Takes up: potential budget cuts in New Jersey affecting people with disabilities; a plan in Nova Scotia, Canada, to relocate all of its citizens living with disabilities from institutional settings; and Frances Vicioso, a Black-Latina storyteller with mental illness and physical disabilities, leading a “Black Disability History” webinar.
Takes up: a program in Southeast Asia to help people with disabilities migrate without barriers; scrutiny of abusive educational practices in England against children with learning disabilities and severe mental disorders; and students with disabilities win a Disabled Student Bill of Rights at the American University in D.C.
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: Disability services for students in college; the Supreme Court in Japan ruling unconstitutional the Eugenics Protection Law, which prevented people with disabilities from giving birth; and the life of disability rights activist Margot Imdieke Cross.
Takes up: employees at a hospital in Japan sexually abusing patients with severe disabilities; the push to enforce Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act in the U.S.; ‘Menopause and Me,’ a video for women with autism and learning disabilities; and an update of the situation of people with disabilities in Russia.
Takes up: disabled children and of color being restrained and secluded in U.S. schools; the All Abilities Ball in Gympie, Queensland, Australia; and the need to ban e-scooters in Toronto, Canada.
Takes up: Disability Pride Month; inaccessibility in Montreal’s light-rail stations; proposing cuts to disability payments in the UK, and Case Dominique School in Congo-Brazzaville for children with autism and Down Syndrome.
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.
People with disabilities protest UK anti-protest law; Senegal woman with disabilities works to ensure access for disabled children; Saskatchewan people with disabilities demand better access and benefits.
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.
Readers’ Views on: Iran: Woman, Life, Freedom; Election Threats and Battles; Women’s Marches and Enemies; Sexist Supreme Court; Ukrainians Fight for Freedom; Para-Transit Disservice; Mike Davis; Labor Struggles, from Amazon…to the Bank.
Handicap This! on disabled dancer Rodney Bell Ngati Maniapoto; disabled students’ fight for rights at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and Ireland’s first Disability Pride and Power Festival in July.
The difficulties people with disabilities are experiencing in Ukraine as it is being attacked by Russia; the newly formed Marion County (Oregon) Advisory Group will help the disability community connect with emergency management during emergencies; and the Australian Disability Enterprises refused to raise their sub-minimum wage for disabled workers.
Takes up: Difficulty for a disabled raped women in Kyrgyzstan to get justice; Mexican women marching on International Women’s Day for disabled women’s rights; the Disability Rights Coalition of Nova Scotia hailing a victory; and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons’ ad seeking psychologists boasted of all the mentally ill people in U.S. prisons.
Pennsylvania prisoners are not afforded any quality healthcare or meaningful relief, even from debilitating conditions; not even from disability.
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.
Handicap This! takes up an inhuman “assisted suicide” bill being debated in the House of Lords in UK; the working conditions of caregivers; the effects of COVID-19 on government-funded caregiver agencies in Ireland; and the danger the Taliban pose for disabled people in Afghanistan.
Adele reviews the book “They Didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties” by Lisa Levenstein.
Five Canadian feminist activists released The Care Economy Statement proclaiming that caregiving is a societal responsibility; through February, thousands of feminists demonstrated across France in support of “Julie,” a 25-year-old woman who when younger was raped over 100 times by 20 firemen; in memoriam for Nawal El Sadaawi, an Egyptian radical feminist, Marxist, writer and activist; and the Illinois Prison Project launched the Women and Survivors Project.
On March 24, around 200 activists protested against a surprise eviction of the tent encampment in Echo Park. There is antagonism between houseless people and the families and businesses close to them. For poor communities to scapegoat even poorer people is the way that the 1% keep us fighting for space and resources while they throw us bones.
People with disabilities falling through the cracks when trying to get vaccinated; Egyptian TV show centers people with disabilities; half of people killed by police are people with disabilities; cop dumps Whitney Mitchell out of wheelchair at a protest and leaves her helpless on the ground.
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.”
During the pandemic Supplemental Security Income has been steadily collapsing, severely affecting handicapped and elderly people; In Ghana people with disabilities face confinement and in some cases physical violence and prejudice; and in the U.S. there has been an increase in the number of women killing their disabled children and then committing suicide.
Nationwide Black-led revolt and white supremacist backlash, class struggles and the ravages of a pandemic and economic collapse are taking place amid election battles and attacks on democracy.
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.
Domino’s Pizza inaccessible website; disability rights advocate Marca Bristo dies; Orange County, California, residential care homes owing over $1 million in back wages, and British rock climber Jesse Dufton leading the ascent of the Old Man of Hoy.
Nursing home resident tells of feeling like a prisoner in her home, and overcrowding, malpractice and mistreatment of residents caused by underfunding and understaffing in for-profit nursing homes.
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.
We look at the true opposition to Trumpism: mass revolt worldwide of women, youth, Black people, labor…–the context to work for new beginnings.
Women have changed the world through an incredible and sustained activism based on a humanism that runs like a revolutionary red thread through an amazing array of actions, demonstrations and statements. This development is based on over 50 years of a movement that the founder of Marxist-Humanism, Raya Dunayevskaya, characterized as “Woman as Revolutionary Force and Reason.” .
New Jersey medical parole passed; Chicago cop shoots autistic teen; films lack characters with disabilities.
“No cuts to Medicaid” sit-in; UK official endorses forced institutionalization; nursing homes dump people with disabilities; rally at Illinois Capitol demanding budget; four prisoners with disabilities executed in Arkansas.
ADAPT takes over Thompson Center in Chicago to demand a meeting with Governor; 40 Guatemalan girls killed in a fire where disabled and children were housed in inhumane conditions; a British conservative councilor and special needs teacher accused disabled persons who protested cuts and privatization of the National Health Service of making false claims to avoid work.
An in-depth Marxist-Humanist view of the state of the women’s movement in the U.S. and worldwide as it responds to the rising fascism of U.S. President Trump and other world leaders.
India: fight for institutionalized women with disabilities; England: cuts to the personal budgets of disabled people; U.S.: standard of education for many disabled children could be raised if Supreme Court rules that they should receive “meaningful benefit” in education; and Transgender African-American woman Kayla Moore, who had schizophrenia, is killed by police.
Reports from the huge Women’s March from participants in Chicago, Ill., Detroit, Mich., Oakland, Calif., Nashville, Tenn., Memphis, Tenn., Los Angeles, Calif., and New York City.
The lightning move by Republicans in Congress to prepare to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare—before Donald Trump even took office, with only the vaguest idea of what is to replace it, and with full knowledge that a large majority of Americans oppose the repeal of its most important provisions—gave a sign of how far the new single-party government intends to roll the clock back, with dizzying speed.
Mass murder of disabled in Japan demonstrates humanity’s willingness, all over the world into the U.S.’s Illinois, to ignore the complete humanity of the differently abled.
Pasadena schools deny equal education to students with mental health needs; Florida prisons deny disabled prisoners access to wheelchairs, canes, sign language interpreters and hearing aids; and a proposed rule requires federal agencies to work toward more workforce representation of the disabled.
A summary of disability rights actions around the world including: the savaging of overtime pay for personal assistants in Illinois; a bill in Madison, Wisc., seeking stronger rules for investigating abuse and neglect of children with disabilities; and the arrest in Chennai, India, of disabled rights activists.
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.
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.
