The Social Movement Left OUT

[Marta Russell]

>For Marta, and the list.
>
>Jenny K came into the shop this afternoon just after I posted on this
>thread from work. She is one of DREDF's lawyers. I asked her if she
>knew you (Marta), but I don't think you've met. In any event I also
>tried to get her to explain what happened to the DREDF international
>law project, but couldn't get much of an answer.
>
>Last year DREDF had a DOJ(?) project to make recommendations on creating
>guidelines for international disability law. I have no idea what they
>covered. Do you? (I should know, but I don't)


See http://www.dredf.org/symposium/index.html
The UN convention on the rights of disabled people proposed as a part 
of the plan is being obstructed.  There is a battle going on to get a 
convention.

>
>In any event, in some talks with Mary Lou last year, I remember
>worrying about some of the possible problems with any international
>disability law guidelines lead by the US government.
>
>My biggest worry was that the US privatized social services system
>with its giant healthcare industry, HMOs, private equipment dealers,
>obnoxious home care agencies, filthy for profit nursing homes, greedy
>drug companies, etc, etc, would become central to any US international
>development policy. That developing legal guidelines in this area
>might neatly tie (perhaps inadvertently) into the on-going US
>neoliberal drives to project these same US corporate healthcare models
>into various trade and economic policy agreements and become the de
>facto international standard.
>
>The underlying argument goes something like this. Privatizing social
>support services takes disability out of the medical model and puts it
>into the consumer model. And that is supposed to be progress.


Yes I agree that this is a large failing.  But I have complained in 
writing about the fact that the DRM takes the market as a given and 
only demands right to access services and consumer direction, but 
doesn't really confront the economics or structure of those 
capitalist institutions.

But since the state welfare and social service agencies have been a 
large part of the oppression, that is not a place to go for progress 
either.  One activist just wrote me that " the left is saturated with 
social workers, educators, unions, and philanthropests, the very 
people fighting inclusion and are the heart of compassionate 
oppression...   Unions, both social worker and hands on staff are big 
supporters of institutions, teachers have as a group fought 
mainstreaming, and social workers, well when I figure out how they 
help I will let you know."

So how do we get there from here?  It is a big big question.

>
>Well, whatever is right and wrong about this argument has to be
>injected into the anti-globalization movements and hashed out there by
>disabled advocates. The goal would be that some consensus arises from
>both the developed world's progressive community and the developing
>world's advocates to counter what I would expect to be a future of
>brutal repercussions and consequences---if that doesn't happen.


Where does one hash this out?
>
>I can see the potential to co-oped any established disability
>centered radicalism by US neoliberal policy makers, using the
>so-called great successes of the US on disability rights as the
>justification for exporting a really heinous privatized healthcare
>and social services system.


I agree most certainly.  It has already happened to some degree.  But 
we have the centrist DRM advocates at the helm, just like the current 
Dems are run by the neoliberal centrists.  Who put them there. Duh, 
they get appointed.
>
>The only way I can see to prevent this kind of duplicity is for more
>disabled advocacy groups to link with the anti-globalization
>movements---or whatever you want to call the whole counter-culture
>that is co-evolving with globalized neoliberalism.

I am all for that.  The question is how does it form?  Do you have an 
email address for Jenny K?

>
>So all that was the background to my obnoxious comment earlier this
>afternoon.


I missed that one.

Marta

-- 
Marta Russell
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.disweb.org
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