Supurban- thanks for asking!

I can't think of it as the suburbs- my apartment's only a couple of blocks from the El after all, but after ten blissful years in the city my street address no longer contains a Chicago zipcode. I'm still just 30 min from the Loop, and to my knowledge there are no kids picking banjos on their front porches. The public library, a 40's style diner and parks are all within a three block radius of my house and the big fur tree ourfront brings me disproportionate amounts of joy. I don't miss Pilsen- not yet anyway. I will miss my landlord, a Polish grandma/ architect who drove me home from the hospital once and brought me soup when I was sick- but I digress.

I haven't been homesick for any of my old apartments in Chicago, with the possible exception of my first, a historic women's international dorm in the Gold Coast which has since been turned into condos.

As for Alabama, well I'm always homesick for Cheahah and miniscule hillside towns swimming in pine trees. I miss the geophraphy of forest and foothills and indigo ridges in the distance. I do NOT miss the flatness of the prairie or the brown shrubs midwesterners stubbornly refer to as trees.

Fissures

When I began this blog, I never imagined Id be reporting on hate crimes, but here we are. There are infinite ways for the heart to break over this stuff, a kaleidoscope of faces and stories that flicker across the Internet and are never heard from again. Documenting hate crimes against people with disabilities should be handled with the same swiftness and professionalism as crimes committed on the basis of race, sexual orientation or religion. We know this, so why hasn't the media gotten the message? It's unconscionable for a crime like the premeditated beating death of Brent Martin by three teenage boys to go unnoticed by the major networks.

Meanwhile, my friend "Saul" is concerned about going to a birthday party at a friend's house. He's afraid his sister won't let him go. He thinks she doesn't trust him to be on his own. It may be true that ableism clouds her perspective, but Saul's sister is also influenced by the very real fear that what happened once will happen again. Saul is the survivor of a hate crime. I doubt anyone in his neighborhood would classify it as such. They tell themselves, these things happen. Better keep him home from now on for his own safety.

Punishing the victim, restricting his freedom- this makes sense to some people. As solutions go it is a fairly low maintenance one. Apprehending the assholes who target people with disabilities, prosecuting them and raising awareness about such offenses takes work. It takes a zero tolerance attitude and cohesive action on the part of law enforcement. More importantly, it takes a commitment from the community to assert that these things don't just happen. When a person with a disability is assaulted- this is major news, because we should all be on the same page on this one! Is our culture really so degraded that we're incapable of acknowledging the thugs who do this, which, let me point out, is an attitude that is still painfully, pitifully, far from voicing public outrage?

When my friend Saul is discouraged from going out for fear that he will "get into trouble" or more accurately that trouble may find him, it sends the message that Saul's freedoms are held in lower regard than those of the punks who assaulted him. It suggests that there is no middle ground- no cell phones, for instance, that he could use to call someone if he happened to need assistance? It implies that there is no safe public space for people with disabilities. It smacks of the "women ask for it" myth. I'm loathe to even go into the various ways Saul could achieve his goal of traveling independently because that's so not the point of this post.

Look how easy it is to give into a lie when dissenting voices of those in the know are kept at the periphery.

Media Musings: Rock the Loud Minority!

Every blog carnival that I've had the pleasure to click through leads me to the same conclusion. I am thrilled at the range and depth of talent of the writers in our blog community- and stunned at how many of us type away each day delivering consistantly fabulous, illuminating contnet- for free and easyInternet consumption. I do believe that writers should get paid for their craft, but we all know the significant challenges involved in getting quality disability- related content out to the masses by means of popular media outlets- i.e. those that write checks.

The reason we invest our valuable time and limited resources- essentially reporting the news for free- is simple. We care about the issues that affect people. Regardless of one's position in life, the concerns affecting people with disabilities affect us all. Americans can no longer afford to hide behind an "us/ them" mindset. We in the community understand the nature of the dividing line, that it is infinitely porous, fluid. Maybe it changes its course as you enter your senior years, have kids, when new neighbors move in across the street. The line arches to encompass friends and relatives at all stages of life, colorfully winding its way through our communities. When did your "them" start to bear an uncannty resemblance to those you call friend, colleague, lover, parent, child?

If you are under 40 you likely shared a classroom with a disabled student. Maybe you hung out, went to each others birthday parties. You did not attend a segregated school system, why accept media that is one- dimmensional and lazy with the facts about a vital segment of your community? Take this as fact instead: disability issues influence YOUR legislators, YOUR community leaders, YOUR bills in congress, YOUR healthcare providers, YOUR school districts, YOUR places of business, YOUR economy.

It is my hope that disabled journalists, with or without a venture like [With-tv] will figure out a way to fill the gap created by popular media's consistant misrepresentation and cliche- ridden content. This week's blog carnival hosted at [With-tv] is a fine compilation of voices and a testament to the possibilites of engaging a broader audience.

With the current writer's strike network television is at a standstill. But writers in the disability blog community won't go silent because we understand that the price of media complacency is a debt of devastating proportion. Turn to this week's blog carnival to read some of the facts the mainstream media overlooked.