Hi Miriam, what is happened with Joe?
why he is not on list, is he out from jail?.
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2015 9:03 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] FW: doing the right thing
I think Joe wanted this forwarded.
Miriam
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From: joe harcz Comcast [mailto:joeharcz@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2015 8:42 AM
To: Sylvie Kashdan
Cc: Penny Reeder; Bob Hachey; Miriam Vieni; Carl Jarvis
Subject: doing the right thing
Part of growing up Catholic is simply doing the right thing, and as agnostic as
I've become I cannot scrub that part of my identity out of my skin....Here is
something that might be good for our goodly list serve.
Peace Comes Only With Justice...
The Picket Line
When I was a young man growing up just north of Flint Michigan I was a product
of what might be called a “solidarity movement”. That for folks who don’t
know much about politics or movements for the working class might call it a
brotherhood. Workers fought against the bosses in General Motors for equable
treatment, union rights, associational rights, and the basic rights to make a
fair day rate for the labor extolled in some sort of safe environment.
They organized, and they picketed and they even took over plants in famous
sit-down-strikes all fighting for our freedom and basic standards of living,
the first being foremost.
And I was the son of a Catholic small business-man, and even a Republican who
happened to be a Catholic and a small homebuilder. But, he taught me to never
cross a picket line even though he didn’t have a “union shop”, for he knew two
things:
-First it wasn’t right.
-Secondly, it wasn’t in his self-interest.
On the latter my dad made a good living building homes for those union workers
in the sixties, seventies and eighties.
On the former though he was a small business man he always was a worker, hammer
in hand and not some sort of “arm chair boss”. He always knew the value
of labor as he always has labored. But, he always knew the value of labor and
embewed me with those values even though he knew I was going blind.
Now what has this got to do with the organized blind movement, or the organized
movement of other people with disabilities; or the combined movement which
is all about the same goal---equal opportunity and equal treatment?
The bottom line is this: We must stand together, in solidarity. We must as
Martin Luther King said, and understood, and lived by “An injustice to one is
an injustice to everyone.”
In other words our collective civil and human rights no matter our diversity
and even differences in opinions are intertwined.
We must standing solidarity with each other if not for the liking of each
other, for simple and common survival!
We cannot afford in this movement for civil rights of the individual and the
whole to throw even one person under the bus.
We cannot let a few brave individuals either to carry all the water. And we
certainly cannot allow our organizations or petty rivalries over this or that
petty thing to determine whether or not this action or this person is deemed
worthy of her or his backing for attempting to advance the common good.
And if folks are afraid of retaliation then let us think of what happened to
oppressed people who did nothing in and because of retaliation before in
history.
I’ll remind people that before the Jews were slaughtered, and before the
gypsies, and others were slaughtered, as if this wasn’t bad enough, the very
first
people put to death in Nazi extermination camps in the T-4, final solution
programs were 100,000 people with disabilities in 1940.
Yea the very first ushered in to gas chambers were people….People who were
blind, deaf, mentally and physically disabled!
Now we people with disabilities have to know this history and more. Why to
re-visit horrid pages from the past? No, because they can become our present!
Fast forward to the events of September 17, 2015 and the events on the literal
Michigan State Capitol lawn where an event sponsored by state and federal
taxpayers funds was to celebrate the 25th celebration of the Americans with
Disabilities Act, our collective civil rights law, premised on Article V, of
the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution itself, the highest law of
this land which is supposed to be a land of law and not of men. And what
does it say? It says we are all guaranteed “equal protection and due process
under law”.
These words make me weep for joy, my sisters and my brothers. They need no
gloss. They are what they are.
And these words were codified in to law for all of us with disabilities under
the Americans with Disabilities Act. And this very act was to remove barriers
by state and local government under Title II of the Act twenty five years ago,
yet literal police and other barriers were put forth to me and others
with disabilities on that day. And they were not the picket lines of the
oppressed, but, rather the lpolice lines of the oppressors against the voices
of the oppressed. These were the abuses by the state using the state police to
stifle First Amendment rights of not only a small handful of people with
disabilities but, also all of you just like the state police were used decades
ago to silence the voices of the oppressed at the likes of the Flint, Michigan
“sit-down strike” and other actions, though this one incidence is even more
disturbing for we people with disabilities were not taking over private
property,
and nor were we impeding public access and nor were we even engaging in
picketing or bblocking public access. No, we were only trying to distribute
pamplets,
and only trying to engage our civil rights in and upon a public event and
public forum: a most protective right, especially when engaging state officials
on public property!
Yet, on September 17 of this year on the State Capitol lawn, or rather as the
MSP proscribed, not beyond the “Austin Blair Statue” the rights of the blind
and others with other disabilities ended, including our First Amendment rights
to protest against the violations of the very act which was supposedly being
celebrated. Again public expense and in a public forum, the most public of
forums, the very “Peoples House”. the Lawn of the Michigan State Capitol.
Many, including me were protesting, again with words and pamphlets in peaceable
assembly guaranteed by our sacred First Amendment rights the fact that the
ADA is violated tby our public officials including the segregated and
exploitative treatment of more than 8,150 of our sisters and brothers with
disabilities
who are exploitive with sub-minimum wages in the sheltered workshops of
publicly funded operations like Peckham Industries Inc. while CEOs like Mitch
Tomlinson
who is a connected state actor makes $500,000 plus on our blood, sweat and
tears.
So these creeps with Lt. Governor Calley on the rostrum along with other state
actors Called on the stage at our civil rights celebration violated our
civil rights on our civil rights day, and they criminalized my civil rights by
arresting me for “crossing the artificial picket line, not by labor but
against our rights and by state actors acting as a police state against the
dissemination of ideas”, on the ultimate public forum where, most ironically
the most protected free speech rights to express all sorts of ideas in the free
market place of ideas was created to begin with, the, again “People’s House”,
the State Capitol Lawn! Again, being redundant here, we were violated from
expression even on the State Capitol Lawn! My God if people cannot see how
wrong this is then there is no hope not only for people with disabilities but
for all
The “Picket line” is an expression of solidarity for rights and not supposed to
be an exclusionary tool of he state apparatchek against we the people.
The barriers and barricades are supposed to be the tools of we the people
against the abuses of the state and not the tools of the state to be used
against
our inclusion in the activities of the state.
Aside from heroes in the disability movement like Justin Dart, Jacobus
Tenbroek, Judy Heuman, Wade Blank, and countless others, living and dead, must
stand up in one voice with one fist and say, “Enough is enough! Nothing about
us without us is the mantra of the disabilities rights movement. It applies
to all lovers of democracy with a small “d”.
And the slogan “Nothing about us without us,” is also the mantra of all the
people acting in concert in this struggle for equality in this world. All of
us. Don’t exclude we people who happen tolive with disabilities from this
promise and this birthright! For we are you, if not today, then tomorrow.
Joe Harcz
Advocate with Disabilities
Mt. Morris, Michigan
November 17, 2015
