Words from Shane Clariborne
Monday, March 15, 2010
“Redistribution is only as meaningful inasmuch as it is rooted in love.”
Going Underground
Monday, February 22, 2010
By Guest Writer Zara Todd
I’ve lived in London most of my life, and by most people’s definitions I’m a born and bred Londoner. I consider myself to have quite a good grip of London geography and attractions, but recently I’ve realised I have a huge blind spot in my knowledge . . . I know hardly anything about the Underground. I seem to subconsciously block out virtually every reference to the Underground system. I rarely consider it as a travel option, apart from the small part of the Jubilee Line I can use without the challenge of huge gaps or massive steps, but recently the Underground has kept popping up in my life.
It started a few weeks ago when a friend highlighted to me the proposal for TFL that they will be scaling-down their plans to make the access to more Tube stations step-free. Scaling back accessibility plans seems short-sighted to me, especially with the Olympics and Paralympics descending on London in two years. However, I didn’t think the lack of future access on the Underground would really impact on my life as I’m so used to navigating London without the Underground. Then it struck me that until fifteen years ago most buses weren’t accessible to wheelchair-users and if that was still the case I would be incredibly frustrated and pissed off. I certainly wouldn’t have the type of life I have because without buses I would be trapped and isolated, rarely able to travel, especially with friends.
How would the way I live my life change if I had wider access to more of the Underground? After this week I can say one thing for sure - I would have more free time! Although I spend more time than most of my friends thinking about the practicalities of doing things like going on a night out to applying for a job, I’d like to think that when I decide I want something I don’t let being disabled get in my way (a trait which has got me into some interesting scenarios over the years).
A few months ago I decided with a friend that we wanted to see Kelly Clarkson in concert at Wembley so we booked tickets. At the time I knew getting to and from the gig wouldn’t be easy as I live on the other side of London, but I wasn’t expecting the mammoth trek that going to a simple concert would involve. The Wembley area is quite well serviced by the Underground and local railway stations. Unfortunately none of them work comfortably with me travelling independently in my electric wheelchair so I made the decision to stay over in a local hotel instead of attempting to get home in the middle of the night after the gig, and boy am I glad I did. What if I could fully access the Underground would be a three-hour round trip became an eight-hour exploration of London by bus. Don’t get me wrong, the bus journey was really interesting and I got to see lots of the different sides of London but I can’t help but feel I wasted a lot of time.
I LOVE buses and I depend on them most days to get me where I need to go and live the life I want, but the last week has got me wondering what am I missing. Now I know the Underground is the bane of most commuters’ existence, but, as unpredictable as it can be, I think people often take for granted how liberating the Underground is to their lives.
I, like most human beings, enjoy having choice, and I know this sounds stupid, but until I received the report from my friend, I never really processed just how much my travel options are determined by whether an organisation or individual deems accessibility important, and that scares me.
Most of the time I forget how the lack of access to the Underground changes the way I live but after this week I realised that the Underground or lack of it really does change the way you think about London. Without the Tube, London feels much bigger and inaccessible.
Now I believe in equality, even if that means dealing with a few sweaty and rude fellow travellers, as long as I get equality in service as well, but at the moment, and unfortunately for the foreseeable future, it seems I am asking too much.
Help isn’t Hard to Ask For Anymore
Friday, February 19, 2010
By Guest Writer Rebecca Wylie
I don’t ask for help as much as I should.
The truth is, disabled or not, most of us don’t. This is most likely caused by an innate fear of showing weakness and like other mammals we are programmed with a “survival of the fittest” mentality. When you are disabled, admitting you need help can feel like you are losing what little independence you have. You are conflicted because you know you need the help but you want to do it on your own. Sometimes it is hard to ask family members because you don’t want to be a strain on an already busy group of people, despite their willingness. Plus, you may have to wait a few minutes or adjust your schedule until they are available to assist. My mind is plague by this conflict almost hourly.
Fortunately, my mind doesn’t always have to be and I owe it all to the wonderful ladies that I have hired to help. When I went away to college I got my first taste of hiring a staff, managing them and developing a rapport with them. At first, the task was daunting and stressful, but after a few weeks, it became easy. I originally hired four students, from all academic disciplines (not just nurses and therapists), and finished with eight on staff. I never turned away a willing person (you never know when you might need them) and would add people to a back-up list in case a primary attendant needed a shift covered.
Now that I am back at home and unemployed, I am alone during the day, while my parents work and was tired of having to ask friends, neighbors and relatives to come each week and then worry if I couldn’t find someone for Friday or any other day. How was I going to eat lunch on Friday? This dilemma happened often and I was tired of worrying. Finding reliable people who were willing to come for several hours a day was a bit trickier to do in the “real world” because I do not live near a college campus but I eventually accomplished the goal. I have two wonderful ladies that come.
Having control over your life, when you can, is so important and having personal care attendants allows me to have it. I am no longer on someone else’s schedule as I tell them when to come and go. Because I am in charge, I also control how things get done. This is equally important to me given that I like my things organized and my parents are often too busy to adhere to my preferred system. Don’t get me wrong; I am extremely appreciative of my family’s help. It shows me how much I am loved. But I am 25 and need to have my own life, like all of my peers.
Perhaps the most rewarding part of hiring my own staff isn’t the work that they do for me, it is the deep friendship that develops. It happens gradually but there comes a time when I am no longer a boss and they are no longer an employee. And when that happens, it isn’t hard to ask for help anymore.
Two Forms of Independence
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
By Guest Writer Rebecca Wylie
I like to think of myself as a very independent person despite not being physically able to take care of myself. This may seem like a contradiction and to an outsider, maybe it is. However, after nearly 18 years of being in a wheelchair, I now realize we all possess two different kinds of independence, a physical one and a psychological one.
As one might guess, physical independence manifests itself in one’s body. Can my body move through life without the assistance of another or device? Can I take care of my body and all its biological needs, which sustain its existence? Most people with disabilities will answer “no” to some or all of these questions and this provides a source of daily frustration: the inability to go upstairs to a friend’s apartment, the inability to eat, drink and go to the bathroom when you want to, the inability to show hug, kiss and be intimate like everyone else. You lose control of many aspects of your life, privacy, freedom, and rights. The world is a very exclusive place.
In direct contrast, psychological independence manifests itself in one’s mind and heart. Can I think for myself? Do I possess the courage to take risks, expand my horizons, problem solve, and be flexible when obstacles arise? Do I possess a sense of adventure and zest for life? Is my spirit full? These are much harder questions to answer but are essential for living a full life, disability or not. If you throw in disability, psychological independence becomes one of the few things the individual still controls and it is the thing I try everyday to strive for in everything that I do.
Disability is a unique experience become it requires a great deal of psychological independence in order to get through each day. The general population has psychological independence but they aren’t exactly required to use it everyday. Their days often are mundane: wake up, go to work, see the same people doing the same thing, come home, eat, watch some TV, go to bed and sleep for six hours before they get up and do it all over again. Disabled life is different every day, even when we wake up, go to work, etc. because there is always a new obstacle in the sidewalk, or ignorant person that thinks they know what’s better for you than you do.
There is always a new battle. Utilizing your psychological independence becomes your only artillery and your armor. Use it wisely and you will accomplish every goal, you will meet every challenge.
Employment is Empowerment
Monday, February 15, 2010
By Guest Writer Rebecca Wylie
One of the biggest problems facing the disabled community at present is the lack of sustainable employment, employment that allows them to live out in the community as independently as possible.
I am a walking, well more like rolling, poster child for this cause. I am a 25-year old incomplete quadriplegic living just outside of Chicago. I graduated top ten from one of the best high schools in the United States. I went on to the University of Missouri to study Graphic Design, a subject I not only have a passion for but also something I knew I could do despite my severe physical limitations. Being seven hours away from family of any kind, I managed to hire personal care attendants who helped me get up every morning in time for class, fed me my meals, and put me to bed after I finished my homework. I graduated in four years without changing my major, a feat that many students can’t attest to. And yet, three years after graduation I have failed to secure meaningful work, work that will pay for my personal care attendants; work that will allow me to move out of my parent’s house; work that will pay for my health care, my food, my quality of life.
Most people with disabilities live off Social Security, Medicare and Food Stamp benefits as they struggle to find work and if they don’t and their families no longer can take care of them, they become a ward of the State, further depleting taxpayer money from programs that all citizens could benefit from, like building infrastructure, establishing National Parks and improving education. I, ironically, was denied any government benefits at age 18 because of the little birthday money I had saved throughout childhood. Not that I want to live exclusively off these benefits for the rest of my life, $500 a month will not pay for adequate shelter, food and health care for anyone, let alone someone disabled.
Determined not to be a financial burden on already angry taxpayers, I decided to go away to college, thinking that an education would be my ticket to getting a job and living as physically and financially independent as possible. I was convinced by my family, teachers, counselors, caseworkers etc. that college was the key. Now that I have a Bachelor’s degree and have had little success at securing permanent sustainable employment I know that a diploma is only part of the equation.
Lack of employment does not stem from the lack of preparedness, on my alma matter’s part or mine. I write a mean cover letter, have an up-to-date resume and possess a killer design portfolio. I have worked with various employment agencies, government-run and not, that claim to “help people with disabilities find and keep quality employment that pays a living wage and offers a chance for advancement.” I have applied for hundreds of jobs/internships, paid and unpaid, both in and out of my field. I have networked. I have even managed to score interviews. And still, I remain unemployed.
Some people would blame this failure on the state of the current economy. While it is true, the U.S. labor force has faced one of the worst economic climates in nearly 80 years, I can’t bring myself to point my finger at that. Long before the economy tanked the disabled have struggled, and as I said earlier, I have applied for hundreds of jobs and even gone on a handful of meaningful interviews; the economy is not the biggest contributing factor here. The problem occurs in the interview stage when the potential employer sees the disability. I immediately look weak, broken and useless. If only they could sit in my wheelchair for a day, type and write with their mouth for a day, step inside my brilliant mind and face what I face everyday. They would see a completely different person.
It is up to me and everyone else who is disabled and wants to work to show society what we are truly capable of.
To Accommodate for the Brilliance of Man
Friday, February 05, 2010
Reprinted with permission from A Jar Full of Fireflies by Ashley Brown.
I will tell you your story from my point of view. Though there were several decades in there where I missed it all and a few where I chose to. I will tell you your story, though you may not recognize it now through all the history books and blackboards. I will tell you your story though perhaps you have already seen it a better way ‘round. Way up there with all the wreckage and stars.
I found you when I was walking in the monsoon and stubbed my toe on your feet and gathered the courage to climb your branches. When I was young I climbed (and didn’t mind the callouses on my feet) to your hear your leaves shake and talk and shake back again when my face was close enough. I would watch your great trunk tremble and tell of all the bodies bent beneath you. lovers. hippies. the romans to hide their swords. and marys rounded bastard belly . Later, maybe because my mom was tired of my bruised knees or because we were running out of Band-Aids. My father climbed high into your branches holding boards and a rusty hammer and into your arms laid a room for us. and I would climb and read you where the wild things are and a wrinkle in time. fight battles from your boughs. And on Sundays I would sit to watch you talk to the sky. The way we would if we could hear its language. But then I started having to wear stockings and go somewhere else to learn things. and I gathered philosophy and politics and so many words in my arms I no room for holding your branches. now I am sorry it took me so long to unfold the map that led back to you. and am glad you didn’t mind the wait and said you didn’t understand time anyway, that yesterday you watched as the world was made.
Christ Walked on Water, We Can Wade Through the War
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Reprinted with permission from A Jar Full of Fireflies by Ashley Brown.
Dear crosswalker,
Every day that fall and just before the sun was up, I took the train from Cite Universitaire to the French school, coffee filter grit between my teeth and my metro pass clumsily shoved between my skirt and hip. And after school I wandered your city, watching the way high heeled women walk and how little french people’s mouths move when they talk. I sat for hours in front of the seine, the bread shops, and cathedrals watching the sun glint against the tourists and lovers. The business men and beggars.
That day I saw you, I watched the street sign turn from red to white and all those people pass you by. I watched your clean and open eyes pass right through them, figuring, for a moment you were daydreaming…But you were somewhere much farther away, unsuspecting. brave. lost. So I took you by the arm and we walked across the street, you and I and all those shifting clothes and feet. We were the perfect pair, you holding whispered conversations and words and cadences and i with my memories of colors and people and sun. Each disconnected, in our own way, in that endless city of streets and savants and silk.
We could have shared our secrets, been each others treasured maps, had they not been sealed up in a language I didn’t understand. But then again, I figure that of course you would not have known just where the sun was and if you did it would not have mattered. And I don’t care too much for gossip.
So instead, we shared a crosswalk. some sort of lovely and strange solidarity in all that silence and seconds, grabbing each others’ coat sleeves and pulling ourselves across.
I think you knew.
Just how I felt.
Homesick Geographer’s Logic
Monday, February 01, 2010
Reprinted with permission from A Jar Full of Fireflies, by Ashley Brown.
Dave is teaching high-schoolers in Virginia. Charles is finishing up his first year of medical school. Carter and Will are married almost a year now and talking a language I don’t understand. Lucy joined an artist co-op and is painting in her own studio now. Laurie is waiting tables in the North Davidson District.
Some of my friends chose to stay. To Teach. Work. Drink. Commit themselves to graduate school or the World Cup. Some of my friends chose to go away. To Travel. Relearn languages. Ride in trains. I sporadically read their postings about protests in Dublin and humanitarian aid in South Africa.
I measure my life by these people.
I am turning twenty something. Deferring my college loans. Learning to cook. Refusing to live at home. Paying bills by myself. Planting a garden. Finding unfamiliar communities and new friends. Julie calls and tells me she got a job working at Bank of America. I call Laurie and tell her it’s not really about the boyfriends or the benjamins. This backfires because I, as it turns out, am not humorous or entitled to this joke, and because it has everything to do with both. I am writing new songs and spending time in a newfound, bohemian coffeehouse. I’m wondering if I lost weight since last year and about the new changes my parents made to the house.
Strange, scattered feeling when you realize your home is made of people. Vulnerable feeling… and that these particular people, come and visit, but that they are visiting. Awkwardly asking where the bathroom is instead of stealing your leftovers.
This realization makes your home smaller. Because maps full of pen marks and scotch tape still fit in your pocket. (You shouldn’t have to use these kind of things to find your home.) And it makes your home bigger. This too. You stretch out your index finger and point in the direction you last saw them go. (But they’ve gone farther than your borderline fingertips or vanishing point, primary school perspective.)
“Learn how to use a compass,” I tell myself, “and hope map keys lie about all that distance in-between and make the decision to believe that, maybe, the latitude line mathematics and geological dots we call home will turn into people soon, and we will hold each other by unfolding our maps.”