by Kathy Hoell, Chair, NCIL Voting Rights Task Force

A lot is at stake in this election. As leaders in the Independent Living Movement, you of course will vote! But just voting is not enough. As leaders, you have a responsibility to engage your consumers, friends, and family members in the election. As an employee of a Center for Independent Living, you can develop and conduct nonpartisan voter education activities. These can include registering people to vote, educating people about our concerns and issues, or conducting phone banks. It is predicted that this off-year election will have a low turnout compared to a presidential election. Many people with disabilities who voted in 2012 will not vote this year unless they are asked to. Paraquad, Inc. the CIL of St. Louis, MO has done phone banking for years. It is the most-effective tool for increasing the disability vote.

An effective phone bank is made up of two steps. The first is to call and speak to all consumers, friends, and allies (leaving a voicemail message is not effective). When you reach the person, ask if they plan to vote on November 4th. Make sure they know where to vote and if they know what time of the day they plan on voting. The second step begins the night before and throughout Election Day: call everyone who said they would vote and remind them.

Another option for advocates is to volunteer for the candidate of your choice. Volunteering in an election campaign is an important way to build a relationship with those elected officials whose decisions affect our lives. It may impact their decisions in the future if they know people with disabilities. Some ways in which you can effectively volunteer are: going to candidate events and cheering the candidate on, putting a bumper sticker on your wheelchair or car if you have one, putting a yard sign on your lawn or in your window, working at a candidate phone bank, or canvassing for a candidate door-to-door. Your candidate will probably have many other opportunities – ask how you can help.

Some of us take Election Day off and volunteer on that day when candidates need the greatest number of volunteers. Being near a polling place and encouraging people to vote for your candidate, or holding up your candidate’s signs on busy street corners are just a few of the many jobs campaigns have for volunteers on election day. Remember – you cannot conduct partisan activities while working, but as an American citizen and a leader, you can volunteer for the candidates of your choice.

Lastly, you should be thinking about the next election and either running for office yourself or encouraging a colleague in your community to run for office.

If you haven’t done so already, please sign and share the petition to make airline travel more accessible and wheelchair-friendly for passengers by allowing them to remain in their chairs during flights, and keep talking about it using the hashtag #AirlineAccess4All.

Additionally, organizers are requesting your stories about experiences with flying and why this campaign is important to you. You do not need to be a good writer; they just want to hear your voice. They will be using these personal accounts to convince Congress and the airline industry of the need for these changes. Send your stories to Vicki Jurney-Taylor, Community Organizer, All Wheels Up, Inc., at [email protected].

Background

All Wheels Up, Inc., a nonprofit organization that advocates secure and comfortable seating for wheelchair users on commercial airlines, has created a petition to make airline travel more accessible and wheelchair-friendly for passengers by allowing them to remain in their chairs during flights. The campaign already has the blessing of the FAA and is now focusing on getting Congress to amend the Air Carrier Access Act of 1986 to make this a reality. Six days ago, we created a MoveOn.org petition to urge Congress to do this, and we now have over 6,000 signatures.

Organizers are hoping to reach as many people with disabilities as possible with the help of CILs across the country, so please share this message.

Kathy Greenlee, Administrator, Administration for Community Living, spoke during the Closing Plenary at NCIL’s 2014 Annual Conference on Independent Living. During her speech, she addressed several of NCIL’s legislative and advocacy priorities, including violence and abuse against people with disabilities and the elderly.  She specifically shared that she wanted to learn more about the issues and planned on addressing violence and abuse as one of her priorities. 

Many times, you hear speakers say things and make commitments that don’t end up with results, but not this time!  Ms. Greenlee has reached out to NCIL seeking contact with the NCIL Violence and Abuse Task Force and has set up a conference call with the Co-Chairs to begin a dialogue.  She has an upcoming speaking engagement where the audience will be Adult Protective Services and has reached out to us for input into her presentation.

Roberta Sick and Jan Derry, Co-Chairs, are in turn, reaching out to NCIL members soliciting stories about your experience working with adult protective services.  We are looking for both positive and negative stories that demonstrate that APS is or is not responsive to the needs of people with disabilities.  Please share your stories with Jan Derry at [email protected] or Roberta Sick at [email protected] so we can share them with Ms. Greenlee during our upcoming discussion. Tell us what your experiences have been.

Not Dead Yet and other disability rights activists from around the U.S. and Canada held a three-day protest vigil at an international assisted suicide and euthanasia conference held in Chicago last week, hosted by the U.S. group Final Exit Network.

Diane Coleman of Not Dead Yet summarized the week’s events in the post “NDY Protests the World Federation Conference – From My Vantage Point”.

Get the full run down at the Not Dead Yet Blog and check out their direct action web page for photos, leaflets, and press releases. Video will be uploaded soon!

NCIL’s Mental Health Civil Rights Task Force continues to follow two significant pieces of federal mental health legislation. As you may recall, Rep. Tim Murphy introduced H.R. 3717, “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2013” in December of last year. This bill would reauthorize the SAMHSA programs without the reforms NCIL supports. It also singles out people who are “disabled” (but not dangerous) for involuntary treatment. The bill also cuts support for advocacy and mental health peer support. NCIL opposes H.R. 3717 and other bills that single out people for reduced rights based on disability.

Recently, Rep. Ron Barber introduced H.R. 4574, the “Strengthening Mental Health in Our Communities Act of 2014”. This bill reauthorizes SAMHSA programs but without the reforms NCIL supports. These reforms are:

• a majority of consumers on state mental health planning and advisory councils (which are required to review and comment on state community mental health block grant – MHBG plans)
• that each state provide for consumer peer support organizations and / or consumer-run community mental health services in its MHBG plan; and
• that state mental health planning and advisory councils coordinate activities with Statewide Independent Living Councils under section 705 of the Rehabilitation Act.

NCIL supports H.R. 4574. We urge Representatives to support amendment of the bill with the reforms discussed above. To that end, we are beginning to work on crafting alternate legislation to bring forward during the next Congress in 2015.

The NCIL Mental Health Civil Rights Task Force also maintains an active presence on Facebook – join us on our Mentally Healthy Independent Living page. Task Force meetings are held via teleconference and usually take place on the first Thursday of the month at 3:00 Eastern. The next meeting will be on Thursday, 2 October. Please contact Task Force Co-Chair Krista Erickson at [email protected] for further information. The Task Force extends its thanks to Mike Bachhuber, Co-Chair of NCIL’s Civil Rights / ADA Subcommittee for contributing much of the above material.

The National Council on Independent Living has signed on to and fully supports the National Council on Disability’s Statement of Solidarity with the Victims of Police Violence in Ferguson, MO. The full text is available below, or can be read on the National Council on Disability (NCD) website.

On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, an unarmed African American teen, was shot and killed by a police officer. The disproportionate and militarized response by law enforcement in response to non-violent protests and peaceful assembly by residents of Ferguson gained attention from around the world including alarm from the United Nations. That same month, Kajime Powell and Ezell Ford, both unarmed African American men were fatally shot by police, raising additional concerns about the ways police officers respond to individuals with disabilities—particularly African American men with disabilities.

The National Council of Disability (NCD), an independent federal agency that advises the President, Congress, and other federal agencies about policies, programs, practices, and procedures that affect people with disabilities, joins the legion of civil rights and civic organizations to call for greater justice and accountability.

NCD recognizes that these tragic events are part of a larger social pattern involving racial profiling, police brutality, inequality, systemic racism, and segregation in addition to the marginalization and discrimination of people with disabilities and supports the Department of Justice investigation into the death of Michael Brown. The End Racial Profiling Act (ERPA), currently under consideration by the United States House of Representatives, would prohibit the use of profiling on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin or religion by law enforcement agencies.

As David Perry and NCD’s Lawrence Carter-Long detailed in an article for The Atlantic last May, “encounters with police have also taken an unnecessarily violent turn for people with disabilities that are not psychiatric or intellectual, including conditions that are physical or sensory” making disabled individuals at increased risk for incarceration, harassment, violence or death at the hands of law enforcement.  [Read more…]