Disability Integration Act graphics that agencies could stand to take a look at too…

This is a series of graphics promoting the Disability Integration Act, an important piece of legislation in the United States right now, that is not getting anywhere near enough support.  From the Disability Integration Act website:

The Disability Integration Act (DIA) is civil rights legislation, introduced by Senator Schumer in the Senate and Representative Sensenbrenner in the House, to address the fundamental issue that people who need Long Term Services and Supports (LTSS) are forced into institutions and losing their basic civil rights. The legislation (S.910, H.R.2472) builds on the 25 years of work that ADAPT has done to end the institutional bias and provide seniors and people with disabilities home and community-based services (HCBS) as an alternative to institutionalization. It is the next step in our national advocacy after securing the Community First Choice (CFC) option.

Credit for most of these goes to Cal Montgomery.  His dogs Murdo and Erastus are featured too.  Image descriptions are in the alt and description tags, the captions contain my personal responses to each graphic.

This is my personal favorite, and is the reason that my own home is not the same as moving into someone else’s home, no matter how much my agency wants to convince me that moving won’t harm me and forcing me to move isn’t massively unethical.

Not everyone knows rabbits don’t belong in cages, look up the House Rabbit Society if you want more information on that. Not everyone knows human beings don’t belong in institutions no matter what our disability is. Look up the Disability Integration Act for more information on that.

Pretty straightforward…

This is horrifying but true. This is what I mean by forcing us not to live in our own homes is an ongoing, large-scale crime against humanity. I’m not making this up.

It’s amazing how many people don’t grasp this, or seem to think that disabled people ought to be okay with giving up freedoms other people would strenuously object to giving up. They act like it’s the natural order of things. There are entire groups of people who think it’s their job to persuade us to be happy giving up our freedoms. Who think that there’s something wrong or pathological or that we’re in denial about our disability or something, if we still want freedom. That we’re just being stubborn or otherwise causing problems, instead of naturally wanting what everyone else in our cultures gets. It’s like freedom for us is optional and it’s our job to “accept” that. Bullshit.

This is a close second in terms of favorites.  People act like when people get older, they should be okay giving up their freedoms as well. This is just as much bullshit as it is when applied to disabled people. There is nothing about being old that means you have to leave your home. Nothing at all. No more than being disabled. This goes whether you acquire a disability or not as you age. Elderly people should not be forced out of their homes any more than disabled people should, nor forced to accept loss of freedom as the price of aging any more than it is the price of disability. The wholesale warehousing of elderly people is part of the same large-scale crime against humanity as the warehousing of disabled people, and is often done by the same industries.

What I like about these is they show how simple and normal it is, what disabled people want.  And they have adorable animals on them, and draw parallels with the actual lives of the animals, and people care about animals.  They might see things about disabled people they wouldn’t otherwise see without the analogies being made.  For real.

But seriously my favorite is the one about being able to poop whenever I want.  That one really encapsulates why it’s important that I stay in my own home, and why making me move to someone else’s home is unreasonable, cruel, criminal, and a whole host of other choice words.

And yet disabled people and elderly people are expected to not only accept restrictions on our freedom, but to do so gracefully and without complaint.  In fact, the more readily we accept these things, the more we are praised.  And then we lose our freedom.

And usually we die faster too.  Not that anyone notices.  They think we die because we’re elderly or disabled.  Actually, lifespans (along with various other measures of physical and mental ability) for various disabilities have had to actually be updated over the years entirely because of fewer of us living in institutions.  Institutions kill people faster.  All institutions, whether large state institutions or small nursing homes.  They reduce our lifespan and nobody notices or cares.  That’s not the only reason they’re bad, but it gives the lie to the idea that they’re really there to “protect our safety”.

There is nothing that happens that is good in an institution that can’t be done, and done better, outside of one.

There is a lot that happens in institutions that is bad and doesn’t need to happen at all.

There is nothing that happens in institutions that is special to institutions, good, and requires an institution in order for it to happen.  Anything you hear different is a lie used to keep institutions open.

Institutions are our modern equivalent of Victorian workhouses.

Workhouses were institutions for poor people.  Think the sort of thing Charles Dickens wrote about.  They had terrible living conditions and people died in them.  Many poor people would rather die than go to the workhouse, just as many disabled people would rather die, live on the streets, or go to jail than end up in an institution.  People considered workhouses necessary.  People considered workhouses natural.  They were neither one.  These days, people consider workhouses an atrocity and a thing of the past.

But we still have institutions for disabled people, and they are everywhere.  Some of them are large and obvious, others are hidden in plain sight.  But all contain the same thing:  A power structure that puts administrators on top, direct support staff in the middle, and disabled people at the bottom.  If you want to know how institutional something is, follow self-advocacy leader Roland Johnson’s advice and ask the question “Who’s in charge?”

Also, anything that requires a disabled person to move out of our own home — even if it’s “just” moving into the home of an existing staff person — and gives no option for the disabled person to get the same help in the home we already live in, shows that something is institutional in nature.  Even if it’s entirely “community-based” otherwise.  Real community-based services let you live wherever you want to live.

And there are institutional-style services that masquerade as community-based services and get funding through home and community-based services (HCBS) waivers.  Even some that let you stay in your own home.  If living in a system seems more like a dystopia than it ought to, chances are thre are at least institutional elements.  It’s plenty possible to have an institution where each person lives in their own home but it’s otherwise run like any other institution.

At any rate, all of this is very important, and I love these graphics.  And definitely tell people about the Disability Integration Act and give them the link to the Disability Integration Act website.  Which is http://www.disabilityintegrationact.org/