Volume IV, Issue 2 • Summer 2018 Bridges provides information and support to people with disabilities, their families, and the community to connect with the HOPE and the HOW. Congratulations to Jeiri for winning a Starbridge 2018 What’s Inside... Community Award for her advocacy! This issue of Bridges highlights Ableism Voices A View from Where I Sit What is Ableism? Ableism is Merriam-Webster defines ableism as discrimination or prejudice defined as the practices and against individuals with disabilities. I define it as an everyday dominant attitudes in society that adversary who can and may defeat me multiple times a day. As a devalue and limit the potential of person with a physical disability, I recognize ableism is everywhere. persons with disabilities. It assigns It’s in every business, every school, in every movie where the inferior value to people who have casting director chooses to hire a non-disabled actor to play a developmental, emotional, physical disabled character, and it’s even in church. or intellectual disabilities. In our society, there is no stone untouched by ableism and once you see it, Ableism may be invisible to those you can’t unsee it. Hopefully you don’t ignore it; you point it out, and educate those around about it. who do not have disabilities. It is sometimes not intentional, but in As advocates, it is our job to educate people about the struggles people with certain circumstances, it is very disabilities face; specifically we should all be discussing ableism as it is one of intentional. the most prominent struggles. Below you will find interviews of advocates in different positions discussing An ableist society is said to be one their experiences with ableism. that treats non-disabled individuals as the standard of ‘normal living’, which results in public and private places and services, education, Voices Conversations about Ableism and social work that are built to serve ‘standard’ people, thereby inherently excluding those with various disabilities Adapted from Stop Ableism, www.stopableism.org/p/what-is-ableism.html Ableism Pages 4-7 Dear Advocate Stacy Schuyler (SS) Luticha Doucette (LD) Steven LaDue (SL) Page 8 One-on-One Aide Self-Advocate Self-Advocate and Special Ed Teacher New York State Partners Q: Tell me about yourself. Where injury which makes me neurodivergent. in Policymaking® are you from? What do you do? Woohoo neurodivergent, awesome. Page 8 SS: My name is Stacy Schuyler. I SL: My name is Steve LaDue. I am a am from Rochester. I work for the teacher/advocate coach for students From the Editor city school district and also SWAN with disabilities and their teachers in Page 9 (Southwest Area Neighborhood the Rochester City School District. My Association) community center. title is Behavior Support Specialist, which means I’m primarily working LD: I am Luticha Doucette. I work for with students with very intense social the Mayor’s Office of Innovation. I have emotional behaviors that aren’t been an incomplete quadriplegic for typically dealt with in most academic actually 33 years this Memorial Day settings. and at the time I also acquired a brain continued on page 2 *This interview is a transcription and some answers are edited for brevity and clarity* 1 Bridges • Summer 2018 Q: How do you define ableism? SS: I think that I am so trained to constantly look for ableism because even when I go in a place I think, “Oh I couldn’t bring this person here or that person here.” So it’s hard for me to define other than to say, it’s just something I am looking for… I’m always planning three steps ahead. LD: So ableism is not just something that’s structural; everything that’s built is built for those who are not disabled. So any building, anything in this world that we interface with has a standpoint of someone who’s not disabled, but it’s also attitudinal. So how we talk about those who are disabled, how we write about those who are disabled, “confined to a I grew up having a disability from exacerbates the pain that I am in on a wheelchair” and their “suffering.” the time I was born until probably daily basis. SL: I think it’s just people making 12 or 13; I was legally blind with very assumptions about the people minimal corrective lens working. I SL: Having a disability helped me around them. That’s the bottom line, couldn’t participate in life typically understand how a person internalizes especially if those assumptions affect like everybody else. After puberty, my their own value and their worth in people in a negative way. vision changed dramatically to the reaction or relationship to the people point where now I can drive. around them. And what does that do Q: How do you combat or for them psychologically and socially Q: Why are you passionate about emotionally? I never felt as though I experience ableism? disabilities or advocacy? was a part of anything until, well after SS: There’s a lot of depression among college, just feeling like an outcast. my teenage kids; none of them have SS: I have a cousin that has Cerebral As of recently, working with the friends. On a couple of my school Palsy and I was always around him. students and families that I worked assignments you would see all these When I first got my assignment with with a number of years, understanding little kids with disabilities and you’d the city school district, a few of my that anybody who has something in see the other kids and they’d all have students had behavior issues and then their life that makes it so they can’t friends and they’d go to each other’s little by little I was transferred over to interact with the world in a way that houses. But it becomes so hard for students with various disabilities. the world wants them to interact families with kids that have various with them, puts them in a deficit needs. What’s so hard about calling I kinda looked and saw how kids were and automatically puts them into a and saying, “Hey, can this kid come treated, and a lot of kids were very, situation where they have to start over?” You know, even if the family very hopeless, and that bothered me. planning things differently. needed a ramp for the kid, just call The kids were very dependent on and ask if the other kid can come me as an adult, and they didn’t seem Having these experiences has over instead. Ask if we can meet you to have a lot of friends. That really benefited me so much, not only as somewhere. You know, nobody ever bugged me. A lot of kids without an advocate, but also as a special does that. There’s almost no such thing disabilities would ask me questions, education teacher. as playdates for kids with disabilities. and I would say, “Don’t ask me, ask the kid with a wheelchair.” I would run The children with disabilities don’t away and the kid would look at me I’ve really learned know that they could live in their like, “Oh no, come back” and I would own house, that they can take a bus say, “No, no you go talk to them; how to understand somewhere, they can go sit in the have a friend, be a friend, make a movies by themselves, they could friend for life.” people as people have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, they could have a job. A lot of kids don’t LD: I’m really passionate about this and listen to them understand that there’s a future, and because it impacts my everyday life they don’t see active adults within the and now that I also have chronic and their needs when disabled community doing anything, pain on top of being in a wheelchair, and the pictures they are getting accessibility and ableism really developing plans. aren’t positive images. impact me even more and it really – Steve LaDue continued on page 3 2 Bridges • Summer 2018 My job and my goal is waiting for me. Where are they?” And like the secretary’s eyes got really big to allow kids to grow. and she’s like, “She’s right there.” And he did a double take. And you know, – Stacy Schuyler you have to be professional, you can’t LD: So for me, I think I’m in a unique go wild on people. I wanted to curse position than other people because that person out because I dress on I work for the system. So therefore, point, you know, I’m dressed when I in my office I have the ability to Ieave this house and that’s because really influence those who are the I have to be presented just as the decision makers to think about same as others without disabilities things in a different way.Our mayor or perfect. And even when I’m at is literally the first mayor to really my most on point, like Rihanna level, address accessibility and to talk right? I’m not even seen, like, “You Q: What piece of advice would about disabled people if you actually don’t see this Fenty (make-up) on you pass down to someone who go back and listen to her inaugural me? What’s your problem?” speech. Like those were my words may be dealing with the effects of that she was using.