Pioneers in the fight for disability rights__The League of the Physically Handicapped

Subject: Re: Pioneers in the fight for disability rights__The League of the
Physically Handicapped


Miriam,
Well, we do need to educate the sighted world...as soon as we've come to
grips with reality.
Your points are well taken. As I said earlier, "Differently Equal", but not
independent as if we were sighted.
Having lived both as a single blind parent, and as a blind man in an
integrated marriage, I can totally agree with those accommodations we too
often take for granted.
Sure, as a single blind dad, I got along pretty well. But I did need
certain accommodations in running a household. I had no scanner to read my
bills, nor any of today's fine equipment that would allow me to pay my bills
on-line.
And how do you know if your children slopped gooey stuff on the carpet or
smears on the walls unless someone said, "Ugh!"?

Life got so much easier when Cathy drove into our lives.

Carl Jarvis

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
To: "'Blind Democracy Discussion List'" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2013 8:21 AM
Subject: RE: Pioneers in the fight for disability rights__The League of the
Physically Handicapped


And the fact is that those sighted people could not function if they lost
their sight. They are absolutely correct. They would have to receive
training and they would have to be capable of benefiting from the training.
And after the training was completed, they would need to arrange their
living environments in such a way that they could function comfortably in
them. They'd need tactile markings. They would need a way to identify colors
of clothing. In the old days, tags that were sewn onto clothing that had
colors written on them, now, computarized devices. They would need
accessible appliances or a way to make the appliances accessible. They would
need to train their sighted friends, relatives, etc. not to move things
around in their homes without informing them of what they were doing. They
would need to find transportation and assistance with shopping, and
assistance with choosing appropriate clothing. I could go on and on. The
importance of our familiarity with our environment and the accomodations
that have been made for us in that environment were made very clear to me
when I used to go on trips arranged for blind people. Take a group of very
competent blind people and drop them into a completely unfamiliar
environment, perhaps in a foreign country for a week, and it quickly becomes
evident how much assistance they require. We are so busy defending ourselves
against sighted people's definition of us as incapable beings, that we tend
to completely deny the real limitations that blindness imposes. And if one
of us dares to voice this, another one of us immediately talks about how we
can and should educate sighted people, as if that will negate the truth.

Miriam

-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of ted chittenden
Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2013 10:12 AM
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
Subject: RE: Pioneers in the fight for disability rights__The League of the
Physically Handicapped

Blindness scares sighted people because of the reliance that sighted people
have on their eyes not only for doing things but also for judging other
people. Many sighted people cannot conceive that it is even remotely
possible to perform many of the tasks they do without sight (in fact, this
view of the blind might save some blind services from the Tea Party types
who are otherwise out to destroy government services of any kind, but I
digress).

Unfortunately, the NFB's view of the matter, though 180 degrees from that of
the sighted, can be just as destructive. Training a blind person to believe
that he/she can do everything that a sighted person can do without
assistance not only raises the expectations of blind people beyond the realm
of reality, it also turns off many sighted people who would otherwise might
be willing to offer needed assistance.

We have discussed this topic previously, but I can recall attending NFB
state and national conventions where the focus would be on total
independence for blind people while noting many blind people there receiving
assistance in one form or another. I think that Carl Jarvis got it right in
a previous post when he said that the ultimate goal should be the ability to
interdependently coexist with our sighted colleagues, being willing to
accept assistance when it is needed and being able to (nicely) tell our
sighted friends and relations when it is not.
--
Ted Chittenden

Every story has at least two sides if not more.
---- Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
Actually, I think it has to do with the feeling of most people that
blindness is the most devastating of all disabilities and that they tend to
separate themselves from it and from those who are blind. Unlike the deaf
community, blind people have always striven for integration and inclusion.
NFB wants the fewest accomodations possible in the physical environment
because, they assert that blind people are just like everyone else. But this
theme is evident throughout the blind community. So even though blind people
have been trying to change the attitudes of sighted people toward them for
years and years unsuccessfully, blind people cannot accept that the
attitudes of sighted people, with or without disabilities, toward them, are
what they are.

Miriam

-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of Claude Everett
Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2013 8:52 PM
To: 'Blind Democracy Discussion List'
Subject: RE: Pioneers in the fight for disability rights__The League of the
Physically Handicapped

Desire of Power, Insensitivity and greed!!


Claude Everett
"First of all: what is work?
Work is of two kinds:
first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface
relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so.
The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and
highly paid."
From The collection of essays "In Praise of Idleness" by Bertrand Russell

-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2013 3:52 PM
To: 'Blind Democracy Discussion List'
Subject: RE: Pioneers in the fight for disability rights__The League of the
Physically Handicapped

Every disabled group has its own specific needs. I don't think that that is
the reason. I think it is a much deeper and less palatable reason.

Miriam

-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of ted chittenden
Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2013 5:49 PM
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List
Subject: RE: Pioneers in the fight for disability rights__The League of the
Physically Handicapped

Blind people make up a very small part of the disability population, and
many of the things they/we need to be independent are very different from
the types of things needed by other disabilities, most notably the deaf and
paraplegics and quadraplegics. Probably the biggest difference between the
blind, especially the totally blind, and the other disabilities in terms of
their needs is the need to learn how to replace the printed word. This is
something that no other disability group has to deal with, and most of the
centers for independent living (CILs) do not have the means or the financing
to train blind people how to read again.
--
Ted Chittenden

Every story has at least two sides if not more.
---- Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
This is a really fascinating article. Aside from the interesting history, I
had a few random thoughts in response to it. FDR was disabled, but made sure
that the public didn't identify him as such or with other disabled people.
Barack Obama is black and although he can't hide this fact as FDR could
disguise his disability, Obama makes sure that the public does not identify
him with the underclass of black Americans. Now-a-days, disabled is the
good word that replaces handicapped. But "handicapped" was the word of
choice back in 1935.
And although later in the article, blind people are mentioned as walking arm
in arm with deaf people in a demonstration, it is clear in most of the
article that the term, "the disabled" did not include blind people. Blind
people are almost always set apart, either by their own choice or by the
choice of others. This was what struck me about Andrew Solomon's book, Far
From The Tree. He wrote about all these complicated relationships between
parents and their children who are different from them, in many cases,
children with various disabilities. But he managed to omit blindness
although he mentioned one blind woman in passing. It bothered me so much
that I finally sought out his website and wrote to him about it. He was kind
enough to answer me, but I find his non reason for omitting blindness to be
strange. This is what he said.

Dear Miriam,

I originally wanted to do so, but lost my way at a certain point and wasn't
able to. I think it's a fascinating topic. Should I have the chance to
write about it, I'll be sure to be in touch with you. Thanks for your kind
words about what I've done; I wish I could write five more volumes dealing
with dozens of conditions!

Warmest,

Andrew

-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On Behalf Of Claude Everett
Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2013 4:07 PM
To: 'Blind Democracy Discussion List'
Subject: Pioneers in the fight for disability rights__The League of the
Physically Handicapped

.....Social Movements.History.
Pioneers in the fight for disability rights

By Keith Rosenthal
Issue #90
IT IS commonly held that the inception of the modern US disability rights
movement occurred amidst the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s.
Specifically, two major developments figure prominently in this narrative.

THE FIRST is the rise of the Independent Living Movement in Berkeley,
California. This movement was born of the efforts of a group of disabled
University of California students. Politicized by the civil rights struggles
of the period, they became active on their Berkeley campus and later
established the first independent living center in the United States in
1971. The aim of the center, of which hundreds of others would soon spring
up across the country, was to create a space where disabled people could
exercise control over all aspects of their lives-professional, medical,
social, civic-rather than remain marginalized by a paternalistic society
constructed around their exclusion.

The second major landmark of the new disability rights movement was the
formation of the group, Disabled In Action (DIA) in New York City, in 1970.
Like the independent living centers, DIA sought autonomy for disabled
people, but was more explicitly political and organized confrontational
protests against discriminatory laws, attitudes, and institutions.

Out of and alongside these two organizations flowed countless springs of
disability rights awareness, activism, and organization. This all played a
fundamental role in changing the way that society-and most importantly,
disabled people themselves-viewed the question of disability. This
transformation is best expressed in the articulation of what has come to be
known as the social model of disability. In sum, this model explains
disability oppression as a phenomenon which limits the self-determination
and life opportunities of people with impairments, and which arises
primarily from social and political-rather than medical or personal-factors.

In other words, it is not the existence of a physical or mental impairment
itself which diminishes one's life, but rather the systemic unemployment,
poverty, discrimination, segregation, etc., imposed upon people with
impairments by an inaccessible and unaccommodating society. As Judy Heumann,
founder of DIA, put it, "Disability only becomes a tragedy for me when
society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives-job
opportunities or barrier-free buildings, for example. It is not a tragedy to
me that I'm living in a wheelchair."1

The disability rights movement of today can trace its immediate
lineage-directly or indirectly-to these 1960s-era progenitors. Yet, it is
possible to look even further back in US history to the Depression era of
the 1930s, to see the very first emergence of a self-conscious movement for
disability rights, organized by disabled people themselves, and promoting a
view which closely foreshadows that of the social model.

It goes without saying that the Great Depression that began in 1929 had a
devastating impact on the lives of all American workers, with official
unemployment rates skyrocketing to 25 percent. But for disabled people the
economic crisis hit even harder. One study found that 44 percent of deaf
workers who had been employed prior to the crash had lost their jobs by
1935. The overall unemployment rate for disabled people was probably upwards
of 80 percent, translating into crushing levels of poverty.2

Finding employment had been extremely difficult for disabled workers even in
times of economic prosperity. Industrial capitalism had come to develop a
tendency to discard all those whose labor was deemed insufficiently
productive or too costly in relation to the amount of profit they could
create for an employer.

The years leading up to and during the Great Depression saw a veritable
explosion in the popularity of eugenicist ideas among the political,
medical, and economic elite of the United States. These ideas posited all
disabled people as so much worthless refuse to be cast aside in the
"survival of the fittest" struggle that was free-market capitalism. As a
consequence, millions of disabled people were subjected to forced
institutionalization, sterilization, and/or death at the hands of both
private and public officials.

Yet for all its nightmarish features, the 1930s were also marked by a great
upsurge in working-class radicalism and resistance against exploitation and
oppression. Strikes, occupations, sitdowns, pickets, and demonstrations for
jobs, welfare relief, and against evictions, and for many other reasons
became commonplace. Millions of workers formed labor unions to protect and
extend their rights. Notably, the American Communist Party (CP) also grew
during this period into a substantial force on the US left. It ballooned to
a membership of approximately eighty thousand, with hundreds of thousands
more passing through its ranks.

As a consequence of all this turmoil and struggle, the administration of
Franklin Roosevelt had begun implementation of its New Deal program in the
mid-1930s. A centerpiece of the New Deal was the creation of millions of
federal jobs through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), inaugurated in
January of 1935.

Yet even the WPA-as important a victory as it was for the working
class-proved to be woefully limited in its scope. Among other flaws, state
and federal WPA regulations barred disabled jobseekers from enjoying any of
the program's benefits, categorizing such individuals as "unemployable." WPA
advertisements underlined this point by explicitly stating that "only
able-bodied American job-seekers" need apply.

To make matters worse, two additional pieces of New Deal legislation,
following on the heels of the WPA, further codified federal discrimination
against disabled people. The Social Security Act of August 1935 specifically
defined "disability" as "inability to engage in substantial gainful work,"
thus precluding anyone receiving any disability insurance from obtaining
employment. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which established a
national minimum wage, exempted workers with disabilities from the law's
coverage, thus giving official sanction to the common practice of employing
disabled people in "sheltered workshops" where they were paid a mere
pittance for their labor.

For one particular group of disabled workers living in New York City, such
blatant discrimination on the part of the putatively progressive Roosevelt
administration was simply too much to endure passively. On May 29, 1935, six
of these individuals presented at the local office of the Emergency Relief
Bureau (ERB) and demanded equal access to jobs under the new federal relief
program. When told they did not qualify, being "unemployable," they demanded
to speak with the ERB director, Oswald Knauth. When Knauth refused, they
began a sit-in right then and there, initiating an indefinite occupation of
the ERB office.3

This particular group of protesters was not yet part of any formal
organization, but they had come to know each other through their previous
involvement with radical politics and labor activism. Most had been at least
peripherally involved in the activities of the CP.

Undoubtedly, this prior experience played a role in giving them the
confidence to defy the prevailing bigotries regarding disabled people as
social and medical "invalids." Rather, they situated their struggle and
their demands on an explicitly political terrain. They forthrightly referred
to themselves as "handicapped" rather than "cripples," "invalids," or any of
the other then-common derogatory euphemisms.

As one participant recalled, "What started it was finding out that jobs were
available, that the government was handing out jobs . . . everybody was
getting jobs . . . those of us who were militant just refused to accept the
fact that we were the only people who were looked upon as not worthy, not
capable of work."4

When the second day of the occupation began, the protesters decided to
drastically expand the action. They sent one of their numbers over to a
nearby rally being held by the CP in Madison Square Garden in order to
appeal for help. Immediately, the emissary returned with several dozen
reinforcements. Before long, hundreds of people were picketing outside the
ERB office, with thousands more looking on. By the day's end, the action had
drawn the support of members of the local Writer's Union, the Young
Communists of America, and the Unemployment Council. It had also drawn the
attention of various media outlets, which reported on the protest in a
predictably sensationalized manner.

Over the next several days, Knauth employed a number of tactics designed to
break the occupiers' resolve. Yet the sit-in persisted. A steady group of
picketers-disabled and nondisabled-held constant vigil outside. Though the
number of picketers slowly dwindled as the days wore on, newcomers
continuously showed up to lend their efforts to the fight. This included
visits from disabled people throughout the region who had read reports of
the action and identified with it.

On the sixth day of the occupation, Knauth finally conceded to a meeting
with the group at which point he was informed of their demands. First, they
wanted fifty jobs to be immediately given to supporters of their as-of-yet
unnamed organization, followed by ten more jobs every week following.
Second, the jobs must be at or above minimum wage. Finally, the jobs must
not be in segregated "sheltered workshops" or as part of a charity, but
rather in an integrated setting with nondisabled workers.

Knauth peremptorily stated that he could not acquiesce and that,
furthermore, his policies were merely in compliance with those of the
federal government. At this point, one of the occupiers, a man named Hyman
Abramowitz, angrily retorted, "That's not a good enough answer. We are all
handicapped and are being discriminated against." He then proceeded to
indict the Roosevelt administration. He accused Roosevelt of "trying to fix
things so that no physically handicapped person can get a job, so that all
of us will have to go on home relief. . . . We don't want charity. We want
jobs."5

Though few would have been aware of it at the time, the irony was that
Roosevelt himself was also disabled. In fact, he was impaired in much the
same way as Abramowitz-paralyzed from the waist down due to a childhood bout
of polio. The only difference between these two men, one from the working
class and one from the ruling class, was that Roosevelt and his presidential
entourage were able to develop an elaborate system that kept his impairment
all but completely hidden from the public. Thus, while Abramowitz fought for
the right of all disabled people to obtain jobs, Roosevelt used the power of
his position to deny this right to millions of other disabled people less
fortunate than himself.6

Nine days after the occupation had begun, the police were finally called in
to quell the protest. After roughing up the defiant occupiers and their
supporters outside, they dragged away eleven protesters in handcuffs.

In the days following, while the eleven awaited trial, protesters continued
to confront Knauth at a number of public appearances he made around the
city. Things escalated further when the trial began later that month. On the
first two days of the ten-day trial, large protests were held at the
courthouse and at the ERB office, which led to yet more arrests. Inside the
courtroom, things were just as tumultuous, with the defendants and their
supporters generally creating a ruckus, shouting slogans, and making
speeches.

By this time, the coverage of the struggle by the local media had morphed
from a sort of mild, if not bewildered, contempt into outright bigotry. The
newspapers and ERB officials began derisively referring to the defendants as
"the Communist cripples." On the one hand, it was argued that the disabled
activists were mere helpless dupes being used by the CP for "dramatic
effect." On the other hand, they were portrayed as sly manipulators who were
"taking advantage of their physical disabilities" in order to further their
irrational cause. In all cases they were presented as pathetic and
inferior.7

The day after the initial police raid, the New York Herald Tribune smugly
reported "the crippled picketers screamed hysterically and fought with forty
patrolmen who did everything they could to avoid violence." A few days later
the New York Post described a protest against Knauth held at city hall in
this way: "Ten vociferous cripples and a handful of onlookers comprised a
mass meeting . . . to protest treatment of invalids on relief rolls."

For its part, the Daily Worker, the official newspaper of the CP, regularly
covered and publicized the protests in generally partisan terms. This was
not always unproblematic, however, as the articles would sometimes take a
paternalistic tone, for instance describing "helpless crippled people" being
beaten by police. Nonetheless, the Daily Worker's message was always
unambiguously one of support for the struggle.8

On June 28, the trial finally came to a close with the judge declaring all
of the defendants guilty of disorderly conduct. However, betraying his own
confused prejudice, he only sentenced the three nondisabled defendants to
serve time in jail. The upshot was that, regardless of the judge's
intentions, the eight remaining disabled defendants were now immediately
free to rejoin their comrades protesting in the streets.

Later that evening, an angry throng of protesters once again stormed the ERB
office in outrage at the court's verdict. This time a phalanx of police had
been stationed at the ready and a protracted melee ensued, ending with the
arrest of fifteen more protesters. With these final mass arrests, the
dramatic opening phase of the struggle had drawn to a close. But the
activists who had been involved were just getting started.

The occupation, the protests, the trial and its aftermath, all served to
significantly propel the group's public notoriety. They had attracted a
sizable number of adherents and supporters to their movement and had
established themselves as serious fighters. On this basis, they decided to
formally organize on a permanent basis. They adopted the name, the League of
the Physically Handicapped (LPH).

People had never before seen anything quite like the League. They completely
defied the prevailing one-dimensional image of disabled people as pitiful or
powerless. They demanded respect and equality, and in collectively fighting
back against their oppression, had come to construct a new identity for
themselves that rejected their supposed inferiority. This was reflected in
the slogans they used at protests, such as, "We don't want tin cups. We want
jobs," "We are lame but we can work," and, "Handicapped workers must live,
give us jobs."9

As one League member, Florence Haskell, later recalled, "You have to
understand that among our people, they were self-conscious about their
physical disabilities.. . . They didn't like being stared at. They didn't
want to be looked at. . . I think [the protests] not only gave us jobs, but
it gave us dignity, and a sense of, 'We are people too.'"10

During the rest of 1935 the League held regular meetings, addressed labor
union gatherings, and recruited more members. In November a new WPA office
was opened in New York City and the League immediately subjected it to fresh
rounds of picketing. They distributed leaflets that read, "In private
business the Physically Handicapped invariably are discriminated against.
They work harder for less wages.. . . It is because of this discrimination
that we demand the government recognize its obligation to make adequate
provisions for handicapped people in the Works Relief Program."11

After three weeks of picketing, the League's efforts finally bore fruit. The
local director of the WPA conceded to hiring forty of its members. But the
League was not satisfied. "The [WPA] officials figured if they hired the
most active of us . . . it might kill the thing," one League member
recounted. "But instead of killing it, more handicapped came to the picket
line."12

The LPH had demonstrated that progress could be won through struggle. For
many, this discovery proved contagious. Over the course of the following
year, the WPA would be forced to give close to fifteen hundred jobs to
disabled New Yorkers.13

Drawing confidence from its local successes-and no longer content with
winning a limited number of jobs for its members-the League soon set its
sights even higher. It was now determined to directly challenge the WPA's
discriminatory federal policy itself.

By early 1936, League pickets outside of the New York WPA office explicitly
began to raise precisely this demand. Then, in May of that year, thirty-five
League members traveled to Washington, DC, in order to bring their grievance
directly to Roosevelt and the national head of the WPA, Harry Hopkins. When
League activists arrived in DC they quickly discovered that neither
Roosevelt nor Hopkins were willing to meet with them. They then decided to
employ their tried-and-true tactic and commenced a sit-in occupation of the
federal headquarters of the WPA.

The newly-elected president of the League, twenty-one-year-old Sylvia Flexer
Bassoff, explained to reporters,

Unable to get any satisfaction in New York, we resolved to come here and ask
the aid of Mr. Hopkins in providing WPA employment. They class us as
unemployables, despite the fact that our members include. . ., teachers,
chemists, . . . and others who are professionally skilled. We are going to
stay here until Mr. Hopkins does see us. Until then nothing can make us
leave." League members, she said the next day, were "sick of the humiliation
of poor jobs at best [and] often no work at all." They were tired too of
"getting the same old stock phrases that the handicapped have been getting
for years." They wanted, she said, "not sympathy-but a concrete plan to end
discrimination . . . on WPA projects"14

The occupation continued over the next foty-eight hours until Hopkins
finally relented to a meeting with the League representatives. Yet he still
remained obstinate. He defended the administration's position, maintaining
that disabled people were indeed "unemployable," and completely dismissed
the League's basic argument that disabled people were in any way being
oppressed, discriminated against, or otherwise disenfranchised as a social
group within society. The League representatives then left DC, smoldering
from the experience.

The League took the ignorance expressed by Hopkins as a sort of challenge.
It was in no small part as a result of this that the League decided to
publish an important manifesto on disability in August 1936. Titled, "Thesis
on Conditions of Physically Handicapped," copies of the document were
distributed to Roosevelt, Hopkins, the press, and the public.15

The stated purpose of the "Thesis" was to detail the reality of the
oppressive conditions faced by disabled people in the United States-their
constant "struggle for social and economic security." Moreover, it advanced
the notion that this struggle was not a consequence of their impairment, but
rather "unjust restrictions" and "unfounded prejudices"-in other words,
discriminatory policy and perception.

The "Thesis" pointed out the incongruity of the fact that the federal
government practiced affirmative action in employment with respect to
disabled veterans, yet maintained that all other disabled people were
"unemployable." Of course, the only difference between these two groups was
the source of their impairment. Thus, the government on the one hand
demonstrated that disabled people could be brought into the workforce, while
on the other hand "deterring and hindering" all those whose disabilities
were nonmilitary in origin.

Indeed, though the "Thesis" did not further expand upon this, the false
divide created by the government between disabled veterans and civilians was
extremely important. For instance, studies show that during World War I, far
more Americans were killed or injured while working in the mines of West
Virginia than while fighting abroad in Europe. During the first few years of
World War II, a similar phenomenon held, with the industrial accident rate
hitting an all-time high amidst wartime production speedups.16 This meant
that the war and its concomitant increase in the domestic rate of
exploitation of workers produced a dramatic increase in the number of
disabled Americans. Yet the types of aid extended by the government to
different groups of disabled people varied greatly according to a rigid
hierarchy of disability classifications, with war wounded at the top,
injured workers in the middle, and those born with severe disabilities at
the bottom. Of course, the whole scale shifted, too, when factoring in
considerations of race, gender, and class.

Next, the "Thesis" proceeded to detail the ramifications of the harmful bias
inherent in government work-relief policies and projects. Disabled people
generally faced one of three fates at the hands of state employment
agencies. Either they were declared "unemployable" and rejected outright;
they were given temporary jobs at "miserably low wages," which sometimes
included being sent "out as strike-breakers"; or finally they might be
placed in a dreaded sheltered workshop.

Originally, sheltered workshops developed as a sort of charitable venture in
which disabled people were employed in various nonprofit enterprises.
However, this practice soon expanded into the private and government sector
as well. These workshops were generally completely segregated, had poor
working conditions, and paid next to nothing. Then, as now, sheltered
workshops were exempted from minimum wage requirements and other labor
regulations. They used "the guise of social service," the "Thesis" argued,
while actually engaging in "shameful exploitation." In particular, the
"Thesis" pointed to those workshops run by the Red Cross under its Institute
for Crippled and Disabled as especially deserving of scorn in this area.

Beyond the issue of employment bias, the "Thesis" criticized the limited
welfare assistance, or "home relief," provided by state and government
agencies. Such aid was usually insufficient for nondisabled recipients, and
"doubly insufficient" for those with disabilities, owing to the greater
costs associated with their use of assistive technology and health care
needs. The "Thesis" pointed out that such meager relief forced many
recipients to resort to begging on the street, yet the proliferation of
antibegging ordinances-many of which were specifically directed at disabled
beggars-prevented them from undertaking even this desperate measure, on pain
of imprisonment.

Finally, the "Thesis" leveled a generalized attack on "the whole Emergency
Program and all the social legislation of the New Deal" for being
"consistently neglectful" of the needs and problems of disabled people. "As
far as the [Roosevelt] Administration was concerned," the "Thesis" charged,
"there were no such persons, there was no handicapped problem."

The "Thesis" represents one of the most important historical documents in
the disability rights movement. It was the first treatise of its kind to be
both explicitly political-even militant-in its condemnation of the
oppression of disabled people. In addition, it was a product of the efforts
of disabled people themselves, fighting to articulate their own demands and
their own needs.

Much like those who would come after them, the disability rights activists
in the League had struggled to redefine disability as a social, rather than
a medical or pathological, phenomenon. The problems faced by disabled people
in society thus required collective political action rather than personal
rehabilitation.

The publication of the "Thesis" marked the apex of the League's activity.
During the fall and winter of 1936 the League continued to protest against
WPA discrimination as well as fight to maintain the jobs they had already
won. However, in the spring of 1937, WPA offices nationwide began massive
layoffs, cutting hundreds of thousands of workers from its ranks. In
response, WPA workers across the country engaged in large strikes,
demonstrations, and marches. Once again, the CP played an outsized role in
this resistance, while the League figured prominently in various actions in
New York City.

At one massive demonstration against WPA cuts held in May in New York City,
League activists marched alongside other disabled workers at the head of a
procession numbering in the tens of thousands. The Daily Worker reported
that the "front ranks of the 9 hour long demonstration" were populated by "a
group of deaf mute and blind workers. . . . Deaf workers marched arm in arm
as escorts for the militant blind strikers."

The article further quoted a number of disabled marchers angry at pay and
job discrimination on WPA projects. One person interviewed felt that, if any
wage difference were to exist, it should be that disabled people get more
pay, not less, than their nondisabled counterparts, because their costs of
living were greater. "We are handicapped badly-and handicapped further with
the wages we get," he argued.17

In August 1937, the Workers Alliance of America-a group closely affiliated
with the CP-organized a large action in Washington, DC, in which thousands
of people descended on the Capitol lawn. The stated aim of the action was to
demand that Roosevelt stop the WPA cutbacks and reinstate the half million
WPA workers whose jobs had already been cut.

Thirty-three delegates from the League made the trip down to DC in order to
participate in the action. While there, they were also able to secure
another meeting with WPA chief, Harry Hopkins. Perhaps they held out hope
that he had been moved by their "Thesis." In fact, the meeting proved to be
just as unproductive as the previous one. The League delegates grudgingly
returned home empty-handed, though promising to "return in larger numbers
within a short time."18

As it turns out, this promise never materialized. By 1938 the League appears
to have dissolved completely. So what accounts for this sudden drop-off in
activity? It might be helpful to look at the broader context.

As discussed above, the CP exerted a strong influence on the League. The CP
in turn was influenced heavily by the foreign policy needs of the Stalinist
regime then in power in the USSR. This meant that throughout the course of
the 1930s the CP went through a number of sudden and dramatic
transformations. In particular, by the end of 1936 the CP had begun to
drastically curtail its open criticism of the Roosevelt administration. As
fascism grew in power throughout Europe, the USSR began looking for allies
among the "progressive" nations of the world. Therefore, the CP was directed
to ingratiate itself with Roosevelt in order to create a "popular front"
against fascism.

Thus, even as the CP played a key role in organizing protests against the
WPA cuts in 1937, it did so in an increasingly diffident manner. So, for
instance, the very next day following the mass mobilization on Washington,
DC, in August 1937, the Daily Worker announced in unqualified terms that the
workers had won a complete "victory" insofar as Roosevelt had delivered a
written promise to the Workers Alliance to stop any further cuts. The
original demand to reinstate the half million laid off WPA workers had
quietly disappeared overnight.19 Moreover, even this supposed "victory"
proved illusory as WPA cuts continued unabated over the next several years.

Before long, the CP would become a stalwart defender of Roosevelt against
his critics on both the political left and the right, even going so far as
to actively suppress war industry strikes and work stoppages, which the CP
deemed detrimental to the "national war effort."

While it is clear that the League was in no way controlled by the CP, League
activists nonetheless would have been affected by changes in the politics,
tactics, and arguments of those CP members around them. League activists
would have been discouraged by this latter group from continuing their
protests directed at Roosevelt; they would have been told that their narrow
fight for disability rights was now trumped in importance by the greater
fight against fascism.

The further tragedy of this whole episode was that the League's loose
connection to the CP meant that its memory and legacy were virtually erased
in the wave of anticommunist witch hunts and McCarthyite repression that
swept the nation in the 1940s and 1950s. Years later, League members would
cite the increase in redbaiting and bitter divisions over political ideology
as the source of the group's degeneration.20 Like much of the radical left
during and after the war, the League was crushed under the weight of
domestic repression on the one hand, and the political twists-and-turns of
the CP on the other. This is the primary reason for the total lack of
continuity between the League's activities of the 1930s and the new
disability rights movement that reemerged in the 1970s.

Today, the disability rights movement can pride itself on having won
important gains over the years, not the least of which was the passage of
the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Yet the fundamental oppression
of disabled people in this country persists, including high unemployment,
poverty, homelessness, and police brutality; the re-emergence of mass
institutionalization in prisons and nursing homes; and discriminatory laws
limiting the rights of disabled people to marry, have children, and exercise
total autonomy over their lives.

Truly, the fight for disabled people's liberation remains an urgent project
of the present. And it is for this reason that the significance of the
League of the Physically Handicapped endures.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

1.Joseph Shapiro, No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil
Rights Movement (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1994), Kindle edition.
2.Kim Nielsen, A Disability History of the United States (Boston: Beacon
Press, 2012), 134.
3.Paul K. Longmore, and David Goldberger, "The League of the Physically
Handicapped and the Great Depression: A Case Study in the New Disability
History," The Journal of American History, Vol. 87, No. 3 (Dec., 2000), 888.
4.Ibid., 899.
5.Ibid., 901-902.
6.Fleischer, Doris Zames, and Frieda Zames, The Disability Rights Movement:
From Charity to Confrontation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001).
1-4.
7.Longmore, 902-903.
8.Ibid., 903-904.
9.Ibid., 904.
10.Ibid., 904-905.
11.Ibid., 905.
12.Ibid., 906.
13.Ibid.
14.Ibid., 907.
15.Ibid., 908.
16.Nielson, A Disability History of the United States, 149, 158.
17."36,000 on Projects Demonstrate Demonstrate Against Threat of WPA Cuts,"
Daily Worker, May 28, 1937, Harvard University Library microfilm.
18.Longmore, 919.
19."How Workers Alliance Forced WPA To Stop Slashing Rolls," Daily Worker,
August 27, 1937: 5, Harvard University Library microfilm.
20.Longmore, 920.


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