By Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, New York Times – August 19, 2016

Not long ago, a good friend of mine said something revealing to me: “I don’t think of you as disabled,” she confessed.

I knew exactly what she meant; I didn’t think of myself as disabled until a few decades ago, either, even though my two arms have been pretty significantly asymmetrical and different from most everybody else’s my whole life.

My friend’s comment was meant as a compliment, but followed a familiar logic — one that African-Americans have noted when their well-meaning white friends have tried to erase the complications of racial identity by saying, “I don’t think of you as black,” or when a man compliments a woman by saying that he thinks of her as “just one of the guys.”

This impulse to rescue people with disabilities from a discredited identity, while usually well meaning, is decidedly at odds with the various pride movements we’ve come to know in recent decades. Slogans like “Black Is Beautiful” and “We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Used to It!” became transformative taunts for generations of people schooled in the self-loathing of racism, sexism and heterosexism. Pride movements were the psycho-emotional equivalents of the anti-discrimination and desegregation laws that asserted the rights of full citizenship to women, gay people, racial minorities and other groups. More recently, the Black Lives Matter and the L.G.B.T. rights movement have also taken hold. Continue reading →

Thanks to the initiative of Self-Advocates at Favarh, HB 5050 – An Act Concerning the Modernization of Parking Spaces for People with Disabilities, passed both the House and the Senate today and awaits the expected signature from the Governor. With that, Connecticut becomes the second state in the country to both remove the word “handicapped” from parking signs and to change the static wheelchair to a more active, independent, and modern icon.

The measure is a ZERO COST bill which means the new signs will only be installed when existing signs need replacing and with new construction. Continue reading →

Restraint: “Life-threatening physical restraint” means any physical restraint or hold of a person that restricts the flow of air into a person’s lungs, whether by chest compression or any other means. “Physical restraint” means any mechanical or personal restriction that immobilizes or reduces the free movement of a person’s arms, legs or head.

Seclusion: The confinement of a person in a room, whether alone or with staff supervision, in a manner that prevents the person from leaving.

With the passage of Public Act 15-141 (SB 927) the Connecticut General Assembly has made major revisions to the State laws that govern the use of restraint and seclusion in schools.

Continue reading →