While the London Guardian has dismally bad coverage of our issues, the Guardian in San Francisco has been doing a top notch job.
After that Toynbee article (which was posted on LBO), disabled people picketed the Guardian in London. Here is an update:
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ACTION UPDATE - DEMONSTRATION AGAINST THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER BY DISABLED ACTIVISTS - 31.08.01
Today about a dozen disabled people protested against recent negative coverage in the Guardian newspaper - especially articles by Simon Hoggart and Polly Toynbee.
After leafletting the general public and workers outside the Manchester offices of the Guardian, 2 of the protesters went in to negotiate a right to reply to the offending articles, under the editorial control of disabled people. As we were told there were no editorial staff present at the Manchester Offices, the Head of Personnel agreed to fax our demands to Chris Elliot, the Managing Editor at the Guardian's London office. After the protesters were able to speak directly to Guardian staff in London, it was agreed that the Guardian would contact their Readers Editor to ask if they would agree for the protesters to have a column in the paper as a right to reply.
The Readers Editor is back to work on Tuesday 4th September when negotiations will start between the protesters and the Editorial staff.
Disabled people are demanding that we have the right to reply to negative articles written about us by non-disabled people.
If the Guardian does not afford us this right, further action will be taken against the newspaper.
This protest was viewed as a partial victory, but we have a long way to go.
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By contrast the San Francisco Guardian featured this piece:
August 29, 2001 news | a+e | sf life | extra | sfbg.com
Pity this! Disability activists hate the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon as much as you do.
By Emily Teplin TONY DANZA'S SHMALTZY rendition of "Sing Sing Sing" on last year's Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon, the annual 20-hour fundraiser that combines "star-studded" performances with pleas to donate, begs the question: who's doing whom the favor here? Is Danza, with this embarrassing number, actually using his celebrity to help kids with muscular dystrophy, or should he be grateful to the MDA for providing him with one of his increasingly rare cameos on national television?
Now in its 36th year, the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon has become a veritable Labor Day institution, as essential to our feel-good urge as Hallmark cards. We're entertained by Danza's number and the "Annie Get Your Gun" shuffle and Lord of the Dance, which prove limited physical mobility isn't necessarily bad. We're touched by human interest stories of kids who can't play ball like other kids (at least people with neuromuscular disorders can still watch TV). Watching Jerry sing "You'll Never Walk Alone" on our screens, we call the 1-800 number in a choked-up voice and pledge to the MDA and/or beg the operator to make him stop.
The telethon is a bizarre recipe for entertainment and an incredibly lucrative fundraising phenomenon. It raised more than $50 million last year for research and support services. The MDA sends kids with muscular dystrophy to camp, buys them wheelchairs, and promotes scientific developments for a cure. So why do so many disability rights advocates oppose the telethon?
It's not just a matter of good taste. Since the 1980s activists such as Jerry's Orphans, a group of former Jerry's kids, have rallied against the telethon because they believe it projects degrading stereotypes about people with disabilities. As if the stigma of being associated with Ed McMahon wasn't enough, Blane Beckwith, a Berkeley disability activist told the Bay Guardian, "Jerry keeps putting out the 'pity' message at the same time we're trying to get equality. We work all year trying to gain recognition." The telethon's portrayal of helpless, pitiable disabled people "keeps us doing damage control half the time."
Harriet Johnson, a Charleston, N.C.-based lawyer who has one of the diseases the MDA focuses on, said, "He makes it seem like we have one foot in the grave and that our only hope for any happiness is in Jerry finding a cure."
Activists say they're not as concerned about finding a cure as they are about disabling social and physical barriers to equality. As Beckwith asked, "Are you really going to hire someone you pity?"
Anti-telethon protests have ranged from the Bay Area chapter of Jerry's Orphan's storming the KTVU station to demonstrate against its participation in the "Love Network" of stations hosting the telethon to organizing through Web sites (see www.stoppity.org) to creative drinking games. In 1997, Ragged Edge magazine reported the emergence of "Tympani!," which "gives players points for downing swallows at virtually every predictably sappy moment on the broadcast."
This year activists expect the loudest outcry ever against the telethon, due in part to Lewis's May 20 appearance on the CBS Morning News. When asked about disability advocates' criticism of the telethon, the MDA's "number one volunteer" responded, "Pity? If it's pity, we'll get some money," and "[If] you don't want to be pitied because you're a cripple in a wheelchair, stay in your house!"
"He meant to use the word 'compassion,' not pity," Bob Mackel, the MDA's director of public information, told us. "He speaks from his heart, and sometimes it just comes out wrong."
Under pressure from disability activists, both the MDA and Lewis issued an apology for his comments on CBS.
"Jerry considers himself to be our savior," Beckwith said. Apparently, America agrees. A recent Slay Media study showed that 36 percent of Americans see Lewis as the entertainer whose cause is the most recognizable and that he's done more to draw attention to a disability than Michael J. Fox or Christopher Reeve. Jerry's efforts have helped the MDA raise more than $1 billion over the years, and in 1977 then-U.S. representative Les Aspin nominated Lewis for a Nobel Peace Prize.
According to Mackel, the MDA and the telethon have changed to incorporate ideas of disability rights and independence. Beckwith retorted, "They've just co-opted what we've been saying all along." In Joseph Shapiro's No Pity, Marilynn Phillips, a disability activist and former poster child, dismisses the MDA's reform efforts, saying, "There are no good plantations, and there are no good telethons." There are also, to my knowledge, no good versions of "You'll Never Walk Alone."
Emily Teplin is an intern at the Bay Guardian.
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