Vocational Rehabilitation Quotes

When we do disability justice work, it becomes impossible to look at disability and not examine how colonialism created it. It becomes a priority to look at Indigenous ways of perceiving and understanding disability, for example. It becomes a space where we see that disability is all up in Black and brown/queer and trans communities—from Henrietta Lacks to Harriet Tubman, from the Black Panther Party’s active support for disabled organizers’ two-month occupation of the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation to force the passage of Section 504, the law mandating disabled access to public spaces and transportation to the chronic illness and disability stories of second-wave queer feminists of color like Sylvia Rivera, June Jordan, Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, Marsha P. Johnson, and Barbara Cameron, whose lives are marked by bodily difference, trauma-surviving brilliance, and chronic illness but who mostly never used the term “disabled” to refer to themselves.

Punishment is not care, and poverty is not a crime. We need to create safe, supportive pathways for reentry into the community for all people and especially young people who are left out and act out. Interventions like decriminalizing youthful indiscretions for juvenile offenders and providing foster children and their families with targeted services and support would require significant investment and deliberate collaboration at the community, state, and federal levels, as well as a concerted commitment to dismantling our carceral state. These interventions happen automatically and privately for young offenders who are not poor, whose families can access treatment and hire help, and who have the privilege of living and making mistakes in neighborhoods that are not over-policed. We need to provide, not punish, and to foster belonging and self-sufficiency for our neighbors’ kids. More, funded YMCAs and community centers and summer jobs, for example, would help do this. These kinds of interventions would benefit all the Carloses, Wesleys, Haydens, Franks, and Leons, and would benefit our collective well-being. Only if we consider ourselves bound together can we reimagine our obligation to each other as community. When we consider ourselves bound together in community, the radically civil act of redistributing resources from tables with more to tables with less is not charity, it is responsibility; it is the beginning of reparation. Here is where I tell you that we can change this story, now. If we seek to repair systemic inequalities, we cannot do it with hope and prayers; we have to build beyond the systems and begin not with rehabilitation but prevention. We must reimagine our communities, redistribute our wealth, and give our neighbors access to what they need to live healthy, sustainable lives, too. This means more generous social benefits. This means access to affordable housing, well-resourced public schools, affordable healthcare, jobs, and a higher minimum wage, and, of course, plenty of good food. People ask me what educational policy reform I would suggest investing time and money in, if I had to pick only one. I am tempted to talk about curriculum and literacy, or teacher preparation and salary, to challenge whether police belong in schools, to push back on standardized testing, or maybe debate vocational education and reiterate that educational policy is housing policy and that we cannot consider one without the other. Instead, as a place to start, I say free breakfast and lunch. A singular reform that would benefit all students is the provision of good, free food at school. (Data show that this practice yields positive results; but do we need data to know this?) Imagine what would happen if, across our communities, people had enough to feel fed.

There are two ways to prevent a thief from pursuing his vocation,” he said. “One is by imprisoning him so he cannot go out and rob. But this doesn’t really correct the problem, because the thief remains a thief, and he will likely steal again once released. The second way is to rehabilitate the thief by teaching him how inappropriate it is for him to live this way. Teach him a respectable vocation and evoke in him a sense of pride and dignity that it is beneath him to stoop to being a thief. In the long term, it is always better to inspire rather than criticize, to encourage rather than demoralize.

As compared to White-Americans, a larger percentage of African-American applicants to the vocational rehabilitation system are denied acceptance. Of the applicants accepted for service, a larger percentage of African-American cases are closed without being rehabilitated.

Potential problem as homelessness must be tackled on many fronts. Prevention is vital. Vocational and occupational job counseling and retraining; pre- and post-marital counseling; parental and family counseling; crisis management; work schedule options; residence options ​Some of the bill for retraining might be paid out of a tax on companies doing work on the Moon and importing workers and their families. The rehabilitation work might in part be done by OMOs, occupational maintenance organizations. What is needed is not job “insurance” (i.e. unemployment compensation) but job “assurance.” ​Those still falling through the more stubborn cracks can be provided storage lockers for what belongings they retain, lockers to which is attached a legal address for receipt of mail, and for listing of job applications. This host facility might provide cooking facilities and showers. ​Use of such a facility will bring with it a requirement to participate in retraining and rehabilitation programs. This is in everybody’s interest. “Tanstaafl still rules!” [There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch!”]

The University of Illinois Wildlife Medical Clinic accepted native wild animals in need of care due to illness and injury, or because they'd been orphaned. The goal was to rehabilitate them and release them back into the wild. Veterinary students made up the bulk of the volunteers, but there were a few- like me- whose undying love for animals, and not our future vocations, had led us to the clinic behind the veterinary medicine building on the south side of campus. I had a tendency to gravitate toward the smaller animals, but I also felt a special affinity for the birds. They were majestic creatures, and there was nothing more satisfying than releasing one and watching it soar off high in the sky.