Marta Russell wrote:
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> However, it is important that individuals develop individual strength
> to exercise their will when it comes to institutional domination and
> other forms of oppression.
I agree with what I think you mean but not quite with what you say here. As your subsequent remarks make clear, in so far as disabled individuals are segregated, there is no way (or little way) in which they can develop that strength. Your work in the disabled rights movement (and that movement as a whole) is, I take it, an attempt to develop a collective power in which individual disabled people can then share and exemplify. Correct? (Probably the wording could be worked on.)
This afternoon I attended a meeting of LAN (not the computer kind) sponsored by the local Community Health Services (i.e., the local state financed mental health agency). (I attend as a representative of the local DMDSG.) The legislature, it seems, as provided only a .5% cost of living raise for the DHS (state Dept. of Health Serives) and its local agencies (2% which begins, however, only with the fourth quarter). To provide the 5% raise promised local staff, they are reducing that staff by one position, the position cut being that of adult outpatient services. They did get a grant which allowed them to purchase 2.5 hrs more a week of the time of a local psychiatrist for juvenile psychiatry. This particular psychiatrist is a very good one -- but in the time the state allots for his services those services will be quite limited, quantitatively and qualitatively. . . .And so on. There are a lot of contradictions in the delivery of mental health services to those who can't pay. One friend (schizophrenic) is obtaining fairly decent treatment from CHS, and his condition is under fair control -- but what he _really_ needs is at least $1000.00 more a month in personal income. His remaining "peculiarities" would be no disaster were he financially stable. As it is, he will be very lucky if he stays permanently outside the clutches of the law.
Carrol
> Segregation of disabled individuals by
> society is the instance foremost in my mind but as you know there are
> others. It is these individuals who are actively engaged in throwing
> off the shackles because we see the problems -- how far we get under a
> capitalist economy is another question. Every reform movement is and
> will be limited by class power in a class based economy.
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> Marta