Every person need to be taught disability history

Not the “oh Einstein was probably autistic” or the sanitized Helen Keller story. but this history disabled people have made and has been made for us.

Teach them about Carrie Buck, who was sterilized against her will, sued in 1927, and lost because “Three generations of imbeciles [were] enough.”

Teach them about Judith Heumann and her associates, who in 1977, held the longest sit in a government building for the enactment of 504 protection passed three years earlier.

Teach them about all the Baby Does, newborns in 1980s who were born disabled and who doctors left to die without treatment, who’s deaths lead to the passing of The Baby Doe amendment to the child abuse law in 1984.

Teach them about the deaf students at Gallaudet University, a liberal arts school for the deaf, who in 1988, protested the appointment of yet another hearing president and successfully elected I. King Jordan as their first deaf president.

Teach them about Jim Sinclair, who at the 1993 international Autism Conference stood and said “don’t mourn for us. We are alive. We are real. And we’re here waiting for you.”

Teach about the disability activists who laid down in front of buses for accessible transit in 1978, crawled up the steps of congress in 1990 for the ADA, and fight against police brutality, poverty, restricted access to medical care, and abuse today.

Teach about us.

Oh! Oh! I got one! Meet Edward V. Roberts-

Ed Roberts was one of the founding minds behind the Independent Living movement. Roberts was born in 1939, and contracted polio at age 14, two years before the vaccine that ended the polio epidemic came out (vaccinate your kids). Polio left Roberts almost completely paralyzed, with only the use of two fingers and a few toes. At night, he had to sleep in an iron lung, and he would often rest there during the day as well. Other times of the day, he breathed by using his face and neck muscles to force air in and out of his lungs.

Despite this being the fifties, Roberts' mother insisted that her son continue schooling. Her support helped him face his fear of being stared at and ridiculed at school, going from thinking of himself as a "hopeless cripple" to seeing himself as a "star." When his high school tried to deny him his diploma because he had never completed driver's ed, Roberts and his mother fought the school and won.

This marked the beginning of his career as an activist.

Roberts had to fight the California Department of Vocational Rehabilitation for support to attend college, because his counselor thought he was too severely disabled to ever work or live independently. Roberts did go to school, however, first attending the College of San Marino. He was then accepted to UC Berkeley, but when the school learned that he was disabled, they tried to backtrack. "We've tried cripples before, and it didn't work," one dean famously said. The school tried to argue the dorms couldn't accommodate his iron lung, so Roberts was instead housed in an empty wing of the school's Cowell Hospital.

Roberts' admittance paved the way for other disabled students who were also housed in the new Cowell Dorm. The group called themselves "The Rolling Quads," and together they fought and advocated for better disability support, more ramps and accessible architecture like curb cut outs, founded the first formally recognized student-led disability services program in the country, and even managed to successfully oust a rehabilitation counselor who had threatened two of the Quads with expulsion for their protests.

After graduation from his master's, he served a number of other roles- he taught political science at a number of different colleges over the years, served on the board for the Center for Independent Living, confounded the World Institute on Disability with Judith E. Heumann and Joan Leon, and continued to advocate for better disability services and infrastructure at his alma mater of UC Berkeley.

Roberts also took part in and helped organize sit ins to force the federal government to enforce section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which stated that people with disabilities should not be excluded from activities, denied the right to receive benefits, or be discriminated against, from any program that uses federal financial assistance, solely because of their disability. The sit-in occupied the offices of the Carter Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare building in San Francisco and lasted 28 days. The protestors were supported by local gay rights organizations and the Black Panthers. Roberts and other activists spoke, and their arguments were so compelling that members of the department of health joined the sit in. Reagan was forced to acknowledge and implement the policies and rules that section 504 required. This national recognition helped to pave the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.

Roberts died of cardiac arrest in 1995 at the age of 54, leaving behind a proud legacy of advocacy and activism. Not bad for a "hopeless cripple" whose rehab counselor thought he was too disabled to ever work.

[id: a black and white photograph of Roberts, a bearded white man, sitting in his chair and smiling with a ventilator tube between his teeth.

A younger Roberts lying in an Iron Lung with a cup with a straw next to his head.

Two photographs, one of Roberts and a black man with a service dog (probably a seeing eye dog) walking along a path together, the other of Roberts participating in a march, with another man behind him holding a sign saying “Civil Rights for Disabled”]/end id.

The person I reblogged this from is someone I enjoy seeing on my dashboard.

splatoon characters react to you being infertile~

mr grizz:

PUNKITT PRONOUN EVENT LIVE, POST #PUNKITTDIRECT TO LET PUNKITT KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS

come with me and lets go to marblearth

"It's soooo easy to just go through your followers and block bigots 🙄" — quote from someone with 37 followers

This isn't an "ohhh look at this loser who only has x followers", it's "there is a point you reach where looking at every single person who follows you is genuinely impossible and acting like it's easy to do so shows that you haven't reached that point yet."

So I'm reading for an art history class, and Baudrillard is talking about the trends in colour usage from generation to generation (mostly in interior design, but there's definite spillover into fashion, architecture, etc.), and how every new colour movement is a direct rebellion against the previous one, like how the bright colours of the 60s/70s were a direct response to the austerity and seriousness of the WWII/postwar era, and how a shift back to organized, moralistic neutrals were a direct rejection of 60s/70s gaudiness, etc., and that all makes sense, people find their parent's style tacky, sure

But he goes on to observe how we've now been stuck in a lull of pasty tones and naturalistic finishes for some time, and I'm thinking yes, he's so right, but that's weird, because its been hanging around for so long, like what is it rebelling against anymore? What is it answering to? Well all I had to do was be patient because lo and behold, Baudrillard provides the following sentence, which caused me to completely wig out:

"...except of course, for the spheres of advertising and commerce, where colour's power to corrupt enjoys full rein"

And I'm like ooohhhhHHHHHH, so this colourless minimalist wasteland of a design principle:

Is maybe hanging on so stubbornly because this corporate hellscape:

is assaulting all of our eyes, inside and outside of our homes, every waking second, and is tainting the very concept of colour into something we can't relax around in our living spaces.

Oh. Oh no. No no no no

fuck, i hate when that guy is right

In the age where you can pay to get rid of ads on youtube etc, having a commercial-free surrounding is a sign of wealth and privilege.

i can’t believe im almost crying over an weapon patch

sketchek was a legendary TF2 Pyro main who used a lot of creative movement tactics to make awesome, stylized frag videos.

2 years ago he was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was given an estimated year left to live. he posted on his youtube channel that he would be taking his leave from the TF2 community so that he could spend his last year alive with his family and in the real world.

his final video was this:

tf2 heritage post

note: sketchek faked his death and is still alive

also he’s a vtuber now

This is the advanced form of that net zero post. This is finding out several new points of information. Like holding a 10 lb weight, then having it taken away and replaced with a fully loaded barbell.

I finally switched to firefox and I've seen a lot of posts about the effortless importing of preferences from chrome and how it's important to support non-chromium platforms, but nobody is talking about the loss of productivity that happens when beautiful women come to your house to kiss you on the mouth because they heard you use firefox now. nobody's talking about this

watch nimona on netflix 🔥

"I don't like butch lesbians" "I don't like masculine women" ok come here

me every single day of my life

It’s really funny when your cat takes a deep breath and exhales

You don’t have a job what are you so tired from? Slept 8 hours instead of 10?

Stripey rat buddies

Buddies

Tabby crew

link to tweet: (x)

grandad will always be there....