Acclaimed SF State teacher living history of disabled rights movement

From Xpress online, a news service of San Francisco State University: a feature about disability rights activist Paul Longmore, history professor and author of “Why I Burned My Book.” Longmore had polio as a child and uses a motorized wheelchair.

An excerpt:

As a student at Occidental College, Longmore began to learn about his life experience as it related to his disability.

He was inspired by two women who had also become disabled from polio, but whom he said raised children and traveled the world independently. “They lived their lives so much more competently than most people. That’s what inspires me and that’s what I’ve learned from them.”

“During college I came to realize that all of us [with disabilities] had been drilled in a sense of shame about our disability and about our bodies. We turned our devaluation inward, against our bodies, against ourselves,” he said.

Since then Longmore’s role as a disability rights activist was sparked. He fought for the rights of actors with disabilities, reproductive rights of disabled women, and picketed for physical access on university campuses. He also fought for his own rights to be able to pursue his dream to work as a professor.

“Living with a disability like mine is very expensive,” he said. Longmore’s respirator and other medical and non-medical needs such as hiring a typist for note taking, requires extra money.

“As long as I didn’t go to work and earn an income, I could get supplemental income, he said.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 15th, 2007 at 4:24 am and is filed under civil rights, personal stories, polio, wheelchair. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.