----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com> To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Friday, December 20, 2013 7:24 AM Subject: [lbo-talk] Marta Russell, RIP
>I recently learned that list alum Marta Russell, the disability rights
>activist, died sometime in the last week or so. That's all I know, but she
>would have been 62 today.
>
> Doug
That's too bad. I met and talked with her several times when she came up here from LA. The last time was around 2004. She was thinking of relocating but found the disability politics up here pretty closed off.
Her book Beyond Ramps was in many respects was a critique of the Berkley style disability rights movement. It was a valid and pointed comentary. She and the book attempted to move the discussion away from accomodation with the democratic party lines about access and toward a more thorough going marxist style awareness. Her political awareness I think formed after her disability (she was a para) and already had a career in the movie industry in the visual effects department. I don't know the details, but I assume she had a car accident or something like that. She continued working but visual effects were undergoing a vast overhaul with digitalization and other changes in editing. She had to leave her former work.
The point being that her marxism was informed by her work experience which was a departure from most of the disability establishment experience up here. Most people were for the most part disabled young before working and most never had `regular' jobs. So their emphasis was on access to employment rather than overhauling existing employee relations. Marta critique centered on the problems of efficiency and productive capacity in labor. It seems like a subtle point but it was critical to the existing nature of the vision and scope of reforms and what disability rights actually meant.
Unfortunately, most of the politicos here were still around and running things so her job prospects and contacts were limited. She tried Marin county for awhile and then I lost track of her. She was a fun conversationalist, often witty and pointed like her book.
CG