Vitriolic Letter Discourages Participation and Another Hurdle for the Disabled

June 21, 2000

Dear Editor:

At last night's City Council meeting a representative from the City's Commission on the Status of Women spoke on ongoing issues: the continuing inequities in pay between men and women and the wish for more women to run for public office. Unfortunately, letters, such as the one the Lookout received from Ms. Sirotti, work to discourage women - and men -- from running for public office.

While public scrutiny, debate and dialog on issues is at the core of good community governance, vitriolic letters like Ms. Sirotti's work to discourage people from participating in the process. She seems to think it's an "honor" rather than a serious responsibility and not worthy of compensation. While that may be an issue worthy of debate, it is sad that she chooses words that attack a person, rather than discuss issues.

Luckily, I have a thick skin and can focus on the positive. And I am fortified knowing that there are many more positive people in the world who are willing to engage in healthy and respectful debate. I hope letters like Ms. Sirotti's do not discourage people from seeking local elected offices, such as the City Council.

Mayor Pro Tem Pam O'Connor
Santa Monica

June 21, 2000

Dear Editor,

The following is a letter to Julie Rusk, the city's Human Service Director.

Jerry Rubin has been urging others to contact you in support of a Disabilities Commission. I would like, instead, to raise some questions about both the commission and how the alleged ground swell of support is being produced.

Fraudulent Ground Swell of the Disabled

Mr. Rubin is fully controlling the meetings that have allegedly expressed a ground swell of support for a Disabilities Commission and packing them with his usual suspects (often having no disabilities). He forces those brave enough to protest to be put in a position of seeming to be out of order. Most of the coalition are not disability organizations and are many of the same organizations, some actually with a few members, that Rubin calls on every time he needs support for whatever.

These meetings have been predetermined to the goal of a Commission from the beginning. They are more like a tent revival or a New Age meeting, with hand holding circles and free food that is made to seem to come from the influence and bankroll of the leaders. In short, the ground swell is rigged, fixed.

Who would risk disapproval by raising questions?

Another severely physically disabled person in a wheelchair and I tried to, but were blocked in as many ways as could be. Mr. Rubin told others that we were disrupting the meeting when we were the only moment of open discussion and, God forbid, disagreement. We were told by Jerry and his chosen lead person that we were interrupting the agenda. There was no agenda item for audience comment. When I quizzed the lead person, he at last admitted that the only comments allowed from the beginning were supportive ones.

Is this the way that city property like the Ken Edwards Center is supposed to be used, for people with a hidden agenda going through the surface motions of democracy by having a series of meetings with none actually allowed? It is particularly galling to watch the meetings controlled by able-bodied "leaders" standing at the podium who try to crush the voices of actual severely disabled persons in the very few minutes that we took.

It is highly objectionable for Jerry Rubin to be using this issue to try to broaden his political appeal beyond his narrow one on the back of appearing to be good to the disabled. This is the same person who ran his annual fundraiser in a totally wheelchair inaccessible location for nearly a decade after being requested to choose an accessible location. Only after we staged a demonstration on New Years Eve and got major coverage from the local newspaper, The Outlook, did the church in which he annually held his fund-raiser devote some of its funds to a lift. Jerry sat on his hands through the whole thing.

So the process by which this Jerry rigged ground swell for a Disabled Comm. is questionable and the newfound commitment and documented history of Mr. Rubin when it comes to commitment to disabilities rights and the ADA is highly doubtful.

The Disabled are Not Just Another Special Interest Group. They are Very Different.

As to the substance, though a Disabilities Commission sounds at worst harmless and possibly beneficial at first glance, on closer observation it could be more accurately viewed as harmful to those very citizens who need the greatest help.

Though I am not opposed to a carefully constructed Disabilities Commission that avoids the sad history of other such commissions, I am 99% persuaded that the kind of structure that is needed to avoid the harm will not occur here, despite Santa Monica's reputation as a progressive city. Progressives and Liberals have often shown themselves as ignorant and insensitive to core issues of disabled civil rights as conservatives and reactionaries.

The special census done a few years ago revealed a profound division in what we call the disabled. The great majority of those called disabled or claiming disability do not go through the economic and social suffering of the severely disabled. For example, what I will call the merely disabled, (as distinguished from the severely disabled) are inconvenienced by their disability. They have more difficulty doing key functions, but can still do them. Nevertheless, they still fall under the ADA. While they were likely to be twice as unemployed as the non-disabled, their economic and social deprivation and isolation has no comparison to the severely disabled. The Census Bureau defined these as the group of disabled people who cannot do certain key functions at all, such as walking or hearing.

I would include seeing also under severely disabled, but hesitate because the leadership of the blind in the US has always insisted that their blindness is not a disability, and have consistently separated themselves from the disabled. By claiming special status, and having had a head start on demanding special services on the other disabled, in some cases by hundreds of years (you must remember that, in the past, many severely disabled people died from the accidents or diseases that they now live through but cause them life-long disablement) the blind have done much, much better in getting financial advantages and services from many levels of government.

The Census discovered that those with severe disabilities were approx. 17 times more unemployed than the non-disabled and about nine times more unemployed than the disabled in general.

I talked about this in a number of LA Times Commentary Page articles.

The Effect of These Differences on Groups Appointed by Able-Bodied Politicians: Middle Class Welfare

What will most likely happen with the Disabilities Commission is one or more of the following:

1. The criteria for membership will not be severe disability that profoundly damage economic and social equality. Therefore it will be dominated by people who are vastly more contented, prosperous, independent and extremely less concerned with the problems that remain for the severely disabled. Many of them "passed" for much of their lifetime, until they saw certain benefits by identifying themselves as disabled. By "passing" they avoided the life experience of those who could not hide their disabilities and therefore fully experienced the most profound aspect of noticeable disability: negative stereotyping, social and job discrimination, and forced dependency on niggardly and spying support programs often operated by bureaucrats with no flexibility or empathy.

2. The criteria will not even be that one should have a disability. As with the LA Committee on the Disabled that meet in City Council chambers, there will be able-bodied agency representatives. Able-bodied minority member athletes appointed by a City Councilperson to please his constituency and to, allegedly get publicity for the body. The result is that the Commission will willingly descend into insignificant detail while avoiding the remaining massive problems.

3. There will be able-bodied parents of the disabled with infinitely more organizational skills than many of the disabled on the commission. Mostly this group usually comes from the parents of the mentally retarded or cognitively disabled, who only have a limited amount of say in or understanding of the positions that their parents are taking on many issues that affect all of the other disabled people. Even when they are themselves put on these commissions, they seldom conceive of the depth or complexity of the issues. This may not be easily acceptable to the bureaucrats or parents, but it is simply the obvious truth.

These parents have been wildly successful in getting money out of the government for agencies serving their children. While about 26 independent living centers serving mainly the physically disabled get at most $20 million in state funding, about the same number of Regional Centers doing similar non-material coordinating services for the mainly mentally retarded get one thousand million dollars a year from state coffers and about half the budget of the approx. $350 million California Dept. Of Rehab. Thus approx. 1.2 billion goes for services to one disability group, the mentally retarded, while only about one ninth of that is available for all other disabilities in the state.

4. Though the blind leadership in the United States opposed the ADA, they will be found on this Commission and, if history holds, will steadfastly seek more special and narrow benefits for themselves, such as an operation exclusively dedicated to the blind, as they have done in many state departments of vocational rehabilitation, and as they have done in gaining exclusive rights to have profit making businesses in government buildings.

5. Some of the disabled members will be there to represent the interests of their agencies and their jobs rather than the interests of the disabled, particularly the unemployed and poverty stricken disabled. I once wrote a LA Times column noting that, while the independent living centers were outside the newly furbished State Capitol,, protesting a cut in their own budgets I was inside stuck on a non-disabled accessible low toilet bowl that their otherwise poor advocacy had failed to get included under the billions spent on the building.

Though this commission will share some of the biases of other appointed commissions -- for example, as with this Disabilities Commission, women's commissions often give only lip service to the needs of working class, immigrant, and other women struggling in low-wage jobs and tend to focus on white and middle class professional women's issues -- appointed Disabilities Commissions take such tendencies to the extreme, because of the extremes of income, education and function in the disabilities world. The fact is that the vast majority of the disabled are very poor while the Commission members are usually not. The poorest group overall in America are the disabled. The commission member are predominantly from the very small group of privileged disabled with jobs, or higher income, or higher education, or all of the above. They will heavily focus on things that further benefit this group.

It may give the appearance of representation, but may represent the disabled as well as if the slave masters appointed a legislature to represent their slaves.

Bourgeois Baloney Masking the Fact that Things are Getting Worse for Disabled Mainstreaming

All of this talk of the wonders of the ADA has left the poor severely disabled sinking into greater poverty and unemployment, admitted recently by Pres. Clinton to be 75% overall among working age disabled. He failed to note that this new figure was an increase of about 14% over the previous figure of 66% overall unemployment. The low paying jobs formerly offered people with disabilities have gone to Mexico and China.

The reply "Well, this commission is not designed to solve every problem" is not satisfactory. Such commissions consciously direct attention away from the major problems faced by the disabled. The commission can be seen as another way of side tracking complaints voiced directly at City Council meetings to the actual democratically elected officials.

Another Hurdle for the Disabled

Why is such a side tracking commission -- another hurdle to the disabled -- needed in a city with only 90,000 citizens, less than one-fourteenth the size of Los Angeles?

I would suggest that, instead of fostering improvements in access, the cacophony of very separate goals of very different groups, both economically and disabilitywise, on the commission will produce a confused tower of Babel open to manipulation and control by those with better incomes, better training, and stronger vested interests.

In short, while serving the purpose of dominantly able-bodied would-be politicians and bureaucrats, it will slow real progress and access in the city for the most needy disabled people, increasing the gap rather than diminishing it.

Sometimes Doing Nothing is Positive Thinking

I wish I could be less pessimistic, but my extensive experience with such groups impels me to these conclusions. I wish I could propose a neat set of rules and detailed procedures to keep it from happening, but such rules are always circumvented by those have the juice to accomplish it.

The doctor's oath is to do no harm. Often that means doing nothing.

What is really needed is a grassroots rebirth of organizations formed, supported, and run by the disabled. Before the advent of the mini-bureaucracies of the independent living centers (with the old line State Dept. of Rehabilitation quietly exercising veto power over their budgets and activities) there was a large dues-paying political organization in California with many active committees for the physically disabled. Now there is not a single California or national organization of the disabled for the physically disabled. There is no longer a national coalition of disabled organizations.

Without these grassroots organizations (what they call NGOs in the rest of the world) the only thing that another government appointed commission can do is further weaken the true voice of the needs of the disabled.

A no vote is a truly progressive vote.

Not only will it keep government closer to the disabled, but it will probably save money from being expended on unnecessary city employees and outside funding of agency that have already shown their inability to even touch the problems of the disabled. It will save the money for material improvements that are needed for Santa Monica's disabled in appropriate housing, stepped up code and law enforcement, and concrete services and facilities, rather than for token disabled employees shifting paper around and going to meetings.

For all you know, this whole hoopla is just that: a goal of one or two promoters of the commission trying to promote themselves into power or a nice city job. I note that Pro Se (the pseudonym of one of the two promoters) is protesting too much at every opportunity that he does not wish to be on the commission that he is promoting. That just happens to leave him open to applying for a current or additional job tending to the needs of the disabled as a city employee, maybe with potential City Councilman Rubin's support.

And, of course, Jerry Rubin's new halo of "helping the handicapped" can't hurt him in his run for City Council -- or at least so he seems to believe.

Experience Actually in Disabilities Rights Organizations

I say this from a quarter century of experience in grassroots organizations, from labor union presidency in the anti-poverty programs to national representative and state vice president for the world's largest dues paying disability political organization, to being
sentenced many times to jail as a member of the most militant, civil disobedient organization of the disabled in the country. I've managed to see many of the tricks used to avoid serving the severely disabled because it costs money.

Once I watched as a Disabilities Commission in a nearby city spent its whole meeting being guided by a city department head to debate where the disabled parking spaces should be located at a city facility, though state regs. clearly define where they should be
located. Disability commissions are just another way to trick the disabled into thinking they are getting something when all they are about to get is wind. Such a commission will not accurately represent the needs of the great majority of the disabled. It will just make it easier to ignore it.

Better Than a Commission Would be True City Council Access for the More Severely Disabled

If the City Council wishes to hear from the disabled, to begin with, it should have its meetings earlier and allow the physically disabled to speak earlier. It should have meetings strictly for testimony about disability needs and abundantly publicize these occasions in the general press, on TV, at places where disabled people congregate, and mailed to the list compiled by the various agencies serving the disabled in the city. It should insist that transportation is available, and it should repair and light its disgraceful sidewalks -- some of the worst of which are on the way to City Hall -- so that the disabled with mobility limitations and wheelchairs feel safe from injury.

Bill Bolte
Santa Monica