ELLIE'S BLOG on Living Well with Disability

And what role should society play when these things happen? This is a question that is again re-surfacing that must be answered if our capitalist country remains a strong democracy. I am reminded of the 60's when I was strong, active and healthy in my late 20's.  People remember different things about this tumultuous decade. The hippies, Vietnam, riots and marches etc..

I also remember that Civil Rights was becoming a large and immediate issue with the desegregation of schools. But finally the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964.  This was the beginning of our society's awareness of the lack of civil rights for all of us including the disabled.  Although it took 30 more years for the ADA to pass.

I also remember in 1965 Congress passed Medicare and Medicaid in an amendment to the 1935 Social Security Act (the year I was born). This and the Civil Rights Act like Social Security 30 years before had been a long time coming.  There were people on both sides of the issue that felt strongly for and against.  Obviously more supported the Acts and Amendments and they passed.

If you follow the news you are aware that they are still controversial with some people as is the Health Care Reform recently passed. I myself am a very strong advocate of universal Health Care with manageable costs.

In the 60's I was front and center to see the needs of many of the people in our country. I was working for much of that time as a Home Care Physical Therapist in Brooklyn N.Y.  I lived in one of the best areas. I also saw patients in their homes there as well as the worst areas like Bedford Stuyvesant.

What I saw formed my thinking of the need for constant vigilance to protect the people who had bad things happen and then became one of our vulnerable. And I realized that in order for society to play a meaningful role, government had to be involved. I welcomed the passage of both of these Acts as I did 30 years later when the ADA passed.

We have made a lot of progress in both health care and civil rights since the sixties.  But unfortunately slowly we have lost economic equality. The rich are getting much, much richer and have increased their influence and power on our government. While the rest of us (90%) are losing. In the current recession all the past decades of  bad eggs are coming  home to roost.

We have very high levels of unemployment (where are the jobs ?) this is only going to foster tremendous problems down the line. Will we have a lost a whole generation? What about all the hope the disabled community was beginning to have?  We were just beginning to establish our civil rights as natural to our fellow citizens.

Below is a poem by Jane Mayhall that was published in a book "GIVERS AND TAKERS 2"  in 1966.    It was relevant then and is relevant now.

NOTES FOR THAT BIG GOLD BOOK

All evaporated, nobody real.

Yesterday was not so much better.

Then I didn't try or exert. 

When good- looking couple

made nasty fun of cripples,

I thought," oh well, the sins

of the world."  I was an easy-going

snob.  And the couple seemed to me

no more capable than worms,

I  know now, they rule the ramparts

of the sky.

To evaporate is to die.

The standards are collapsed.

Jiggling  puppets of wickedness

flay their victims, victims

flay their gods.

We are dawdling and obscene,

Slaves to catastrophism.

(Nothing was intrinsic but desire.)

What is the difference to me ?

My muscles ache like foam

bristling on the waters.  Disillusion,

emptiness conjoin.

But I feel a raging impulse:

"Listen to me, world.  Now you

Must change. "

   And change we can. We can do so much better.  We have to think beyond ourselves. We have to accept our responsibilities to our fellow citizens. We must remember we were once a society. Most of us once felt that we are all in this together. I hope and pray we can do this again.                   ellie

 

                                     

         A female Black Swallowtail Butterfly  visits our garden for sustenance.