Patrice Jetter is a force of nature. She’s joyous in her clothes and her hobbies (sewing, painting, model railroading) and her confidence in small acts of kindness. She found love with Garry Wickham and they want to marry. They can’t afford to because they’re both disabled. Marriage would end their access to US Federal health insurance and income support.
Kevin Gotkin’s Crip News shows up in my mailbox on Mondays. His principal focus is on English-speaking crip art and artists (like himself), but he inevitably encounters disability policy issues. Today I appreciated:
Guaranteed income (GI) programs offer monthly direct cash transfers to people who need help. And when organizers talk about this work (like Michael Tubbs on NPR in 2021), they often cite MLK’s 1967 “Where Do We Go From Here?” speech.
MLK named disability in his case for GI. Black single mothers of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) helped him understand that expanding access to employment was an incomplete approach. For “those at the lowest economic level,” including “the aged and chronically ill,” he said, “we must create incomes.”
But today’s GI movement, which has swelled since 2020, has abandoned the radical legacy MLK helped popularize. The NWRO proposed a Guaranteed Adequate Income. Not a cash supplement. An income that can actually support a family. Most programs across the U.S. today offer several hundred dollars per month (rarely over $1000) for only a short period of time.
This doesn’t just leave disabled people behind - it causes harm. Most often, GI programs force people enrolled in existing public benefit programs, like SNAP and SSI, to choose between accepting the cash payments and experiencing a double cliff (the cash reduces or eliminates other benefits and then disappears itself). Some programs even specifically exclude anyone who receives SSI. And people like Andrew Yang are hijacking the framework to imagine cash transfers as a consolidation or wholesale replacement of public benefit programs.
https://cripnews.substack.com/p/mlk-guaranteed-income-and-disability
If this sounds familiar, it's a cross-over between pandammit socialism and the WIPP warnings.
( poster in window )
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cathexys boosted a good piece from the HuffPost about the cruel impact of medical bigotry due to the obesity panic.
https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong/
by blacklangpod
https://blacklangpod.buzzsprout.com
Creator Anansa Benbow opens my brain to the huge varieties of black language, especially AAVE/Ebonics. The first episode declares: no grammar police and pinged my disability pride when she said, "I stutter. Imma gone make this podcast" and carried on. The second explores the pragmatic function of aight so boom in storytelling. The third episode takes direct aim at the reality that Black creativity drives US culture, including language change, and yet White people valorize White AAVE speakers while excoriating Black AAVE speakers.
She compares the experiences of Rachel Jeantel, star prosecution witness in the George Zimmerman trial whose testimony was simply not understood by white jurors, with Bhad Bhabie, a white rapper who gained fame by disrespecting her mother on Dr Phil:
Language appropriation of Black people is not simply language borrowing, unfortunately, it comes with the erasure of Black people. Again, the push to promote stan/twitter/internet language, instead of recognizing that the language used on social media comes from Black people is an example of that erasure.
Sorry to report no transcripts for this podcast.
https://www.accentricity-podcast.com
Sociolinguist Sadie Ryan explores linguistic ideology as applied to Scots. In her words:
This is a podcast about people and how they talk. About accents, and why we care about them. About languages, and how they refuse to be controlled. About why there is no such thing as bad grammar, no language is more important than any other language, and every voice is valid.
I learned that Scots language is scorned as uneducated by many English power brokers. A pair of episodes document kids just learning to talk and how they speak one year later.
I had to listen to the first episodes several times to get accustomed to her accent — sadly, no transcripts. Excellent bedtime listening.
Learned about both of these from the Huge List of Linguistics Podcasts hosted by Lauren Gawne aka superlinguo:
https://www.superlinguo.com/post/158448074588/linguistics-and-language-podcasts
Completely adorkable Good Omens gen fic, POV of a very queer, very UU minister interviewing a couple she calls Bowtie and Sunglasses. Only canon you need to know is that the couple getting married are a demon and an angel who’ve been flirting for 6000 years.
From "An Unquiet Mind," s.e. smith's excellent monthly column at Catapult.co which explores disability identity and its interaction with the world at large.
“This was fine for someone else,” someone frustrated at being asked to accommodate me says, as though I am not an expert on my own self, as though all disabled people have the same needs. Why isn’t this thing that someone who isn’t you found perfectly acceptable enough? We spent all this money on it. As though being disabled does not in itself confer a literal body of knowledge, an expertise, a skill, an awareness of precisely what I need—because I have spent a lifetime fighting for it. I have a mastery of myself, a master’s degree in myself, yet I am followed, everywhere, by reminders that myself is too much. https://catapult.co/stories/what-if-accessibility-was-also-inclusive-column-unquiet-mind-s-e-smith
I adore s.e. smith’s viewpoint and way with words! Two other essays introduced me to myself.
OMG! It’s not just me who finds death sex so highly charged.
There is a thing that happens with those adjacent to death that many people seem to be afraid to speak of, perhaps because it feels startling and shameful when it happens to them for the first time. Perhaps because no one speaks of it, they assume they are alone in this, perverse, broken. But those of us in the know are well aware that funerals—memorials, celebrations of life, transition ceremonies, Passages (always with a capital P)—are absolutely the best places for hooking up.
https://catapult.co/stories/the-small-beauty-of-funeral-sex-essay-s-e-smith
s.e. smith nails the concept of "debility," something I struggled to understand last year at the SDS conference. When impairment is the result of trauma — whether that’s state or personal violence, especially due to marginalized status — the social model of disability isn’t enough.
Talking about how environmental disparities can contribute to disability becomes complicated as a disabled person who is proud and confident in my identity.
https://catapult.co/stories/when-disability-is-a-toxic-legacy-se-smith
I met s.e. smith through FWD: Feminists With Disabilities, an excellent group blog that’s further proof that longevity is not equal to value. Later I had the good fortune to meet s.e. in person. I’ve always admired smith’s ways with words, and I was delighted but not surprised to learn that three of smith’s monthly columns at Catapult won a 2020 US National Magazine Award.
Explore s.e. smith’s stuff at https://www.realsesmith.com/
cross posted to the wonderful ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
podcastjoy community
An Arm and A Leg is a podcast focused on the cruel cost of U.S. health care. Experienced radio producer Dan Weisman personally crashed into this issue, looked around for help, and realized this was a beat that needed covering. He does original reporting and boosts the knowledge of dedicated fact-hunters and advocates from around the U.S.
Even though the topic is dire, the show is funny and well-edited. What If This Podcast Were A Musical is indeed a musical about the cost of health care!
The Why Are Drug Prices So Random episode turned on a very bright lightbulb for me re pharmacy benefit managers. PBMs are the 41 for-profit companies which determine how much U.S. folks pay for a prescription, no matter whether we have health insurance.
I’ve poked Dan about his wanton use of "crazy" as an all-purpose negative adjective and the lack of transcripts for An Arm and A Leg, and he promises to do better.
In the meantime, a sober evaluation of PBMs from STATnews:
Three excellent items from my Dreamwidth travels:
seperis lets us know that Amazon accepts SNAP in NY state, and offers discounts for people with federal EBT cards.
https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/1059318.html
I’m in awe of petra’s skill with fannish poetry:
You can see it in progress at this prompt post https://petra.dreamwidth.org/840970.html
This one blew my mind:
Higgledy Piggledy
Hercules Mulligan
Renegade tailor tied
Tories in knots,Managed his shop full of
Haberdashderringdo
Carefully measuring
Breeches and plots.
All the villanelles https://petra.dreamwidth.org/tag/poetry:+villanelle
ljwrites writes on DW about many things, including this helpful meta about "Policing and woobiefication: two sides of the same coin".
https://lj-writes.dreamwidth.org/99391.html?format=light
Fandom policing and villain woobiefication/apologia seem to be polar opposites, but at heart they agree on one thing: That your morality is defined by the wholesomeness of the content you make and consume.
[… snip …]
If you truly disagree with the fandom police's premise, then actually disagree, and don't validate the flawed and harmful premise by spinelessly seeking a loophole for yourself like "Yeah people who like immoral shit and deserve to be mistreated/shamed, but I'm nothing like those immoral people because [horrible validation of real-life immorality]."
ljwrites does a much better job explaining this!
https://lj-writes.dreamwidth.org/2019/03/02/alt-text.html
lightgetsin relies on image descriptions, and her thoughts are crucial
https://lightgetsin.dreamwidth.org/308442.html
For sighted people, images can communicate a lot in a short time. On the web, tho, images come with a cost: bandwidth. Folks who don’t or can’t view your image can still get your message when you use image descriptions. "alt text" is the HTML tool to hold your image descriptions.
Web Accessibility In Mind — WebAIM — is an outstanding resource for ensuring that all users can appreciate your web content.
Spend twenty minutes at WebAIM to gain a confidence in applying the principles of alt texts. Their tl;dr about the content of alt texts: ( open me )
The author writes with honest details, humor, and horror about his experience with psychosis during his initial years with bipolar disorder.
I couldn’t put this book down. McDermott’s writing is both funny and insightful. He enabled me to watch a mind slowly spinning out of control, and then struggling back to lucidity again. His both-sides perspective is invaluable.
I’ve been logging my days. Here’re our nights!
Between four and six pm, we come home, snack, and think about dinner. When we’re done with that, it’s time to watch TV!
We sped through the second season of Killjoys. ( for some reason I cannot remember the name: I always say Misfits instead )
Thanks to decemberthirty’s recommendation, we started watching The Crown. ( we can't turn our heads away )
Up until yesterday, hypothyroidism has been inexpensive to treat. Lyothyronine was synthesized in the 1950s, and was first approved by the US Food & Drug Administration in 1954.
( sticker shock )Two pieces of good news: I can afford to pay for it, and I can finally spell lyothyronine.
We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America—Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page, eds.( 4 of 5 )
branchandroot