson.
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Now, I'm sure all my disabled and non-disabled readers can relate to being made to feel inferior, and would never appreciate if someone were to target them due to an impairment, but this person's comments left me a bit confused.
ReplyDeleteWho is the "You" she is referring to in the response?
If it is a personal attack on myself, then she misunderstood my questions in the previous New York Times post. If it is not, and she is simply saying "people who attack disabled individuals, just because they may be easier targets, or live in high crime areas are mentally deranged," well then; I completely agree.
Just because one is disabled does not mean they are not mentally or PHYSICALLY strong. It also does not mean they cannot defend themselves, as this commenter has shown.
One of my many goals of this blog is to show disabled and non-disabled individuals that disabled people are strong and they can and will stand up for what they believe in.
I appreciate this woman's feedback and will be asking her to share more of her story for another post
The following is another comment from my Facebook commenter:
ReplyDelete"The real problem is those folks who can't defend themselves.
But for those who can, in my opinion, the only way to stop this is to go ALL OUT once attacked. It is self-defense, so one is allowed to meet force with equal (if adaptive) force.
Part of the problem with that is that self-defense instructors generally don't take disabled students. There are certain venues that people really believe that ADA does not apply."
Here's the update, the Facebook commenter has agreed to be identified!
ReplyDeleteThe woman's name is Ann Patterson and she resides in San Francisco. She did not wish to disclose her disability to me, but made it clear that she could heavily relate to being a victim of crime. At the end of her long heartfelt note, she made it clear that her previous comments were not personal attacks, but rather anger towards individuals that had wronged her.
She had this to contribute:
In some kind of underground way the disabled person is always terrified of loss.
Loss of function. Loss of housing. Loss of livelihood.
And this is just stupid. No one can take from you what you don't allow to be taken.
Except that the federal government policies tend to reinforce the whole Dis-dar thing....instead of enabling disabled people to be self-sufficient they enact policies that assume hat every disabled person is either retarded or near retarded.
And finally, I have to say that I loathe discussing this stuff in the terms that the docs, lawmakers, and the social workers invented. I m NOT disabled. I have some limitations.
The person who is label 'retarded' is NOT retarded. S/he thinks differently.
(and sometimes this is absolutely beautiful) And on and on and on.....
So one of the things that needs to happen is that when 'disabled' people meet they use their own terms and descriptors and FORCE the docs, social workers, and lawmakers to adopt the vocabulary. And for God's sake DON'T us "challenged", or I will personally bop the user in the nose.
We're people and we have people dreams, goals, and ideas.
Lets make the less understanding among us KNOW what it is about to lose the use of a limb, eyes, ears, bladder, and/or brain without feeling compelled to kill us or to make us 'less'.
Ann Patterson
San Francisco, CA
October 6, 2009