Debating Advocacy Priorities

This response by Laura Hershey, one of our movement's foundational thinkers, is too good not to share:

Debating Advocacy Priorities: Free the Oppressed, or Promote Employment?

By Laura Hershey

Always willing to challenge the disability rights movement with provocative ideas, my friend Josie Byzek has now written a column calling on our advocacy movement to make employment a top priority. It

Eggheady Thoughts on Employment

By now you’ve probably seen the funny Think Beyond the Label commercial that encourages businesses to hire people with disabilities. If not, you can watch the commercial here, and read an excellent New York Times article about the campaign here.

This campaign focuses on an issue that – strangely – isn’t a high

Relief for Haitians with Disabilities

Paul Timmons, board chair of the disaster-relief group Portlight Strategies, says there’s a good reason his group focuses on people with disabilities. “It’s a screaming need,” says Timmons, who has a physical disability himself. “The large relief providers, almost without exception, don’t even have us on their radar, much less in their sights. Things as simple as shelter accessibility get overlooked.” And don’t get him started on FEMA.

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Jan 19 11:48

Swine Flu, MS and Vaccines

“I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”

— T.S. Eliot, in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Obviously I haven’t yet actually died from swine flu, although a few times I have begged God to just kill me. A bit melodramatic, to be sure. But now that I think I truly am finally recovering, I feel a kinship with Lazarus.

The flu means fever, and fevers with MS are terrifying. I’ve been through enough to have a plan: Basically, I don’t let ibuprofen out of my

Health Care Reform: Shhh ... Let it Cook

Within the disability community, we’re all being very quiet and polite right now about health care reform. I don’t know if you noticed, but there haven’t been any big action alerts, rallies or even publicized meetings among our activists about the issue in quite a while.

It’s like this whole process is a soufflé of sorts and we don’t want it to implode. Well, when I say “we,” I mean generally those of us who see ourselves as left of center, politically. Partisans on the right are jumping up and down and doing all they can to get

Thoughts on Compost

I’ve been thinking lately about compost.

Gardening is brutal. To cultivate what we desire, we murder a lot of perfectly-fine plants. And most of us dispose of our victims’ bodies – the weeds, the saplings, the beautiful-but-unloved bushes – on a compost pile. Some folks do it right and mix in coffee grounds, egg shells and organic dinner left-overs. I suspect most are like me: We dump our clippings and then make sure they’re turned once or twice a season. The reward is richer soil and free mulch for our gardens. Every gardener knows what grows thrives

ADAPT's Marsha Katz Responds