Anne Finger is a leader in the field of Disability Studies. Below is a letter she has circulated among disability scholars asking questions that have important implications for rebuilding in the wake of Katrina.
Posted by rollingrains at September 12, 2005 09:10 PM
I don't think that the discussion of the "tragedy" of Hurricane Katrina should be seen as a diversion from these issues--in fact, I think this "natural" disaster provides a stark and telling illustration of how the intersections of issues of race and disability play out in a concrete way in people's lives.
Throughout this week, I've been struck by the presence of disability. In the New York Times, I read of a woman in the Superdome grabbing a reporter's arm, pleading for water for her daughter, a wheelchair user. "I'm afraid she's going to have a seizure," the mother cried. On NPR, I heard the voice of a man calling out, "Dilantin! I need Dilantin!" The president of Jefferson Parrish breaking down as he told of a man who'd been reassuring his mother, institutionalized in a nursing home, that help was on the way--only to learn that she had drowned--on Friday. And, of course, that image of the woman in the wheelchair, dead outside the Convention Center.I've been enraged on so many different levels this past week--at the way that disabled people seem to have been forgotten by those who ordered the evacuation of the city and the rescuers, at the appalling conditions everyone--disabled and nondisabled-- who sought shelter in the Superdome and the Convention Center endured. I was heartened when I read of Jesse Jackson and other African American ministers and Kayne West, stating the obvious racial dimension to this disaster. That this disaster had an especially horrific impact on disabled African Americans is clear.
I do think we need to rethink our use of the word "tragedy" when applied to this. While these events were undeniably tragic, they were hardly inevitable.
For a start, let's think about why the levees broke in the first place. Our nation as a whole may have problems with its infrastructure, but these problems are particularly acute in poor communities. I am sure there are statistics about this, which I don't have at the ready, but anyone whose ever wheeled or walked along the sidewalk in an upper middle class neighborhood and also wheeled or walked along one in a poor neighborhood knows this difference in their bones. Infrastructure--from sidewalks to curb cuts to levees--is underfunded in poor communities. That a hurricane would hit New Orleans was inevitable. That the levees, which had been neglected during both Republic and Democratic administrations, were not being adequately maintained was also a known fact. And while we may be assured that the increase in ferocity of hurricanes has nothing to do with global warming, I know I'm not the only one--Daniel Shorr was voicing the same question on NPR--who wonders if this spate of recent hurricanes is an opening salvo in the more extreme weather predicted as a result of global warming.I'm also wary when the sole solution offered is to donate to the victims. The impulse to reach out and offer help those in need is a generous and good one. But as disabled people, many of us have experienced charity first-hand, and we understand that the charity model has many drawbacks. There are the worthy recipients of charity--the smiling, grateful cripples--and the unworthy--the angry, bitter cripples; the "looters," those who, as Barbara Bush put it, "were
underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." Above all, charity keeps in place the notion that the "problem" is located in the bodies of disabled people, in the individuals who have been displaced, rather than in social structures and economic policies. I would like to see us putting our energies, our time, our money into demanding structural change.I think we, as disability activists and scholars, need to enter into the national dialogue, loudly and clearly, stating that these deaths of PWD's were not inevitable tragedies, but were the result of government policies that ignore our needs.
We need to say that this neglect does not hit all disabled people equally, but was especially lethal for the
poor, predominantely African-American, residents of New Orleans and surrounding communities.
I think we should also demand that, as the dead are counted, the powers that be also collect statistics on how many disabled people are among the dead. How many were found in nursing homes? How many were found in community care facilities? I think the answers to those questions will shock the conscience of our nation. We need to reach out to those disabled people who survived, and do all we can to enable their voices to be heard.
In general, I'm not a big fan of working within the legislative process, but I think this is a time when it makes sense to contact your senators and representatives and get them to ask some hard questions in the hearings that will be happening in the upcoming weeks. What were the plans for evacuating institutions--nursing homes, community care facilities? What were the plans for communicating with people who were deaf and hearing impaired? How was lifesaving medication going to be delivered to people who had been forced to flee? In short, what thought was given to the lives and needs of disabled people? We should be writing letters to editors, calling reporters, talking in our classes and to everyone we can about the impact of Katrina on disabled people, and especially on those in our community who have the fewest resources.Anne Finger
anniedigit@mindspring.com