Some of us get the long guns. I said this in a conversation with another disabled woman in the Accessibility Room at an Active Transportation summit. I was explaining why I believe policing is a vital part of the conversation about accessibility of active transportation and had, specifically sought out presenters to speak about this.…
ableism / accessibility / Cities / Disability / disabled / Human Rights / inclusion / poverty / public policy / Uncategorized
Tick Tock It was thirty seconds to midnight in the life of a bill before becoming a law. Catherine Frazee – in Nova Scotia – contacted me – in British Columbia – with what she called a rough idea. Frazee’s rough ideas are most people’s keynotes. She laid out a plan for a round the…
Remarks prepared for an episode of CBC’s White Coat Black Arts that will not be included in their episode. Hello. My name is Gabrielle Peters and I am a disabled and poor woman. Now that Bill C-7 was given royal ascent I am among the class of humans for whom assisted suicide can be medical…
accessibility / BC Politics / Canadian Politics / Disability / disabled / Health / Human Rights / inclusion / public policy / Uncategorized
The words in the title are literal descriptors not self-pity or encouragement to pity me. Piss, shit and poverty feature prominently in my life. So I thought maybe it was time to write a bit about them and their relevance in discussing what is wrong with the current approach to disability policy by the Canadian federal and BC provincial government.
#inclusion / #poverty / #racism / ableism / Disability / disabled / Health / Healthcare / Journalism / medicine / poverty
3 men talking and now I have 3 minutes Start the clock I’m wondering how privileged and protected you have to be to call our culture death denying People in my world drop dead Fall from the sky Decompose while people walk by No funerals or memorials They are just gone Day I moved in…
Dear Mayor and Council and Appropriate City Staff, Re: Accessibility and Paving of Arbutus Corridor/Greenway I am writing to request you finish paving the Arbutus Greenway area immediately. This is my second letter about this matter. I sent the first in an email on August 11, 2016 to Mayor and Council via the City Clerk’s office but…
Headline: Kim Campbell Calls President Trump A Motherf**ker! The former PM weighs in days after a U.S. congresswoman pledged to help impeach POTUS. Photos of Trump and Kim Campbell This isn’t going to take long because I don’t have all fucking day for this shit. When a wealthy, respected person says motherfucker they are seen…
“You know, that might be the answer – to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That’s a trick that never seems to fail.” – Joseph Heller, Catch-22 “The calculated simulated of enthusiasm…is also common within contemporary culture. In a variety of configurations, the applause sign has become a social principle.” Stuart McEwan, Spin:…
But the point of this post is not accessibility, it is capitalism. Supply and demand. Profit. Mass production. The things that form the economic basis for the society we live in and how items we use and require are produced and distributed…So what happens when all but a minority of people who require them for accessibility stop using plastic bendy straws?
This is the sign you hang on your window when you design to exclude. Inaccessibility is discrimination.
Every year we gather to mourn and every year new names are added and our grief grows.Today we grieve knowing the Canadian state is set to legislate the right to do wrong. Bill C-7 and the amendments to it moves further along fulfilling the eugenics wish list articulated decades ago after the murder of Tracy Latimer by her father Robert Latimer.
Restraints Someone was ill in the washroom I am told. Two women were disinfecting it using UV ‘light – which means one stood holding the control end of a cord and another leaned against a cleaning cart. I said I didn’t mind waiting. “I don’t think you’ll like the smell,” the empty-handed one tells me.…
This is about something very hard to quantify and explain to the hyper-rationalists and proponents of Bill C-7. It is something from my personal journal. I wrote it years ago. I share it now for those who still have enough humanity to understand it.
I know that Bill C7 must be stopped because I know passage of this bill will result in preventable deaths of disabled people. I know this because I know those already happen. I know they already happen because I was almost one of them.
My name is Gabrielle Peters. I am disabled. I am poor. I am poor because I am disabled. Picking who will be poor is a function of society. Bootstrap is a lie. I didn’t choose to be poor. I was not given a choice. Politicians say if disabled people don’t want to be poor we…
