They're onto us, Kathleen

Many folks have been following the Kathleen Seidel subpoena story--it's being discussed in various sectors of the blogosphere, not "just" on blogs about autism but on blogs about science, law, and blogging itself. (I Speak of Dreams has been compiling a good long list of blog responses to the controversy.)

My in-house science consultant (aka, my husband, the physicist) pointed me to this choice quote in the response by one of the attorneys seeking access to Seidel's email files. Apparently they think her connections should be treated as suspect because she's

"a person utilizing investigative ability well in excess of that available to the mother and housewife she claims to be..."

Uh, whuh? I can't understand, maybe I'm a little distracted, what with the jangle of minivan keys in my pocket and the Spongebob songs running on a loop in the next room... but "mother and housewife" status doesn't limit my "investigative ability," and it is surely completely irrelevant to Ms. Seidel's capacity for finding and analyzing published or public-record legal and scientific documents, too. Now I'd say more about this, but my suspiciously excessive ability to use a search engine doesn't get the dishwasher loaded or the other kid off the schoolbus...

The face of George Everett Greene

[Image description: head-and-shoulders photo of a 14-year-old boy, taken in 1894--he has close-cropped sandy hair and is wearing an ill-fitted collarless shirt under at least two other layers]

Back last May, for Blogging Against Disablism Day, I wrote up a post about George Everitt Green (1880-1895), an English child who was apparently killed by his foster mother in Canada after he didn't match her expectations for what a teenaged boy should be able to do--he was described as small for his age, "backward," and as having "defective vision." The foster mother was never convicted, and the case was used to spur feeling against immigrants, especially young disabled immigrants, as the "diseased offscourings of the hotbeds of hellish slumdom."

In that post, I wondered if there was a photo of Green anywhere--the Barnardo emigration program that brought him to Canada was famous for photographing each boy before he set sail. Well, thanks to a new comment on that post from sarahquay, I now know there is a photograph of Green, in the Library and Archives Canada, and it's online.

"Death through ill-usage" is the wording of the crime in his file (where the name is spelled "George Everett Greene," thus the spelling in my title above). Above is George Green, age 14, about to board a boat to North America. Hopeful, maybe; confused, maybe; wary, probably; young, definitely. Not much older than my own son. Within the year, he would be dead from abuse, malnutrition, exposure, exhaustion, and gangrene. He's looking out across more than a century, and I wish we could look back and say "things have changed." But they haven't, or not nearly enough.

Wheelchair tipping?!?!

In not one, but two, countries, intentionally tipping someone's wheelchair has come up in the news lately. What's the deal? In the London Times in January, Rod Liddle suggested in an opinion piece that

"Next time you see a young person in a wheelchair, tip it over and drag the occupant to the nearest job centre, lecturing him or her all the while on the dignity of labour."

Because the only reason a young person would use a wheelchair is to avoid employment, right? (Liddle has a long record of horrid statements about disability, but this one explicitly incites violence against disabled people, an escalation on his part.)

Moving across the Atlantic, the idea is already being put into practice--by one deputy sheriff in Hillsborough Co., Florida. Brian Sterner, a quad, was stopped on a traffic violation on 29 January and taken to the station for booking. Deputy Charlotte Marshall Jones didn't believe he was really paralyzed, so she dumped his wheelchair forwards, and he (surprise!) fell to the ground. The incident was caught on the office surveillance camera (video here, but be warned--it's distressing to see), and she has been suspended without pay. Brian Sterner, it turns out, is the former director of the Florida Spinal Cord Injury Resource Center, based in Tampa. He plays wheelchair rugby with the Tampa Generals, and he's working on a PhD.

So, to recap, some young people use wheelchairs AND work AND drive. And throwing someone to the ground is a dangerously stupid way to prove anything.

Amy Votes

[Image description: woman with grey hair, long skirt, and walker, smiling over her shoulder, on a ramp near a sign that says "Vote Here"]

From the New York Times Polling Place Photo Project--this is Amy Pitt, voting (with a broken ankle) today in Rochester NY. Amy Pitt is (or was, in 2004) active with Metro Justice of Rochester, "an independent, grassroots, progressive membership organization, seeking a peaceful and just society....[working] for human rights, total equality, and economic and environmental justice by raising community awareness and engaging in non-violent direct action."

More accessibility-related images in the project (so far, I'll keep adding links as I find more): "Stairway to Democracy" by Brian Scott (San Francisco CA); "Handicap Access" by Kirk Bravender (Chicago IL); "QH Sign" by Anonymous (Jacksonville FL); "Privacy" by Daniel Goscha (Urbana IL); "Vote Here!" by Anonymous (Minneapolis MN); "Other Arrangements" by Eric Talerico (Sierra Vista AZ); "Primary Distortion" by Marcus C. Emerson (San Diego CA); "A Chance for All" by Anonymous (Knoxville TN); "South Philadelphia" by Anonymous (2006 Midterms, Philadelphia PA); "Birmingham, Alabama" by Louise McPhillips; "Easy Access" by Nancy Wynn (Glastonbury CT); "Access to the Hawaiian Democratic Caucus" by Bruce Behnke (Pearl City HI).

[last updated 20 February 2008]

Another citizen detained, slated for deportation

MercuryRising and other blogs have the story of Thomas Warziniack, and how officials didn't expend the very minimal effort that would have protected his rights as a US citizen. Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia. Although family members have produced Warziniack's Minnesota birth certificate, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have been holding him in an Arizona detention facility pending deportation--because, they say, Warziniack claimed to be a Russian citizen upon arrest for minor drug charges. Warziniack has a Southern accent, does not speak Russian, and has never been to Russia. He is a former heroin addict who may experience mental illness, and he has no memory of making such claims. But "the immigration agents told me they never make mistakes," explained Warziniack.

"Proving citizenship is especially difficult for the poor, mentally ill, disabled or anyone who has trouble getting a copy of his or her birth certificate while behind bars," notes reporter Marisa Taylor. And because of such cases, immigration and citizenship are disability issues.

Stop Eugenics video and the HFEB

The HFEB, or Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill (the full phrase sounds ominous already, doesn't it?) is a piece of legislation before the British parliament that would make it illegal for couples or individuals to choose for an "abnormality." Clause 14 spells it out:

Persons or embryos that are known to have a gene, chromosome or mitochondrion abnormality involving a significant risk that a person with the abnormality will have or develop—

(a) a serious physical or mental disability,
(b) a serious illness, or
(c) any other serious medical condition,

must not be preferred to those that are not known to have such an abnormality.

This would prohibit, say, a Deaf woman from choosing a deaf donor to increase the chances of her child being deaf like her. There are myriad other troubling possibilities. English bloggers Grumpy Old Deafies are all over the case. Today they posted a video made in protest of the HFEB by stopeugenics.org:





Transcript of the title cards, which appear in white against black, between scenes of a line of paper cutout dolls being cut away from the line, one by one, with large scissors:

Nobody's perfect.
Nobody.
Not even you.
Stop Eugenics.
Just stop.
stopeugenics.org

More videos from the same campaign are here.

Disability History and Awareness Month

For readers living in North Carolina, today is the first day of Disability History and Awareness Month, as declared by your legislatures and signed by your governors. In West Virginia, October is Disability Awareness Month, and the third week of October is Disability History Week. Other states (Idaho, Iowa, Florida, Connecticut) are in the process of considering similar legislation. These designations came about through the work of young disability rights activists, who are learning how government works by meeting with officials, writing letters, and drafting such declarations. A designated week or month may not add any ramps to your neighborhood or stop any hate crimes, but it's evidence that a new generation of kids are getting trained to do the tedious stuff that will get a ramp built, a law changed, a law made, a law enforced...

Junius Wilson and Floyd Brown

I posted almost a year ago about Susan Burch and Hannah Joyner's research on Junius Wilson (1908-2001)--a deaf African-American man who was arrested at age 17 but never tried, was labeled insane, was placed in a state hospital in North Carolina, castrated, and held for more than seventy years. The extraordinary book Burch and Joyner co-wrote will be released this fall, as Unspeakable: The Life Story of Junius Wilson (UNC Press 2007).

It would be nice to think that stories like Wilson's are safely in the past, but they're just not. Floyd Brown is another North Carolina man, also African-American, also disabled, also arrested under shady circumstances and never tried, held in the state hospital for the last fourteen years now. Carolina Legal Assistance is on the case, trying to get the murder charge against Brown dismissed, so he can be freed. "Mr. Brown has fallen through the cracks," says the CLA's Greg McGrew. No doubt about that.

June 30: Derek Bentley (1933-1953)

The short descriptor for Derek Bentley in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is "victim of a miscarriage of justice." Hard to argue with that. Bentley was born on this date in 1933, in London (his twin didn't survive). He and his sister Iris were children during the Second World War, and had to be dug out of the rubble of their house during a bombing in London. He was considered "borderline feebleminded," and had a history of seizures. He never learned to read or write. Derek Bentley attended a few schools, with little success (one headmaster described him as "the most irregular boy I have had in my career"), and at fifteen was convicted of petty theft, and sent to reform school. He tried to work as a mover and a road sweeper, but couldn't manage long in either job.

In 1952, Bentley was caught trespassing in a warehouse with a sixteen-year-old named Christopher Craig. Fifteen minutes after Bentley was in police custody, Craig fired a gun and killed a police constable. Because Craig was a juvenile, he was sentenced to ten years in prison; Bentley, who never touched the gun, was sentenced to death. Despite protests, Derek Bentley was hanged on 28 January 1953, at the age of 19.

His parents (who died in 1976 and 1993) and his sister Iris Bentley (1931-1997) never gave up trying to clear Derek's name. In 1966, they succeeded in having his remains removed from the prison cemetery. The tombstone was eventually inscribed "a victim of British justice." A 1991 film about Bentley revived interest in the case, and in 1992, Iris convinced the police to re-examine the case. Derek Bentley was pardoned in 1993, and the conviction was overturned in 1998. Too late for Iris Bentley to see; and far too late for Derek Bentley.

[Image: A waist-up image of a blonde teenaged Bentley, wearing a black turtleneck, holding a cigarette in his mouth, a packet in his hands.]

Where is Pedro Guzman?

Nobody knows, including Pedro himself, at last word. While he was in jail for a misdemeanor trespassing violation, the 29-year-old Los Angeles-born man from Lancaster CA was mistakenly identified as a non-citizen, and turned over to Homeland Security for deportation in April. In mid-May, he called a relative, probably from Tijuana, but he wasn't sure. No word since then.

This week, his family filed suit against the LA County sheriff's department and the Department of Homeland Security. "My worst fear is that he is no longer living," explained Guzman's brother Michael. "He doesn't know how to read. He often can't remember his family phone number. He even gets lost if he gets off the main street in Lancaster." Michael Guzman confirmed that his brother attended special education classes before he dropped out of school; he speaks English and Spanish, but is unable to read in either language.

Pedro Guzman is an American citizen, a disabled man, abandoned by US government officials, alone in an unfamiliar place, after a misdemeanor trespassing violation. They could have looked up his birth certificate, or called his family, but nobody bothered. Now, nobody knows where he is. Or if he's even still alive.

At left above, a photo of Pedro Guzman, as shown at this local news website.

UPDATE (7 August): Pedro Guzman turned up alive in early August.

Fair housing and disability benefits

The disability law blogs (see Sam Bagenstos, Charles Fox) and others do a great job of covering court cases (like this new Ninth Circuit opinion, also from California). But here's a less-famous settlement in LA. The attorney wrote to us here at DS,TU, looking to publicize the outcome. She hopes the settlement can help other disabled tenants in the same bind as her client. Connie Y. Chung of the Housing Rights Center writes:

I'm a fair housing attorney at a non-profit organization in Los Angeles and I recently settled a disability discrimination case that I thought might interest you. My client is a tenant in Whittier who has multiple, serious disabilities and now subsists primarily on his Social Security disability benefits. Because his Social Security check arrives on the second Wednesday of the month while his rent is due on the first of the month, he requested a reasonable accommodation from his housing provider to change his rent due date to correspond with the date on which he receives his disability check. His manager refused, stating that changing his rent due date would require an extra trip to the bank and the accounting office wouldn't be able to complete its rent reconciliation under the normal timeframe. The tenant contacted our organization and when the manager rejected our request as well, we filed a lawsuit in federal court. Soon after the lawsuit was filed, the housing provider offered to settle with us by accepting a partial rent for March, which the tenant could cover without the Social Security check, and then the tenant would go back in April to paying the full rent at the beginning of the month.

Our organization is trying to publicize this case because it's very common for tenants subsisting on disability checks to request a change in their rent due date as a reasonable accommodation, but we believe this is the only lawsuit ever filed in the US that has addressed this issue. We're hoping that the more people know of these types of reasonable accommodation requests, the more they'll be granted.

Important point: "reasonable accommodation" doesn't mean "as long as it doesn't cause the slightest inconvenience or change in our procedures." And note that the accommodation here isn't about the tenant's impairment, but around the realities of mismatched external supports--it was a calendar thing. Congratulations to attorney Chung and the Housing Rights Center for a settlement that makes a lot of sense.

The Housing Rights Center also deals with the rights of tenants with companion animals, and other kinds of code enforcement. They present workshops and materials in various languages (their staff page lists folks who can assist clients in Spanish, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog, Armenian, and Russian), and at various venues (including "walk-in clinics" at public libraries, schools, and farmers markets), to serve the widest possible range of Angelenos.

Conference for Law Students with Disabilities, January 27 - 28, 2007 at American University in Washington, D.C.

The American Bar Association's (ABA) Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities' Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (IRR), along with the ABA's Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Lawand the ABA's Law Student Division, will be sponsoring a planning conference for a new national student organization that will encourage those with disabilities to pursue careers in the legal profession as well as assist them in the admissions process, throughout their tenure in law school, and in securing employment after graduation. Attendance at the conference is free and financial assistance for travel expenses is available on a first-come first-serve basis. The conference is being held at American University's Washington College of Law, Washington, D.C.

For more information, contact IRR at (202) 662-1030 or download the flier [PDF].

July 1: Happy Canada Day!

It's Canada Day, and it's also the sixtieth birthday of judge Rosalie Silberman Abella, who was appointed to the Canadian Supreme Court in 2004.

Justice Abella wrote for the majority in the big immigration cases last fall, Hilewitz v. Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration, and deJong v. Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration. In both cases, families who tried to immigrate to Canada were initially turned away, because their disabled children might impose "excessive demands" on state services. Wrote Abella in favor of the families:

The issue is not whether Canada can design its immigration policy in a way that reduces its exposure to undue burdens caused by potential immigrants. Clearly it can. But here the legislation is being interpreted in a way that impedes entry for all persons who are intellectually disabled, regardless of family support or assistance, and regardless of whether they pose any reasonable likelihood of excessively burdening Canada's social services.

Abella herself was once an immigrant child: she was born in a displaced persons camp in Stuttgart, Germany, to parents who had survived the Holocaust. The Silbermans immigrated to Canada in 1950, and twenty years later their oldest daughter graduated from law school. In 1975, she became the youngest person ever appointed to the bench in Canada (and the first pregnant judge in Canadian history too).

Yeah, Wow.

Disability Law blog has this story, with the comment "Wow." Agreed. (My son's IEP was yesterday; so, one more reason to be glad we don't live in Baraboo, I guess....)

California textbook bill already includes disability

Last Thursday, California state senator Sheila Kuehl was interviewed on the radio (the audio is here) about SB1437, "School Instruction: Prohibition of Discriminatory Content," a controversial state bill that would add "sexual orientation" to the list of identity categories to be presented without discrimination in school textbooks. The revised language would read:

No textbook or other instructional materials shall be adopted by the state board or by any governing board for use in the public schools that contains any matter reflecting adversely upon persons because of their race or ethnicity, gender, disability, nationality, sexual orientation, or religion.

Kuehl (once known for her portrayal of Zelda Gilroy on "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis") was one of the first women admitted to Harvard Law School, and is the first openly gay or lesbian person elected to the California legislature. She notes that if textbooks are "silent about the diversity of talented people who were important in California, the impression is that only white, straight men did anything important. That leaves virtually everyone else in school believing their talents may not be sufficient."

Maybe make that white, straight, able men? The disability clause is already part of the current law, and has been since 1987. Has it been enforced? I'm curious if it's ever had an impact. Under the new version (if passed), will California high school students in American history courses get to know that (for example) Hull House founder and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams (left, 1860-1935) was both lesbian and disabled (from spinal tuberculosis as a young child), and maybe talk about what it meant that she often had to conceal both these central elements of her life? How both might have shaped her work?

Cool.

Capitol protest

About five hundred disability-rights protesters from across the US visited the Capitol on Monday, organized by ADAPT; over a hundred of them were arrested for refusing to leave private offices, and some spent the night in jail. They targeted members of Congress who had not signed as co-sponsors of MiCASSA and other legislative efforts to combat the institutional bias in long-term care services. The story was widely if briefly reported in local television stations across the US (so there must be footage), and carried, again briefly, to newspapers by the AP (here's a shortlived link to that account, so read it quick). ADAPT's got a longer version, of course, with photos, here, and in this press release.