slander of my beloved affiliate on your elist

[Marta Russell]

Yea, the corporate state has done things like this many times before
to discredit unions.  But abuse does occur in these awful snake pits
and those of us who follow those stories and know of people who have
survived them know that neither unions nor business owners of these
snake pit institutions have stopped the abuse of institutionalized
persons - including nursing home abuse.   An associate of mine who is
a university professor in Hawaii and widely published on disability
issues recently wrote a review of my book for New Political Science in
which he stated "this reviewer has never met a former inmate of a
state school or a state hospital who was not repeatedly raped, men and
women." It is usually workers doing the raping.  In Los Angeles
several years back a worker raped a woman who was commotose and she
got pregnant.  The nursing home's solution was to abort the pregnancy,
then sterilze the woman!  Great, so now there will be no evidence of
future rapes.  Her family was poor and without the means to find her a
better place to "live."  We demonstated in front of the judges home
cause the judge did nothing to protect her either.  So, it certainly
is not beyond reason to suspect such allegations of other kinds of
abuse towards inmates may be true -- even if this one is not and is
being used for political purposes.  Everyone's act needs to be cleaned
up cause when it isn't you cannot wholly claim innocence and expect
people to believe it.  So now, there is a huge disability social
movement to get rid of these insitutions and shift the money to in
home services whenever possible.

Marta

Doug Henwood wrote:
> 
> A union friend of mine happened to read Marta Russell's post
> (appended below), and responded:
> 
> >Spreading the evil governor's slanders of caring-4-patient worker
> >heroes (and I ain't being sarcastic here). We take the governor to
> >court, documenting his use of $6 million in state funds to pay for
> >replacement workers around the state -- a big labor story -- and the
> >state releases this bullshit the same day so the idiot papers write
> >about that crap instead.
> 
> >Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 09:43:53 -0800
> >From: Marta Russell <ap888 at lafn.org>
> >Subject: Nursing home strike report
> >
> >If true this is certainly infantile and uncalled for.
> >Marta
> >
> >New York Times-4-11-01
> >
> >"Hartford:Nursing Home Sabotage"
> >
> >"Allegations of vandalism and sabotage before a one-day strike at
> >Connecticut nursing homes have been substantiated by  Chief State's
> >Attorney John M. Bailey.  In a report released yesterday,
> >investigators said that they found evidence of 34 incidents at nursing
> >homes before the March 20 walkout by members of the New England Health
> >Care Employees Union, District 1199.  The report said identification
> >bracelets were removed from some Alzheimer's patients, some diabetics
> >were fed chocolate, and doors to an oxygen tank room were glued shut.
> >Mr. Bailey said one or two arrests were possible."

-- 
Marta Russell
author, Los Angeles, CA
http://disweb.org/
Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract
http://www.commoncouragepress.com/russell_ramps.html