Intersectionality and the Disability Rights Movement: the Black Panthers, the Butterfly Brigade, and the United Farm Workers of America
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JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 Intersectionality and the Disability Rights Movement: The Black Panthers, the Butterfly Brigade, and the United Farm Workers of America Paul Grossman, J.D., P.A. Mary Lee Vance, Ph.D. Jamie Axelrod, M.S. JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 Faculty Grossman, Axelrod and Vance Consulting, Beyond the ADA Paul Grossman, J.D., P.A. US, ED, OCR, Chief Regional Civil Rights Attorney, SF, retired Guest Lecturer for Disability Law, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Hastings and Berkeley Colleges of Law, U.C. NAADAC, OCR DisNet, & CAPED Faculty Member Former AHEAD Board Member; Blosser Awardee AHEAD and CHADD Public Policy Committees Member The Law of Disability Discrimination for Higher Education Professionals, Carolina Academic Press (updated annually) JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 Faculty Grossman, Axelrod and Vance Consulting, Beyond the ADA Jamie Axelrod, M.S. Mary Lee Vance, Ph.D. Dir., Disability Resources, Northern Arizona University Dir., Services for Students with Disabilities, Sacramento State University ADA Coordinator/Section 504 Compliance Officer, Northern Arizona Former AHEAD Bd. Member; University Member, JPED Editorial Bd.; Immediate Past President AHEAD Board Member, Coalition for Disability Reviewer, NACADA National Advising Journal Access in Health Science and Education Co-editor, Beyond the ADA (NASPA 2014) Member AHEAD Public Policy Committee JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 Caveat This presentation and its associated materials are provided for informational purposes only and are not to be construed as legal advice. You should seek your Systemwide or house counsel to resolve the individualized legal issues that you are responsible for addressing. Any policy or procedure additions or revisions under consideration should be reviewed by your college’s legal counsel prior to implementation. 4 JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 USE AND PERMISSIONS This PowerPoint has been provided to reinforce today’s AHEAD Preconference Program presentation. Without the written consent of AHEAD and Paul Grossman, consent is denied for reproduction, republication, duplication, distribution or any other form of sharing this document. Consent is provided to convert this document to a different format accessible to the user. No copyright is claimed as to photographs, graphics, or works of others including photographs associated with the “504 Sit-In.” Many are the works of author and civil rights advocate HolLynn D’Lil. https:// becomingrealin24days.com/ Some pictures are from the New York Times, Not Forgotten series 5 JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 Conference Civility Statement We ask you to join us in creating a culture that reflects… Access and Inclusion and Civility and Respect …this week and in all aspects of our organization. JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 Intersecting Branches Shared Roots of the Disability Rights Movement JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 Learning Objectives • To share the history of how and why racism and ableism intersect • To place the admission, inclusion, and accommodation of students with disabilities into its compelling and legitimate American Civil Rights context - establishing that disability rights are civil rights • To show both that the disability community in America has a long way to go to achieve equality and that access and support in higher education is a critically important part to achieving equality • To reaffirm the critical importance of your job and disability services • To stress that pedagogical tools, if made universally accessible, could more effectively educate all students • If these objectives are achieved, we should all be engaging “disabled students” with insight and understanding. Compliance would then be a very limited problem JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 Racism and Ableism • Racism • Ableism • The belief that different races • Ableism is a set of beliefs or practices possess distinct characteristics, that devalue and discriminate against abilities, or qualities, especially so people with physical, intellectual, or as to distinguish them as inferior or psychiatric disabilities and often rests superior to one another. on the assumption that disabled people • Prejudice, discrimination, or need to be ‘fixed’ in one form or the antagonism directed against a other. person or people on the basis of • Discrimination in favor of able-bodied their membership in a particular people. racial or ethnic group, typically one • First known use of the word ableism, that is a minority or marginalized. 1981. JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 Ableism Sets the Stage for: • Queer & trans people to be institutionalized as mentally disabled, mentally ill/sexually deviant/”unfit” • Communities of color to be understood as less capable, smart & intelligent, therefore ‘naturally’ fit for slave labor • Women’s bodies to be used to produce children, when, where & how men needed them • People with disabilities to be seen as ‘disposable’ in a capitalist & exploitative culture, including Nazi culture, because we are not seen as ’productive’ • Immigrants to be thought of as a ‘disease’ that we must ‘cure’ because it is ‘weakening’ our country • Violence, cycles of poverty, lack of resources & war, the police to be used as systemic tools to construct disability in communities and entire countries” See the works of Mia Mingus, e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cJkUazW-jw JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 Disabled People as Expendable • An advanced social democracy does not wake-up one day and decide that extermination of its own people (Jews, political and draft resisters, some priests and nuns, Romany people, Eastern Europeans such as Poles, homosexuals, etc.) is a legitimate function of government • The 1933 law for ‘Prevention of Offspring with Heredity Defects’ allowed Nazi Doctor’s to forcibly sterilize those they considered unfit • From 1934 until 1939, about 400,000 German women and men were victims of the Nazi forced sterilization, because they were believed to have had a hereditary disease including coming from “inferior nations” in Eastern Europe or even persons holding “inferior ideas” such as pacifists • Many of those having undergone forced sterilization, especially women, died as a consequence of the surgical intervention JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 Eugenics & the Myth of Perfecting the Gene Pool • US • Nazi Germany • Many states authorized forced • American proponents of sterilization of thousands of Eugenics, a scientific movement “undesirable citizens” – people to “improve” the genetic with disabilities, prisoners, and composition of the human racial minorities – on the theory population, soon accelerated that, as the U.S. Supreme Court sterilization programs, which put it in upholding Virginia’s served as a model for Nazi forced sterilization law in 1927, programs implemented during “three generations of imbeciles the Holocaust. are enough.” JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 The Black Triangle: Nazis, Race and Disability Picture of 5 men, a couple looking mentally as well as physically disabled, wearing the striped uniforms of prisoners in Nazi prison camps. They all wear upside down black triangles on the left side of their chests. JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 Race and Disability According to the Nazis • According to Nazi ideology, the • The Nazis believed that disabled world was divided into “Aryans,” people did not, and could not, be a the “master race,” followed by part of the German master race. the “lesser” races identified by They believed that they were skin color, ethnicity, culture, and genetically ‘impure’, and a nationality. After Jews, the Sinti financial burden on the state. and Roma, commonly called • Ultimately, this view led to the Gypsies, inspired the most murder of thousands of disabled animosity. Gypsies were also people. treated as social outcasts. JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 Disability Rights “If people with disabilities have a future, then everyone in our society will have a future.” Ed Roberts JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 Disability Rights are Civil Rights • Photo of Rosa Parks • Photo of wheelchair and sitting in the front of the scooter users chained to bus front of Greyhound bus JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 • Unflinching in his advocacy around Black Pictured: Brad Lomax with empowerment and disability rights, Brad Lomax brother Glenn was a member of the Black Panther Party (BPP), founder of the BPP supported East Oakland Center for Independent Living and protestor during the 1977 Section 504 sit-in. • Oakland’s Black Panther Party cooked and carried wholesome, hot meals—meatloaf, fried chicken, rolls, and salad—across the Bay to San Francisco every single day, as they understood disability intersectionality with disabled Black Panthers. • Brad was joined by fellow Black Panther Chuck Jackson during the 25 day long sit-in, who not only provided attendant care for Lomax, but also for others in need. JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 Social Justice Model: Individual Rights and Responsibilities • Photo: Justin Dart, Jr., “Father” of the ADA, sitting in front of the nation’s capitol. Behind him is a banner quoting Martin Luther King, Jr. that says “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” JW Marriott Austin, Texas July 19-23, 2021 Two Historical Human Rights Laws • ADA • Civil Rights • The Americans with Disabilities Act • The Civil Rights Act of (ADA) was signed into law on July 1964 prohibits discrimination on the 26, 1990, by President George H.W. basis of race, color, religion, sex or Bush. national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade • Guarantees that people with discrimination on the basis of disabilities have the same gender, as well as race in hiring, opportunities as everyone else to promoting and firing. participate in the mainstream of American life -- to enjoy same • Nothing about disability but a opportunities and to participate in conceptually helpful to the State and local government development of the basic programs and services.