The Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies Update

https://goo.gl/Xj1Ag8
The Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies (the Partnership) and Portlight Inclusive Disaster Strategies (Portlight) have continued our active support for disaster impacted individuals and communities throughout the catastrophic storms and fires of late summer and fall.

  The Partnership and Portlight have assisted thousands of disaster survivors with disabilities, their families and the many generous people trying to help in the wake of hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, the catastrophic flooding and the challenging relief efforts that followed. We have concurrently supported disability leaders responding to the California wildfires.  

  With your support, we maintained clear focus on our core mission: Equal access and full inclusion for the whole community before, during and after disasters. In addition to our relief efforts, led by Portlight, the coordinating efforts of the Partnership are focused on building a national infrastructure to prepare for all disasters to follow, driving transformational policy changes and engaging and supporting disability stakeholders and disability led organizations in leadership roles.

  Our work always assumes the adage "nothing about us without us" and we are committed to involving disability organizations throughout engagement, training, tools, technical assistance, employment and leadership development and all aspects of our work.



From sexual harassment to hostile colleagues: readers' experiences of life with a disability

https://goo.gl/epbGWJ

Worst, by far, have been the ghosts’

I’ve just started using a symbol cane (a shorter version of the cane most people associate with blindness) in public. I’m progressively losing my sight due to a congenital nerve disorder, and was tired of bumping into everyone and the understandably irate responses that followed. The cane, I thought, would solve all that. How wrong I was.

Any benefit I’ve received is mitigated by my negative experiences. Some of the worst of these have been with people who try to “test” me. I’ve had people deliberately stand in my way to see if I move around them; one lad tried to run me down with his bike; another started waving his hands in my face to see if I reacted. I’ve also had a fair bit bit of unwanted guidance: people grabbing my arm or touching me without permission in order to steer me. Personally, I find it rather alarming to have a complete stranger manhandling me, no matter how benevolent their intentions. 

But the worst, by far, have been the “ghosts” – a polite term for a pretty ghastly phenomenon. I’ll be sat in a cafe, minding my own business, with my cane at my side. A man (so far they’ve all been men, and I have speculated whether this is a new, bizarre form of sexual harassment) will plonk himself, uninvited, at my table without a word, then just sit and stare at me. When I challenge them, they don’t respond; they just shift about in their seats, ignoring me. Every time, there have been empty tables they could have sat at instead.

This has never happened when my cane wasn’t visible, and I now make sure it’s folded away so that I appear “sighted”. I can think of no excuse for this level of intimidation and harassment. It’s massively affected my confidence, and I’m seriously beginning to question whether using the cane is worth the bother. But why should I feel forced to relinquish something that has been so useful in other respects? Daisy Higman


Trump’s Hostility Toward Immigrants Hurting Disabled

https://goo.gl/YXsr5w

A year ago, I was accepted into a buy-in Medicaid program for disabled working adults. The program allows disabled adults to work by providing us with in-home caretakers, the only insurance which provides such coverage. Unfortunately, no government-approved home-health agency would take my case because, inter alia, they were short-staffed. They simply couldn’t find Americans willing to work a low wage position that entails lifting and the intimacies of care-taking.

So I had to hire and pay an independent contractor caretaker out-of-pocket to have my basic needs met. I had only three requirements for the employee: 1) she could transfer my 100 lb frame; 2) she didn’t steal or have a criminal record; and 3) she wasn’t an addict, who would steal my medication, which are vital to my functionality.......

After I was out of recovery, she said, “Okay, we’re going out to dinner…my treat. If I’m going to tell you all my secrets, I need to do it over some food and alcohol!”There, she confessed how she found out, after thirty years of living in this country, that she was undocumented. Her mysterious appointments were with an immigration attorney to try to ascertain her status, only to find out that her green card expired long ago.

After caring for the most vulnerable among us, enduring patients who spat racial epithets at her after she changed their diapers, going to college and incurring student loans, and committing not a single criminal offense, she was, in the eyes of our current administration, “illegal,”…a criminal. The person who made me able to get out of bed, shower, get to appointments and, most of all, work and contribute to society was, now, a criminal.......

Trump’s hostility toward immigrants, even toward those who were brought here as children, not only shows how deeply our President lacks empathy, but it strikes fear into honest, law-abiding, loving, caregiving people, who dedicate their lives to helping the most helpless Americans in this country. Eliminating DACA and making our existing immigration laws even harsher not only harms immigrants who contribute to our society in a way our fellow Americans are unwilling to do, but injures those Americans, like myself, who rely on such selfless people. It leaves disabled Americans to search for an American who isn’t a criminal or opioid addict, and is willing to perform underpaid intimate manual labor.

Moreover, these deportations leave the healthcare industry further short-staffed. And the immigrants will not only be forced to emigrate into an unfamiliar country, in which they have no ability to make a living, forcing them into poverty, but their student loans will go unpaid, and their American patients will be left with no dignity. Eliminating Dreamers from our country strips immigrants of their dreams and many disabled Americans of our dreams of independence and self-determination. In short, it strips this country of the very definition of the American Dream.



Medicaid Cuts May Force Retirees Out of Nursing Homes

First Medicaid cuts destroy the community-based support system, then the nursing home system....
https://goo.gl/DQpYmw

Alice Jacobs, 90, once owned a factory and horses. She has raised four children and buried two husbands.

But years in an assisted living center drained her savings, and now she relies on Medicaid to pay for her care at Dogwood Village, a nonprofit, county-owned nursing home here.

“You think you’ve got enough money to last all your life, and here I am,” Ms. Jacobs said.

Medicaid pays for most of the 1.4 million people in nursing homes, like Ms. Jacobs. It covers 20 percent of all Americans and 40 percent of poor adults.

On Thursday, Senate Republicans joined their House colleagues in proposing steep cuts to Medicaid, part of the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Conservatives hope to roll back what they see as an expanding and costly entitlement. But little has been said about what would happen to older Americans in nursing homes if the cuts took effect.

Under federal law, state Medicaid programs are required to cover nursing home care. But state officials decide how much to pay facilities, and states under budgetary pressure could decrease the amount they are willing to pay or restrict eligibility for coverage.


Net Neutrality, Accessibility, and the Disability Community

https://goo.gl/SzNkro

This morning, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai revealed his proposal to repeal Net Neutrality rules. It’s bad. Pai’s priorities are clear: he wants to wield control to powerful telecom companies at the expense of everyday people like you, me and Alice Wong, author of today’s blog. Wong is founder of the Disability Visibility Project, co-partner in #CripTheVote, and all around badass. Read ahead to learn about what the repeal of Net Neutrality would mean for Alice and her community:

Net Neutrality, Accessibility, and the Disability Community

Let’s face it, social media can be a troll-infested, fetid dumpster fire polluting our timelines. There are days when I don’t want to be online. As I try to practice self-care, I invariably return to the Internet because it is my second home, my playground, my workshop.

Net neutrality is important to me because the Internet & social media are essential tools in my activism & 

social participation. I’m the Founder of the Disability Visibility Project®, a community partnership with StoryCorps and an online community dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture. With the DVP, I’ve been able to build community & amplify our media to the public with Twitter chats, a podcast, and blog posts. As a co-partner in #CripTheVote, an online movement encouraging the political participation of disabled people, I’ve seen first-hand the power of hashtags that create a space for action and conversation. Without net neutrality, I wouldn’t have the same reach, platform, or voice.