Steve Grube wrote:
> Why do you say "what a sham" ?? And why do you say "What
> is with people like Zinn." ???? Okay, so he's overlooked
> some important issues - especially ones you prioritize highly.
> Lighten up! Zinn does excellent work and is a great example
> of integrity. Do your communicating with him directly
> and find out why. Zinn isn't the enemy, but with your "challenge"
> of him I don't think you'll get as much of an answer as you
> would if you engage him in more of a discovery about his thinking.
> You could even get an "ah-ha" out of him. -steve grube
Steve,
Well let me explain further. I've watched the pundits on the left ignore disability for years and years. Maybe Zinn - a historian - never heard of the Americans with Disabilities Act? Do you really think that is possible??
There is a long, long history here with the Left ignoring us. It is well known in disability circles that the "left" has omitted us as a class of persons who have a movement, have issues. It took about 6 years after passage of the ADA for the "progressive" press to even acknowledge our existance and still the vast number haven't the slightest interest in reporting on our issues like they do on race, gender and gay issues. My publisher, who took a risk on publishing a leftie book about disability admitted that the attitudes on the left about disability he encountered in the process of doing my book were "sick."
Many, I repeat, many of us have tried to make the bridge occur between Left organizations and the Disability Rights Movement but the resistance has been painfully clear. To name just one example: Democratic Socialists of America, though it has been asked to list disability as one of its mission statement categories (as it lists gender, age, sex preferences and race) never has included disability - even though I am certain that some of its members would agree it should be listed. Naively, I thought years back that I was the only one who had brought the issue up, but then I met a woman who is blind who told be she had tried to no avail years before me.
I cannot count the times that I have tried to attend meetings that were not held in wheelchair accessible locations and when you call that to the group's attention, many times, nothing changes. Access was not seen as a civil right. Pity is the word I can use to describe the dominant outmoded reaction to disablement I see on the Left -- and paternalism follows that.
Please don't tell me it is my attitude when it is the history of the past ten years which has shown me how right I am. Imagine if you told a black person "to lighten up" about being made virtually invisible politically. What response do you think you would get from the BRC to that??
It seems to me that people in Zinn's position, especially being a historian, have an obligation to report some of the facts. Don't you think so? I mean what kind of history book can omit an entire people's civil rights movement - ongoing over thirty years - and call itself "A People's History." That is what I mean by sham. I too had been an admirer of his former work but I am insulted to have been left out as a part of "the People." We disabled people don't rate as second class citizens here, we are nowhere to be found in his version of history though he gives plenty of space to other identity issues like race and gender. What does that make us??? A Third Class, Fourth Class or NO CITIZEN AT ALL? We are totally invisible, An Invisible People.
I will approach Zinn, though some would say it won't do any good (I got one private email saying that already) because it is necessary.
Marta Russell