Never Walked In High Heels

My last article on health care entitled, “Why this Health Care Thing Scares Me” attracted such a visceral response from some of you that I realized that it was quite the hot-button topic. Doubting the validity and moral stability of a national healthcare system, suddenly seemed like insulting apple pie, the American flag, and little baby bunnies. So here we go again…

I’ll start at the beginning. I am a woman with Cerebral Palsy who was put into private therapy at the age of six months. My family was extremely poor at the time and doing so was an incredible sacrifice of time, energy, and money on their part. At the same time I was also placed into therapy provided through the government at a public school when I began my early childhood education at the age of three. Thus, I saw both sides of the picture. The private therapy, which was paid for directly from a pocket book, and the public kind given for free. The difference is striking.

After a therapist at school informed my mother that, “Walking is not a reasonable goal for her” a Kindergarten teacher saw the fallacy of this argument and immediately gave up half of her lunch period to help me learn to walk. When my mother took news of this assessment back to the private therapist, they agreed with the school teacher and the goal of walking was added to my list of well defined goals that would continue to be worked on for the next 16 years. The goals at school were nebulous. Therapists were underpaid and overworked and the quality of therapy never came anywhere near what was available within a private clinic. I have no doubt in my mind that if it wasn’t for the private clinic of Pathways Center for Children, I would not be nearly as able-bodied as I am today. The format of therapy in public school consists of government goals and regulations thought up by some expert in Washington who has probably never seen a disabled child, let alone this one in particular.

What I’m writing here is my own story. I have no doubt that there are some great physical therapists, who work within the public school systems. The ones even I had were sometimes outstanding, but the pressure and paperwork placed on them by a needless bureaucracy made their jobs so much less efficient than they could have been.

But as is typical with any of my personal experiences this one doesn’t fit inside that box. The first abnormality comes from the conservative argument that healthcare is much worse in socialized systems such as is visible in the UK. Every single one of the private therapists I had were trained by people at the Bobath Clinic, which is a resource specializing in providing top therapy for individuals with Cerebral Palsy. This clinic is actually in the south of England and while it is funded in a multitude of different ways, it goes against the statement that, “all UK healthcare offices are rubbish.”

The second thing you must be aware of is that my family could not afford to give me private therapy and so the family who started Pathways Center for Children subsidized a great many therapy sessions for children in similar circumstances including myself. For many years, my therapy cost my family next to nothing and it was through the generosity of the Ryans (the clinics founders), and the blessing of their wealth that I was able to undergo treatment. In a system where everyone is financially equal, no one could afford to have the outstanding treatment I received. Not only the abilities that many doctors claimed were impossibilities but the desire to create enough capital someday to give other children the same opportunities. By eliminating private healthcare, these systems and avenues are cut off and unavailable to those who need it most.

When thinking about politics I am often reminded of a line from Thornton Wilder’s, Our Town. A town official at one point says that we all want the same thing. We want the people who need services to be able to get them, and those who are going to milk the services to be kept away from taking advantage of the system That’s what I want. That’s really what we all want, but we also live in a fallen world where even with healthcare for everyone, not everyone’s needs will be treated. To those who call me extremist and cold-hearted, I would ask this. Does your opinion come from firsthand experience? Have you read my story? Is my experience not as valid as yours, and should my concerns be ignored because they do not fit with your agenda? Answer this truthfully and honestly. Growing up I wasn’t a member of a particular political party (in truth, I’m still not). I was just a kid who knew what she saw and experienced, and refused to forget it.

“Dear Athena, thank you so much for the invitation to see you perform at Sadler’s Wells next month. Unfortunately, due to the current conditions of the economy, I feel that I cannot take on any additional clients as it would not be fair to the clients I am currently serving. Thank you again for your invitation. Regards”

Okay. I get it. The economy is bad, really bad actually. The UK and the rest of the world are slowly grinding to a standstill. People are being laid off. The housing market, which dictates so many other seemingly unrelated things, now seems to be everywhere—shooting up one minute and failing the next. It’s rough and nobody likes it. But now it seems that on top of all the other problems, people are actually starting to use the economy as an excuse for everything.

And when I say everything, I mean everything—completely unrelated items such as kicking the dog when you get home, or not considering clients for a potential acting agency. You and your wife got in a fight? Blame the economy. Late for work three days in a row? Well, it’s because the economy is ruining public transportation. Kids not doing well in school? It’s because the economy is so bad that nobody can focus anymore. All these problems are very real and money does affect everything, even corners of our lives that we can’t imagine. But there comes a point in time, where people can only blame their issues on their own choices and not on external problems.

I can appreciate that being an acting agent in London is hard, very hard. So hard in fact, that in the best of times an agent might not come to your show. She’s not interested, or busy, or she has a full roster already. All perfectly acceptable reasons for not coming out to a production. To hide behind conditions when they have nothing to do with the present situation is to ultimately change excuses to consistently avoid the truth. Just say you are unable to make it to the show, or you can’t take any more clients. That reason is actually as acceptable now as it was three years ago.

And the fact is this entire letter is reflective of how we got into the economic mess in the first place. People blaming other people rather than taking action will always lead to disaster be it war, economic downfall, or social upheaval. And then to say that something wouldn’t be, “fair to other clients,” is absurd. Nothing is fair, I get that, and within a certain acting agent’s roster, clients are competing against each other for the same job. Is that fair? But there is a world of difference between a job being inherently competitive (and therefore refined by competitive people) and one that is ground to a halt by a bad economy.

If a man didn’t make the cut for his NCAA college basketball team, would that be blamed on the bad economy as well?

In college when we would go the health center, everything was blamed on a virus. You could go with a broken leg and the nurse would tell you that the broken leg virus has been going around all season. Now it seems we have the bad economy virus. Yes, it is extremely easy to lose both hope and momentum when in a recession, but that is the last thing any of us should want to do. Closing our hands, clenching our fists, and hiding under the bed in fear of what my happen will only serve to make a bad situation infinitely worse. If everyone responded this way how could we ever hope to bring about the level of optimism and opportunity needed to make things better. You’re scared. I’m scared. We’re all terrified as to what may happen, but the truth is that the doors that seem to be closing because of the economic downturn were always difficult to open in the first place. Storms are always hard to weather and challenges come and go. The difference is that Fox News and CNN don’t usually focus on it when you’re terrified. Keep your hands out and open, look for the opportunities that still exist, and take sensible risks. The rules are really the same as always. These include our most basic instinct: Refuse to become paralyzed when everyone else around you is doing just that.

Back in the classroom, Socrates was relentless towards the mind of sixteen year olds.

“Can we ever be untied? Look on a map, America is huge. Alaska, Kansas, New York all in one country. Let’s be reasonable.” Now he was doing his best to push everyone’s buttons.

I’ve been out of college a short while now and already two of my friends have needed to apply for handicap parking placards. Two years ago it was unthinkable, now they are applying for the blue placards which are permanent, rather than the temporary red ones. For someone who has found how we are all alike more interesting than how we are all different, the connection is striking. For most of us, as we age, America will be shrinking. What is different about disability rights from most civil right battles is that nobody will wake up suddenly being a different race, gender, or creed than when they went to bed. Life can change in an instant in that going for a jog one morning may be the last time we ever do it. This may be as simple as a bad knee or as traumatic as a car accident, but everyone’s body will fail him. Moreover the inaccessible America you  permit today is going to be the same one you will inherit tomorrow when your body breaks down. I’m not just advocating for my rights. I’m advocating for yours

But even the politicians, the ones who are supposed to be directly enacting the Constitution, remain blissfully unaware of how small America is on this issue. In between welfare reform and environmentalism, gay marriage debates and school vouchers, when was the last time you heard a story about disability rights on a news station? I can think of only one politician who consistently brings up the issue in her platform. Other than that, I feel like everyone else’s issues get debated in Washington except mine. Even though all men are ultimately feeble, the needs of all men are ignored.

What I learned that day in the classroom, took an additional six years to finally reach its full meaning. Like so many other things in life, you don’t realize what rights are until they are taken away. It’s as simple as someone in the grocery store insisting that I really want skim milk when I’m reaching for the two percent. Most people when they think about disability rights think of assisted care or special services. I don’t need that. I just want to get where I’m going unimpeded by a staircase, someone who thinks they know my limitations, or even an overbearing special service. Don’t give me add on’s until you’ve figured out how to fully give me my unalienable rights. This doesn’t mean I don’t have those rights yet. I still have them, America (or anywhere else I’ve lived) just hasn’t figured out how to respect them. Special care facilities, special education, even special funding is no replacement for freedom. Any revolutionary in American  history could’ve told you that. They could also tell you that sooner or later, that freedom eventually came. Even after living in the real world, I cannot give up hope that I will join them.

“I’m still waiting for an answer.” He looks at what we are all looking at… the clock. Our books are still being clutched to our chests in anticipation. “Miss Stevens, you’ve had your hand up for some time now.”

“Maybe the phrase all men expands as civil rights expands… Uh… It could’ve meant all males with property then but now it means all humans… or-or at least it should.”

“Go on.”

“It just expanded to incorporate more and more people until today, everyone is equal.”

“So the history of America-“

“The history of America is the story of the phrase ‘all men’ expanding.” He looked at me and nodded approval. The bell rang.

That’s what I said one rainy August morning when I was sixteen. It would take me years to learn the weight of what it meant.

The preceding is a narrative from Athena’s book The Perfect Sole due out this winter.

“What  kind of kooks would claim equality as a birthright? I mean the idea’s insane. Can anybody in this classroom, in 2000 give me any absolute proof that the man who wanted to wash my windshield for a buck this morning and Bill Gates have an equal chance in life? Anybody?” The teacher was already passionately walking around in circles and raising his voice. “You can’t do it, just look at the world.”

People who pass me on the street tend to see what I can’t do when really, they don’t know the half of what I can do. The idea that God made all men equal is great in theory, but hard to believe in practice, particularly at first glances of other people’s conditions. We live in a world, I came to find out later, where most people will define you by what your abilities are not, not what they are. Oddly enough, this way of defining humanity is precisely what splinters people so that we question the meaning of “all men.” By categorizing everyone so that “we are all different” there is no longer a solitary unit of mankind. If there was, nobody would question what was meant by “all men” in the first place. Thus we do not allow Jefferson’s ideal to be fully accomplished.

“I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what ‘all men’ means,” he says after a brief tangent about the Civil War. “Did the constitution change when we freed the slaves? Don’t think you are getting out of  here without answering the question. I don’t care if the bell does ring.”

I realize now, that my so called “America” ends with the first unramped sidewalk  I come across, regardless of what the law says. Certain doors, both metaphorically and physically, remain impossible to open and you can recite what lawmakers say until you are blue in the face, it doesn’t mean anything. If America is a place where people are “endowed by their creator to certain unalienable rights,” then you don’t realize how small America actually is when your are sitting in your high school U.S. History class in your wheelchair. You can’t know that, because all the same teachers see you everyday, they know you for you, meaning that there is nothing to prove, and every day you open every door, even if it means asking a janitor, in Spanish, how to unlock it. Then when you get through the graduation line and out into the public you’re shocked by how many variable friction door handles there are which, of course, you can’t hold onto, how many huge cracks there are in public sidewalks from endless cycles of ice freezing and melting, and how many oblivious people there are out there who don’t listen and can’t stand the thought of either themselves or me being independent . Outside of a classroom, American progress rarely goes in a straight line.

Jefferson’s promise was scrawled across the board in half dead dry erase marker. Circled were the words all men. Our first day back for junior year of high school, the man in a sports coat at the front wasted no time in making us think. He demanded to know,  who was classified under the term “all men?” Did that include women, minorities, every age, creed? What about the fact that when these men wrote the Constitution, they clearly didn’t mean slaves, or women, or for that matter any white male who didn’t have the good fortune to own land? I looked out of the window at the rain pelting down, as it did every August to discourage us from even wanting to be outside. Summer was, without a doubt, over.

I didn’t know it then, but that was the first time I realized that I was entitled to certain rights, even if society refused to grant them.

Speed ahead six years and I’m in the so called “real world”. And I have discovered that certain bus drivers refuse to let me on their buses, in public there is a very vocal, albeit small, amount of people who don’t think I’m educated enough to go shopping on my own, and I am constantly plagued by experts telling me that they know more about my life than I do. A concerned teacher is continuously calling me and insisting, not suggesting, that I move out of my newly unpacked flat on the fourteenth floor of a high rise I love and into one that’s on the ground floor for “health and safety reasons.” When I try to tell her that I couldn’t find a ground floor flat which suited my needs, she told me I “don’t know how to go about looking properly.”

At twenty three, I’m wondering how to go about declaring my independence from the people out there who can’t stand the thought of me being independent.

Being a disabled woman these day is like living in your own private American Revolution without the petticoats and bayonets. It means starting from square one and having to convince every person you meet that you are, indeed intelligent, capable of making your own decisions, and deserving of being listened to. It means finding subtle ways to display your capacities. There are numerous daily examples of this. Calling a waitress by their name on the tag alludes to the fact you can read. You bring up current events and dare to debate where disagreement is uncommon (citing your sources of course). And if you can see from the onset that a person is going to be over bearing, you avoid them at all possible costs, even at the expense of being slightly aloof.

Not that I knew any of this my first day of junior year. Sitting, listening to the bald man at the front, I thought the idea that God made all men equal was just a given to Americans, excluding the bigoted idiots of course. We had the Civil Rights movement, women’s rights marches, and every amended law in between so that America was the land of opportunity for all people. I never thought that I would be one of the ones still having to fight for Jefferson’s promise to be fulfilled.

One of my best friends and I have been following a Supreme Court case which has recently completely engrossed our dinner time conversation. Last month they reached a verdict, but we still can’t let it go. A middle school-aged girl, suspected of hiding painkillers, was strip searched in front of the school nurse and another female teacher after no prescription drugs were found found in her locker. The US Supreme Court fortunately has ruled that the search was unconstitutional and went against an individual’s right to privacy. The student, and if I might say victim, in this situation is now in college and although the decision brings closure, it cannot begin to undo the damage brought on by the incident.

There’s something about being in a school setting, which forces individuals, who are otherwise quite pleasant, to come under the false assumption that there is no governing body higher than there own and nothing any parent or student can do to complain will ever have ramifications on an administrative career. The situation that invoked the Supreme Court case was of course every parent’s worst nightmare. You send your child to school to educate them in  reason and logic. You expect faculty and staff to treat your student with decency, showing them how a moral upright person is to behave in a larger society. Students are taught that they should trust their teachers, and I think the relationship with those in front of the classroom can often prove to be as important or as detrimental as a relationship with a parent. What happened was of course a breech of power, but it was so much more than that as well. What the students learned is that there is no law, and in this particular situation, that might makes right. Is a classroom full of young people where we want to call this into question? Forced to strip down to her underwear and shift her breasts to prove that there was nothing in her bra, the teachers who observed the strip search actually advocated for her to turn off her mind, her conscience, and her self-respect for their own suspicions.

What disturbs me about this case is that I know this abuse of power and manipulation of students happens on a daily basis. I have seen it happen in my own education, which is why I find the case so angering. If our teachers are responsible for educating and molding the next generation, what does it mean to teach children that there is no right to privacy and that any official can demand a strip search and must immediately be complied with? How can we ever teach that a woman has a right to choose what happens to her own body when this occurs? Such is a recipe for a rampant abuse of power particularly when brought upon a student who has no prior history of using any harmful substances. What is obvious about this situation is the fact that the faculty who administered the search were used to living in fear and thought that such mandatory complacency was perfectly acceptable. I wish more parents were involved in their children’s education to the extent of being willing to take the school administration to court when they are severely in the wrong. I am fortunate enough to have parents who were willing to do so and who taught me to do likewise. The greatest education that can be received often comes from the mistakes of the teachers who are supposed to be offering it freely. Battles with school administration are unfortunately an everyday occurrence if you are a student with a disability and critiquing though they might be, they teach you never to turn of your mind, always to question authority, and how to really be an aware individual, even if it means always being suspicious of those in charge.

              When my roommate brought home a new fling, I didn’t pay much attention. In our house, boys come and go, and while most of them are friendly they all have their faults. So, we’ve learned not to get too attached, not to invest too much, and not to become too annoyed by the fault that one can see plain as day even when the other cannot. But this particular one got unexpectedly on my bad side so fast that he managed to permanently smear himself to my disfavor.

              It started when I was stupid enough to walk across the floor of our new flat barefoot and I received a splinter from an ill cared for floor. This unleashed a general barrage of comments about my landlord not taking care of the place and not being responsible for his investment. I was having various amounts of trouble with the property owner that week and the splinter just sealed the deal.

              “But Athena, you shouldn’t hold people responsible to their actions like that. People just do stuff, it doesn’t mean anything,” he said, reclining on the couch and lazily fondling my roommate’s hand. OK, I instantly went from having on opinion about the guy to utter disgust all in a matter of four seconds. This was an impressive record. My somewhat embarrassed roommate asked him to clarify what he meant, which he gladly did, by repeating himself. I looked to my roommate in utter disbelief, ready to punch the guy in the face, before I realized that he would dismiss the action as being “just stuff.” What was the point?

              I couldn’t imagine having a relationship with a guy who, when asked to take responsibility for his actions, refuses to due so. More to the point, I can’t imagine having sex with someone who behaved in this manner either.

              The link between sex and responsibility is an issue that makes modern audiences very nervous. In an age of birth control and condoms we’d like to think that we’ve removed any responsibility from having sex. And we’ve gotten rid of the big ones to be sure, but sex is something which profoundly affects every facet of life including economics and politics.

              For a woman to have a partner who refuses to take responsibility for himself and his actions is like a throw back to the days before feminism.  Its saying that she doesn’t deserve someone who is honest with her or respects her. If he can’t be held accountable for his actions, what will stop him from  becoming abusive or cheating on his partner? Why should his girlfriend have any value to him, if he doesn’t value his own actions. 

              Like so many of society’s problems, this commentary is meaningless without making it concrete. Most women will say “I would never go out with anyone who would say that!” Fair enough, but would you get involved with someone who subconsciously believed it? How many times do you tell yourself excuses for your significant other. Or are left trying to explain the unexplainable to friends when your partner does something stupid?

              But then let’s add sex to the mix. It goes without saying that this sort of attitude carries huge risks for my friend in terms of STDs. But the ramifications become much more distressing than that. If a man refuses to take responsibility for his actions, then sex is meaningless to him in every sense of the word. It is not an act of adoration, commitment, or even enjoyment. If “people just do stuff” then the intention cannot exist, even if the intention was/is hedonism. Sex is “just stuff” and as mundane as doing your laundry or emptying your pockets. When even the most exciting things become mundane  there is no longer passion or even a sense of life.

              Suffice it to say, the beau didn’t last too long after that. I think my roommate figured out they didn’t have that much in common. It was the first one in a while that I had learned anything from, so this boy had more sticking power than most in my mind. And for that I tip my hat to him…not that I expect that to mean much to him. After all, people “just do stuff.” 

Walking into the church, I felt gorgeous. My green dress perfectly complimented my red hair as the fabric skimmed off of my shoulders and tightly hugged my waist flowing in a cascade down to my knees. The gold sandals I wore had rhinestones that hit the light with such intensity, you would swear they were diamonds. I hoped I was stunning as I walked into one of the back pews, greeted my neighbors, and sat down.

When we all rose for the first song, I noticed that I was having a good day on my feet, able to stand upright and straight (my mother had recently commented that she thought I had grown over the summer despite being 25 years old and far past growth spurts) I opened my mouth to sing noticing the reflection of the sunlight through the stain glass window. Suddenly and inexplicably I felt something cold at my back—I was nearly bowled over. “What the — ?” I started to wonder. Whipping around I noticed a little old lady who had her fingers down the back of my dress.

“Everything’s fine dear. It was just that your bra strap was showing and I decided to fix it.”

On what planet is it ever considered a reasonable action to stick your fingers down the back of someone else’s dress in order to make them appear more modest by covering their exposed bra strap?

I recognize of course that I have a rather different outlook on the showing of brassier straps than my elders. In my opinion, every woman wears one, so what’s the big deal if it shows every once and a while. I really do appreciate and admire this reverence with which older women treat this topic—that’s not my issue here. My issue is the invasion of privacy and the fact that this little old lady took it upon herself to become especially intimate with me without even asking my permission.

I don’t know what it is about me that says to perfect strangers that I have no boundaries of intimacy. As I’ve stated before, I’ve learned to very carefully seek out potential invaders of privacy. The man on the street who believes that I suddenly need a kiss, the women who take it upon themselves to fix my bra straps, the people who suddenly decided that they know exactly where I’m going and seek to push my wheelchair without ever saying a word to me. Living in London, I’ve come to realize that different cultures have different distances that they perceive as intimate. In the western world, when two people are in a elevator, chances are that they will stand on opposites sides. In more eastern countries, this distance option becomes much closer. What is invasive to one person is uninvasive to another, but I’m pretty sure that sticking your hand down the back of some perfectly strange young woman is considered inappropriate in a majority of cultures.

I believe that my lack of a right to privacy has something to do with my disability. Perfectly good natured people seem to take the stance that if someone in the village has a disability it is the responsibility of the entire community to bound together and help them, which on the one hand is perfectly true. But at the same time, the communal help is supposedly to offer the disabled person as normal a life as possible, and a normal life usually means keeping boundaries to some sane level. It does not mean letting everyone in to manipulate your life, your possessions, and your clothes to however they see fit. Help is only a blessing when it’s actually helpful. When it isn’t helpful, it quickly turns into a nuisance.

Yes, I know people mean well. And I probably should be more thankful than I am. As my mother would say, ‘its better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.’ Well, so are a lot of things but that doesn’t make them OK. And for that matter, she knows I’d kill her if she ever tried to fiddle with my bra strap in public. I’m a twenty five year old woman. We live in a culture where a certain amount of privacy is required by each other in order to remain respectful. Maybe this woman would’ve acted the same way if I was able bodied, but I doubt it.

Either way, I knew my bra strap was showing when I bought the dress and I had consciously decided that wasn’t an issue. Which is to say, I suppose, I had chosen to take the consequences for my actions of exposing an eighth of an inch of a bra in public. I just never expected the consequence to be so invasive.

Apparently, I’m a fire hazard.

              I was not made aware of this until I was rejected from an internship last week. The theatre I was looking to work at is up three flights of stairs above a local pub. I frequent the theatre all the time, climbing up the staircases and making my way into the theatre all the time, occasionally putting a little extra weight in my escort’s arm. I was aware of the stairs when I chose to apply for the position. I was equally aware that I could navigate the stairs by myself safely and effectively. The stairs were a non issue for me. It should have been likewise for the theatre company.

              But then again who am I to say what I am capable of?

I never asked for a reason as to why I didn’t get the position. The company willfully offered it on their own in an email. “Although we understand the nature of your disability allows you to climb stairs, we are concerned that in the event of a fire, you would impede safety for yourself and others in the building.” And that was the end of their reasoning.

        What’s most troubling about this situation is that it occurs at least three times per year. Because a building is not accessible, the potential employer hides behind health and safety law as a means of negating any form of disability discrimination law. To be able to escape the compensatory obligations of one law by hiding behind another law represents a failure on the part of lawmakers to form a cohesive code of conduct. Worse still, it prevents society from ever effectively progressing. During the 1950’s in America we found ourselves equally able to escape the law via other laws. We called this heinous situation the Jim Crow laws and they are looked upon now as a disgraceful barrier towards civil rights.

        What is, perhaps, the most disturbing about being called  an occupational fire hazard is that it takes values such as choice and independence out of my hands. No longer am I able to decide for myself when I am able to safely walk up and down a flight of stairs. Furthermore, achieving the goal of being able to do so is no longer enough. Rather, it is up to an outside source who knows very little about me and my condition, to decide what I am capable of. Outside sources, governing experts and pragmatic cautions overstepping their boundaries often result in putting more shackles on the individual, not safety  features.

        Assuming of course that the only reason I didn’t get the position was because I would prove to be a fire hazard in the workplace, I appreciate the theatre’s desire to keep me safe. But really, that decision should be my call. I know my capabilities and limitations. I weighed all those considerations before I applied for the job and they are not their choices to make. Oddly enough, if I prove to be such a fire hazard, I’m surprised they didn’t saying anything about me going up three flights of stairs to pay them money for a ticket. I guess occupational hazards only occur when the money flows in a certain direction. 

Written for the Las Vegas Review Journal September 3, 2009

              I was very frustrated when I read the LVRJ article this morning on yesterday’s county commissioners’ meeting. It stated that there was a “compromised reached” between the residents and developers at Mountain’s Edge regarding the building of future parks in the area. This is simply not true. The only compromise which was reached was pre-established between Commissioner Brager and the Focus Developers. Meanwhile, the Las Vegas Review Journal seemed to miss the even bigger story, that democracy has become relative in Las Vegas.

              Brager stated during the hearing “I am willing to go against my constituents to do what I think is right.” Since when has this ever been the role of an elected official? Her job is to represent us and our wishes, not single handedly alter and mold her district into her visions of what it should be, no matter how noble her intentions are. Out of those of us that spoke at the meeting, there was only one man who agreed with her proposal, constituting less than five percent of the opinions heard. The other ninety five percent were in stark opposition. Commissioner Brager continued to insist that the majority were “wrong,” “foolish,” and even “unsympathetic” when we are no longer promised the parks we were guaranteed upon investing in our homes.

              For the past year Commissioner Brager has consistently treated her electorate like children, while doing everything possible to allow big business to squirm out of obligations to residents. Behind closed doors she agreed with Focus Developers to a scaled down version of the parks we were promised. The proposed plans at the meeting were ones we had never seen before, nor were there enough printed yesterday by Focus to allow ten people to examine the changes, let alone the 150+ who had to take time off from work to advocate for their homes.

            Commissioner Brager chooses to appease big business rather than advocate for the citizens she works for. To her, democracy is a relative term as is the word guarantee. Brager chooses to be a democratic leader only as long as her voters agree with what she thinks is best, otherwise she will become patronizing. She says she can’t understand why we would reject the parks the commission is giving us for free. What she fails to acknowledge is that we here at Mountain’s Edge aren’t asking for anything to be given, we are asking for her to help in ensuring we receive the parks we were guaranteed by Focus when we took out our home loans. In a commissioner, we don’t need a nursemaid, we need an advocate.

            Brager’s actions yesterday illustrated just how relative democracy has become these days. Her behavior is indicative of the feelings of superiority and expertise which has crept into every corner of our government. Brager was elected to be a civil servant, not to insult our intelligence with fallacies and back room deals. Her job is to express the will of her constituents, not chastise them. Failure to understand this, as many on the federal, state, and local level, now refuse to do, means that people like Commissioner Brager, may soon be out of a job.