Reply #58: Some ideas in that vein.

[Banazir]

Yes. Keeping alive, and valuing our lives, and showing others that our lives have value independent of what our abilities are, absolutely. The ability-based elitism so many have, like someone's better in some kind of absolute moral sense just because they are able to do something someone else can't do, that's a huge problem.

Unfortunately some disabled people fall into it, putting ourselves over other kinds of disabled people. I knew a disability scholar who was shocked to find many physically disabled people got their self-esteem from not being cognitively disabled, for instance. I think it's vital when we're doing things that we're working for all of us. Not just in a superficial sense. Learning what matters to different ones of us and incorporating that even if it seems foreign. No "Nursing homes are bad, but developmental centers are natural," no "Developmental centers are bad, but psych wards are natural," and so forth. No splintering, but no automatic assumptions that we know what's best for someone whose life situation is totally different (we hate it when non-disabled people do that to us). Real thought. A real, inclusive, non-tokenistic progressive disability movement I guess is what I'm talking about, and what I've missed. (And both progressives and conservatives have screwed us over thus far, which is unfortunate. I really don't see genuine disability rights as being high on most people's agenda -- at best, we're seen as solely a health care issue, and at worst, we're seen in terms of our "right" to be eliminated from the planet while the rights that would help our lives be better are ignored.)

And, yes, doing things to ensure the safety of all is vital, and even to include people who wouldn't normally be thought of as includable. Really broadening the ideas of who is capable of participation, and what participation means. Participation can be asserting our existence in a positive way. I still believe that many of the so-called "non-compliant violent clients" (and those used to be my labels) stuck in group homes and other institutions are revolutionaries. I know that right now there must be tons of people who are housebound and don't have a lot of contact with the outside world, tons of people who are homeless, tons of people who are institutionalized, tons of people who for whatever reason don't have access to a means of communication that others understand. It's really important that with laws that could kill all of us, we stand up for the lives and value of all of us -- not "We're good because we're not like those others," but "We're good because we're part of human diversity."

And... yes. Basically what you said. Just expanding on it a bit myself. I'm something relatively close to housebound. What I do is educate my support staff and hope they educate more people. I give them writing by disability activists, I discuss the issues with them, I make sure they know that we are valuable people no matter what we can or can't do by non-disabled standards and no matter what category or "degree" of disability we get put under. The guy who was here tonight said he'd be distributing some of the literature I showed him to other people, and I showed him the DU site too at one point. It's vital, IMO, that we get other people, disabled and non-, seeing all of us as having full personhood and value. People being decent to each other, and knowing what it means to be decent to each other, is more vital than even the laws are, despite the fact that we need the laws as well: Without that, then the laws will fail, and with that, there will be more people grasping and responding to our political issues even if the laws are rescinded.