Elite media’s selective disdain for public activism is well known. Still, you’d think some things would garner a word or two. Like 300 disability rights activists, a couple hundred in wheelchairs, occupying the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C. The May 2 demonstration was organized by the rights group ADAPT to protest Republican budget plans for Medicaid. Ninety-one people were arrested and carted off by Capitol police.
Yet days after the rotunda protest, and another action the next day in which 300 demonstrators gathered outside the Longworth House Office Building, many getting inside to Rep. Paul Ryan’s second floor office where 10 were arrested, the country’s big media have taken no notice. Accounts in Politico (5/2/11) and the Hill (5/3/11) were all a search turned up.
ADAPT organizer Mike Ervin explained that it’s not just the roughly 35 percent funding cuts to Medicaid in the GOP’s budget proposal that concern the disability community, but the plan to convert states’ federal shares into block grants. Many people with disabilities rely on Medicaid ‘for the assistance we get every day to live in our communities,” rather than institutions.
As for the claim, from Ryan’s Roadmap Plan, that block granting “allows states maximum flexibility to tailor their Medicaid programs to the specific needs of their populations,” Ervin says, “That’s like saying Jim Crow laws give states more flexibility to decide who gets to drink at their water fountains. Flexibility is basically a code word for abandonment.”
People with disabilities (one community that anyone can join at any moment) and their advocates are right to worry their concerns won’t be heard by lawmakers, to the extent that that involves dealing with a press corps that, evidently, can’t even see them.
This ain’t no tea party.
In more ways than one.
The way the public in general has treated the handicapped is shameful, like the afflicted did something intentional that made them that way:
“You’re right! It was irresponsible of me to get Parkinson’s disease or break my neck when a drunk driver hit me!”
The media only pay attention to the handicapped when they want a tear-jerking pity story to “balance” out all the “bad” news they’re “forced” to report every day. But usually, as with this case, when it comes to reporting on the struggles all handicapped have on a daily basis the media are nowhere to be found – BOOOOOOO-RIIIIINNNNGGGG!
I used to be a reporter and I was appalled while doing an internship at a TV station and the reporter was going to identify a handicapped person as “crippled”. And when I was a full-fledged journalist in my own right I covered a small municipality where they were delaying installing a ramp for access to their trailer (this was very rural) because they didn’t like the state telling them they had to! It’s always nothing more than a pissing contest with politicos!
Although I probably cross the journalistic ethics line, I did speak to the mayor off the record about the issue, which is important to me because my cousin’s been a quadriplegic (paralyzed below the shoulders) for nearly 30 years now. She said the people in wheelchairs can be lifted into the building. I asked her how dignified she would feel having a group of strangers lift her into a public building that should be equally accessible to all citizens, not just those who can walk. Madam Mayor saw my point.
The mayor was actually a very nice person but she had let herself get caught up in the politics of the situation without thinking of exactly why the state passed the law in the first place – in the interest of fairness and equal access. Though there was probably some lawmaker with this issue close to his/her heart because the typical legal situation, unfortunately, is more reflective of what ice-water-in-his-veins Paul Ryan is shooting for – screwing them over.
I’m glad this article pointed out that anyone can become a member of this group at any time. My poor cousin joined the second he broke his neck in a car accident less than a month before his 16th birthday.
He was a passenger, by the way, and no alcohol was involved, just icy roads. Still, I’m sure there are many conservatives who see him and assume he probably got what he deserved. They’re all such douche bags.
If the media can’t see them, do they exist?
In the institution where I work all employees are advised to document everything they do because, “if it’s not documented, it didn’t happen.” Of course this also means that if something is documented, then it did happen. It suggests that reality doesn’t matter, only perceptions of reality. If you control the documentation you control perceptions — and that’s all that matters. Very convenient for the documenters of the world. Denying documentation, never mind dissemination of information, is a very effective way to control impressions of reality.
So if people protest against injustice, and their protest goes unnoticed, there was, effectively, no protest. It didn’t happen. And if it didn’t happen, obviously things are just fine… The media have not only stolen the voice of the people, they have stolen the awareness of the reality of injustice. That lack of awareness has become the new reality.
They sould have had some signs that were miss-spelled and hateful. A banner that claims Hawaii is another country?
Good call FAIR. As a US activist who helped organize massive rallies over the years that the media powers-that-be tried to either distort or sweep under the carpet, I know only too well the undemocratic villainy practiced the capitalist media.
If this kind of thing in the photos were to happen in a nation on the US/NATO Imperial hit list, such as Cuba, China, Iran, Libya, etc. — possibly with a little encouragement from CIA “democracy experts” — it would be trumpeted within the the US and even ’round the world as another in the ongoing litany of alleged crackdowns / repressions / totalitarianisms that the Empire abhors.
Mainstream media (MM) reports only the news that their corporate execs. want the people to hear. Since most seem to lean to the right, and therefore don’t want people who have valid concerns involving THEIR legislation to be seen by OTHERS who might share the same concerns as the protesters… they too might want to share their own feelings with their local right leaning “representatives”, and NONE OF THOSE representatives want THAT to happen to THEM, much LESS be made public on TV because they might be joined by even MORE concerned constituents… and on and on it goes.
Having grown up in the 60’s-70’s, being allowed the PRIVILEGE of voting at age 18 and becoming aware of the realities of politics at an early age, I’m much less optimistic about having a government “of, by and for the People” than I was back then. Corporations are “the People” now, and greed and power are their priorities. Many of our “representatives” don’t give a shit about the average Joe who pays their salary and health benefits… we don’t “contribute” enough to their campaigns, or bribe them with lobbying funds like their ‘corporate citizens’ do.
More people need to get up, get out and get active… show your anger… GET MAD!!! There are many who make their voices heard all over the country via the internet, but not enough physical, public presence, like back in the day. Kent State muffled many of the voices, and under the circumstances, I can see where a similar situation could actually occur, and would probably be “justified” by law. Going to jail is one thing, being un-armed and shot dead is another. But still, we need to let them know NOW, not just shut-up and wait to vote them out in 2-4 yrs… that’s lazy, PLUS the damage they can do beforehand is dangerous, and could take decades to reverse!
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
‘You know, if one person, just one person does it, they may think he’s really sick and they won’t pay attention to him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both weirdos and they won’t pay attention to either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of ‘YOU work for US’ and walking out. They may think it’s an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in, singin a bar of ‘YOU work for US’ and walking out… Well friends, they may thinks it’s a movement…’
And that’s what it is
Flexibility is not another word for abandonment. That is the frame you seek to have people believe. You see it goes to the bureaucracy that is the fed. Unwieldy,inefficient,bloated.If they owned the sahara dessert … we would be out of sand. And unfortunately for Dems -States rights are still primary to this country.
thank you so much for including disability rights coverage in your overall program. as you point out, it is all too often excluded from the human rights narrative, and discrimination against people with disabilities is rampant among human rights and social justice organizations.
I HAS MEDICAID.
NOOO THEY BE STEALIN MY MEDICAID