KPFA - Pushing Limits

The New Year is upon us and 2017 does not look all charming and bright.  Like other people of good will, the disability community is scrambling to adjust to the new president.

We’re applying advice from former Congressional staffers (and that guy we know down the street.)  We’re talking about organizing ourselves more tightly like local senior groups have done.   We’re looking for better ways to make alliances with other groups.  We’re laughing as much as we possibly can.  We’re overwhelmed, but hopeful.

We’re talking about all of this and more.  Co-Hosts Sheela Gunn-Cushman and Mark Romoser in conversation with Oakland disability and senior rights advocate Michelle Rousey.

The post A Look Ahead – 2017 appeared first on KPFA.

Modern genetics offers parents the dream of choosing the characteristics of their children and aborting those who don’t fit their ideal.  As scientists move in this direction, disabled people are understandably critical.  They cite, for instance, the strong historical link between genetics and eugenics.

In this program, Oakland writer Anne Finger explores these issues with Eddie Ytuarte through the lens of eugenics in the Soviet Union.

Ms. Finger tells stories of a variety of unusual characters seeking real or supposed scientific truth amid the maelstrom of gigantic changes occurring in Russia before, during, and following the October 1917 Revolution.  Her essay, “The Left Hand of Stalin: Eugenics in the Soviet Union,” appears in the volume, “Disability Politics in a Global Economy: Essays in Honour of Marta Russell.”

In Nazi Germany the theory of eugenics brought the world the ideal of the perfect Aryan race.  This led to the round up and death of 275 thousand people with disabilities and, eventually, the death chambers of the holocaust.

Eugenic theory took a different tack in the Soviet Union where the goal was, not the perfection of a specific race, but the perfection of humanity as a whole.   There was early USSR resistance to the Darwinian theory of “survival of the fittest,” Finger says, citing early scientists who found that, in the harsh Siberian climate “sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle.”

Join us for an in-depth look at eugenic-genetic questions.

Produced and hosted by Eddie Ytuarte.

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A discussion in memory of the late activist author Marta Russell with Steve Weiss and Ravi Malhotra.

Russell is especially noted for her book Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract, which offered a leftist analysis on how disability intersects with capitalism and includes topics like the Americans With Disability Act, health care,

Weiss, an activist now living in Portland, Oregon, was the long-time companion of Russell.  Malhotra is a professor at Ottawa University and edited a recently released collection of essays called Disability Politics in a Global Economy: Essays in honor of Marta Russell.

In the collection, leftist writers honor Russell’s work by reflecting on her insights and adding contemporary analysis.

Produced and hosted by Eddie Ytuarte.

The post Remembering Marta Russell (1951-2013) appeared first on KPFA.

Maytte Bustillios was given two years to live after the discovery of a cancerous tumor in her brain (Oligodendroglioma).  Now, seven years and three craniotomies later, she talks to Shelley Berman about her fitness routine, mothering a child with a heart problem and dealing with the daily limitations of disability.

With an analysis of California ballot measures by Shelley Berman.

Produced and hosted by Shelley Berman.

The post Maytte Bustillos: Living with Brain Cancer appeared first on KPFA.