On Tuesday, October 18th, the Organizer's Forum had its monthly meeting. This meeting is a chance for people with disabilities (PWD) to talk among themselves about an issue. This month's topic was the Occupy Movement. Organizers Rachel Siler of Chicago, Nadina Laspina of New York City and Marg Hall of the Bay Area were the main speakers. The audience was about 40 people in total on the conference call.
Rachel spoke about her experiences at Occupy Chicago. At one event she attended, there were about 10 people with disabilities. She described that as," really awesome." And at other event, she described meeting a vision impaired person. At that event, people were arrested, including the person with the visual impairment. Rachel described the scene as follows: the protesters who did not want to be arrested were across the street, those who were unsure as to whether they wanted to be arrested were milling around and the definite arrestees were protecting the tents.
At some point, Rachel remembers people shouting, “They’ve arrested a blind man!" This was Rachel’s new friend. At this point, Rachel noticed the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) buses, which are lift equipped. That's when she had to make a choice about being arrested herself, which is been numerous times with the disability rights group ADAPT. However, ADAPT usually get tickets and not hauled off to the actual jail. Rachel said that she felt sort of obligated to get arrested because no other wheelchair users were doing it, but in the end decided not to.
The next speaker was Nadina Laspina. She said that a lot of people with disabilities in New York come from other oppression struggles. Disabled In Action, the New York City group, has always joined in marches for issues as divergent as single-payer healthcare, the environment, or gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender (GLBT) pride. She cited the Occupy Movement as "a golden opportunity for all oppressed groups to coalesce" and urged the disability rights movement to "be bold" in any demands it makes as a result of the Occupy Movement. She added that a group of PWD from New York City attends Occupy Wall Street every Sunday from noon to 4 PM and welcomes visitors.
Merg Hall of Communities United in defense of Olmstead or CUIDO has been to both Occupy San Francisco and Occupy Oakland. The latter of which just started a week ago. She urged PWD "to interface and be visible" in their local Occupy Movement.
Also on the call was Cathleen Holdsworth of Philadelphia ADAPT. Philadelphia has apparently been sending down at least one person their local Occupy Movement daily. In terms of access many structures are now accessible at Occupy Philly, including the library, than were at the beginning. Ms. Holdsworth said," I think they won the heart of Philadelphia by taking care of the homeless. Of course, that may just be the people I talk to."
One thing that all the speakers noted was that people will not include PWD if they don't know anything about PWD and the needs of such people. One participant argued for the need of a working group on disability as part of the Occupy Movement.
If any readers want to discuss this issue further, they can find the Organizer ‘s Forum’s Facebook page or send an e-mail here.
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