Tiger Beatdown

In Oregon, disabled workers have recently filed suit against officials who support sheltered workshops, arguing that they are Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) violations and officials have an obligation to promote supported employment over sheltered workshops. For those not familiar with the intersections between labour and disability, the case is a fascinating glimpse of a complex system and the history behind it; a system that enforces poverty for people with disabilities, limits independence and autonomy, and provides a large pool of low-cost and sometimes free labour.

Labour rights are a critical social justice issue, and issues specific to the disability community are often ignored, perhaps under the mistaken belief that people with disabilities can’t work, don’t want to work, or won’t work. The unemployment rate is extremely high among people with disabilities, and attitudes about disability and work leave many employees extremely vulnerable to exploitation. It’s critical to integrate discussions about disability into larger conversations on the subject of labour, and to include people with disabilities in these discussions.

The turn towards sheltered workshops began in the wake of the First World War; prior to that, many people with disabilities were provided with training in useful trades, with the goal of allowing them to support themselves independently. Such programmes were funded and supported by governments as well as community organisations, providing opportunities for people with disabilities and placing a strong emphasis on independence and self-supporting work. (Continued)

As Sady just noted at In These Times, 2012 is going to be a year of anti-reproductive justice laws, specifically targeted at effectively ending abortion in the United States. In shocking news, a recent study concluded that when abortion is illegal, rates of unsafe abortions rise, and globally, we are having a serious problem with access to safe abortion services. Conservatives in the United States are warring not just on the right to access reproductive health care, but also quite literally the right to be alive with their proposals to ban abortion. Scaremongering and dramatic tactics are going to be on the increase among anti-choice ‘activists,’ and they’re coming out swinging already: An Oklahoma legislator just introduced a bill to ban the use of fetal tissue in food.

Because, you know. Fetal tissue in food is a pressing public health issue that requires immediate action.

We’ve just been reminded by Rick Santorum that pregnancy after a rape is ‘a gift from g-d,’ indicating the extreme to which some anti-choicers will go to protect ‘the sanctity of life.’ For people who think life is a gift from the heavens, though, they’re surprisingly cavalier with the lives of people providing reproductive health services:

Since 1977, the National Abortion Federation has documented eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 41 bombings, 175 instances of arson, 391 invasions, 100 butyric acid attacks, 662 anthrax threats, 523 instances of stalking and 418 death threats against clinic workers. (source)

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The attack on reproductive rights in the United States is likely to heat up in 2012, and we have an early entrant in the race to the bottom in the form of a court decision that went through on Friday, ordering the immediate enforcement of a mandatory sonogram law in Texas. More specifically:

The law, enacted in 2011, requires abortion providers to perform an ultrasound on pregnant women, show and describe the image to them, and play sounds of the fetal heartbeat. Though women can decline to view images or hear the heartbeat, they must listen to a description of the exam…unless she qualifies for an exception due to rape, incest or fetal abnormality.

This is not the first state with such a law and I fear it’s going to become a growing trend in the US, right along with dismembered fetus anti-abortion ads on television. The right wing is bent on making abortions as difficult to access as possible through every possible means, and that includes coercive, invasive, and unwanted interference from their medical providers. As spelled out under the law, this is yet another hoop in the series people with unwanted or dangerous pregnancies must jump through to get access to medical care, and it’s a humiliating and shaming one.

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People are heading to the polls in New  Hampshire today, kicking off the official primary cycle in the United States. This year, a lot of eyes are on tactics used to prevent people from voting, particularly targeting low-income communities of colour and nonwhite people. There’s a laundry list of voter suppression tools that are getting significant coverage in the news, but one in particular is receiving almost no media coverage:

Voting while disabled. Yes, we vote!

The exact number of inaccessible polling places in the United States isn’t known, although this undated article puts the number at around 20,000, in direct violation of multiple laws. Various clauses which enforce accessibility in polling places to some degree can be found in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Voting Accessibility for Elderly and Handicapped Act of 1984, the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, and the Help America Vote Act of 2002. That’s a whole lot of legislation. 22 years after passage of the ADA, we’re still struggling to make polling places accessible, let alone address full access and inclusion in society for people with disabilities.  (Continued)