Statement Regarding Senator Paul and Disabilities

Senator Paul’s comments regarding people with disabilities and the assistance they receive that keep them a part of their community shows that Mr. Paul desperately needs to be educated on the facts.  Most people do not wake up in the morning and say to themselves, “Gee, I hope I get a disability today so that I can ‘game the system’.”  A large number of individuals who receive disability payments paid into that system themselves for a number of years, just like Social Security Retirement.  We in the disability community were dismayed to learn that our Senator made such insensitive remarks regarding the 874,000 individuals in Kentucky who have a disability. 

Fraud in disability programs is estimated to amount to less than 1 percent and is extremely rare, as the agency’s watchdog has found. Its inaccurate payments rate is also less than 1 percent. SSDI payments are far from comfortable, averaging $1,130 a month, just over the federal poverty line and usually replacing less than half of a beneficiary’s previous earnings. Very few beneficiaries are able to work and supplement that income: less than 17 percent worked at some point during the year in 2007, but less than 3 percent of those people made more than $10,000 annually.   People with disabilities do want to work but lack of affordable and accessible transportation, unfounded biases by employers, inaccessible work places, and continued stigma and negative stereotypes by the general public and elected officials are huge barriers to individuals with disabilities obtaining meaningful, gainful employment.

The Center for Accessible Living is an innovative leader in empowering all people to achieve their goal of independent living.  We work on a daily basis with people with disabilities helping them to achieve independence and be integrated into the community.  We invite Senator Paul to meet with us so that we may share our concerns and educate him on the day-to-day reality of people with disabilities and the discrimination they face every day. 

Keith Hosey

Associate Director, Center for Accessible Living

What We Need from Our Allies

Allies

Allies are people who consider themselves to be not disabled and who want to help us to achieve our liberation ourselves and not on our behalf. A special group of allies are the parents, children, friends, lovers, and spouses of people with disabilities who themselves suffer much of the oppression by "connection." Also our allies are people who have chosen a professional interest in disability. Historically some of these people have been put into roles, which are oppressive to us. This does not negate their alliance or potential alliance. Our natural allies include all members of other oppressed groups.

What We Need from Our Allies

1. We need people who consider themselves non-disabled to explore their feelings about their bodies, (the ways they learn and think differently), their experiences of being ill, of being made to feel "different" in any way, of their reactions to people with disabilities, and of their fear of becoming physically less able themselves.

 2. We need listening while we express our hopelessness, pain and frustrations. (Only when we have thoroughly discharged these feelings will we be able to move successfully to a thorough celebration of ourselves and our lives.)

*Remember that the expression of feelings is not the "hurt", it is simply the expression of the hurt. We have all felt hurt and never showed it to anyone. Part of humans' natural healing ability is expressing feelings to another who listens with respect and patience, not needing to "fix" us or hurry us off our feelings. It is a powerful gift to let someone be honest about how they are feeling without judgment, in confidence, knowing the sharing is the healing. 

3. We need our internalized oppression interrupted. This may mean recognizing it when we do not.

*(Interrupt us if we speak degrading about ourselves or expect too little accommodation for our disabilities. Remind us that it is the oppression talking or preventing us from taking action. Encourage us to "act outside the oppression" by speaking well about ourselves and each other, by acting boldly and powerfully, by taking ourselves seriously.) 

4. We need support to love and encourage each other to tackle our own goals, ideas, and dreams; i.e., our counselors, family, and friends must not collude with any patterned divisiveness between us or act on their own feelings of being "left out."

5. We need to be touched lovingly and with awareness in order to contradict the massive invalidations we have been given of our bodies.

6. We need to have the highest expectations made of us.

7. We need to have our allies join with us in our demand to be included in all events which at present means solving the problem of access (for example):

A. By making all venues accessible to people with mobility-impairments;

B. By the provision of sign-language interpreters whenever necessary;

C. By making literature and important information available to people with visual disabilities; and

D. By not wearing strongly scented perfumes, deodorants, hair sprays, after- shave, etc.

Liberation 

Our liberation will require the challenging of all facets of our oppression, and in particular the resulting internalized oppression, i.e., coming together, noticing how we feel about it and expressing that to others; and overcoming any divisiveness between us; recognizing the cause of our mistreatment as oppression; recognizing our right to exist, to have feelings, to be loved and to love; to participate fully in society and particularly in controlling our own lives, making allies and being allies to all other oppressed groups.

- Excerpt Taken from Arizona Bridges for Indepenent Living (ABIL) Peer Mentor Training Manual

What People with Disabilities can learn fifty years after Dr. King’s "I Have a Dream" speech and the March on Washington

The march on Washington 50 years ago today, which included Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, was not just about racial justice, but also about economic equality. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was not simply the battle for civil rights, its agenda was a broader and more radical one of economic equality. The brilliance of this march is that, in a time when African-Americans were regularly being beaten or killed or excluded from places just because of how they look, the organizers and Dr. King were looking forward -  looking towards economic justice as well as racial equality.

Without economic equality – jobs, equal wages, the same employment opportunities – no group of people can truly enjoy the American dream. So they organized the march, calling for “mass descent” upon Washington, with participants protesting “the economic subordination of the American Negro.” They envisioned a groundswell of protest calling for freedom and jobs with the dual goals of ending racial segregation and discrimination in the Jim Crow South and achieving economic equality for all Americans.

People with disabilities can learn a lot from the march and Dr. King’s speech. Namely, that until people with disabilities have economic justice and equality, we will not be treated as equals in this society.

Although people with disabilities are still being refused basic access and services – and we're still fighting for ramps and interpreters – our unemployment rate is also almost twice that of non-disabled. The true unemployment – those not working and not looking for work – is even higher. Many with disabilities that are working, are often working lower wage jobs and some are even paid less than minimum wage, thanks to outdated 1930s laws based on false assumptions that people with disabilities cannot be as productive non-disabled.

To make matters worse, many of the social support systems which are supposed to help uplift individuals who need a temporary “hand-up’ to achieve the American Dream end up holding people with disabilities in poverty. The fear of losing life-saving medical care has stopped many people with disabilities from working or becoming economically self-sufficient. As Sen. Edward Kennedy wrote, "the high unemployment rate among people receiving federal disability benefits is not because their federal benefits programs have 'front doors that are too big - i.e., have eligibility criteria that are too loose - but because they have 'back doors that are too small' - i.e., once persons are on the rolls, it is too risky to come off."

Fortunately, now more than ever, people with disabilities will be able to become economically independent. New rules for federal contractors to hire people with disabilities and an ever increasing desire of many companies to hire people with disabilities in general are breaking down stereotypes and inequalities in the workplace. Provisions in the newAffordable Care Act (ACA), including the end to discrimination over pre-existing conditions, new affordable health benefits exchange and expanded Medicaid will allow people with disabilities to find medical coverage outside of the limited current options. There’s never been a better time for people with disabilities to pursue employment and not fear for their health coverage.

Yes, ramps and interpreters and access and an end to discrimination are extremely important to the disability rights movement. But we shouldn’t forget what the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom has to teach us. As long as people with disabilities are largely living in poverty, the public vision of us as ‘objects of charity’ will prevail and our demands for civil rights as a political minority will be ignored.

- By Keith Hosey -