Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
“On a scale of one to 10…” By Joe Rosenbaum
At a CIDNY writing workshop we gather together to write in a supportive environment. When we are about to begin our writing the workshop leader, Avra, gives us a 'prompt' (a few key words to start our writing). We have 20 minutes to write. The 'prompt' for what follows was: “On a scale of one to 10..."
A table, a chair, alone
"Most importantly, the value of home health care lies chiefly in the social relationships between caregivers and recipients. Physical care sustains our biological existence as human beings, but caring
relationships maintain our humanity." Deborah Stone, "Reframing Home Health-Care Policy"
How to value what we, you, and I cannot see? If it happens that way to you, can the same thing happen to me? If it happens to me could it happen to you?
It was a warm summer day yet the hospital room seemed so cold. So big, too big for one person. A concrete floor. A bright light. Sunlight streaming through one relatively small window.
A table, a chair, alone.
As I walked into the room I saw Dorothy as she looked out over the
edge of the bed at the floor.
"Help me."
"Help me."
"Please, help me."
It was only me, unseen, but I had heard her voice, her plea, her cry.
"I'm here," I said. "It's Joey."
I didn't say, but I meant: "You don't have to feel helpless now."
"I want to get off the bed," she said.
The tubes going in and the tubes going out. Where was the helper to help her, to help her to cope, to help her to get off the bed?
Was it necessary? Could it be done? Was it worth helping an old lady after surgery?
What does it cost to help an old lady? How much hope is lost in the world by not helping her?
If you cast hopelessness in to the world how much will the ripple effect change the life of those it reaches? How much hopelessness creates despair?
Dorothy leaned out over the edge of the bed:
Where am I now?
How can I get my life back?
Who will help me?
Who knows who I am?
What can we do?
What was she given? Without the reflection of another person, would there be life after an accident? Will only half of life be given back now, given up to all those given something?
On a scale of one to 10, the first parts, the one to five, was done, was begun, but on this scale: 6 to ten gives back our humanity.
On a scale of one to ten, if she was given five, not to lose the five, she needed six to 10. For, as Dorothy said at her birthday party, "The kindest gift you can give to an old person is to let them know you remember them."
But to give that, to restore our humanity, to heal, was to fulfill the meaning of our lives...To be only onesid(e(ed)) was to now be half-hearted for an old person wanting to be whole again, a person.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Ode to the ADA
There was a very popular restaurant that attracted many.
Families flocked there to sample specials.
Couples reserved tables to enjoy drinks and appetizers for two.
Business people gathered, as well, to celebrate promotions
and for all sorts of ballyhoo.
But for those who used wheelchairs, a cane or a crutch,
Enjoying the atmosphere and savoring the cuisine
Presented an unwelcome test --
In the form of a dreaded mountain of steps.
Oh, in the early days, some were willing to accept a “lift”
No matter the safety risk,
Or the dent to their dignity.
That was a price some would pay,
All for the chance to join in the festivities.
But then came the ADA --
The most powerful legislation in our history –
Specifically crafted to protect the civil rights of people with disabilities.
Although neither a quick nor easy task,
To the dilemma of this inaccessible place
We applied the tenets of the ADA.
Indeed, according to the law,
Under what we’ve come to know as Title III,
Equal access to goods and services cannot be denied.
Everyone has a right to participate –
Yes, that’s right – Even people with disabilities.
And so it is to this very day.
The steps have vanished in favor of a beautiful ramp.
People looking for a bite to eat or thirsty for a drink
Continue to rush in.
And among them are all kinds,
Including those with disabilities.
Thanks to ADA, the landscape has begun to change.
Of course, there are many mountains left to climb,
But armed with the certainty of our equal rights,
We shall prevail –
One barrier at a time.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
In Celebration of the ADA
My battle began in 1998 when I sued the New York City public schools in federal court for disability discrimination in employment. I had been hit by the polio virus in 1954 when I was an infant. Prior to the ADA, I had tried unsuccessfully to become regularly employed. But when my employers saw that I fell, they quickly let me go. Then the ADA was passed into law on July 26, 1990, and my life changed. On August 1, 1990, I moved across the country to Rochester, New York, and was hired to work as a day-to-day substitute teacher in the Rochester city public schools. The person who handled my job application stated that the law required her to hire me because I was qualified. My work experience led the state to assist me in getting teacher certified, and that is how I came to work for the New York City public schools as a high school teacher.
Imagine that you are in my situation. You have accumulated a student loan debt of over $24,000 in order to get teacher certified. You participate in an oral selection process that measures your professional knowledge to be a public school teacher in a large urban school district. Because of your score, you are provided a city license for a tenure-track position and placed on a list of qualified applicants who are randomly selected for job offers. After you are hired, you are required to complete a written medical examination. You are asked about past hospitalizations, medical, surgical, and trauma history. You had undergone several major surgeries as a child in order to make it easier for you to ambulate. You are not aware that your employer may be discriminating under the ADA by asking for such information. In fact, you could have brought a disparate impact discrimination class-action suit against your employer based on testimony provided you later in federal court. You fill out your portion of the form honestly, your doctor fills out his portion of the form, and you deliver it to the employer’s medical department.
Your supervisor provides you with a reasonable accommodation of one classroom and asks you to request permission for its continued use. You don’t know that this is unnecessary according to the employer’s own procedures. You file a written accommodation request personally with the employer’s medical department and provide documentary evidence of your history of a disability in order that the request will not be denied. What you don’t know is that your employer has a non-transparent and unwritten policy to terminate city licensees for medical reasons. So, without your knowledge, your status has been demoted and you are now a regular substitute teacher working in the same school at the same job. This provides you with less job protections. Had you known that this had occurred, you could have filed a disparate treatment class-action suit against your employer for violating the ADA’s provisions regarding medical examinations and inquiries. Your supervisor gives you a satisfactory evaluation for the semester, but you have lost seniority and are transferred to another school. You are told that the reason for your transfer is “budget considerations.”
At the new school, you are terminated at the conclusion of the school year for poor classroom management and ineffective instruction. You believe that your supervisors actually terminated you because you complained to your union and to the medical department about their disparate treatment of you and their failure to provide you with a reasonable accommodation. You file a discrimination charge with a federal agency. Several months later, you learn that your employer terminated your city license. You are under the mistaken impression that your license was illegally terminated after you filed a charge of disability discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The employer denies terminating your license in court, but its own administrative agents attest in documents that the license was terminated. The employer argues that the administrators are mistaken.
This is what happened to me. Because I could not find an attorney, I have been representing myself in the federal court in Brooklyn for nearly thirteen years. The judges were antagonistic, and at one point my trial judge accused me of wanting privileges because of my disability. Then in 2005 administrators (who were responsible for the adverse decisions regarding the termination of my license) made incriminating statements. After winning an appeal in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, I have asked the district court to certify my claims as a class-action suit whose members are potentially all teachers who must undergo a medical examination by my employer.
No doubt the employer will state that at least one of my claims (medical inquiry into past hospitalizations) was not filed within 300 days of the time that I learned of the practice and therefore is untimely. However, on May 24, 2010, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Lewis v. City of Chicago (case involving African-American firefighters) that in disparate impact discrimination claims the use of the discriminatory practice is relevant. The City of Chicago had argued that the relevant time period was when the plaintiffs first learned of the discriminatory practice.
Maryam (Maya) Ayazi
Elmhurst, New York
