Beyond Ramps: Book Launch and Panel with AJ Withers, Anna Malla & Laurence Parent
THURSDAY, MAY 24, 6pm
at the Centre Culturel Georges-Vanier
2450 rue Workman (métro Lionel-Groulx)
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The venue is wheelchair accessible (access audit available on request).
Childcare available on request (phone 514-848-7585 to reserve)
Whisper translation into English & French
If you need ASL interpretation, or have other accessibility needs, please contact us by May 17 so we can accommodate you (info@qpirgconcordia.org or 514-848-7585)
In order to help make this event accessible and safe for people with chemical sensitivities, please refrain from wearing hair and body products with fragrance or clothing washed in detergent with fragrance, including “natural” products and essential oils. For more information visit http://www.peggymunson.com/mcs/fragrancefree.html
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About “Disability Politics and Theory”:
An accessible introduction to disability studies, Disability Politics and Theory provides a concise survey of disability history, exploring the concept of disability as it has been conceived from the late 19th century to the present. Further, A.J. Withers examines when, how and why new categories of disability are created and describes how capitalism benefits from and enforces disabled people’s oppression. Critiquing the model that currently dominates the discipline, the social model of disability, this book offers an alternative: the radical disability model. This model builds on the social model but draws from more recent schools of radical thought, particularly feminism and critical race theory, to emphasize the role of intersecting oppressions in the marginalization of disabled people and the importance of addressing disability both independently and in conjunction with other oppressions. Intertwining theoretical and historical analysis with personal experience this book is a poignant portrayal of disabled people in Canada and the U.S. — and a radical call for social and economic justice.
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About the panelists:
AJ Withers is a Toronto-based anti-poverty and disability justice organizer and author. They have worked with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) for many years and their book Disability Politics and Theory will be out this spring through Fernwood Publishing.
Anna Malla has lived in Montreal for the past ten years, and until recently, was the full-time Coordinator at QPIRG McGill. Prior to her job at QPIRG, Anna was a union organizer and support staff member at the Migrant Farmworkers’ Support Centre in St-Remi. She is also a long-time member of the Justice for Adil Charkaoui Coalition, and has worked on various other migrant justice and anti-racism campaigns. For the past four years, Anna has been contending with a long-term, chronic pain condition diagnosed as Fibromyalgia. She is committed to challenging herself and those around her to re-vision the ways in which chronic illness impacts our relationships to each other and the world around us.
Laurence Parent is a PhD student in Humanities at Concordia University. She holds a MA in Critical Disability Studies from York University and a BA in Political Science from Université du Québec à Montréal. She lives in Montréal and is involved within the Québec Disability Rights Movement. In 2009, she co-founded a disability rights organization called RAPLIQ which aims to challenge ableism by doing direct actions and using creative means.
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Part of the Montreal Festival of Anarchy (www.anarchistbookfair.ca)
Presented by QPIRG Concordia
INFO: www.qpirgconcordia.org
514-848-7585 – info@qpirgconcordia.org
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Although things are progressing to be sure, things aren’t quite moving fast enough. Of all this talk about disabilities, the one disability which always seems to get pushed to the back burner is blineness. For instance, many countries, states or provinces have government subsidies to hire us yet, companies go out of their way not too, or we are taken advantage of when we are hired. Videotron is a very clear case of this. My brother in law for instance, works there, so I should have had at least some consideration so long as I fit the qualifications, right? When I spoke to Videotron’s recruter, she told me that they do make allowances and/or modifications for those with some vision by providing zume text, but they make no effort to accomodate those with no vision, even though JAWS (JOB ACCESS WITH SPEECH), is provided to companies at the government’s expense. Recently, I’ve heard rumours that Montreal’s Au Noir restaurant is only paying their blind waiters 30 to 50% of their full salary and that those poor workers won’t say anything for fear of losing their jobs. (It’s kind of why some blind people let their dogs get petted while in harness at the expense of other users because they’re afraid they won’t get help if they don’t). Even though guide-dogs have been allowed to go with us everywhere we go for many years, guide-dog schools don’t properly educate the public on good guide-dog etiquette and worse yet, they give out mixed messages therein, because they can’t agree. Some say they shouldn’t be touched, while others leave it up to individual users. Just recently, I was even told while on a bus that it was illegal to have my guide-dog there, even though guide-dogs have been allowed to accompany us since the mid 70s… Despite the fact that blind people were among the first massage therapists years ago and that we have had blind jeaniuses such as Art Tatum Ludvic Van Beethoven and Ray Charles, blindness is still the most misunderstood of all the handicaps and blind people are the most neglected and mistreated in many cases. Ah yes! Of course! The CNIB provides us with mostly uneducational books to read and equipment with which to read them because, God forbid we be productive members of society. Yes, things are moving quickly for all the other handicaps, but they’re moving ass backwards for blindness! Yes, we have talking gadgets, but they only help us communicate. They don’t help us get a job, they don’t insure we get paid on time and they rarely get us long term respect. So, you wanna move heaven and earth to build ramps for wheel chair users, right? Why? Well, obviously modifications for wheelchair users can be seen and noted by the public allowing politicians and owners of public establishments to rest on their laurels and say: “See? Things are progressing forward. Maybe not as fast as we want, but we’re getting there. Yet it might actually cost less in the long run to put tracks on wheelchairs as can be found on a bulldozer and a driving switch which would lock those treads uni-directionally preventing the chair from slipping back down when climbing a set of stairs or an escalator for example. But, of course this would never happen, because those types of modifications wouldn’t be noticed by the general public and therefore couldn’t be applauded. Unless you work with, go to school with or know blind people, most people will never see addaptations or accomodations for the blind. Braille and talking cell phones have existed in Spane made by Motorola, since the mid 90s, yet, thanks to Apple, have only made their entry into North America in the last 2 years or so. Products for the blind are cumbersome, notoriously poorly constructed, obscenely over priced most times (accept for talking watches, clocks and thermometers of course), and there is no regulation insuring that many products such as the Humanware Trecker Breeze GPS for instance, actually work properly. Did you even know that, untill recently, you couldn’t even program this thousand dollar piece of crap GPS and even today, when you try to increase the voice speed, the voice cuts out? It would be cheaper for me to go to Canadian Tire and pick up a 200 dollar Garman, find someone to program it for me and listen to one of its onboard voices.
Since I like to do guide-dog education, here are a couple of things I’d like to leave you with. The first is: “just because we don’t see your face doesn’t mean we don’t have one”, and: “the road to the hell you pave with your good intentions is most often reserved for someone else.” If you only want to be noticed and not felt, I probably lost you all the way back at blindness being the one handicap pushed to the back burner and you definitely won’t reply or respond in any way. If, on the other hand, your intentions are true, I’d like to thank you for reading all the way through and anxiously await your possible response.
Hi Daniel,
I am a student at McGill University researching the implementation of accessible menus for people with visual disabilities in Montreal. You seem to be (rightly) passionate about accomodation for blind people – would you (or anyone else on this site for that matter) be interested in contributing your opinion to my paper? If so, please send me an email at jennyknoll@gmail.com and we can set up an email or phone interview (whichever you prefer).
Thanks for your interest!
Jenny