Human Rights

[image to the left says EVERY HUMAN HAS RIGHTS]

This post is a continuation of yesterday's, in fact I was thinking of just going on about it in that post, but I decided it was a separate topic.

So that march I went to on Sunday, the march started 1hr after it was supposed to. Plus, Going from Baltimore to DC on the weekend using public transit takes 3hrs each way. Needless to say, there was a lot of time to talk.

What did we talk about? We talked about human rights without ever really using the term "human rights." We talked about the "DD world," the "LGBT movement," and the "consumer movement" (mental health)

• We talked about how the DD world has it together way more than the consumer movement (at least here and mostly in terms of legislative POWER).
  
• I brought up "mad pride" and how that seems very new, although I know nothing about it really.
  
• She talked about the LGBT movement and how people are afraid to associate with the consumer movement because people still conceive LGBT as being a "mental illness" and it is not. They want to get far away from it.
  
• I talked about how I wondered why On Our Own isn't part of the Cross Disability Rights Coalition when psyc issues are disabilities? Plenty of people are on SSI/SSDI and medicaid because of them. CDRC is comprised of People on the Go and ADAPT. I was told that when it was formed the "DD folk" wanted to stay away from the "psyc peeps" because people often assume that they have psyc issues and they do not.
• She said that from what she's seen it goes both ways. Some people in the consumer movement don't want to hang out with DD folk because people think they have a DD.

I've tried to get people involved in CDRC and I've gotten the impression that they don't consider their issues disabilities (even people on medicaid/SSI/SSDI). They don't seem to care what disability, it's not specifically DD that is getting to people, it just seems like they think disability issues aren't their issues. My roommate seems to think that LGBT issues aren't my issues. Well I've got news--THEY'RE EVERYBODY'S ISSUES.

We couldn't really hear anyone at the rally, so we left early, but the little I got was that employment discrimination (specifically 'don't ask don't tell') and feeling like a second class citizen are big things. I know I've written on here about feeling like a second class citizen and I'm pretty sure I've written about the fact that 70% of PWD 18-64 who can and want to work are unemployed in the US (WAIT! I did, and it was in a post bout psyc issues. See... cross-issue) A lot of PWD can't get married, very similarly to LGBT. If they get married they lose their services--their SSI, their health insurance, their attendant care, things that they need to survive. I told my friend that the aging community was involved in COMMUNITY NOW as well as the disability community. There isn't anything different about their imprisonment. She wonders why more things can't be like that. Why people stay in their silos. So do I.

The picture below was taken on Sunday in Atlanta. The man in the picture is within the grounds of the nursing home where he lives--THAT IS SURROUNDED BY BARBED WIRE. These are HUMAN ISSUES. No one should have to live like that.