Journalist – Historian – Speaker
Some suggested rules for life as a good person: Don’t take pictures of disabled strangers without their consent. Don’t share the pictures you shouldn’t have taken to the internet without their consent. Their story is not your story to do with as you see fit. A picture of a Kroger employee helping a blind customer …
The Name of the Rose was my first glimpse into what it might look like to interrogate, depict, and perhaps even understand medieval culture. It started, of course, with Sean Connery and Christian Slater, in the movie, but I soon moved to the book. It was beyond me. So much Latin. So much assumed knowledge. …
There’s a new hashtag campaign around saying the word “disability.” It is initiated and led by my friend and writing companion Lawrence Carter-Long. I am wildly in favor. I am trying, in my writing this year, to write the sentence: “There are no special needs, only needs” as often as possible. We all have needs. …
Nice article in the local paper on de-escalation training for Park Ridge law enforcement. Last year, a U.S. Justice Department grant secured by the Park Ridge Police Department allowed for officers to take crisis intervention training, a program that aims to prepare officers to deal with citizens struggling with a broad spectrum of mental health …
#CripTheVote has become an important hashtag, founded by Alice Wong, Andrew Pulrang, and Gregg Beratan, intended to bring disability into the conversation around the 2016 presidential campaign. Like most forms of online activism, its primary function (to my mind) is to thicken networks. We tweet, we use the hashtag, we encounter each other and find …
Many of my friends on Facebook and elsewhere kindly sent me a cool picture of a ramp that zig-zags through a set of stairs. As the picture permeated Facebook, though, I noted an important phenomenon – every single one of my wheelchair-using friends reacted negatively. Description: A set of stairs with a ramp moving diagonally …
Until last week, neither Sanders nor Clinton used the word “disability” at most rarely. Then, in her close to the final debate in New Hampshire, Clinton concluded her remarks as follows: You know, we didn’t get to talk about the continuing struggles that Americans face with racism, with sexism, with discrimination against the LGBT community, …
Mount St. Mary’s University gave a survey to its incoming class that allegedly was used as a tool to identify the most at-risk members in order to try to drive them from the school. I will have a piece on this with The Establishment soon. Here’s the survey via Scribd. Given its alleged purpose, I find the …
I’ve been caught up in my disability journalism lately, but don’t want to neglect some of my other passions – medieval history and helping academics share their expertise with wider audiences. Over the past few weeks, a number of outlets have passed around research – just a working paper really – that argues women rulers …
Two weeks ago I saw a tweet that alerted me to a job ad for the CEO of The Arc of Texas, along with other ads on their site, that basically said no disabled person need apply. I posted about the ad, with screenshots, and started a mini social media storm in the disability community. …