View of the struggle and rights of people living with disabilities: an art series depicting youth with disabilities in Nigeria, Kenya and Senegal; a seminar for women with disabilities in Tanzania; Disability Pride in the U.S. and Canada; a protest in Brussels against segregation in residential care homes.
Takes up: Minnesota Personal Care Assistants (PCAs) who agitated for better wages and overtime pay won; Hereford’s Mercia Learning in the UK applied to convert a day nursery into a Growth, Empowerment and Motivation school, to educate 30 neurodivergent students; and on April 26 people with disabilities protested train travel into Paris, France, as most of the 12 million people with disabilities in France struggle because of taxis and train ramps that cannot accommodate wheelchairs, or no ramps at all.
People with disabilities make up 15% of the population. They are in every country and culture on earth. One thing that unites the disabled is that capitalism is a world not made for us, and communism is the only way to establish true freedom and equality for everyone.
Efforts to declare an end to the COVID pandemic are part of a drive to return to a pretended normal, to keep anything fundamental from changing–even if it means leaving the door wide open for the next pandemic
Readers’ Views on: Women’s Struggles for Freedom; Open Season on Lgbtq+ ; Healthcare Workers on Strike; Lois Curtis; Immigrant Solidarity Needed; Putin vs. Ukraine; U.S. Right vs. Ukraine; Water and Humanity’s Future
Takes up: Vanuatu, a Pacific island country, developed a national sign language, Storian wetem han; in Minnesota personal care assistants have won a wage increase through the SEIU Healthcare Minnesota union; the UN celebrated the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on Dec. 3.
Asian-American disability rights activist Alice Wong’s memoir “Year of the Tiger”; In Poland, caregivers of children with disabilities called for the right to work part-time jobs while keeping government stipends; and disability rights activists critique California’s CARE Courts Act, where courts can order involuntary treatment plans for people with psychotic disorders.
The Women’s March and other groups held A Women’s Wave Day of Action on Oct. 8, 2022, demanding a nationwide right to abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted that right. Women, youth, and allies are aware of the importance of reproductive justice to our lives and democracy and are motivated to organize and creatively fight back.
Readers’ Views on Absolute Idea and Self-Liberation; Labor and Ecology; Avoiding Race; and Voices from behind Bars.
Handicap This! on disgusting comments by the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding the disabled; the opening of a center for people who struggle with mental health and other issues in Wales; discrimination on many U.S. university campuses against the disabled; and the Society for Philosophy and Disability.
Autistic man in UK awarded damages in a discrimination case against Virgin Active; professor at Oxnard College put on leave for berating hard-of-hearing student; “little person” banned from a cooking class at Heart of Worcestershire College; London Stansted Airport pulls special assistance from woman because she “didn’t look ill.”
Staggering COVID-19 death toll in New York nursing homes and nationwide in nursing homes housing the disabled; impact of school closures on special needs students; Team Brit allows people with disabilities to participate in motorsports.
April Dunn, advocate for alternative ways for students with disabilities to get a diploma; workers and disabled adults in group homes don’t get medical equipment they need to avoid COVID-19 and to care for those who have it; the fear that the disabled have that they are disposable in the COVID-19 pandemic; and how pediatricians are considering denying organ transplants to kids with disabilities.
Handicap This! column on Black Disability History; maltreatment of children with disabilities; and bill aimed at phasing out the subminimum wage paid to over 150,000 disabled workers.
A roundup of actions around people with disabilities: Secretary of Education’s drive to rescind federal guidelines ensuring that disabled and minority students not face unfair discipline; Japan’s plans to use the 2020 Paralympic Games to make Tokyo hotels and public transportation more accessible; the insufficiency of Social Security Disability Insurance; and how charter schools are less likely than public to respond to enquiries regarding disabled students.
Marxist-Humanist analysis of the nature of President Donald Trump’s inhuman immigration policy, the damage it is causing and the outcry against it, including from his own base.
Women’s Marches took place around the U.S. and the world in 2017 AND 2018, once again showing that the opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump is alive, thriving, militant and exuberant.
Santa Barbara’s jail system and sheriff are sued; Texas caps the number of students who can receive special education services; people with disabilities criticize Esther McVey, the Work and Pensions Secretary in the United Kingdom.
New Jersey medical parole passed; Chicago cop shoots autistic teen; films lack characters with disabilities.
On the 60th anniversary of News & Letters we discuss its philosophic basis and invite readers to participate.
A roundup of the situation of people with disabilities and how they are fighting for their rights including in Mexico, a prison in Carlisle, Penn., outrage against the shackling of two young students with disabilities in Covington, KY, the banning of a child with cerebral palsy and autism in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, and disabled people in Iraq who face neglect and isolation.
Black lives as Subject; Russia in crisis; Nothing about us without us; Homelessness in L.A.; Central Canada Alliance; Perspectives and philosophy; Elderly to the streets?; Women and Yemen half-peace; Labor and climate justice; Dialectic and women’s liberation; Voices from behind the bars
A roundup of actions around disabilities, including the police gunning down of mentally ill Thaddeus McCarroll in St. Louis, MO; a protest against Peter Singer, who called for legalizing killing disabled infants; and how American Airlines forced a woman in crawl onto a plane.
How a Black woman in Chicago with several handicaps became a disabilities rights activist.
When Deborah Cunningham, an ADAPT activist and Executive Director of the Memphis Center for Independent Living, died on May 7, the movement lost a tireless, creative, committed activist, feminist and thinker.
In the absence of successful social revolution, today’s total crisis is shown in a world capitalist order that is falling apart economically, politically, environmentally, and in thought. That does not mean that we can wait for capitalism to collapse and step aside for a new society. On the contrary. Its desperation makes it that much more vicious, and it threatens to doom all of humanity with it.
Revolt and Counter-Revolution, from Greece to Syria; Here Come the Reformers; Women’s Freedom; Against Racism
Several hundred people blocked streets; Women with disabilities dumped into institutions; Judge hits mentally disabled man.
Rauner’s $1.5 billion Medicaid cuts will have a devastating impact on those who depend on this program for their healthcare. “Some people will die from these cuts,” a woman at the rally said.
Missouri school district forced to return student’s cane; memorial for people with disabilities systematically murdered by Nazis; people with disabilities enslaved in South Korea’s salt fields.
Illinois Governor Rauner has made his living out of exploiting the disabled and elderly in his many nursing homes.
Disability Rights Iowa filed a complaint charging that Governor Terry Branstad is failing to provide services to disabled Iowans; Disability Rights International is fighting the Guatemalan government over dangerous conditions in the Federico Mora psychiatric institution.
From the July-August 2014 issue of News & Letters
Chicago—On May 26, a group of 14 people from Chicago ADAPT went to Springfield, Ill., to push for the passage of House Bill #349 whose purpose is to make the 5% temporary personal income tax in Illinois permanent. Without that happening, we face huge cuts in [=>]
LABOR AND IMMIGRATION
On April 8, about 100 people, the majority young Latinas/os, gathered in front of Los Angeles City Hall to protest the deportation of immigrants. Obama’s administration has aggressively deported 2,000,000 immigrants. We held signs reading: “Not Even One More!” and “No Separation of Family!” Separation of family members has serious adverse effects [=>]
Hungary’s discrimination; violence against women with disabilities in EU; Jenny Hatch wins right to make her own decisions; death of Michael Anthony Kerr, a North Carolina prisoner with disabilities.
Chicago ADAPT, along with Community Alliance and Northside Action For Justice, held an action at the offices of the Department of Human Services, which also houses the office of the Department of Rehabilitation Services because of the conflicting and confusing information we were getting from the state heads of human services versus the various DRS offices throughout Illinois.
Cops beat deaf man in Hawthorne, Calif.; Assad’s forces torment man with Down Syndrome in Syria; South Carolina abuses mentally ill prisoners; disabled Chicago woman illegally evicted.
People shared stories about their experiences with Medicaid, the minimum wage, disability rights, and talked about the importance of seeing the human side of issues. The only things the legislators would say was that “revenues were the problem.”
Vigil for Rights of Persons with Disabilities bill in India; 6.5 million refugees with disabilities; Iraq camp for Syrian refugees with disabilities; Georgia: marginalization of children with disabilities.
Readers’ Views from Nov.-Dec. 2013 N&L: U.S. RACISM AND BLACK AND LATINO STRUGGLES; LABOR UNDER ATTACK; CTA vs. THE HOMELESS; DISABILITY AND HUMANITY; ABORTION IS A HUMAN NEED; EGYPT’S CONTRADICTIONS; DETROIT CRISIS; NUCLEAR PERIL; WHY A NEWSPAPER LIKE N&L?
Bus discrimination in Leeds, England; school sit-in in Pennsylvania; Russia “psychiatric” repression; Montreal voting rights
The only way to get out of Administrative Segregation is by attending the Gang Renouncement and Dissociation Process. After many months I was told that I could not attend this program because the units do not house inmates with wheelchairs and don’t have cells or showers for the handicapped.
Detroit Eviction Defense is fighting to keep Jerome Jackson in his home in Inkster, Mich. Jackson has been a leading fighter in Detroit Eviction Defense, active in many campaigns to keep others in their homes. We fight with the Hernandez and Orozco families in Southwest Detroit fighting Fannie Mae and its out-of-control efforts to throw families from their homes and cause further damage to our neighborhoods. Resistance is growing; join us! We demand no more foreclosures, no more evictions and good housing for all.
Readers’ Views, September-October 2013, Part II
Readers’ Views, September-October 2013, Part I
Solitary confinement in Contra Costa County juvenile hall; New Bedford theater expulsion; Providence school makes disabled students work manual labor for little or no pay
News & Letters, Vol. 58, No. 3
May – June 2013
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2013-2014
Capitalism’s violence, masses’ revolt show need for total view
The world today is riven between the creativity of masses in revolt and the violent degeneracy of counter-revolution, whose destructiveness even extends to the revived specter of nuclear war two decades after the collapse [=>]
AT THE CROSSROADS OF HISTORY
When the Green Movement started in Iran over the 2009 election, the so-called leaders were part of the government who were against Ahmadinejad. The growth of the movement of women and youth got so big it became “out of control” by the so-called leaders. The government leaders got scared because [=>]
by Suzanne Rose
England—Church of England leaders want doctors to have the right to withhold treatment from disabled newborn babies in “exceptional circumstances,” even though it will “certainly result in death.” The church states that the principle of “justice” inevitably means that the potential cost of long term healthcare and education in the saving of [=>]
On Oct. 3 the Connecticut State Supreme Court made the inhuman and sexist decision to overturn the sexual assault conviction of a man who “had sex” with a woman who has severe cerebral palsy, with the intellectual functional equivalent to a three-year-old and who cannot verbally communicate. The Court held that, because Connecticut statutes define [=>]
