Kalister1 wrote:
It matters, liberals tend to be on the side of equality. They tend to really support initiatives in favor of the disabled.
Liberals think they do. Conservatives think they do, too. The key word is think. And both will use disabled people as a "See, look, we're nice to them" thing without really acting in our interests at all.
Liberals and Disability Rights: Why Don't They Get It? focuses (from the point of view of disability rights activists who
wish liberals would get it because those particular activists are more on the side of liberals than conservatives on other matters) on why liberals
don't tend to grasp disability rights perspectives, and often fight against us. (While that article came out after a specific incident happened, it collects articles from a bunch of different writers on this topic.)
Edited to add a quote:
Quote:
"Liberals say, 'we support the social programs that you depend on, that you agree with -- and because we do that, we should have your unqualified support, even when we support every 'better dead than disabled' cause that comes along.' Folks on the right say, 'Look, we're out there on the protest line in Florida; we're fighting for the lives of people like Terri Schiavo, so we should get your unqualified support, no matter how much we cut the social programs you need to function and even survive.'"
Another one of the more telling quotes from it is that disability issues are seen as medical issues rather than civil rights issues (which is, in fact, why in the name of "psychiatric medicine" it's possible to torture people in ways that are otherwise outlawed under international law).
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"In my world it's a place of patterns and feel. In my world it's a haven for what is real. It's my world, nobody can steal it, but people like me, we live in the shadows." -Donna Williams