NBC Looks At "Sheltered Workshops"

Disabled workers paid just pennies an hour – and it's legal

Anna Schecter, Producer, NBC News - June 21, 2013

Last Friday, the NBC primetime news program Rock Center did a story about sheltered workshops, and the labor law provision that allows them and similar organizations to pay certain workers with disabilities less than minimum wage. I didn't see the show, but I have read the accompanying article on the NBC website, and I'll watch the segment online shortly.

The disability organization I worked for never had sheltered workshops, and in fact Centers for Independent Living uniformly opposes them. However, there are a few sheltered workshops in my area, and we often assisted people who worked at them. My take on the issue has always been that they are at best a relic of an earlier time, and at worst genuine exploitation. Unfortunately, I think that most of the criticisms against sheltered workshops and paying sub-minimum wage leave out some important aspects that both help explain why such a seemingly unfair system ever got approved, and how the system could be changed without unintended negative consequences for the workers.

I'll have more to say on this later today, or maybe tomorrow after I do some more thinking and reading about it.

Says Peter Dinklage

20Q Peter Dinklage

Eric Spitznagel, Playboy Magazine - May 2, 2013

The whole article is good reading, but here's the "money quote":

Playboy: "You are aware that you're a sex symbol, right? Some might even call you a DwILF."

Dinklage: "DwILF, as in Dwarf I'd Like to Fuck? That's very clever. Honestly, I think there's an irony in all of this. I take it with a grain of salt. They'll say, "Oh, he's sexy," but women still go for guys who are six-foot-two. It's nice that people are thinking outside the box, but I don't believe any of it for a minute."

School's Out

Today is the first day of Summer Vacation in my local school district. I wonder what the kids with disabilities are going doing this summer. I also wonder what's next for the students who graduated or "aged out".

One of these days I'll describe my school experiences, but not now. My thoughts about education and students with disabilities are mostly based on things I saw and learned about when I was working at our local Independent Living Center.

Let me start by saying that I met a lot of really great teachers and counselors who all wanted the best for their students. My issues with education, especially "Special Education", are systemic and ingrained ... a culture, really, that reshapes individuals more than individuals shape it. At least in our area, we seem to have more than our share of really good, decent, dedicated and forward-thinking teachers.

What disturbed me most in my encounters with education was the feeling ... hard to prove anecdotally ... that there are at least a few really smart kids with disabilities in each district who are unrecognized and wasted by a system mostly geared towards remedial work, behavioral control, and maybe, if they are lucky, some life skills training. History, literature, math, science, critical thinking, philosophy? Maybe, if we have time. It's like Special Ed teachers actually buy into and endorse the petulant teenagers lament about academics, "When am I ever going to use this?" To them, it seemed, diplomas and degrees really are just gate-keeping pieces of paper.

At conferences, any comments or questions I posed about maximizing academic aptitude and achievement were treated like they were embarrassingly off-topic ... met with polite nods and silence. I felt like a peacenik at a NATO summit; theoretically we had the same goal, but with vastly different assumptions, priorities, and tactics.

By the way, that analogy includes the very real possibility that as the "peacenik", I was being sadly naive.

Early Evening Music

The song, written by Jeff Magnum of Neutral Milk Hotel is widely interpreted as a reference … either loose or very specific … to "The Diary of Young Girl" by Anne Frank.

I accept that interpretation, but to me, on some elemental level it feels like a disability song.

"Two Headed Boy" originally appeared on the album, "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea". It is one of a handful of albums that when I listened to it for the first time, I listened all the way through, stunned, and then immediately listened to all of it again.

I like Dresden Dolls, too, but a little of them goes a long way.

Steven Soderbergh I Am Not

I've started working on a montage of disability-related video clips to put on the front page of the eventual "Disability Thinking" website. So far I have collected 46 clips of various lengths that I'll need to edit down to something like 5 minutes. Most of the clips are from TV shows and movies, with a few TED Talks and Paralympics clips thrown in. I'm not sure what I want the montage to say; I'm trusting that after sorting out the best bits, some kind of theme will occur to me. I'm just a little bit worried that after hours of work, the little movie will turn out trite or syrupy, instead of fresh and a bit funny.

With disability images ... both still and moving ... the line between awesome and ugh is very, very thin.

Two Cool Tumblrs

From too brain fogged for this:

This is the best explanation of ableism I've read in months. Here's a piece of it:

"Ableism is more than just not being an outright douche.  It’s about considering what disabled people will need."

From Disability History & Culture

EveryBody: An Artifact History of Disability in America

Well, there goes the rest of my day. If anyone needs me, I'll be exploring this amazing-looking website by the Smithsonian Institution.

Sigh

Disabled Canadian schoolboy Miles Ambridge is just one of the gang in new class photo

Philip Caulfield, New York Daily News - June 20, 2013

Okay, if Mom thinks the new photo is better than the first, who am I to quibble? Her son is on longer waaaay off to the side in his wheelchair. Now he's in the front row, with his classmates, with no wheelchair in sight. Much better.

Miles is 7 years old, so I'm guessing it's unrealistic for me to think that he might wish to be shown in his wheelchair, just closer to the group? He's probably too young to be hip to the intricacies of disability pride at this stage. Later on, he may learn about and ponder what it means to him that President Roosevelt hid his disability, and what it means now that after some intense debate, we finally have a statue of him in his wheelchair.

On the other hand, I do think it's perfectly reasonable to wonder why the news stories about this class photo thing don't appear to have any input from Miles, himself. He isn't quoted or even attributed.

I guess I'm saying that I'm not satisfied. I have this weird feeling that the school didn't really learn what they should have learned from all of this. It's none of my business, though. Sometimes the personal really does trump the political.

Simple Words

Smart Ass Cripple explains his "pit crew":

"Those are the people I hire to drag my ass out of bed every day, make my meals, do my laundry, scrub my toilet, wipe my butt, etc."

Best way EVER to explain the role of Home Care Aides / Personal Assistants in the lives of people with disabilities. It's pretty simple, yet for some reason, when I worked at an Independent Living Center, it was one of the hardest things to explain to people unfamiliar with disability issues. I wish I'd known about Smart Ass Cripple then, because "Pit Crew" would have saved a lot of time and awkward groping for words.

"Keep Calm ..."

The "Keep Calm, Carry On" thing is almost played out, but I do like this one. I saw it at Wheelchairproblems, tracked it back to Awesomesauce | c5roller, and found what might be the original at Apparelyzed.

3 Kinds Of Disability News

3 in Ohio accused of enslaving disabled woman, child

Michael Winter, USA Today - June 18, 2013

When I read stories like this, I find it hard to maintain much interest in whether people use the "right" words for disability, or whether all the restaurants are wheelchair accessible. I know all of these issues are important and connected to one another, but maybe it would be useful to think in terms of three main kinds of disability issues or questions:

1. Dignity, identity, and discrimination.
2. Polices, economics, and independence.
3. Life, death, and unspeakable cruelty.

The first category might be termed the "academic" or "theoretical" realm, or the personal category, mostly involving how we see ourselves as people with disabilities, how society sees us, and how these factors add or detract from our lives.

The second group of issues are where disability intersects with more or less traditional politics, plus "bread and butter" issues like money, housing, education, and employment. It also includes issues like physical accessibility, access to technology, and legal rights.

The third type of issue is harder to define, but is the most visceral and … for good or for ill … the most sensational. It's the dark underbelly of society's polite befuddlement about people with disabilities. It's where frat bros yell drive-by insults at wheelchair users, where teenagers … and sometimes adults … bully people who look funny, talk funny, or act funny, and where people with disabilities are literally exploited, mostly because they can be.

It's tempting to say that while the third type of incidents still go on, the first two are unimportant, even trivial. I think they are all important, as long as we keep in mind that they are different kinds of problems … connected, but calling for a different kind of thinking and response.

Late Night Music

My objective has been to keep this blog "on topic" about disability. On the other hand some my favorite on-topic blogs … like Eschaton and Balloon Juice … include off-topic bits and pieces, like cat photos and music clips that I think actually enhance the more serious, topical stuff. So, here we go. I'm going to start by posting my favorite performances from the last four years of the "AV Club Undercover" project. Here's my first favorite from the first year:

Site Work ...

I'm working on the bigger website today. Actually, after starting on it this morning, one thing led to another, and I'm starting from scratch ... new server, new website platform, and hopefully a simpler kind of forum.

Funny how trashing two months of work can be freeing instead of frustrating. Feeling excited and focused here!

Dear Modern Manners Guy ...

Here is my letter to the Modern Manners Guy Podcast:

Dear Modern Manners Guy:

Could you please do a podcast episode on "Disability Etiquette?" Grammar Girl did a great episode of her podcast on appropriate language regarding people with disabilities, but what about manners and appropriate behavior? Is it okay to open doors for a wheelchair user? Can you pet a guide dog? Is it ever appropriate to ask a person about his or her specific disability?

I have worked in the disability rights field for over 20 years, and I have disabilities myself. So, I have my own ideas on questions of disability etiquette. There are also many guides out there. However, most of them, in my opinion, focus too much on specific rules and not enough on the principles behind them.

Modern Manners Guy, I'd love to get your take on this!