Disabled Dumping to Deporting: The United States Social Forum

by Leroy Moore

July is here again, the month of the birth of this country and the annual birthday of the Americans with Disabilities Act plus this year the United States Social Forum in Atlanta will be ending in the first week of July. However there has been very little to celebrate for poor people of color with disabilities. Yes, I’m looking forward to networking and helping to open the media airwaves for more people with disabilities and other minorities at the United States Social Forum in Atlanta with my follow Poor Magazine reporter and all maraginze voices but lately poor people with disabilities have been under abuse, crimes and raw discrimination from individuals and institutions. Will the latest abuse, hate crimes and discrimination that I will highlight in this essay be talked about at the United States Social Forum, in the presidential campaign or in our communities after the social forum?

The following cases have been in the media and well documented but once again very few have connected the dots to create not only individual cases but a whole system of abuse that’s been engulfing people with disabilities and at the same time a lack of responds from our federal government. After you read these cases ask yourself what can we do locally and in our communities knowing that our federal government has refuse to sign the UN Treaty on Human Rights of People with Disabilities and also recently President Bush veto the new Hate Crime Bill that would include people with disabilities. Also ask yourself where should the disability movement focus their energy on? Warning, these cases are brutal and might be too much for some readers but they and many others need to be frame in one article and an ongoing discussion with recognition that this is a growing pattern throughout this country.

By now most people have heard about the Los Angles hospital and their ambulance that dumped a disabled homeless man on skid row without his wheelchair, clothes, food and medicine. The above institutionalize abuse happen on February 8th. Today’s headlines in newspapers from LA to NY screamed Disabled American Wrongly Deported to Mexico. What can we do when abuse comes down from institutions, hospitals to Homeland Security? Bush and his administration think that the new Hate Crime Bill will create a “special class,” and it’s not needed. Tell that to the family and friends of James McKinney, a Los Angles mentally disabled man who was attack and beaten to death in May. Last Summer I penned an article about five cases of people with disabilities who were torched, burn some died. Still today there are articles on how patients in nursing homes were scold in bath tubs and thrown bleach on them. One nationwide report found that nearly one-third of nursing homes were cited for a violation involving abuse and that many of these abuse violations caused actual harm to residents, and that the number of abuse violations is increasing.

Atlanta is not only the host city of the United States Social Forum it was the home of Kathryn Johnson , an elderly grandmom who police thought was living in a drug house so they barge in and killed her in her wheelchair. Once again I ask will this and other cases of police brutality and senseless crimes against people with disabilities be apart of a panel at the social forum? The city of Atlanta is talking about withdrawing funds from one of the largest homeless shelter in the city, The Homeless Taskforce. The Homeless Task Force has been in operation since 1981 but like any big city, downtown businesses rule City Hall and both have eyes on the property under the Homeless Taskforce. Poor magazine has planned to hold a press conference on poverty, race, disability and homelessness at the Task Force during the US Social Forum and will interview Task Force Director Anita Beaty. We, at Poor Magazine, hope that this shelter will stay open and fully funded.

This is only one reason we at poor magazine is looking forward to reporting and supporting our follow activists, media makers, agencies like the The Homeless Task Force, The Georgia Law Center for the Homeless at the US Social Forum and beyond. I wonder if the Homeless Task Force was a project of the Mayor like The 24/7 Gateway Center that is the keystone project of the Regional Commission on Homelessness would they have to worry about funding being pulled away. These are the type of stories we, at Poor Magazine, along with our fellow grassroots media makers will be reporting on in the Ida B. Wells Media Justice Center at the US Social Forum June 26-July 1st and we will also make sure panels will address the growing cases of abuse, crimes against people with disabilities who are poor, homeless and of color and have seen a lack of responds by our government and organizations from Hurricane Katrina to round ups by Homeland Security & INS in this country.

By Leroy F. Moore Jr.
Poor Magazine Columnist of Illin-N-Chillin