Journalist – Historian – Speaker
I’ve been playing various types of folk music most of my adult life, but found the most steady work playing Irish pub music. “Pub” music is an act that requires mastery of a wide range of standards, played up tempo and often with maximum camp, but which also allowed for individual style and expression. We …
Two stories this week on the Ruderman Family Foundation report on the media coverage of filicide of disabled people. The report, for which I was the lead author, found: Approximately once a week, a person with a disability is murdered by a family member or caregiver. We have found that when these murders are covered, …
I have a BA in History. People who don’t know the field or its applications will claim it = minimum wage. Actually it always meant I made $$ — Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) March 10, 2017 Because (and this is a fun fact) every industry needs people who can write well. They need people who can …
In Ottawa, a teacher decided to cut an autistic boy’s hair without permission. For weeks, the teacher had been calling the parents of the boy, saying his hair was too long and he chewed on it. From the CBC: The special needs teacher complained that Dominic, who has autism, was chewing on his hair and …
One day last February, I embedded with an ADAPT protest – a decentralized nationwide direct action disability rights group – in Kenosha and Racine Wisconsin. PLEASE READ THE ARTICLE. Here are some images. An African-American man in a wheelchair. Blue ADAPT sweatshirt: Our homes, not nursing homes. LOGO: Figure in a wheelchair breaking chains. https://t.co/11pNOgttEZ …
Super useful fact sheet on Medicaid Per Capita Caps. It’s one of the many threats in the Worlds Greatest Healthcare Bill of 2017 (no really that’s the official name). My article on how the Disability Community is fighting back. Here’s an image, but click the link above for an accessible pdf.
Friends, we’ve been hacked. Giggling GOP student groups have hacked the free speech pieties of my generation. It’s murky ahead. But recognize we’ve been hacked. — David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) March 7, 2017 In the ensuing debates about platforms and protests, which will be extremely complex and often uncomfortable, forcing us to choose between abstract …
Berkeley is claiming that they have to remove a lot of online videos because captioning them all would be too expensive. To which I say: Please build accessibility into everything you do. Deaf people, in fact, have the right to learn. And please don’t blame disabled people when your lack of foresight means you’re in …
Below you will find a letter from the president of Middlebury on the recent protests around the presence of Charles Murray. My basic take is that giggling GOP student groups have hacked the free-speech pieties of my generation. Those pieties were based on a pre-internet information culture, and perhaps still hold true, but they should …
The dad of an autistic man founded a carwash for his son to work at, and has employed lots of other autistic people. NBC did a feature in their “Inspiring America” series. No autistic person is quoted in the story. Instead, we get this: The repetition involved in the work is actually perfect for those …