Chuck Grimes wrote:
>
>
> However, and I have to emphasize `consumerism' was never, ever an
> ideal, a goal, a policy position, and such a bogus construction never
> constituted the central theme of these early movements. They were
> instead entirely devoted to programmatic, institutional, and
> architectural access---inclusion in the public arena of life---not as
> a consumer---but as a fundamental human right. Right to education,
> right to housing, right of access to all the publicly funded programs
> and services that at that time composed the public sector. This was
> actually straight out of the Special Services guidelines that stated
> the goal of the SS projects was to make higher education
> programatically and institutionally accessible to disadvantaged
> students.
>
Yes, this is certainly right on but the ILC movement evolved into a
consumer movement. Believe me, all ILCs refer to their disabled
clients as consumers. They rely on grants, state money and are very
much entrenched in service delivery. Some of them even charge a
co-payment for services. There may be a few that are still radical
but for the most part they are a product the consumer movement.
Berkeley sets itself apart in many ways because there is more
political consciousness there, but it is not, BY FAR, representative
of what has happened across the nation. The nondisabled professionals
moved in to get good stable jobs with the ILCs, they became oriented
towards services, not much advocacy and worse, became mini social
service units.
Marta