KPFA - Pushing Limits

When activists and advocates are up against a shelter-in-place order, when everything we usually do is completely impossible, who you gonna call? 

That’s right!  Disability Justice!  Call ‘em now at 1-800-CRIP-POC-CRIP!

Why them, you ask.

Because over the past couple of decades activists with disabilities, in particular activists of color, have blazed a path of flexibility and mutual support to build a truly intersectional movement.  They’ve worked within harsh personal and societal limitations.  They’ve worked without institutional or philanthropic support.  They’ve worked across distances.  They’ve tested and adapting tech tools and utilized old school stuff like kindness and loving attention.  These people have the theories and techniques you need!

Today, Pushing Limits brings excerpts from an April 2 panel discussion featuring three of these disability justice leaders: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Patricia Berne, and Lydia X. Z. Brown.  The panel discussion was called “Organizing in a Time of Social Distancing: The Wisdom of Disability Justice Organizers.”  It was hosted by JOIN for Justice, the Jewish Organizing Institute and Network for Justice.  400 people listened to these leaders talk about their work and another 600 signed up to listen at another time.

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    This program is dedicated to the memory of Disability Justice Activist Stacey Milbern (Park) who died suddenly last Tuesday. There will be a celebration of her life and legacy this Saturday, May 23. Details here.

Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color’s Interdependence, Survival and Empowerment – Please donate to support the fund’s effort to provide direct financial support via micro-grants to autistic people of color during COVID-19.

Stand with The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe – The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the very tribe that welcomed the Pilgrims in the 1600s, is at risk of losing what is left of their homelands due to a determination made by Trump’s Bureau of Indian Affairs. Sign their petition and donate to their cause.

Skin, Tooth and Bone (Second Edition) – To dig in deeper with your learning about disability justice, get yourself a copy of this fabulous primer all about disability justice principles and practice, published by Sins Invalid.

Crip Fund: Crip Fund is pooling money for chronically ill, disabled, and immunocompromised people in serious financial need during this ongoing time of love, coronavirus, and apocalyptic joy & pain.

#NoBodyIsDisposable Know Your Rights Guide to Surviving COVID-19 Triage Protocols – This “Know Your Rights” toolkit is for people facing potential triage discrimination based on disability or weight during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The document covers rights and strategies for fat and disabled people of all ages navigating medical care in this time.

Disability During a Pandemic: Why You Should Put a Spoon on your Seder Plate this Passover, by Rabbi Elliot Kukla, in JWeekly.

Stay alert for news on the upcoming show produced by Sins Invalid: We Love Like Barnacles: Crip Lives and Climate Chaos.

JOIN for Justice, the Jewish Organizing Institute and Network for Justice, supports, trains and connects Jewish organizers, and their communities.  Allegra Heath-Stout, the Fellowship Director and Trainer, for JOIN for Justice spearheaded this effort and moderated the discussion. Don’t Kvetch, Organize! –The Pandemic Edition, the popular 8-week course offered by JOIN is currently full, but there is a waiting list.

ACTION ALERT From from CARA, the California Alliance of Retired Americans

The California May revised budget discussions are in full swing in Sacramento and, as usual, programs that support people with disabilities are on the chopping block

GOVERNOR’S MAY REVISED BUDGET A DISASTER FOR SENIORS and PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES IT’S TIME TO SPEAK OUT Call Governor Newsom at 916-445-2841

We knew cuts would be massive, but the focus of many of the cuts are to programs that serve seniors and people with disabilities.  In this time of COVID, these programs, though small in the scheme of things, are truly lifesaving.  Programs like Multipurpose Senior Services, Community Based Adult Services, In Home Supportive Services, Independent Living Resource Centers, and more. – all keep people out of institutions WHERE PEOPLE ARE DYING!  Adding insult to injury, the Administration issued Crisis Care Guidelines which put seniors and people with disabilities at the bottom of the list when limited resources are available.  The proposals in the Governor’s budget, if passed, will hurt and possible kill people.  We must fight back.

PARTICIPATE IN THE SENATE BUDGET HEARING SUNDAY, MAY 24: 9AM-????

These meetings are being live streamed.  You can go to www.sen.ca.gov and join the meeting.  There will be a phone number provided to call in for public comment.  You can also send your comments to [email protected].

We need you to “show up” for the Senate Subcommittee #3 on Health and Human Services May Revision hearing this Sunday, May 24th at 9:00am in Room 4203 in the State Capitol. These meetings are being live streamed.  You can go to www.sen.ca.gov and join the meeting.  There will be a phone number provided to call in for public comment.  You can also send your comments to [email protected].

The hearing will be split into two parts: Part A and Part B. Part A will be Health and Part B will be Human Services. Part A will begin at 9 am. Part B will begin no earlier than 1 pm but possibly later than that depending on how long Part A runs.

For a full description analysis of the Governor’s revised budget, go to https://calbudgetcenter.org/.

Some of the proposed cuts that will impact seniors and people with disabilities the most are:

*7% across the board cut to IHSS *Would eliminate the Community-Based Adult Services (CBAS) and Multipurpose Senior Services Program (MSSP) programs. CBAS and MSSP are day programs for older Californians with complex medical conditions or cognitive challenges that allow these individuals to stay in the community rather than be institutionalized. These individuals will almost certainly be admitted to nursing homes or hospitals or worse as a result of the shortage in beds.

*Eliminates and reduces Medi-Cal optional benefits. Specifically, reduces adult dental benefits to the partial restoration levels of 2014. Eliminates audiology, incontinence creams and washes, speech therapy, optician/optical lab, podiatry, acupuncture, optometry, nurse anesthetists’ services, occupational and physical therapy, pharmacist services, screening, brief intervention and referral to treatments for opioids and other illicit drugs in Medi-Cal, and diabetes prevention program services, for a total General Fund savings of $54.7 million.

*Eliminates the 2019 Budget Act expansion of Medi-Cal to aged, blind, and disabled individuals with incomes between 123 percent and 138 percent of the federal poverty level.

*Withholds and absorbs the anticipated federal January 2021 cost of living adjustment to the SSI portion of the SSI/SSP grant.

*Cuts funding to the Independent Living Resource Centers which serves people with disabilities and reduces funding to the Regional Centers serving individuals with developmental disabilities.

Please participate in the other budget meetings scheduled in the Assembly and Senate over the next two weeks.  The budget hearing schedule can be found at:   https://www.google.com/search?q=california+assembly+and+senate+budget+hearings.

Finally, call your state Senator and Assemblymember.  Thank them for any past help and ask them to stand up for seniors and disabled people during the budget process.  To reach our legislators, go to: http://www.legislature.ca.gov/your_legislator.html

The post Organizing In A Time of Social Distancing – Pushing Limits appeared first on KPFA.

COVID-19 is everywhere these days and no place has been hit harder than nursing homes. Estimates are that up to one-third of all COVID deaths have been in nursing homes.

But nobody knows for sure, because the federal government and many states aren’t collecting this statistic.  And, about one-quarter of people in those nursing homes are under age 65 and have disabilities.

What is it about nursing homes that makes them so dangerous?  What will happen to those who live inside them as the pandemic progresses?

Host Mark Romoser talks with Mike Dark from the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.

With a commentary by Shelley Berman.

Mask photo by: https://bit.ly/2WCEfcR

COMING UP

Thursday, May 14th, 11 AM

Please join advocates for elders and people with disabilities, public health advocates, concerned community members, and City officials in an online Town Hall on problems of care in nursing homes and other congregate facilities (group homes, board & care homes, assisted living facilities, homeless shelters, SROs, jails etc).

Click here to sign up!

More information about the issue:

The huge concentrations of COVID cases and deaths in care facilities has been a national disgrace. San Francisco is no exception. Contributing factors include no provision of social distancing, the lack of testing, lack of formal or informal oversight, lack of transparency in reporting cases and deaths to families and the public, and the long-standing low-staffing, low pay, and lack of safe conditions and PPE for care workers.

In California, these problems are made worse by (1) the state’s order that nursing homes accept recovering COVID patients, (2) proposed immunity for nursing homes from criminal or civil penalties for COVID deaths during the pandemic, and (3) proposed state triage guidelines if hospitals become overwhelmed that could discriminate against older people, people with disabilities, poor people, fat people, and people of color.

Nursing facilities are nearly all for-profit, and money must not be a motivating factor in whether or not to provide the best care possible. In addition, local and state government must step in more aggressively to protect people. The low priority placed on the lives of older people and disabled people living in facilities is a sign of ageism and ableism, oppression based on age and disability.

Please attend to learn about these problems, declare that ageism and ableism are unacceptable in our community, and join the dialogue to prevent future tragedies.

Sponsored by the California Care Rationing Coalition: Senior and Disability Action, California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, Gray Panthers, California Alliance of Retired Americans, Hand in Hand, and many more

Fat-Assed Prepper Survival Tips for Preparing for a Coronavirus Quarantine

Twenty-three pages of practical information and lists of resources, from how to disinfect a wheelchair to surviving a hospital visit.  Highly recommended.  (With thanks to Sins Invalid for publishing this and other excellent and timely resources on their website)

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This program produced & hosted by Mark Romoser.

The post Nursing Home Residents Face Covid-19 appeared first on KPFA.

Today’s organizing in the Mad Community has a long and turbulent back story.   Historian Michael Rembis joins us again, this time to relay the remarkable work of mad activists in the 20th Century.

The 20th century was a time of change and increased visibility for people living with

Michael Rembis is the Director of the Center for Disability Studies and an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University at Buffalo (SUNY).

Produced and hosted by  Eddie Ytuarte.

The post Disability History: The Mad Movement with Michael Rembis appeared first on KPFA.