Disability Pride Quotes

Master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and reread them…digest them. Let them go into your very self. Peruse a good book several times and make notes and analyses of it. A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by twenty books he has merely skimmed. Little learning and much pride comes from hasty reading. Some men are disabled from thinking by their putting meditation away for the sake of much reading. In reading let your motto be ‘much not many.

Laugh and cry and tell stories. Sad stories about bodies stolen, bodies no longer here. Enraging stories about the false images, devastating lies, untold violence. Bold, brash stories about reclaiming our bodies and changing the world.

The body as home, but only if it is understood that bodies are never singular, but rather haunted, strengthened, underscored by countless other bodies.

I want to sharpen my pride on what strengthens me, my witness on what haunts me. Whatever we name ourselves, however we end up shattering our self-hatred, shame, silence, and isolation, the goal is the same: to end our daily material oppression.

On athleticism, God knows no favor. It seems rather he is in the business of teaching winners how to lose and losers how to win.

Anyone can be made to feel like an outsider. It’s up to the people who have the power to exclude. Often it’s on the basis of race. Depending on a culture’s fears and biases, Jews can be treated as outsiders. Muslims can be treated as outsiders. Christians can be treated as outsiders. The poor are always outsiders. The sick are often outsiders. People with disabilities can be treated as outsiders. Members of the LGBTQ community can be treated as outsiders. Immigrants are almost always outsiders. And in most every society, women can be made to feel like outsiders—even in their own homes. Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings. It is the key to ending deep inequality. We stigmatize and send to the margins people who trigger in us the feelings we want to avoid. This is why there are so many old and weak and sick and poor people on the margins of society. We tend to push out the people who have qualities we’re most afraid we will find in ourselves—and sometimes we falsely ascribe qualities we disown to certain groups, then push those groups out as a way of denying those traits in ourselves. This is what drives dominant groups to push different racial and religious groups to the margins. And we’re often not honest about what’s happening. If we’re on the inside and see someone on the outside, we often say to ourselves, “I’m not in that situation because I’m different. But that’s just pride talking. We could easily be that person. We have all things inside us. We just don’t like to confess what we have in common with outsiders because it’s too humbling. It suggests that maybe success and failure aren’t entirely fair. And if you know you got the better deal, then you have to be humble, and it hurts to give up your sense of superiority and say, “I’m no better than others.” So instead we invent excuses for our need to exclude. We say it’s about merit or tradition when it’s really just protecting our privilege and our pride.

Pride works in direct opposition to internalized oppression. The latter provides a fertile ground for shame, denial, self-hatred, and fear. The former encourages anger, strength, and joy. To transform self-hatred into pride is a fundamental act of resistance.

Disabled people have always existed, whether the word disability is used or not. To me, disability is not a monolith, nor is it a clear-cut binary of disabled and nondisabled. Disability is mutable and ever-evolving. Disability is both apparent and nonapparent. Disability is pain, struggle, brilliance, abundance, and joy. Disability is sociopolitical, cultural, and biological. Being visible and claiming a disabled identity brings risks as much as it brings pride.

What would happen if we all just acknowledged our brokenness, if we owned up to our weaknesses, our deficits, our biases, our fears. Maybe if we did, we wouldn't want to kill the broken among us who have killed others. Maybe we would look harder for solutions to caring for the disabled, the abused, the neglected, and the traumatized. I had a notion that if we acknowledged our brokenness, we could no longer take pride in mass incarceration, in executing people, in our deliberate indifference to the most vulnerable

My name is CRPS, or so they say But I actually go by; a few different names. I was once called causalgia, nearly 150 years ago And then I had a new name It was RSD, apparently so. I went by that name because the burn lived inside of me. Now I am called CRPS, because I have so much to say I struggle to be free. I don't have one symptom and this is where I change, I attack the home of where I live; with shooting/burning pains. Depression fills the mind of the body I belong, it starts to speak harsh to self, negativity growing strong. Then I start to annoy them; with the issues with sensitivity, You'd think the pain enough; but no, it wants to make you aware of its trembling disability. I silently make my move; but the screams are loud and clear, Because I enter your physical reality and you can't disappear. I confuse your thoughts; I contain apart of your memory, I cover your perspective, the fog makes it sometimes unbearable to see. I play with your temperature levels, I make you nervous all the time - I take away your independance and take away your pride. I stay with you by the day & I remind you by the night, I am an awful journey and you will struggle with this fight. Then there's a side to me; not many understand, I have the ability to heal and you can be my friend. Help yourself find the strength to fight me with all you have, because eventually I'll get tired of making you grow mad. It will take some time; remember I mainly live inside your brain, Curing me is hard work but I promise you, You can beat me if you feed love to my pain. Find the strength to carry on and feed the fears with light; hold on to the seat because, like I said, it's going to be a fight. But I hope to meet you, when your healthy and healed, & you will silenty say to me - I did this, I am cured is this real? That day could possibly come; closer than I want- After all I am a disease and im fighting for my spot. I won't deny from my medical angle, I am close to losing the " incurable " battle.

The stolen body, the reclaimed body, the body that knows itself and the world, the stone and the heat which warms it: my body has never been singular.

I began thinking about what would happen if we all just acknowledged our brokenness, if we owned up to our weaknesses, our deficits, our biases, our fears. Maybe if we did, we wouldn’t want to kill the broken among us who have killed others. Maybe we would look harder for solutions to caring for the disabled, the abused, the neglected, and the traumatized. I had a notion that if we acknowledged our brokenness, we could no longer take pride in mass incarceration, in executing people, in our deliberate indifference to the most vulnerable.

For the first time I realized that my life was just full of brokenness. I worked in a broken system of justice. My clients were broken by mental illness, poverty, and racism. They were torn apart by disease, drugs and alcohol, pride, fear, and anger. I thought of Joe Sullivan and of Trina, Antonio, Ian, and dozens of other broken children we worked with, struggling to survive in prison. I thought of people broken by war, like Herbert Richardson; people broken by poverty, like Marsha Colbey; people broken by disability, like Avery Jenkins. In their broken state, they were judged and condemned by people whose commitment to fairness had been broken by cynicism, hopelessness, and prejudice.

Anyone can be made to feel like an outsider. It’s up to the people who have the power to exclude. Often it’s on the basis of race. Depending on a culture’s fears and biases, Jews can be treated as outsiders. Muslims can be treated as outsiders. Christians can be treated as outsiders. The poor are always outsiders. The sick are often outsiders. People with disabilities can be treated as outsiders. Members of the LGBTQ community can be treated as outsiders. Immigrants are almost always outsiders. And in most every society, women can be made to feel like outsiders—even in their own homes. Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings. It is the key to ending deep inequality. We stigmatize and send to the margins people who trigger in us the feelings we want to avoid. This is why there are so many old and weak and sick and poor people on the margins of society. We tend to push out the people who have qualities we’re most afraid we will find in ourselves—and sometimes we falsely ascribe qualities we disown to certain groups, then push those groups out as a way of denying those traits in ourselves. This is what drives dominant groups to push different racial and religious groups to the margins. And we’re often not honest about what’s happening. If we’re on the inside and see someone on the outside, we often say to ourselves, “I’m not in that situation because I’m different. But that’s just pride talking. We could easily be that person. We have all things inside us. We just don’t like to confess what we have in common with outsiders because it’s too humbling. It suggests that maybe success and failure aren’t entirely fair. And if you know you got the better deal, then you have to be humble, and it hurts to give up your sense of superiority and say, “I’m no better than others.” So instead we invent excuses for our need to exclude. We say it’s about merit or tradition when it’s really just protecting our privilege and our pride.

One of the things we haven’t taught our people as a nation, that this is their country. We haven’t told them that this Bahamas belongs to them. Whether it succeeds or fails it is entirely up to them. WE haven’t told our people that they are valuable. I sometimes pass little boys playing in the road and I would stop my car and say to them: ‘Excuse me baby, do you realize how valuable you are? Do not play in the road, if anything happen to you that is going to hurt us. Because you might be our Prime Minister one day. Iris Adderley, consultant in the Disability Affairs Devision of The Department of Social Services.

We believed we were supposed to "cope" as best we could. As we talked, we realized the disability itself was not that big a deal for us. We had all learned to accept our physical limitations. What made life difficult was not the disability, but the lack of services and support, the lack of accessibility, the unfair and stereotypical ways in which we were treated, the pity doled out for us all our lives. Often, after a meeting, I wrote my thoughts down in a notebook. "It's not my fault that I'm disabled, yet I've been made to feel that it is," I wrote. "My polio never made me unhappy; people made me unhappy. Ever since I was a little girl, people have always made me feel I was no good because I was disabled. From Sicilian women and the nuns to the doctors who couldn't fix me, to my fellow students and prospective employers... and even my own parents." As I wrote, my tears fell and stained the pages - tears of anger, of relief and of new hope.

What the most advanced researchers and theoreticians in all of science now comprehend is that the Newtonian concept of a universe driven by mass force is out of touch with reality, for it fails to account for both observable phenomena and theoretical conundrums that can be explained only by quantum physics: A quantum view explains the success of small efforts quite differently. Acting locally allows us to be inside the movement and flow of the system, participating in all those complex events occurring simultaneously. We are more likely to be sensitive to the dynamics of this system, and thus more effective. However, changes in small places also affect the global system, not through incrementalism, but because every small system participates in an unbroken wholeness. Activities in one part of the whole create effects that appear in distant places. Because of these unseen connections, there is potential value in working anywhere in the system. We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In what Wheatley calls “this exquisitely connected world,” the real engine of change is never “critical mass”; dramatic and systemic change always begins with “critical connections.”14 So by now the crux of our preliminary needs should be apparent. We must open our hearts to new beacons of Hope. We must expand our minds to new modes of thought. We must equip our hands with new methods of organizing. And we must build on all of the humanity-stretching movements of the past half century: the Montgomery Bus Boycott; the civil rights movement; the Free Speech movement; the anti–Vietnam War movement; the Asian American, Native American, and Chicano movements; the women’s movement; the gay and lesbian movement; the disability rights/pride movement; and the ecological and environmental justice movements. We must find ourselves amid the fifty million people who as activists or as supporters have engaged in the many-sided struggles to create the new democratic and life-affirming values that are needed to civilize U.S. society.

The stupendous quarrel, the perpetual emergency, the monumental unhappiness, the battered pride, the intoxication of resistance had rendered him incapable of even nibbling at the truth, however intelligent he still happened to be. By the time his ideas wormed their way through all that emotion, they had been so distorted and intensified as only barely to resemble human thought. Despite the unremitting determination to comprehend the enemy, as though in understanding them there was still, for him, some hope, despite the thin veneer of professorial brilliance, which gave even his most dubious and bungled ideas a certain intellectual gloss, now at the core of everything was hatred and the great disabling fantasy of revenge.

We believed we were supposed to 'cope' as best we could. As we talked, we realized the disability itself was not that big a deal for us. We had all learned to accept our physical limitations. What made life difficult was not the disability, but the lack of services and support, the lack of accessibility, the unfair and stereotypical ways in which we were treated, the pity doled out for us all our lives. Often, after a meeting, I wrote my thoughts down in a notebook. 'It's not my fault that I'm disabled, yet I've been made to feel that it is,' I wrote. 'My polio never made me unhappy; people made me unhappy. Ever since I was a little girl, people have always made me feel I was no good because I was disabled. From Sicilian women and the nuns to the doctors who couldn't fix me, to my fellow students and prospective employers... and even my own parents.' As I wrote, my tears fell and stained the pages - tears of anger, of relief and of new hope.

In Ahab and in his beatnik, quasi-criminal prototype, Jackson (in 'Redburn'), Melville gave expression both to the megatechnic 'Khans' of the global Pentagon and to the counter-forces they had brought into being. And the fact that Ahab's torment and hatred had gone so far that he had lost control of himself and, through his own mad reliance upon power, had become dominated completely by the creature that had disabled him, only makes Melville's story a central parable in the interpretation of modern man's destiny. In Ahab's throwing away compass and sextant at the height of the chase, Melville even anticipated the casting out of the orderly instruments of intelligence, so characteristic of the counter-culture and anti-life happenings of today. Similarly, by his maniacal concentration, Ahab rejects the inner change that might have saved the ship and the crew, when he turns a deaf ear to the pleas of love uttered by sober Starbuck in words and by Pip, a fright-shocked child and an African primitive, in dumb gesture. Outwardly mankind is still committed tot he grim chase Melville described, lured by the adventure, the prospect of oil and whalebone, the promptings of pride, an above all by a love-rejecting pursuit of power. But it has also begun consciously to face the prospect of total annihilation, which may be brought about by the captains who now have command of the ship. Against that senseless fate every act of rebellion, every exhibition of group defiance, every assertion of the will-to-live, every display of autonomy and self-direction, at however primitive a level, diminishes the headway of the doom-threatened ship and delays the fatal moment when the White Whale will shatter its planks and drown the crew. All the infantile, criminal, and imbecile manifestations in the arts today, everything that now expresses only murderous hatred and alienation, might still find justification if they performed their only conceivable rational function-that of awakening modern man sufficiently to his actual plight, so that he seizes the wheel and, guided by the stars, heads the ship to a friendlier shore.

When I hung up the phone that night I had a wet face and a broken heart. The lack of compassion I witnessed every day had finally exhausted me. I looked around my crowded office, at the stacks of records and papers, each pile filled with tragic stories, and I suddenly didn’t want to be surrounded by all this anguish and misery. As I sat there, I thought myself a fool for having tried to fix situations that were so fatally broken. It’s time to stop. I can’t do this anymore. For the first time I realized my life was just full of brokenness. I worked in a broken system of justice. My clients were broken by mental illness, poverty, and racism. They were torn apart by disease, drugs and alcohol, pride, fear, and anger. I thought of Joe Sullivan and of Trina, Antonio, Ian, and dozens of other broken children we worked with, struggling to survive in prison. I thought of people broken by war, like Herbert Richardson; people broken by poverty, like Marsha Colbey; people broken by disability, like Avery Jenkins. In their broken state, they were judged and condemned by people whose commitment to fairness had been broken by cynicism, hopelessness, and prejudice. I looked at my computer and at the calendar on the wall. I looked again around my office at the stacks of files. I saw the list of our staff, which had grown to nearly forty people. And before I knew it, I was talking to myself aloud: “I can just leave. Why am I doing this?” It took me a while to sort it out, but I realized something sitting there while Jimmy Dill was being killed at Holman prison. After working for more than twenty-five years, I understood that I don’t do what I do because it’s required or necessary or important. I don’t do it because I have no choice. I do what I do because I’m broken, too. My years of struggling against inequality, abusive power, poverty, oppression, and injustice had finally revealed something to me about myself. Being close to suffering, death, executions, and cruel punishments didn’t just illuminate the brokenness of others; in a moment of anguish and heartbreak, it also exposed my own brokenness. You can’t effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression, or injustice and not be broken by it. We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn’t pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt––and have hurt others––are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us. Paul Farmer, the renowned physician who has spent his life trying to cure the world’s sickest and poorest people, once quoted me something that the writer Thomas Merton said: We are bodies of broken bones. I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we’re fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion. We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity.

Post-Rehab Advice: 5 Things to Do After Getting Out of Rehab Getting yourself into rehab is not the easiest thing to do, but it is certainly one of the most important things you can ever do for your well-being. However, your journey to self-healing does not simply end on your last day at rehab. Now that you have committed your self to sobriety and wellness, the next step is maintaining the new life you have built. To make sure that you are on the right track, here are some tips on what you should do as soon as you get back home from treatment. 1. Have a Game Plan Most people are encouraged to leave rehab with a proper recovery plan. What’s next for you? Envision how you want yourself to be after the inpatient treatment. This is a crucial part of the entire recovery process since it will be easier to determine the next phase of treatment you need. 2. Build Your New Social Life Finishing rehab opens endless opportunities for you. Use it to put yourself out in the world and maybe even pursue a new passion in life. Keep in mind that there are a lot of alcohol- and drug-free activities that offer a social and mental outlet. Meet new friends by playing sports, taking a class or volunteering. It is also a good opportunity for you to have sober friends who can help you through your recovery. 3. Keep Yourself Busy One of the struggles after rehab is finding purpose. Your life in recovery will obviously center on trying to stay sober. To remain sober in the long term, you must have a life that’s worth living. What drives you? Begin finding your purpose by trying out things that make you productive and satisfied at the same time. Get a new job, do volunteer work or go back to school. Try whatever is interesting for you. 4. Pay It Forward As a person who has gone through rehab, you are in the perfect place to help those who are in the early stages of recovery. Join a support group and do not be afraid to tell your story. Reaching out to other recovering individuals will also help keep your mind off your own struggles, while being an inspiration to others. 5. Get Help If You’re Still Struggling Research proves that about half of those in recovery will relapse, usually within the treatment’s first few months. However, these numbers do not necessarily mean that rehab is a waste of time. Similar to those with physical disabilities who need continuous therapy, individuals recovering from addiction also require ongoing support to stay clean and sober. Are you slipping back to your old ways? Do not let pride or shame take control of your mind. Life throws you a curveball sometimes, and slipping back to old patterns does not mean you are hopeless. Be sure to have a sober friend, family, therapist or sponsor you could trust and call in case you are struggling. Remember that building a drug- and alcohol-free life is no walk in the park, but you will likely get through it with the help of those who are dear to you.

DisabilityPrideMonth isn't just a celebration; it's a jubilant parade of diversity, resilience, and jaw-dropping achievements from individuals who redefine what's possible every day. It's our time to tip our hats to their strengths, rally for inclusivity, and construct a world where everyone can dazzle. Let's shine a spotlight on their awe-inspiring stories, demolish the barriers holding them back, and sculpt a society where every talent is recognized and celebrated.

In Ahab and in his beatnik, quasi-criminal prototype, Jackson (in 'Redburn'), Melville gave expression both to the megatechnic 'Khans' of the global Pentagon and to the counter-forces they had brought into being. And the fact that Ahab's torment and hatred had gone so far that he had lost control of himself and, through his own mad reliance upon power, had become dominated completely by the creature that had disabled him, only makes Melville's story a central parable in the interpretation of modern man's destiny. In Ahab's throwing away compass and sextant at the height of the chase, Melville even anticipated the casting out of the orderly instruments of intelligence, so characteristic of the counter-culture and anti-life happenings of today. Similarly, by his maniacal concentration, Ahab rejects the inner change that might have saved the ship and the crew, when he turns a deaf ear to the pleas of love uttered by sober Starbuck in words and by Pip, a fright-shocked child and an African primitive, in dumb gesture. Outwardly mankind is still committed tot he grim chase Melville described, lured by the adventure, the prospect of oil and whalebone, the promptings of pride, an above all by a love-rejecting pursuit of power. But it has also begun consciously to face the prospect of total annihilation, which may be brought about by the captains who now have command of the ship.

Cedar Capital Group Tokyo Review of Stats Shows Decrease in Mortality Rate in Construction Sites Cedar Capital Group in Tokyo Japan construction industry is one of the riskiest industries to work with. Not only do they have to deal with falling debris but workers also have to be aware of faulty wirings, defective equipment and weather warnings. Workers even sometimes have to lose their lives in the midst of construction. These circumstances are inevitable and precautions were already implemented even at the start of training. Yet, it cannot be denied that construction is one of the most lucrative businesses in the world today. Everywhere we go, we see buildings being built and establishments being constructed. We see new structures in developed nations. New York, America, Tokyo, Japan, Beijing, China and Seoul, South Korea are some of the leading cities which feature new construction projects almost everyday. Singapore is also not left behind. Considered as one of the most flourishing countries in the world, the little island-city has prided itself with new infrastructure projects and promise a thousand more to come. It came no surprise that the country’s journey towards urbanization was held liable for the deaths of hundreds of construction workers in the previous years. Just recently, though, Singapore has declared their concern on the number of fatalities there are in a construction project. If not of deaths, accidents resulting to fractures and minor and major injuries are also experienced in other neighboring countries. Cedar Capital Group in Tokyo Japan, one the distributor of heavy capital equipment in the country, reports to have dozens of death in the last 4 years of their operation. This, as they claim, is one of the reasons why there is a large scarcity in job application related to construction. Many companies are also faced with numerous complaints because of these deaths and injuries. According to further review, approximately one-quarter of the deaths result from exposure to hazardous substances which cause such disabling illnesses as cancer and cardiovascular, respiratory and nervous-system disorders. Analysts even warn that work-related diseases are expected to double by the year 2020 and that if improvements are not implemented now, exposures today will kill people by the year 2020. Surprisingly, though, while people are being troubled with the number of casualties in the construction sector, recent studies and statistics show fewer deaths in construction sector in the first half of the year. Specifically in Singapore, Manpower Ministry has announced only 8 death reports compared to the 17 deaths in 2014. Although this is not a reason to celebrate since there are still fatalities, Singapore’s Contractual Association stated that this is an improvement as it shows the effectiveness of the recent awareness programs and training seminars conducted across the island-city. The country aims to clear all fatalities for the next succeeding years.

All this is quite dangerous. ISIS is no more absurd a movement than was National Socialism in 1932. How many Germans, versed in their Goethe and Schiller, ever believed that a paint-by-numbers artist like Hitler, a former chicken farmer such as Himmler, or a failed academic like Goebbels would soon be turning Weimar Germany into a rogue state that would murder its own sick, disabled, and non-Aryan? Radical Islamists of all stripes support ISIS, if occasionally uneasy about its methodologies. Soon, if ISIS consolidates a caliphate of sorts, it will win over more adherents, who appreciate that it has flummoxed the West and restored pride to millions who either hated the West or were forced to move to the West in humiliation. ISIS is nursed by Western diffidence at best and at worst by the sort of contextualization and rationalization embraced by Obama. Every time he fails to note that Coptic Egyptians are beheaded precisely because they are Christians, or that Jews are killed by reason of being Jews, ISIS takes note. Each time he remonstrates with Christians for their moral high horses, or cites poverty as the root cause of “violent extremism,” or retreats into the distant past in desperate efforts to remind Westerners of their own comparable sins, ISIS takes note. Each time Obama hesitates, issues and then forgets about threats, or slashes defense, ISIS takes note. And if Obama continues, soon a 400-million-person Middle East will take note as well. Millions may not like ISIS, just as millions once were somewhat bothered by Hitler. They may prefer that its beheadings remain untelevised, or may frown on burning someone alive when the firing squad would do. But they most certainly will like the power, territory, and fear that ISIS commands — and the utter helplessness that follows in the once haughty West.

Disability is both apparent and nonapparent. Disability is pain, struggle, brilliance, abundance, and joy. Disability is sociopo- litical, cultural, and biological. Being visible and claiming a disabled identity brings risks as much as it brings pride. The peculiar drama of my life has placed me in a world that by and large thinks it would be better if people like me did not exist. My fight has been for accommodation, the world to me and me to the world. -Harriet McBryde Johnson Taking up space as a disabled person is always revolutionary. -Sandy Ho There is so much that able-bodied people could learn from the wisdom that often comes with dis- ability. But space needs to be made. Hands need to be reached out. People need to be lifted up. -A. H. Reaume Disability justice exists every place two disabled people meet-at a kitchen table, on heating pads in bed talking to our loves. -Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

As Rachel Gorman claims about current-day mad pride organizing, it is hard to decenter whiteness in mad organizing if people of color can’t afford to take up the mad identity, because of a variety of reasons, including already living under surveillance by medico-judicial apparatuses, not having access to mental health care, and the seeming irrelevance of mad movements to the lived experience of racialized and colonized people.

As it happened, the Congress did abandon its silence on social reforms shortly after—though only because Maneckji Dadabhoy had belled the cat in the Imperial Legislative Council. In December 1917, thirty-two years after it was founded, the Congress finally adopted a resolution on untouchability. However, the resolution moved by Madras-based publisher G.A. Natesan was addressed not to the government (for any legal measures) but to fellow Indians (to be more compassionate). ‘The Congress urges upon the people of India the necessity, justice and righteousness of removing all disabilities imposed by custom upon the Depressed Classes, the disabilities being of a most vexatious and oppressive character, subjecting those classes to considerable hardship and inconvenience.

People who have lived in shame and isolation need all the pride we can muster, not to mire ourselves in a narrowly defined identity politics, but to sustain broad-based rebellion. And likewise, we need a witness to all our histories, both collective and personal. Yet we also need to remember that witness and pride are not the same. Witness pairs grief and rage with remembrance. Pride pairs joy with a determination to be visible. Witness demands primary adherence to and respect for history. Pride uses history as one of its many tools. Sometimes witness and pride work in concert, other times not. We cannot afford to confuse, merge, blur the two.

Pride is not an inessential thing. Without pride, disabled people are much more likely to accept unquestioningly the daily material conditions of ableism: unemployment, poverty, segregated and substandard education, years spent locked up in nursing homes, violence perpetrated by caregivers, lack of access. Without pride, individual and collective resistance to oppression becomes nearly impossible. But disability pride is no easy thing to come by. Disability has been soaked in shame, dressed in silence, rooted in isolation.

The degree to which a person experiences feelings of shame depends on two variables: the way other people are treating him (with admiration and respect, or with contempt and disdain), and the degree to which he himself already feels proud or ashamed. The more a person is shamed by others, from childhood by parents or peers who ridicule or reject him, the more he is likely to feel chronically shamed, and hypersensitive to feelings and experiences of being shamed, sometimes to the point of feeling that others are treating him with contempt or disdain even when they are not. For such people, and they are the rule among the violent, even a minor sign of real or imagined disrespect can trigger a homicidal reaction. The purpose of violence is to force respect from other people. The less self-respect people feel, the more they are dependent on respect from others; for without a certain minimal amount of respect, from others or the self, the self begins to feel dead inside, numb and empty. That is how the most violent criminals told me they felt, and it is clear that it is the most intolerable of all feelings (though it is actually an absence of feeling, lack of the feeling of pride, or self-love). When people lack self-respect, and feel they are incapable of eliciting respect from others in the form of admiration for their achievements or their personalities, they may see no way to get respect except in the form of fear, which I think of as a kind of ersatz substitute for admiration; and violence does elicit fear, as it is intended to. For example, I have spoken to many violent criminals who spoke of how gratifying it was to see fear in the eyes of their victims. Feelings of shame and self-contempt are often overlooked by others, because the people who experience them do their best to conceal such feelings behind a defensive mask of bravado and boasting. There is nothing more shameful than to feel ashamed — it reveals that a person has something to feel ashamed about. Why are these feelings of shame and self-contempt so bottomless, chronic, and almost ineradicable in the most violent men? Because, in the men I knew, they had been subjected to a degree of child abuse that was off the scale of anything I had previously thought of describing with that term. Many had been beaten nearly to death, raped repeatedly or prostituted, or neglected to a life-threatening degree by parents too disabled themselves to care for their child. And of those who had not experienced those extremes of physical abuse and neglect, my colleagues and I found that they had experienced a degree of emotional abuse that had been just as damaging: being focused on as the parents' emotional "whipping boy," in which they served as the scapegoat for whatever feelings of shame and humiliation their parents had suffered and then attempted to rid themselves of by transferring them onto their child, by subjecting him to systematic and chronic shaming and humiliation, taunting and ridicule.

On February 9th, 1942, the SS Normandie, a proud ocean liner and the pride of the French Merchant Marine, was being converted into a troop transport. A welder’s torch cut through a bulkhead and set afire a bundle of flammable rags and a stack of life jackets. The fire soon roared throughout the ship and since the internal fire protection system had been disabled, the only assistance available was from the New York City Fire Department. Fireboats pumped water onto the blaze until it caused this magnificent vessel to become unstable. I guess it never occurred to anyone that the water going into the ship, should have been pumped out! On February 10th, the ship rolled over onto its port side, sinking into the mud alongside Pier 88 in Manhattan. Investigations ensued with the thought being that this tragedy was caused by enemy sabotage. However, later findings indicated that the fire had been completely accidental. There are still some allegations contradicting this, and claims that the fire was indeed arson and involved “Lucky” Luciano, the Mafia boss who controlled the waterfront. From the time the fire started until the Normandie was righted in 1943, I watched what was happening to the now renamed USS Lafayette from a perfect vantage point at the top of the Palisades near North Street Park. It was the talk of the town and everyone continued to speculate as to who was at fault. “It must have been the Nazis,” was the conventional wisdom. The soldiers to whom I frequently talked, stationed at the searchlights and gun emplacements, were the ones who surely would know. Eventually, stripped of her superstructure, the ship was righted at great expense. There was talk of converting her into an aircraft carrier, or of cutting her down to become a smaller vessel. However, in the end she was sold for $161,680 to Lipsett, Inc., an American shipyard, where the once magnificent ship was reduced to scrap metal.

Son of a bitch. Blake probably knew something like this would happen. He set me up. He did it on purpose. “I don’t have to negotiate in good faith,” I tell his father. “You brought money into this in the first place. That was a dick move. Why should I play fair?” “You’ve admitted that you’d sell him out,” he snaps. “That at some point, money is more important than he is.” “You’ve admitted the same thing. If I’m a faithless whore because I’ll take a check to break up with Blake, you’re the asshole who values his company and lifestyle more than your son.” “That’s not just my company. That’s my life. It’s his life. It’s—” “Oh, and you think it’s just money for me?” I glare at him. “You think that you’d give me fifty thousand dollars and I’d spend it all on shoes and diamond-studded cat collars? Fifty thousand dollars would pay for the rest of my college tuition. It would buy my dad a lawyer so that the next time his knee acted up, he could finally get disability instead of scrambling to find some job he can manage. It would make it so I didn’t have to work for the next year and could concentrate on my schoolwork. That’s a really ugly double standard, Mr. Reynolds. When money exists to make your life more pleasant, it’s not just money. But when it’s my family and my dreams at stake, it’s just pieces of green paper.” Blake smiles softly. His father reaches across the table and flicks Blake’s forehead. “Stop grinning.” “No way.” Blake is smiling harder. “She’s kicking your ass. This is the best day ever.” His father grunts. “The day I first went to lunch with Blake, I had less than twenty dollars in my possession. Total,” I tell his father. “I would completely sell Blake out for fifty thousand dollars. Some days I’d do it for ten. Dollars. Not thousands. None of this makes me a gold digger. It just means that I’m poor. When times get desperate, I’ll pawn anything of value to survive. I might cry when I do it, but I’m going to be realistic about it. So take your stupid does-she-love-Blake test and shove it.” Mr. Reynolds looks at me. He looks at Blake. And then, very slowly, he holds out his hands, palms up. “Well. Fuck me twice on Sundays,” he says. From the expression on his face, I take it that this is intended to be a good thing. “First time I talked to her,” Blake says with a nod that could only be described as prideful. “Before I asked her out. I knew I had to introduce her to you.” “Shit,” Mr. Reynolds says. He holds up a fist, and Blake fist bumps him in return. Now they’re both being dicks. “Smile,” Blake’s dad says to me. “You pass the test.” “Oh, thank goodness.” I put on a brilliant smile. “Do you really mean it? Do you mean that you, the one, the only, the incomparable Adam Reynolds, has deigned to recognize me as a human being? My life is changed forever.” Mr. Reynolds’s expression goes completely blank. “Why is she being sarcastic, Blake?” “Why is he talking to you like I’m not here, Blake?” Mr. Reynolds turns to me. “Fine. Why are you being sarcastic?” “You don’t get to test me,” I tell him. “You’re not my teacher. You don’t get to act like you’re the only one with a choice, and I have to be grateful if you accept me. I don’t have any illusions about me and Blake. Fitting our lives together is like trying to finish a thousand-piece puzzle with Lego bricks. But you know what? Bullshit like this is what’s going to break us up. You had a test, too. You could have treated me like a human being. You failed.” Blake reaches out and twines his fingers with mine.

longing to suck that bottle of warm, delicious milk. I hadn’t been weaned off it for very long. I couldn’t resist. I pulled the bottle gently out of my brother’s mouth and hands, popped it hastily into my own mouth, lay back on the sofa and enjoyed the trickle of something warm down my throat - something I still enjoy today. Warm milk is heaven for a toddler, a pleasure beyond measure. That was until my younger brother’s legs began shaking, his fists clenched and his breath started puffing away. This was not a good sign. I turned my head to look at him, the bottle still locked in my mouth, when all of a sudden his face turned red and distorted, like he was about to poop. Instead, he let out a high-pitched scream that didn’t quite shatter the front window – though it must have come close – but shattered my eardrums and froze my whole body. Unfortunately for me, it also ignited my mum and dad, who both dropped whatever they had been doing in the kitchen and came running immediately into the living room. ‘What the hell is going on?’ shouted Dad. ‘Brett’s taken Trevor’s bottle,’ shrieked Mum as she ripped it out of my mouth – with my only tooth still stuck in the teat. She shoved it straight back into my brother’s mouth to disable the alarm. ‘He needs a bloody good hiding.’ ‘Little bastard. Get up and come here now!’ bellowed Dad. He yanked me off the sofa and held me dangling in the air by one arm as if he were holding up the biggest fish he ever caught, but with much less pride. My world was spinning and so was I as Dad whacked my petite bottom. I must have blacked out from the pain as I don’t remember anything after that. What I do remember, however, is resenting my little brother for making me lose both my tooth and my taste for dairy products. I also learnt one of life’s important lessons: be very careful what you put in your mouth.

The mannerisms that help define gender - the way in which people walk,swing their hips, gesture with their hands, move their mouths and eyes when they talk, take up space - are all based upon how non disabled people move…The construct of gender depends not only upon the male body and female body, but also on the non disabled body.

“Does your heart implode into an infinite care for your other?” “Does it explode into a million stars?” “Do you feel warm and hold the desire to harbor?” “Would you fly the biggest plane into war?” “Could you change the direction of the starboard?” “If all you understood could immediately be over?” “The dark blue sky is infinite and fast forward.” “How much do you want to keep him safe from harm?” “Would you cut the wires knowingly to disable a bomb?” “To which or what does your sun revolve?” “What do you call your world?” “How many of its problems would you willingly solve?” “How many flags of pride for him will you unfurl?” “How big is your once broken vestige?” “Can you heal from your fleshwounds?” “To carry him on and on, even covered in scars?” “To be shot for the only, To be the carrier and keep it going.” “Even when the sound of every blackhole in space roars?” “Can you question your unholy gods in the name of love?” “Can you hold on even when you can see the reaper settling in?” “Can you curse those who fly far up and above?” “Would your golden soul settle to make due and amend?” “The river of euphrates flows over the globe.” “White clouds, rainfall coming down, droplets from the overdome.” “Are you to agree that you can set fire and land in the aerodrome?” “Even when the shooting rocks from millions of miles away decay your airspace?” “Would you tense up your strings and hold an angry face.” “One that circles around back to the care you have to display?” “How much can you love one person?” “How instantaneous, like spontaneous combustion.” “Can you see why you care this much in their eyes?” “Can you see the water fall from the skies?” “Can you see the sun rising to revolve around them once more?” “Can you see the falls from the cliff ledges and the birds?” “Can you foresee what the future has in store?” “Every story has only one narrator, Every view sought through two eyes.” “Your care, your love for him is not a disguise.” “It is a ground shaking thing to feel, you fly.” “The tremors, the earth-shattering quakes under the plates.” “You can only care anymore, no longer do you despise.” “All the angry lines are gone from the sands of time.” “Can you wonder, can you tell anyone or even explain why?” “Can you hold true for the next million years, Right by his side?” “Can you lose your fears to continue to try?” “Jump a million worlds, fall a million skies.” “Infinite voids, infinite times.” “For one world’s sunrise.