Wampum

The AAPD is holding a National Forum on Disability Issues today at the Conference & Technology Center on Refugee Road in Columbus, Ohio today. Senator Tom Harkin (D-OH) will surrogate for Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), and Senator John McCain (D-AZ) will participate "via satellite" from Arizona. [Note: If I were that campaign's CD I'd use land lines and cut out the 1000 millisecond each-way delay on packet latency, but "via satellite" always sounds impressive and newsy.] Judy Woodruff is going to moderate the forum. Obama's in Europe, and McCain did the cancer thing in Columbus this week, so C >> D on his PD's issues-and-blocks tote board.

Its been eighteen years since our children's civil rights law, the Americans with Disabilities Act, was passed into law. For the past three years we've been living in Federal, State and County campgrounds, and it is still an every-camp question whether the policy of "accommodation" has made it to the locals, and whether its just some blue lines and a cement pad at the site closest to the toilets, or they "get" that Jonah's elopism is his fundamental risk factor, and that a herding service animal can't be "on leash" and function to herd or maintain station on a non-verbal (until engaged) physically very active autistic child. That disability is more than just a wheel chair.

Then there's the constant problem. Jonah likes to look at the way light reflects off of cars. Some people think that their payment of ten or twenty dollars to government gives them the right to harm children who approach, or touch, their cars, which are not fenced like inherently dangerous animals (small dogs held in Class A rigs are a big bite risk). More likely than not, the LEO that comes out to respond to "Adult menaces or hits child" sides with the property interests. Touch a car, get a smack. The canonical LEO notion of "accommodation" is that "all laws apply equally, literally, to everyone", except the ADA, so Jonah and a blind guy or anyone else who crosses an invisible line is a free hit for the psychopaths needing to act out, but afraid of the consequences. The red, white and blue is always there to wrap themselves up in and screech "property rights" from with the chorus of mortally stupid LEOs doing the baseline kumbaya of "cage your kids, cage your kids ..." Obviously, the ADA is not really "law" any more than the Voting Rights Act of 1968 was law for an awful long time.

So I'm putting up this. My first non-neutral-or-critical post concerning the presumptive nominee. Fraser Robinson was diagnosed with MS at age 30. MB was diagnosed at age 40. Where we camp, where we travel, is between two temperature gradients -- the lower, because we didn't buy the top-end cold weather travel trailer, and the upper, because of MB's MS. More than my need for the VSAT and data access, and Jonah's for video access, we are gated by her need for A/C. When the FD at the campaign she's chosen ordered her, the sober, sharp and busy end of the Field organization stick, to staff an event in 90 degree weather last week, I was not amused, and summer/fall in the Eastern Townships of Quebec still looks wicked good to me, for python coding (the CORE registrar client) with a decent co-worker, and for time-on-target in the Abenaki Reserve at Odenak. Still, candidates who grok disability as a policy issue, and I include Curt Weldon, MD and Dan Burton for their dedication to autism over party, are better than those who mock disability, or simply can't be bothered to think at all.

Senator Obama (D-IL), on disability and autism:

The AADP has an optimistic piece up at YouTube, which is a nice united-flavors-of-disability sequence. It misses autism and severe disability, but its still ADA voters at the not quite accessible or "accommodating" ballot box.

Before we left Portland I'd take Sam to the little two-row plus store at Morrill's Corner. Riverside Elementary, where Grace did well, but where Sam didn't ("accommodation" ment ignoring his IEP and the requirement for an aide to help him mainstream, and demonizing his interest in the rich abundance of doors created by the star-pattern layout of the school's designers (architect and district) optimizing on the open-plan mega-room clusters, with accordion walls that left more ambient noise than solid walls separating linear organized classroom wings, and clusters of adjacent doors that all look alike, and only one of which lead to his 1st grade classroom), is not too far from this little grocery, so we'd walk there often. It was the right sized store to "accommodate" Sam then. Just two rows. I could see him or I could hear him, and the staff knew me and my kids, including the fussy baby (now 6!) in the sling, and tolerance was the norm.

Except I remember discussing Michael Savage to one of the neighborhood women clerking at Morrill's, so last week's rant wasn't his first swing in the dirt.

Today is my last full day before departing for Dublin, and I've got all the kids, so we'll find something else to do today than try and get across Columbus to the Refugee Road event venue.