Sometimes people ask me, “How do you do it?” meaning that I have so much energy, blah blah. I was thinking about this today, because after I taught my class, I went straight to the State House. There I joined fellow parents of developmentally disabled adults, who were also there, as well as advocates. They were sitting vigil, which they’ve been doing on and off for weeks: first, in the Governor’s office, and now, outside of the Senate President’s office, as well as the Speaker of the House. They were on the floor, or hanging around the closed doors. They said that what they were told is that people could go in to see the Senate President Therese Murray “two at a time,” and that the others just had to wait.<\/p>\n
So there we all were, pissed off tired parents, with many mentally retarded adults. I use that word non-pejoratively, because it gets right to the heart of things, doesn’t it? You get a visual, which is what I intend. Nat is one of them, and I have no shame in saying that. The shame is on those who use the word “retard” as an insult, and emphasize the first syllable. The shame is on those who never stop to think about how if you just say, “those public programs are wasteful, therefore I don’t support them,” you are taking the easy way out. What else is there? What has the private sector done in any kind of consistent, predictable way? To rely on charity alone is to be at the whim of donations.<\/p>\n
The shame is also on those who develop biased I.Q. tests, that ask you to stack cubes a certain way, or trip you up on categorizing. They don’t and can’t test compassion, or willingness to work, lack of guile, or eagerness to learn. They don’t test mastering activities of daily living, nor do they test how far a person has come. They don’t test those who have learned to control their eccentric behaviors, or their aggression.<\/p>\n
And the shame is on our leaders. Our legislators, our Governor, who promised so many wonderful things and are not delivering. They are letting our most vulnerable simply go home, if they are even lucky enough to have one. Even Nat, with all of his skills, does so little at home, when compared to his group home.<\/p>\n
And perhaps the shame is on all of us, for sending the message that we don’t want any new taxes, when there is no other way to pay for these services.<\/p>\n
It’s as simple as this: if you cut services for disabled adults, they have no services.<\/span> If I must say this, then I will say this. It is not the same as cutting funding for libraries, for roads, for zoos. Even for schools. There is nothing like there is when they are school-age, where they are entitled to go to school. There will always be schools to educate people, in one way or another. But there will not be group homes. There will be no day programs, no way to work. There will be nothing but parents like me, or not like me. Elderly. Fixed income. Working class. Jobless. Ill. Mentally ill.<\/p>\n If you cut the Department of Developmental Services, formerly the Department of Mental Retardation, or if you cut the Department of Mental Health, you cut the services. There will be no services for thousands of people like Nat.<\/p>\n I went into the Senate President’s office and I demanded that she come out, even for a minute, and meet all of these people I said it was an outrage that no one was talking to them. Some of them were even her constituents!!!<\/p>\n I heard that later on, she did come out. Not an aide. The Senate President came out. I am grateful to her for that. Now I hope she and the rest of them will come through.<\/p>\n How do I do it? How do I not do it? I do it because it makes me so angry. We should all be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes people ask me, “How do you do it?” meaning that I have so much energy, blah blah. I was thinking about this today, because after I taught my class, I went straight to the State House. There I joined fellow parents of developmentally disabled adults, who were also there, as well as advocates. They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-1u","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}