Guest commentary:

What Kind of Advocacy

Do Americans with Disabilities Really Need?

By Paul K. Longmore

Ever since Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech, the “needs” of children with disabilities have gotten a lot of press. Palin pledged to be a “friend and advocate” for those children. News stories have reported the excitement of parents and other people in the disability rights constituency that disability issues are finally getting some attention. Some of them have decided to support the election of Palin and John McCain. But do the Republican candidates offer the kind of advocacy Americans with disabilities really need? I don’t believe they do, and I want to explain why I am voting for Barack Obama and Joe Biden instead.

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Guest 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.

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From USA Today:

Tropical diseases commonly occur among poorer people in the U.S., leaving behind such lingering long-term problems as intellectual disability, heart disease and epilepsy, according to a report issued this week.

Study author Peter Hotez said the diseases go untreated in hundreds of thousands of poor people who live mainly in inner cities, the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia and the Mexican borderlands.

Hotez says it is a “disgrace” that diseases causing so much suffering remain at the bottom of the national health agenda.

“If this were occurring among white mothers in the suburbs, you’d hear a tremendous outcry,” says Hotez, a microbiologist at George Washington University.

Dick Thornburgh and Paul Steven Miller, writing in the Seattle Times, urge that the U.S. sign the UN International Treaty on the Rights of People with Disabilities. The treaty could benefit one-quarter of humanity, they say: the 650 million people, as well as their families, who live with disabilities.

As former officials of two different presidential administrations, one Republican and one Democratic, we strongly believe that this treaty is consistent with American law.

… The treaty enshrines important principles that Americans hold dear: nondiscrimination, equal protection under the law and the right to autonomy and independent living in integrated, community settings.

The U.S. reluctance to sign this treaty has been painful and puzzling to us. The treaty provides important protections, beyond the specific protections of the American law, which level the playing field for people with disabilities. And we should not be so proud as to think we cannot learn from other countries about even better opportunities for people with disabilities.

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From the Associated Press in the Houston Chronicle, MSNBC and elsewhere:

The affordable housing shortage plaguing Washington, D.C., and other metropolitan areas has come down particularly hard on the disabled, who have higher rates of poverty and lower rates of employment. At the same time, much of what is affordable is off-limits to them because it’s not accessible. Housing advocates say the problem will only get worse, as the rate of disability increases with the aging population.

From the BBC, [UK] Guardian:

A report by a disability advocacy group in the UK finds that as many as three million people with disabilities are trapped in poverty there. The report, by the group Leonard Cheshire Disability, says people with disabilities are twice as likely to suffer economic hardships than those without disabilities, and are more likely to live in poverty than they were ten years ago.

The group also documented continuing low levels of employment for people with disabilities, gaps in the educational system, and costs for basic living needs that run 25 percent higher than for people without disabilities.

The report said that more than a third of children living in poverty in the UK live in low-income households with a disabled person.

A report in Britain finds evidence of widespread financial dificulties among families with children with disabiities there. The report, from the Every Disabled Child Matters (EDCM) campaign, found that 93 percent of families reported some form of financial difficulty, and that more than 20 percent of such famiies cannot afford to feed their families properly.

The group also reported that such families face barriers to working, and that they are 50 percent more likely to be in debt than comparable families without disabilities.

From the (UK) Guardian.