You should only know what the SEPTA called me.

Teasing aside:

Tim was A-1 Special Person, more a staunch ally and fellow freedom fighter
than close long time confidante and friend.  We were there as and when
needed, which was what mattered when at battle.

He died too young and much beloved.

My heart just hurt when his name caught.

Thought I'd rekindle the light, the esteem and fondness with which I regard
him.

ISM


A Little History Worth Knowing
by Timothy M. Cook
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The Alabama legislature declared them "a menace to the happiness...of the
community." A Texas law mandated segregation to relieve society of the
"heavy economic and moral losses arising from the existence at large of
these unfortunate persons."

Ancient penal statutes for convicted felons? NO! Racial epithets from the
Jim Crow era? Not quite, though these declarations did arise in that period.

Such was the treatment accorded disabled persons, especially those...with
severe disabilities, by democratically elected state legislatures, in this
century.

Nor was the government-mandated regime of segregation, exclusion and
degradation of people with disabilities limited to the South. In every
state, in inexorable fashion, the policy was to keep us out of polite
society.

In Pennsylvania, disabled people officially were termed "anti-social
beings;" In Washington, "unfitted for companionship with other children;" in
Vermont, a "blight on mankind;" in Wisconsin, a "danger to the race;" and,
in Kansas, "a misfortune both to themselves and to the public."

In Indiana, we were required to be "segregate[d] from the world;" a Utah
government report said that a "defect wounds our citizenry a thousand times
more than any plague;" and, in South Dakota, we simply did not have the
"rights and liberties of normal people."

The United States Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Oliver Wendall
Holmes upholding the constitutionality of a Virginia law authorizing the
involuntary sterilization of disabled persons, ratified the view of disabled
persons as "a menace." Justice Holmes juxtaposed the country's "best
citizens" (nondisabled persons) with those who "sap the strength of the
state" (disabled persons), and to avoid "being swamped with incompetence,"
ruled "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute
degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility,
society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their
kind."

So, the next time someone tries to explain to you that handicappism is a
more "benign" form of discrimination, tell them how the segregation and
exclusion of people with disabilities all began. Tell them how,
historically, a lot of important decision-makers passed laws sending us
away.