Rud and Ann Turnbull: Disability community, beware of Palin
September 15th, 2008Guest commentary:
By Rud and Ann Turnbull
To the disability community in America: Be cautious.
Governor Palin’s comments at her party’s convention bring to mind a famous line from Virgil’s Aeneid: “Timeo Danaos et donas ferentes”: I fear the Greeks even when bearing gifts.
On the one hand, Gov. Palin appealed to the hopes and fears of people with disabilities and their families by proclaiming she will be their friend and advocate in Washington.
On the other, she dismissed Sen. Obama’s experience as a community organizer. She asserted he bore no responsibility for his activities; she contrasted her roles as mayor and governor as freighted with responsibility.
Gov. Palin’s promise has understandable allure for the disability community. But words take on authentic meaning when buttressed by biography.
When a young man declines the pursuit of wealth to work with the far-from-wealthy, calling on them and their governments to be better, that man gives us reason to believe he means what he says and says what he means.
When a young governor line-item vetoes six appropriations for community disability services or for accessibility modifications to public accommodations, that governor gives us reason to be skeptical about promises and prospective performance. When the appropriations totaled $749,000 in a state that has a huge budget surplus, and when the governor apparently knew at the time that her nephew has autism, that governor gives us special reason to doubt her commitment to people with special needs.
Yes, state funding for “intensive special needs children” in Alaska increased for Fiscal Year 2010. But it is not yet clear exactly who those children are, how many of them are the intended beneficiaries of the appropriation, and precisely what role the governor had in proposing the appropriation or influencing the legislature to appropriate the funds.
In a word, Gov. Palin’s record on disability leaves us with our doubts about her promise.
It also prompts us to concentrate on the governor’s dismissive mockery of community organizing and its portent for the disability community.
The truth is that community organizing benefits people with disabilities.
That is so historically. Like every other parent of an infant, child, or adult with a disability, Sarah Palin should recognize that the benefits she, her son, and her family can claim as theirs flow directly from the community organizing that parents have been carrying out for more than 50 years.
And it will be so in the future. It is inconceivable that parents and people with disabilities will ever find respite from creating new or better services and from advocating for progressive policies and practices. We are certain of that fact. It’s part of our history as parents of a man who is 41 and has intellectual disability, autism, and bi-polar disorder.
Community organizing has always been our lot. It always will be.
To discount that fact and prospect is to disrespect, in the most profound of ways, the valor of the parents of the past, the parents of the present, and the parents of the future. One wonders what Gov. Palin could possibly mean when she proclaims herself an advocate for people with disabilities in one breath and in another denigrates the organizing efforts of countless advocates who preceded her.
When Sen. Obama immersed himself in the communities on Chicago’s south side, he contributed to people with disabilities and their families. That is so because disability powerfully correlates with poverty, single-parent status, and ethnic minority status.
Whatever he did to counter poverty, make lives safer, and improve public services, his action –- and that of those who followed him then and believe in him now –- enhanced the quality of life of people with disabilities and their families.
When Sarah Palin invokes her own biography, she invites us to say it is a shame -– as in “sadness” -– that she does not know her history.
She also invites us -– we tired community organizers and national advocates -– to say, “Shame on you for devaluing our contributions to your and your son’s future.”
The ultimate shame would be for the disability community and those with whom its cause resonates to vote on the basis of group membership only.
Words and consistent action have meaning; words that are inconsistent with action do not.
Palin pales in comparison to Obama.
~~~~~~~~~~
Rud and Ann Turnbull are co-founders and co-directors of the Beach Center on Disability at the University of Kansas.
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September 16th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
It saddens me that lies and misconceptions are spreading like wildfire and so many people are having their opinion of Palin tainted by these lies. I want to make it very very clear that Palin did NOT cut special needs funding, as has been reported by many internet sources and even CNN’s O’Brien. In fact, Palin increased special needs funding every year that she was in office. And she has signed legislation that will triple the per-student funding of intensive-needs students. It’s important that we do our own fact checking before we believe what we’re told and, worse, spread the information as if it’s truth.
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/sliming_palin.html
September 16th, 2008 at 12:01 am
This is the statement that Obama released after McCain picked Palin to be his VP:
“Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.”
Any remarks Gov. Palin made about community organizers was directed at Obama for this marginalization of her experience. I really don’t understand why it is okay for everyone to throw stones at this woman but if she dares to respond somehow she is in the wrong.
This has been an eye opening year for me. First I realized that there is still overwhelming sexism in this country. I learned that the democrats are only for the equal rights of those that share there demented views. And most disturbing of all, I’ve learned that the disabled community no longer stands together either. No matter whether you agree with Sarah Palin’s political views or not, she is still the mother of a disabled child. She is still “one of us.”
I could never have guessed that this community would treat this woman so badly. I am ashamed.
And just as a side note: John McCain is running for President, not Sarah Palin.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Wow! Patricia, is this an endorsement for Obama? Being an ex Chicagoan, I am very concerned about his credentials. Any one who knows anything about Chicago politics, knows that nobody gets to the top, without pandering to someone. It is frightening to think that he got there so quick, and more frightening to think he did on his community service record. Ask his friend Oprah, how stuff gets done in Chicago.Oh, maybe that is who he knows. Yuck. Sorry, I find it impossible to believe that he did it by helping people with disabilities. Rud and Ann, with all due respect, your assessment is laden with agenda. I am glad you like your Democrat party. I am just not sure your leader, is well….. a leader. Sorry. We will just have to agree to disagree.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
I, too, am troubled by Obama’s lack of experience. He promises a lot of things, but based on his past record, there is no guarantee that he will actually follow through.
And, please. The community organizer comment was a joke. Do you honestly think that a community organizer has as much responsibility as a mayor? I am a community organizer, and I sure don’t think so.
I also think that Palin is damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t in many situations. If she didn’t mention people w/disabilities in her speech, she would have been faulted for that. She did, and is accused of mentioning it only for political gain instead of giving her the benefit of the doubt that she is sincere. If she leaves Trig home, she would be accused of being ashamed of him and/or neglecting him while she campaigns. Bring him with her, and he is a political prop.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:22 am
I agree with Sara Szwarc who reminds us that Palin was reading from a script and was responding to attacks on her experience … in the three days since being announced, she was already being torn down for having so little experience, and her statements were designed to contrast her to Obama, not necessarily to run down community organizers. From what I have read of community organizing in Chicago, in contrast to someone’s life work on the Beach Center, is that it is a very key way to work toward acceptance at Harvard law school and also a great way to get inside the political establishment in Chicago. Cynical, perhaps, but true?
I am troubled by Obama’s lack of executive experience, period. He may have a lot of great promises, but he failed to vote on many controversial issues during his time in government and I don’t know how he will get things done when he is so far left of center. I can’t imagine that our government will be able to fund his promises…if you listen to the plans on his website, he promises full funding of IDEA (a financial obligation that is, by itself, enormous) in addition to such an influx of money for so many federal programs that everyone should be happy, but how in the world will our government afford it? I’m just as skeptical of him as I am of her.
September 15th, 2008 at 5:17 am
Who better to speak up for community organizers than the Turnbulls? The Beach Center on Disability has been a pioneering effort to inform and shape public policy on disability issues. When the Turnbulls speak we all should listen. Thank you Patricia E. Bauer for giving them a megaphone.
September 14th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
It’s also not being much noted that Gov. Palin is very new to being a special needs mother.
It certainly took me a while just to say that I was such.
September 14th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Excellent, and so true. But let’s be clear about one thing: when Gov.Palin said she would be a “friend and advocate” in Washington, and when she disparaged “community organizers,” she was reading from a script. A script written by a former Bush speech writer.
These words were carefully crafted on the one hand to appeal to those of us in the disability community and make us wholeheartedly sanction her appearance on the national political scene, thinking of her as our “voice” in the halls of government; and on the other hand as a put down of Obama and an attempt to show that his experience actively serving those in need around him was less meaningful than her experience as Mayor and then Governor of Alaska.
Just having a baby with Down syndrome (Welcome to the World Trig!), doesn’t make someone an “advocate” automatically. It’s in seeing what is needed and what must be changed to better support our loved ones, and speaking out against injustice while pushing for reform that allows us to add “advocate” to our credentials.
I always hope for the best, but am unconvinced that Gov.Palin knows yet what it means to be a true advocate for her son; and that she would be ready to back up her scripted words to do what is right for our families.
September 14th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Community Organizers? She thinks you didn’t have “actual responsibilities.”