Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!bunker!hcap!hnews!Earl.Appleby From: Earl.Appleby@hnews.fidonet.org (Earl Appleby) Newsgroups: misc.handicap Subject: Re: overload Message-ID: <17336@bunker.UUCP> Date: 31 Jan 91 22:10:08 GMT Sender: wtm@bunker.UUCP Reply-To: Earl.Appleby@hnews.fidonet.org Distribution: misc Organization: The Handicap News, Shelton CT (203) 337-1607 Lines: 78 Approved: wtm@bunker.UUCP Index Number: 13322 PN> Hi Earl, thanks for the nice complement. My pleasure, your due. PN> My main philosphy has always been that a person has value by just PN> the fact that they are a person. For a new friend, you summed up my philosophy in two great lines. PN> ...It seems that they want to judge worth on only working capacity. PN> If you can't work you are not worth anything... I first learned this lesson as a teenager [many moons ago ] while working at a state hospital run by those who judge a man's worth by his contribution to an economy in which they are the privileged. When they finally spent some money, guess who were the beneficiaries? If you guessed it was spent on anything that would have remotely improved the lives of the patients, you're not as smart as I know you are. It was spent on building a wall so the yuppies' barbecues wouldn't be disturbed by the sight of half-naked men driven like cattle by sadistic guards (aka attendants) onto their caged porches... PN> ...This attitude has severly hurt alot of the elderly disabled and PN> the severly disabled. This is the system that perpetuates the bed bound PN> prisoner and the incarcerated in nursing homes. And kicks folks trying to care for their loved ones at home in the teeth!!! PN> At it's worst it has caused people to go to court to pettion for death PN> so they don't have to live in a lonely bedroom prison being bored to PN> death and depressed. Have you ever noticed if some moody teenagers gas themselves to death in a car in NJ it's a national tragedy, but if a quadraplegic in GA is driven by his jailors to the despair you so poignantly describe suddenly it's "rational suicide." That's because the P&P elite ("perfect" and privileged) look at persons [hell, everything] as merchandise...wrong color, wrong size, worst of all, "damaged" goods toss it [i.e., him/her] into the garbage disposal. These are REAL people, real victims, not armchair hypotheses! My philosophy of life, as I suspect yours, come from the school of life. It's a hard school but it's lessons are worth learning. It's taught me, my family, and my extended family [viz., CURE] that life is worth fighting for. PN> And what a waste it is when mostly this does PN> not have to occur if the agencies and government would provide PN> the neccessary equiptment and funding for attendants. Pandora The waste of human lives is the most despicable crime I can imagine and in America is genocidal in its proportions. I'd like to learn more about PCAs and specifically how we can help fight for them. [I'd also like to write you so I can extend beyond the 70 line limit and not have to rewrite it like I did this one because my SX or me goofed ] Life is a battle and my friends and I are in it for the duration. No pacifists here! Too many of our friends (Karen, Paul, Baby Doe, Nancy, so many more known but to God and their murderers) have added to the body count. We shall die as all men. We may even be killed, but we shall never be defeated because we will never buy their live that a man or woman should be treated like a dog because he or she is handicapped or sick...NEVER!!! Off my soap box [sorry 'bout that] to give you [with Ray's permission, of course