Ignored by the left…

LOTS OF PEOPLE DO CARE.REMEMBER THAT.MORE PEOPLE CARE THAN YOU COULD IMAGINE.X

Hello

I work in the social service sector within mental health and learning disabilities.
Over the last year we have seen evermore cuts to peoples services that i feel contravene the human rights act.
I have tried to talk to the Unison union rep about these issues but as most of the management team and union reps are new labour drones this has got me nowhere.

When talking with my fellow workers they do care about the service but feel totally powerless to do something. Most people i work with just see the union as a kind of social club with a few freebies thrown in and are totally alien to industrial action. I have recently joined the Industrial Workers of the World ( IWW ) i hope to seek there advice on these matters.

People do care it's just the spirit of solidarity and militant union action that has been destroyed.
As an anarchist i do feel that that the people in our care are having there freedoms taken away and this saddens me. I guess if you have a disability and can not join the ranks of wage slaves you are less than human and so always have a lower quality of life.
Things need to change.

As I have posted before , this really is the case, with some exceptions, John Mcdonnell, and some welfare rights people in London, and some green party activists, those on welfare benefits, particularly disabled people have been abandoned by the left of all persuasions, and imo, they should be ashamed. Where are the May Day protests against the draconian Welfare Reform Bill which will become law very soon. Millions of the poorest people in the U.K will lose much of their income, some will face losing their homes as housing benefit will be replaced by the bill with a much lower fixed city wide rate. They will have to endure ever intrusive and harsh welfare regimes and possibly face forced medical interventions.Why isn’t Liberty shouting out about this, where are all the civil liberties lot who are so vocal on ID cards for instance. It's time for the wider social movements to stand up and be counted,

I have Asperger's, and have recently been looking into how fighting disablism can be done from an anarchist perspective. At least three quarters of working-age disabled people who are able to work can't find a job, which is entirely the fault of the capitalists and the state (despite having a degree, I've not been able to get into paid work since August).

Add that to the impending cuts in welfare, and there's potential for a new disabled people's movement. If the Disabled People's Direct Action Network (DAN) are still active, then they could call for a demo and pickets of government buildings.

Anarchists care about us. It's just the Leninists that don't, as they probably see it as a 'bourgeois concern', just like all other movements concering minority groups.

In different ways. We tend to support our own first. Those, and I shouldn't say this, but those who can march, be visible, those wheelchairs that can beat the best security, recognise the common causes, we natrally tend to suppor them first.

For me personally, hell is LIS, 'locked in syndrome', the folk who can literally not move a muscle and are mistaken for 'vegetables'. I talked to some of these people. It took them a while to respond. I tried to develop ways to communicate with them. Smarter people got there first and 'patented' their inventions. It is a holistic world. The people who are active against patents are also helping the sick and needy. Anarchism does support the helpless even if it it is indirectly. Everything links up.

Danny, can you imagine what it must be like to be paralysed and mute at the age of 12, removed from your loving parents and Sectioned by those responsible for your “care”?

In this “care”, the sick child was forcibly thrown into a hospital swimming pool with no floating aids because psychiatrists wanted to prove that he could use his limbs and that he would be forced to do so to save himself from drowning. He could not save himself and sank to the bottom of the pool. The terrified child was also dragged out of the hospital ward and taken on a ghost train because psychiatrists were determined to prove that he could speak and they believed he would cry out in fear and panic and this would prove them right. Another part of this “care” included keeping the boy alone in a side-ward and leaving him intentionally unattended for over seven hours at a time with no means of communication because the call bell had been deliberately disconnected. The side-ward was next to the lavatories and the staff believed he would take himself to the lavatory when he was desperate enough. He was unable to do so and wet himself but was left for many hours at a time sitting in urine-soaked clothes in a wet chair. Another part of the “care” involved the child being raced in his wheelchair up and down corridors by a male nurse who would stop abruptly without warning, supposedly to make the boy hold on to the chair sides to prevent himself from being tipped out; he was unable to do so and was projected out of the wheelchair onto the floor, which on one occasion resulted in injury to his back…

See: ‘The case of Ean Proctor’
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/london/2004/01/284021.html?c=on#c85053


Did you know that parents who do their utmost to protect their desperately sick children from being physically and psychologically abused get throw in prison.

See ‘The case of Child X”
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/london/2004/01/284021.html?c=on#c85055


Would you believe me if I said that people with complex and severe life threatening neuro-immunological disorders are getting their front doors smashed in by the Police and getting sectioned under the mental health act. And if their family object, they get threatened with being sectioned too.

It’s all true! See:
 http://www.investinme.org/Article-050%20Sophia%20Wilson%2001.htm

>Danny, can you imagine what it must be like to be paralysed and mute at the age of 12, removed from your loving parents and Sectioned by those responsible for your “care”?

Yeah, sort of, thanks to reading books like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and talking to people much off than I'll ever be. I am just imagining it though not having to live it.

>Would you believe me if I said that people with complex and severe life threatening neuro-immunological disorders are getting their front doors smashed in by the Police and getting sectioned under the mental health act.

Yeah. I knew some kids at school who were sectioned, though by their families. They were funny, smart and normal - when they went in, not when they came out. It was like a warning to the rest of us. That was back in the bad old days of Thatchers Britain, before things went downhill. Listen, I'm sympathetic but busy just now. I'll read your links in full tonight or tommorow and if I can think of anything to do in support then I'll suggest it. And if you suggest an action I'll support it.

One of my best friends has ME and doesn't leave her house much. She has a loving husband and a good life, a horse to ride on etc, chickens to tend, but now her husband is sick with something worse. So it is especially sad to read of Sophia Wilsons case. I do feel a key phrase in that moving testimony is 'She was also badly affected by electromagnetic fields.' I've been reading about EMF since Sophia was a child, I'm sure it is linked to numerous 20th century diseases including ME and childhood leukemia and this being covered up but I don't have time to write about that just now and it would deserve it's own thread. If you do a bit of searching there was a government report on this the government watered down just last week. It is a crying shame.

I’m particularly interested in the possible reasons why these issues are pretty much ignored by the left, and the greens for that matter.

I can't answer for the Greens and the left, but as an individual anarchist I don't feel I do ignore these issues even if I do'nt feel qualified to address them. Sometimes I don't understand these issues, I've never had to navigate a city in a wheelchair for example, I don't know what it is like to be ignored in conversation about me, despite taking an interest where I can I don't even know what all the issues are. There are lot's of issues here that different people seem most drawn to. My own main issue is how to stop my government creating more disabilities in Iraq. I have other interests on the side so to speak, but have known enough activists who suffer more than me and yet achieve more, I would be more than sympathetic, I would be supportive. But you have to educate us before you berate us, a big part of our ignoring these issues is simple, innocent, deadly ignorance on our part.
All I can suggest just now is keep on posting more about this. I'll post an article on the EMF thing eventually unless someone beats me to it. I have posted about the ethics of selective abortion before, about LIS, about EMF and food additives and pesticides, and about one or two other issues I do know about, but despite trying to educate myself and meeting a wide range of people, I am still unconfident on the major issues involved.

We aren't deliberately ignoring the disabled, we are just genuinely ignorant. Fuck, I don't even know if the word 'disabled' is appropriate anymore ?

..when independent media activists become aware of the crime being committed against some of the most vulnerable people in society it may help them link together other areas of concern.

For instance, the nemesis of the ME community is a guy called Prof. Simon Wessley He’s the same bloke how says there is no physical gulf war illness. He’s an apologist for industry and an advisor to the MoD, DoD and Nato. You may have saw him on TV the afternoon of September 11th 2001 being interviewed by (BBC?) news. Oh yeah, and his wife is a senior policy advisor at the DoH..

You may have even come across him or his weasel worded psychobabble when perusing your own investigations, especially the EMF, food additives and pesticides. You may even come across him when investigating “disabilities in Iraq”. And I seem to remember he is sceptical of the detrimental effects of DU and nuclear waste, and as the governments epidemiologist he will almost certainly be advising them on thing such as Bird Flu and Terrorism, etc.

This link  http://www.nato.int/science-old/e/020325-arw2.htm&e=9797 used to work but it didn’t when I just tried it. Nevertheless it should take you to:

'NATO-Russia Advanced Research Workshop on Social and Psychological Consequences of Chemical, Biological, and Radiological Terrorism', Simon Wessely, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (March 25-27, 2002)

I once heard that Peter Power spoke highly of him and I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true. He’s that type of guy, he pops up in all sorts of curious places..

He used to be a regular nobody but then in 1987 he wrote a paper which I think was called ‘Mrs Thatcher and Dementia’, and he rose to prominence almost overnight. I have never been able to find a copy of that paper but I’m told it had something to do with Pinochet.