Good News and a Merry Christmas to All

I wish all readers a Merry Christmas. I hope Santa will be generous this year. Will be reading Twas the Night Before Christmas and the Polar Express tonight. I have great memories of reading these books to my son on Christmas Eve. The sentiments expressed in these two fine books makes me forget the commercialization of the holiday season.

Now for the good news. I received the below email from Simi Linton. If you are not familiar with her work I urge you to read her memoir and ground breaking Claiming Disability.

Justice has been served! Judge George Daniels has ruled that meaningful access to the NYC taxi system is required.

Plaintiffs Christopher Noel, Simi Linton, United Spinal, The Taxis for All Campaign, Disabled in Action brought a civil rights class action suit against The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, and Commissioner David Yassky. Disability Rights Advocates represented the plaintiffs.

Judge Daniels ruling calls for �meaningful access� to taxis for people who are disabled. Though he does not define precisely what that means, he writes:

�It is clear, however, that less than 2% of the city�s fleet being wheelchair accessible, resulting in the unavailability of taxi transportation and significantly increased waiting times for disabled persons who require wheelchairs, is not meaningful access. In fact, during oral argument, the TLC conceded that its regulations do not provide meaningful access to individual who require wheelchairs. It must do so.�

In a footnote, he also writes:

��meaningful access for the disabled to public transportation services is not a utopian goal or political promise, it is a basic civil right. Title II requires immediate and full compliance.�

Isn�t this terrific! Of course, there will be more news stories on this � but for now it is important to spread the word, and rally people behind this decision. We have yet to see how "meaningful access" will be interpreted - and what the true impact will be. Whatever way it is implemented, the ruling itself will certainly have an impact on New York City, and hopefully will also have broad impact on future rulings across the U.S.

Thoughts on putting together an exhibition

Part of the 'Profiting from Powering the World' involves digitising images and putting them together for a travelling exhibition to promote the catalogued collections. It will be made up of 8 pull up banners and will be launched at the workshop on 27th January.

I'm now at the crucial stage of finalising my choices of images and text to send to Waters Creative to produce the final panels. This is my first dabble into producing an exhibition, and I have found it mostly interesting, but sometimes frustrating. I think the nature of this project means I've had to take some unique things into consideration:

Collaborative working: The project is an Archives and Records Wales project involving 11 different collections from 7 different archive services across Wales. I catalogued 6 of the collections so had a reasonable idea of the highlights. I had no idea what the other collections consisted of, and very little time to find out. Robert Evans, who catalogued the North Wales collections, helpfully provided some assistance with this. It meant communicating with archive services with different resources and priorities, arranging visits, becoming a rather demanding reader, requesting lots of scanning, and spending a silly amount of time on trains. Despite the odd lost email, all the services involved were really helpful. It also meant I got to see some lovely places in North Wales.

Design: I found the design work tricky at first. There are so many collections, from a number of different industries (coal, copper, engineering, slate, lager etc),that no particular colours or themes immediately stood out. It took an age to settle on colours and layout. The intention is that it all ties together as a full exhibition, but that each banner can also stand alone. Additionally, being a Welsh project, translation is a large consideration.

Archives: As for the records themselves, I was initially a little concerned about how suitable for an exhibition these collections were. I knew they had great research potential, but these are records produced by heavy industries. Some of them are literally still covered in coal dust. They don't contain a lot of attractive marketing material, the type that you might find in other retail or banking archives, and which lend themselves to exhibitions.  However, having now looked through all the collections I've been pleasantly surprised at the range of material available. My aim was to find a good mixture, combining the aesthetically pleasing with the more informative records.

Now it's coming up to the Christmas break I have a little breather to reflect on the new skills I've gained during this process and the lessons I've learnt (so many!). Hopefully the final product will do the collections, the businesses, and the communities they affected, proud.

The Bottom Line: The Value of Business Archives for Research

 

Archives and Records Council Wales and Swansea University present �The Bottom Line: The Value of Business Archives for Research�, a free one day workshop kindly supported by the Economic History Society.


If you think business archives are too bulky, complicated or specialist then it�s time to think again! This one day workshop will bring together expert speakers to explore the value of business archives for a surprising variety of research.

Over lunch there will be a chance for delegates to meet archivists showcasing the wealth of business collections held by local and university archives across Wales.

The day�s events are free, but registration is required. Lunch and refreshments will be provided

Date: Friday 27 Jan 2012

Venue: James Callaghan Lecture Theatre, Swansea University

For a programme, registration form or more information see: http://www.swansea.ac.uk/lis/historicalcollections/archives/businessarchivesevent/ or contact archives@swansea.ac.uk

A Dangerous Love Affair with Autonomy: Symanski Life Lessons

In the last week Christina Symanski, a woman I have never met has not been far from my mind. Frankly, her death has me spooked. She lived well within driving distance of my home. She shared the same civil rights that I enjoy and yet she did not believe her life had any value. She was convinced her quality of life was abysmally low and that it was not going to ever improve. She thus chose to die. I understand what drove her to die as my struggle to live an independent life was very much in question last year. I was for many months utterly dependent upon my family and friends. This dependency left me despondent. A few things saved me from sinking into the depths of despair and depression like Symanski. Even in my darkest moments I knew powerful social factors were in play. I knew these social factors led many quadriplegics such as Symanski to believe their lives lacked meaning and value. They did not want to be a burden on family or friends. They mourned lost friendships and lovers. They had no job or prospects for employment. They feared life in a nursing home. They received substandard health care due to blatant discrimination. They were confronted with economic ruin. They were socially isolated unable to leave their homes. This is a grim reality that leads to an untold number of deaths.

When I cannot get a story like Symanski�s out of my mind I think of other people with a disability that endure. By endure I do not mean endure physical deficits but rather endure a society that would lead us to believe we are better off dead. Society embraces the dignity and autonomy of those people with a disability that want to die. These people have character! These people are brave! These people are applauded! This is an old story, a deeply ingrained stereotype that is not questioned. We truly admire people with a disability that want to die and shake our collective heads in confusion by those that want to live. This mentality plays itself out in popular culture. Hollywood produces films such as Million Dollar Baby that receive accolades. I was stunned not by the film but the audience reaction. When I saw it in the theaters the audience cheered when the main character Maggie was killed. A comparable film, the Sea Inside, was released in Spain. The courts are not free from anti disability bias. Jack Kevorkian eluded being convicted even though he killed people who were disabled and not terminally ill. In 1990 a Georgia court ruled that Larry MacAfee, a quadriplegic who was not terminally ill had the right to disconnect himself from his respirator and die. The court declared MacAfee�s desire to die outweighed the states interest in preservation of life and in preventing suicide thereby upholding his right to assistance in dying. Just the year before another man, David Rivlin, also sought court intervention in his wish to die. Unlike MacAfee who did indeed die, Rivlin changed his mind. In 2010 Dan Crews expressed his desire to die. He feared life in a nursing home and wanted to be disconnected from his resperator. I could site many other examples but the common theme remains the same�people with a disability that publicly express a desire to die rather than live become media darlings. They get complete and total support in their quest.

The stories above infuriate me. Why is it we rally around those people with a disability that want to die and yet refuse to provide the necessary social supports that would empower people with a disability to live rich, full and productive lives. This makes no sense to me. It is also downright dangerous in a medical system that is privatized and supposedly patient centered, buzz words I often heard last year. It makes me wonder though does �patient centered� allow, justify and encourage people, paralyzed people, to die? It is a euphemism that makes people in the health care system feel better? Symanski died because she found living with a disability intolerable. The unspoken corollary is she was driven to die because social supports were woefully inadequate and medical care substandard.

I remain stunned and saddened but hardly surprised by Symanski�s death. The social vortex Symanski was sucked into that led to her death has claimed the lives of many people with disabilities. Paul Longmore, a brilliant scholar and disability rights activist, wrote about what saved his life: �One thing saved me from that fate: the disability-rights movement. Our movement won my right to live independently, to work productively, to gain access to public places, to receive reasonable accommodations, and to obtain protection from discrimination. Our movement gave me the gift of a nurturing community. It offered me a positive, disability-affirming identity. It taught me pride.� How I wish Symanski could have met Paul Lngmore and others involved in the disability rights movement.

Life Paralyzed: A Final Post

On Sunday December 11 a final post was put up on Life: Paralyzed by Christina Symanski. Entitled "Message to My Friends", Symanski gives those that knew her a final good bye. I urge everyone to read it. One passage struck me as particularly sad.

"Please know that my decision to leave this life behind was not made rashly, or without careful consideration and concern for the people I'm leaving behind. I have been fighting an uphill battle to live, every day since my accident. A big part of me died back on June 5, 2005 and my life was never the same. Everything has felt empty, and bittersweet. Every memory tainted with sadness, over everything that I've lost, everything I miss doing, and everything I had planned to do, and hoped to be.
My paralysis robbed me of the most basic human necessities (freedom, privacy, independence, and physical intimacy)."

I wish Symanski had learned to cope with paralysis. I do not necessarily mean cope with the very real physical struggles she faced but rather make a theoretical leap in logic. Comparing life with and without paralysis is inherently negative and misleading. There is life with paralysis and there is life without paralysis. You cannot compare the two--they are fundamentally different social experiences. Paralysis I would maintain robs a person of only one thing--equality. The civil rights of people with a disability are not valued and often violated. In fact, disability rights and civil rights are not considered by many to be comparable. I wish Symanski embraced her inalienable rights, rights that many people take for granted. Her death is a tragedy for her family and friends and an indictment on American society's failure to provide sub basic social supports for people with a disability.

I Hate the New York Times

I was having a good day until i read the New York Times. Yet again the NYT has published a story, in this case a review of a TV show, that left me deeply annoyed. Here I refer to a December 11 review, " Disabled Host, With the Emphasis on Able" by Jon Caramanica. A few will know Zach Anner, a man with cerebral palsy, who won a reality competition (Your Own Show: Oprah's Search for the Next TV Star) to host a program on the Oprah Winfrey Network. His show, Rollin with Zach, will air tonight. I doubt I will watch the show. But it is the review rather than his show that has me deeply annoyed. The NYT characterized Anner as "witty and charming and mildly zany. And also disabled". Why is that phrase, "and also disabled", included? In my opinion it is based on the assumption that people with a disability cannot be witty, charming and zany. Surely we people with a disability are miserable and morose. Another unfortunate passage sates that: "The inspiration in Mr. Anner�s story is implicit. Unlike most travel shows, on which the hosts feign omnipotence and fearlessness, �Rollin� With Zach� often reveals Mr. Anner adjusting for his disability. Concern for his well-being is embedded into the show, as is the sense that things will not always go smoothly."

When I read these lines I wanted to scream. Why don't things go smoothly when Anner travels? The answer is simple: in spite of the law mass transportation remains either inaccessible or problematic for people with a disability. The reason for this is not because Anner cannot adjust for his disability but rather society fails to be inclusive to people with a disability. Problems abound because people with a disability are not valued. Equal access does not exist within the travel industry. Perhaps this is the reason Anner is not "fearless". Like many people with a disability he knows all too well that when traveling barriers to inclusion are common place. As for "concern embedded" into the show, I find this demeaning. Why should this concern exist? We people with a disability are perceived to be incompetent. Thus the all powerful bipedal people will out of the goodness of their heart protect the well being of people with a disability. This logic is not just wrong but provided the theoretical justification for excluding people with a disability for decades. Paralyzed people cannot fly in a plane, they are a safety hazard. People with a disability cannot attend public school, they are a fire hazard. Exclusion was not seen as a form of discrimination but rather done for the "well being" of people with a disability. Such a sentiment still exists today in spite of the fact the ADA was passed 20 years ago.

One last example should suffice: "Both initial episodes conclude with Mr. Anner attempting a water activity, surfing and then water-skiing, which he succeeds at, with some hitches. On a chair-swing ride at Navy Pier in Chicago the look of ecstasy on his face at the freedom of movement is genuine." A few things are assumed. Water sports and sports in general are beyond the ability of most people with a disability. Sports are for fit people, those without a disability. Implied is the refusal to perceive adaptive sports, in this case a water activity, as equally enjoyable. Why is "ecstasy" on Anner's face? Simple, disability is inherently bad and restricting. Disability is always compared to normal, meaning bipedal movement. Surely Anner must wish he was normal, not disabled. This is evident by the "freedom of movement". Of course the reverse is a lack of freedom and movement people with a disability experience. Easily ignored is that it is not the lack of movement that prevents freedom but socially constructed barriers. For instance I can ski but I cannot ski at all resorts because basic wheelchair access is absent.

The review incorrectly concludes that Anner is a "role model". Who exactly is he a role model for? People with a disability. I can assure you Anner is not my idea of a role model. My role models were people like Ed Roberts and Paul Longmore. These men questioned authority, bucked the system and won. They did not win for themselves but for all people with a disability. Roberts and Longmore made this country a better place for people with a disability. This I admire far more than any television program, especially one on the Oprah Winfrey Network known for fluffy self help pablum.

Mourning for Christina Symanski: Better Off Dead?

Last week I came across a blog entitled �Life; Paralyzed� written by Christina Symanski. The blog was devoted to her �thoughts & day to day struggles living with paralysis� and �current information related to spinal cord injury�. Symanski started her blog in September 2009 and her last entry was posted on September 13, 2011. Since I discovered her blog I have read each and every entry several times. I found much of what she wrote eloquent even though I considered her views on spinal cord injury morbidly depressing. I was hooked by her passion and the raw way she expressed her emotional and physical struggles. In fact, I stayed up most of the night reading her blog from beginning to end. In the morning I googled her name and found more of her writing, paintings, videos posted on various sites, and to my great shock I learned she died two days before I discovered her writing. I was dumbfounded by her death. I still am shocked. I mourn for a woman I never met. My heart goes out to her family.

Not once in the last week has Symanski been far from my mind. Every morning I google her name in the hope of finding an obituary. Every morning I am disappointed. No mention of her death has appeared. I do not know why Symanski�s works have touched me so deeply. Perhaps her words struck a chord because they are so radically different from mine. Perhaps it is because she wrote so well. Maybe it is more basic; I am appalled by her death and morbid views of paralysis. Even more disturbing to me, she did not die of natural causes. She wrote extensively and with sincerity about her desire to die, to end her suffering. She accomplished this goal and in the manner she wrote about. Based on threads at the Care Cure Community, she refused all food and hydration. According to a woman that identified herself as Christina� s best friend �Christina passed away yesterday, December 1st, exactly two months from when she started refusing food, water, and medical treatment. She spent most of those months at home, aside from a week in a hospice facility to get her palliative meds sorted out. Everything didn't play out quite as peacefully as she imagined it would, and she was conscious up until a few days ago, but her final moments were calm and comfortable and she passed on in her own home with her family at her side.�

It is one thing to express a desire to die, to essentially starve and dehydrate one�s self, and another to follow through. Symanski�s writings illustrate her interest in a cure for spinal cord injury, struggle coping with a high-level spinal cord injury that caused a host of medical complications, foremost among them autonomic dysreflexia, and her increasing despair. In 2009 her entries largely concerned a cure for paralysis. Symanski was injured in 2005, spent a long time in critical care hospitals and was for more than a year the resident of a nursing home. She escaped the nursing home, an almost impossible feat, lived in her own apartment and was remarkably productive. She was interviewed for newspaper articles and talked at length about her artwork. She posted three well produced but maudlin videos on line about life with a high-level spinal cord injury. A cursory reading of Symanski�s posts indicate that as 2010 progressed her entries became increasingly dark. Her autonomic dysreflexia continued unabated and the solutions suggested were unacceptable.

Three posts this year were particularly dark. Here I refer to �Meeting with Fr. Doug�, May 9, 2011; �How to Die in Oregon�, May 31; �Why I think I should be Allowed to Die with Dignity� May 31, 2011. All three posts indicate she was actively seeking a physician that would declare her terminally ill and I hence be eligible for hospice care. She consulted a lawyer to discuss the legal ramifications of her desire to die. She also contacted a local palliative care consultant to discuss all her options. Just as she was driven to search a cure for spinal cord injury she was equally driven to die. This is deeply disturbing to me at multiple levels foremost among them is that she convinced a doctor, lawyer, psychiatrist, palliative care specialist and her family to acquiesce to her wishes. This is well outside of the norm and I wonder about the ethics and legality of her actions. It also reveals an unspoken truth. When a person with a disability expresses a desire to die and engages in an all out effort to die they are applauded and encouraged by others�others without a disability. Symanski�s blog is littered with encouragement and supportive words. Her express desire to die in face of a debilitating condition reminded me of a lauded opinion piece I read in the New York Times this summer. �The Good Short Life� by Dudley Clendinen was an eloquent expression of his desire to die before ALS robbed him of his dignity. Society loves people like Symanski and Clendinen who are stately, dignified and eloquent. Their desire to die is perceived to be noble. Here is the problem. No one asks why, why do they want to die? Symanski feared being forced back into a nursing home. Clendinen questioned why he should spend $14,000 a year on a medication that will extend his life a few months.

In choosing to die people like Symanski and Clendinen reinforce an ugly truth about how people perceive disability--that is one is better off dead than disabled. Of course few people will openly admit this. Jackie Leach Scully identifies this as nonverbalized bias �disablism�. She wrote � People who are nonconsciously or unconsciously disablist do not recognize themselves as in any way discriminatory; their disablism is often unintentional, and persists through unexamined, lingering cultural stereotypes about disabled lives�. This made me wonder what would have happened to Symanski if she were not paralyzed and instead had a more socially acceptable chronic disease. Would she have been allowed to dehydrate and starve herself to death? Not a chance. It is only because she had a severe disability that her desire to die was understandable, acceptable to others.

No Faith in My Fellow Human Beings

Last week I had a highly rewarding exchange of emails with a woman who is detailing her end of life experience at thedrsays.org. She is experiencing congestive heart failure and wants to die with dignity and in peace. We started our exchange as I left a cranky comment about her positive response to the Dr Oz I railed against on assisted suicide. Despite our different views we showed each other a great deal of respect that is all too often lacking when end of life issues are discussed. She is facing some very difficult decisions in the very near future. I wish her and her family well. I also urge you to read her work. It is important in large part because she is a living example that modern medical care and medical technology have created impossible ethical conundrums. I do not envy the decisions she and her family will be making. Thankfully it seems she has an excellent rapport with her physician and support of a loving family. As a veteran I am pleased to know she has received appropriate supports in terms of health insurance.

There is no proverbial but coming in this post. Rather an observation: many people who are nearing the end of their life know little or nothing about disability. Disability simply has never touched their lives or members of their family. Disability is an abstract concept and disability rights a foreign idea. But the woman I exchanged email with does have some experience. In her response to me she concluded by noting in "Dr. Oz, Montel Williams and the Bad Cripple" "my mother had polio as a child and is truly crippled by it. she has 3 daughters and growing up with her it never occurred to me that she would be better off if she took her own life. that is one reason I don�t worry about the slippery slope. we are smart enough to make the distinction between someone with a debilitating terminal illness and someone who is disabled. maybe i just have more faith in my fellow human beings."

In these few words a great divide is revealed. Those that favor the right to die with dignity are capable of seeing that those with a disability are not the same as those with a terminal condition. As this woman notes she has faith in her fellow human beings and based upon this faith is not afraid of the slippery slope. I love this sentiment. I do not share her faith or optimism in others. I do not trust the medical establishment. By medical establishment I refer to the medical industrial complex that dictates care in this country. I am even less inclined to trust my fellow man, the ordinary person, like the people on the Dr. Oz show that appeared to be happy to let anyone suffering to end their life with the full support of the medical establishment. In the case of the Dr. Oz Show anyone with a disability was clearly suffering, had little dignity, and deserved to die. The emotions of the show not the few facts put in evidence scared me. It scared me because as much as doctors would like to contend medical care is a hard science there is as much art as there is science in medical care. Culture I assure you rears its ugly head in every aspect of medical care and medical technology. By extension, culture is a significant variable in the way we die. We do not discuss end of life care--we never have and at this point given the very real ethical issues we now encounter at the end of life we as Americans desperately need to discuss the matter. We need a national debate. It is for this reason I found my exchange of emails so satisfying. Our respective views were questioned and subsequently more clearly articulated. We both learned much from a person we had a serious disagreement with.

In thinking about my email exchange and in particular the passage I quoted, I was reminded of one of my favorite books in disability studies, Make Them Go Away by Mary Johnson. In her book Johnson seeks to answer a seemingly simple question: Why is there so little support for disability rights? Well, most people do not equate equal rights with disability rights and few liberal rights organizations support the disability rights movement. The net result is many people do not think people with a disability are a minority group subject to discrimination. I find this line of thought baffling. Prejudice is rampant and it takes much more than 40 years of law making to change our deeply ingrained beliefs. When I bring up the issue of disability rights and closely tie it it other civil rights movements the most common reaction is disbelief. More than a few people have rolled their eyes and some simply say I am full of bull shit. In response I will acknowledge no one wakes up in the morning and thinks I will discriminate against a person with a disability today. But that does not mean prejudice does not exist. And this is why I do not trust my fellow human beings. The prejudice I encounter as a person with a disability is deeply ingrained. It is ever present in the form of a lack of social supports, inaccessible housing and mass transportation, employment, poverty and the list goes on and on. Think of one word--disenfranchised. When all these socially constructed barriers are eliminated I will have faith in my fellow humans. For now, I am not swayed nor do I feel equal. This jaundiced view is not nearly as nice as the sentiments my email friend expressed but reflect the gritty reality I have experienced as a person with a disability.

Waking Man Circa 2012: Exoskeletons By Extension

I find technology magazines and technology geeks to be devoid of any social awareness. I thus avoid such publications with one exception--i like to read about how technology people envision the future. Such predictions are almost always wrong--spectacularly wrong. Think the Jetsons wrong. My son sent me a link to a typical envisioning the future article. I was not enthused but he always has a good reason for sending an article to me. I am interested in not only the content of any link he sends but wonder what inspired him to send it in the first place. As a parent I am interested in knowing how his mind is working as a college student. As lunch time approached today I printed out the link, "23 Incredible New Technologies You'll See by 2021". Imagine my chagrin to read that paralyzed people will be walking by 2012--well sort of walking. This claim is grossly wrong but that is not the point. I now get why there is no chance my favorite invention to make fun of, the exoskeleton, will not go away.

Under the heading The Paralyzed Will Walk there is the proverbial but. The paralyzed will be walking but "not in the way that you'd imagine. Using a machine-brain interface, researchers are making it possible for otherwise paralyzed humans to control neuroprostheses--essentially mechanical limbs that that responds to human thought--allowing them to walk and regain bodily control". A photograph is even included of a man, muscular arms crossed with a skull cap on and hundreds of wires running down his back. Looks to me like dread locks gone wrong! It also sounds a lot like a high end exoskeleton. Deep pockets have been invested in the exoskeleton. What I call the cure industry has embraced this costly idea that has dubious value at best. It made me think how lucky I was to be paralyzed 33 years ago. Modern rehabilitation was being formulated in the 1970s and 1980s and patient care came first. Today things are radically different. Present day rehabilitation is both terrible and wonderful. The truly terrible part is the cure industry that sells false hope and preys upon the newly paralyzed who are fixated on walking. Don't get me wrong, cure for paralysis is a worthy goal as we humans were designed to be bipedal. However a modest bit of research shows we are a very long way from anything that resembles a cure for paralysis. For a practical person such as myself, that means moving on with life using a wonderful alternate means of locomotion--the wheelchair. A spectacular invention that empowers millions of people. In part this is why I hate the idea of the exoskeleton: it glorifies walking as the one and only means of locomotion. This sends a bad message to paralyzed people. Essentially walking is good, wheelchairs are bad. Let's look at it this way and see the folly. Imagine are a paraplegic such as myself. I have the following choice. To start my day I can transfer from bed to wheelchair and go. Time involved less than 30 seconds. Alternatively I can put on a skull cap with dozens of wires and then strap over half my body into "neuroprotheses". Call me crazy but this does not sound like it is an efficient use of time or movement. And here is where culture rears its head. We Americans value technology--the more complex and involved the better. Thus we will dump hundreds of millions of dollars into the exoskeleton but categorically refuse to provide the most basic support services for people with a disability to lead an ordinary life. This makes no sense and many paralyzed people suffer as a result. Needless social isolation and rampant unemployment is the norm. How I wonder can this be tolerated?

I would like to identify something positive about the development of the exoskeleton but have utterly failed. However, there is no doubt in my mind researchers will continue to spend vast amounts of money into the development of the exoskeleton. The reason for this was made clear in the article. Apparently "the same systems are also being developed for the military, which one can only assume means this project won't flounder due to a lack of funding". Great, just great. The real market for the exoskeleton is not paralyzed people but rather its military development. I guess we need the exoskeleton so military men and women can carry hundreds of pounds of gear. Given how insidious the military industrial complex has been weaved into the fabric of American society since World War II the exoskeleton will continue to be well funded. A cash cow even. At the same time states nation wide will cut services for people with a disability with popular legislative support. What a world.