Right from the Berkeley, CA Center for Independent Living CIL start by Ed Roberts, the Independent Living (IL) movement was never as inclusive in the lived experience of disability or cognizance and inclusion of differing lived experiences of people with different types of and degrees of impairment of functioning in the performance of major life activities (disability), of early organizers. The organizer Ed Roberts was remembered in a 2013 tweet, sharing links to blog posts.
Demands for social change were always more exclusive
There now exists over 2,000 Centers for Independent Living in the United States alone. The core Service provided under the Rehab Act include, transition for people leaving nursing homes and youth, information and referral, independent living skills training, peer counseling, and advocacy.
than the inclusivity of the rhetoric, used to organize people, by groups like the Berkeley, CA CIL, and ADAPT (Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation and Americans Disabled for Attendant Programs Today), as well as the EnDependence Center of Northern Virginia. Psychiatric hospitals were rarely considered as equal institutions (compared with nursing homes and developmental disability 'residential treatment centers') to transition their residents out of into community with financial aid paying the costs individuals with disabilities could not pay of inclusive living in communities of a person's choosing. A state (commonwealth) of Virginia legislative honorary bill acknowledged the movement connections between the Berkeley, CA CIL and the EnDependence Center of Northern Virginia.
People with SPMI/consumer-survivors/behavioral and mental health issues were left out in demands of activists and in representation. Compounding the injustice was the federal funding (lobbied for by National Council for Independent Living NCIL) for Centers for Independent Living CILS (at least one in all 50 USA states totalling 2,000 by 2013) that rarely served needs of people with disabilities (#PwDs) living with any type of disability unrelated to eye, ear, spine and mobility impairments as well as intellectual and (not or) developmental disabilities.
Wellness and recovery centers aka peer-run/consumer-survivor run 'clubhouse model' drop-in centers were ignored by NCIL lobbying for CIL designation and funding streams.
This document from California in 2011 stated specifically the purpose of wellness and recovery centers was to attempt to do more for as many, if not more, people with less money.
In northeast California, mostly counties around Sacramento, this link describes patients' rights services and consumer-run programs run under contract since 2007.
New York State brands, by naming the state agency administering the distribution of money, the mission of public mental health system treatment to helping people recover from addiction to alcohol and other substances.
Sidebars on the site about Recovery Oriented System of Care ROSC with links to core values, recovery coaching with costs shifted from the state to private individuals and groups thereof, and public resources link elsewhere.
The Copeland Center that designed an individual plan for maintaining wellness and recovery as well as curricula for training people how to help others to write their own plans begins a summary of WRAP (wellness and recovery action plans) by describing they are based on "the principle of self-determination."
The Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP®) is a personalized wellness and recovery system born out of and rooted in the principle of self-determination. WRAP® is a wellness and recovery approach that helps people to: 1) decrease and prevent intrusive or troubling feelings and behaviors; 2) increase personal empowerment; 3) improve quality of life; and 4) achieve their own life goals and dreams. Working with a WRAP® can help individuals to monitor uncomfortable and distressing feelings and behaviors and, through planned responses, reduce, modify, or eliminate those feelings. A WRAP® also includes plans for responses from others when an individual cannot make decisions, take care of him/herself, and/or keep him/herself safe.
The Berkeley, CA CIL started by Ed Roberts, among others, grounded what became the Independent Living IL movement and its Centers for Independent Living CILS (supported by the
National Council for Independent Living NCIL) in the same "principle of self-determination" while never meaningfully working together particularly to jointly advocate for funding (expand the 1974 Rehab Act funding stream to state and local governments) local CILS for people with intellectual and physical disabilities as well as wellness and recovery 'drop-in' or 'clubhouse model' centers for people living with mental illness.
more examples (not a complete list) of DC, VA and MD peer-run facilities serving people who the Independent Living (IL) movement left behind in the most meaningful way of shared advocacy for a common funding stream:
Silver Spring Wellness and Recovery Center 1400 Spring Street (formerly at 7961 Eastern Ave and 700 Roeder Rd under Affiliated Sante Group/Rock Creek Foundation staffing or at least space rental costs) Silver Spring
On Our Own wellness and recovery center 434 East Diamond Ave Gaithersburg
as one of many On Our Own wellness and recovery centers in Maryland ignored in the CIL designation and funding stream process supported nationally by NCIL
SMILE Center 7611 Little River Turnpike (VA route 236) suite E-100 Annandale formerly located at 6245 King Street (VA route 7) Bailey's Crossroads. Organizational move may have been based on lower commercial rent even to a nonprofit.
Laurie Mitchell Employment Center 6295 Edsall Rd Alexandria near Service Source formerly Fairfax Opportunities Unlimited
lmec.org is the direct web site but it wasn't online as of Sept 15, 2017. lmecc.org wasn't online either. Three links in first mention of name describe LMECC (Laurie Mitchell Employment and Empowerment Center) services. Maybe if NCIL lobbied for funding, after designation as a CIL, then LMECC would at least be able to maintain a web site improving its communication accessibility to provide services to people or stay in operation, if LMEC or LMECC has closed by 2017, as the Green Door in Washington D.C. closed in 2010.
The National Consumers Self-Help Clearinghouse links to peer-run drop in centers for people with SPMI that were probably also ignored in the CIL designation and funding process lobbied for by NCIL. Self-help is useless without financial aid in paying the costs of help, in money and in time to develop skills to make what one cannot afford the 'market price' of, an individual in need cannot pay.
The exclusion of people recovering from SPMI was worsened by a misperception
Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
His assassination attempt - and the outcome of his trial - sparked a visceral sense of outrage among the American public.
"There was a lot of shock, there was anger," recalled Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University, to CBS News' Jake Miller in 2015.
"Reagan himself talked about how the law was too easy on criminals and this played right into that. There were many people who were skeptical that insanity was a legitimate defense after an assassination attempt on the American president. ... I think the popular assumption is if you try to assassinate the president - and actually shoot the president - you're gonna be in jail for life."
that John Hinckley, Jr 'got off' or 'cheated justice' with his not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) defense for trying to murder former President Ronald Reagan 2 months after he was inaugurated (March 30, 1981). Maryland, as an example, changed its law to regard someone 'not criminally responsible' rather than not guilty.
Advocacy for continued confinement continued in 2015
until his release to his parents (class and race privilege they were still able to fill a caregiving role replacing public funds for other caregivers) in 2016.
John Hinckley, Jr's release terms were loosened further by November 2018. Treatment for mental illnesses works. Mental illness/psychiatric symptoms/traits (anxiety and depression) are co-occurring/co-morbid with developmental disabilities like autism. A person should not be prevented from accessing treatment by inadequate public funding (if the person and their family isn't rich enough to pay privately) to provide long term supports and services delivered in home and community based settings, until the criminal justice system becomes involved. Private service providers (government contractors) rely existentially on public funding to provide most of the services.
Inability to determine a consistent 'metric of disability' impairing individual abilities to perform major life activities as well as recognize the difference between illegal behavior and legal behavior, for people living with an intellectual or psychiatric/mental health disability, led to executions despite questionable individual competency.
By 2007 Andrew J. Imparato in "Disability Rights and the Death Penalty" tried to protect people with mobility, sensory and cognitive/intellectual disabilities from the same stigma that kills 'political will' for social safety net funding. That funding pays the costs of inclusive community living that people cannot pay themselves in money or in time to make what they cannot afford to buy quickly enough to meet individual needs.
[link dead by 2017 copy and paste from previous page view added. TLDR (too long don't read) in reader's judgment of a problem - inclusion to communicate ideas is not the writer's problem - if one keeps reading by scrolling down the page.]
www.narpa.org/disabilityrightsandthedeathpenalty.htm
Disability Rights and the Death Penalty
By Andrew J. Imparato
Last Friday, ABC World News Tonight with Charles Gibson covered the South Dakota murder trial of Daphne Wright, a deaf woman whose attorney is arguing that she should not be subject to the death penalty because of difficulties she will experience in understanding the trial and communicating with jurors in the sentencing phase. The Wright case raises the question, as the ABC website put it, "Should the Deaf get Death?"
In the 2002 case of Atkins v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court held that executing a person with an intellectual disability violates the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution's prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment." In overturning a 1989 ruling that had upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty for defendants with intellectual disabilities, the Court noted that evolving standards of decency had led them to question whether executing people with intellectual disabilities would serve the purposes of deterrence or retribution for criminal behavior. The Court also questioned the capacity of defendants with intellectual disabilities to get a fair trial or to provide adequate assistance to their counsel.
This term, the Court is considering whether to extend the holding of Atkins and other cases to prohibit executions of some convicted criminals with psychiatric disabilities. In the case of Panetti v. Quarterman, the Supreme Court is considering the question: "Does the Eighth Amendment permit the execution of a death row inmate who has a factual awareness of the reason for his execution but who, because of a severe mental illness, has a delusional belief as to why the State is executing him, and thus does not appreciate that his execution is intended to seek retribution for his capital crime?"
Although there are many good reasons to take the position that the death penalty should be ruled unconstitutional across the board, the recent trend of identifying classes of disabled defendants for whom the practice should be considered unconstitutional is troubling. When we make arguments that people with mental or sensory disabilities should not be subjected to the death penalty because they cannot understand the consequences of their actions or they are inherently incapable of making an effective defense, we reinforce society's tendency to underestimate the capacity of people with disabilities to make choices for themselves and live with the consequences of those choices.
Artificially low expectations can make it more difficult for disabled individuals to obtain employment, obtain custody of a child in the wake of a divorce, adopt a child, and lead a life characterized by self determination, equal opportunity, and some degree of freedom. Historically, governments have tried to limit the ability of people with a variety of disabilities to marry, have children, own property, vote, drive a car, and engage in other life activities that many people take for granted. Thanks to laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act, these kinds of discriminatory legal prohibitions are less common. Nonetheless, unnecessarily negative and paternalistic attitudes about people with disabilities are still alive and well.
To be sure, there are serious problems with how our justice system fails to accommodate the needs of criminal defendants with disabilities. In the 2004 case of Tennessee v. Lane, a criminal defendant in a wheelchair had to fight all the way to the Supreme Court to force the State of Tennessee to acknowledge its obligation to hold its proceedings in an accessible courtroom. In the context of deaf and hard of hearing defendants, many jurisdictions fail to provide qualified sign language interpreters, real time captioning, and other accommodations that would ensure effective communication for the defendant at every stage in the criminal justice system. Moreover, these failures can and should be taken into account in determining whether the defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial has been violated.
However, when defense lawyers argue that deaf people should be categorically exempted from the death penalty, I am concerned that they are exploiting unrealistically low expectations about deaf people, and their arguments can set back the cause of disability rights.
[3/22/07]
Source: Andrew J. Imparato, AAPD
Andrew Imparato relied on the 'presumed competence' 'meme,' developed to oppose "artificially low expectations," reminiscent of 2000 Presidential candidate George W. (nicknamed "W" or Bush 43) Bush's Philadelphia Republican National Convention speech reference to the "soft bigotry of low expectations," to justify equally severe punishments for people with and without disabilities (the death penalty) who are convicted of aggravated and premeditated murders with no mitigating circumstance (such as disability preventing self-regulation of 'knowing legal from illegal behavior') or demonstrating remorse.
That 'presumed competence' 'meme' later supported the Margaret 'Jenny' Hatch court precedent regarding the sharing of authority by guardians with the person with a disability under guardianship called supported decision-making. Jenny Hatch's attorney Jonathan Martinis, who won the Jenny Hatch case, moved on to direct the USDHHS Administration on Community Living-funded National Resource Center for Supported Decision-Making.
No money for promulgating the new precedent or helping others with further grants replicate it for their own lives is clearly available after Jenny Hatch's civil rights law 'test case' was decided in her favor. Other people with disabilities struggle in poverty trying to 'make their own way' 'in the world.' And the precedent directly applies to people with intellectual disabilities further complicating fiscal support of replication for people with other types of disabilities.
Imparato's testimony in July 2007
Hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee
“Community Services and Supports: Planning Across the Generations”
July 10, 2007
Testimony of Andrew J. Imparato
President and Chief Executive Officer
American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD)
similarly left many people with disabilities behind by ignoring people with mental/behavioral/psychiatric illness in his examples to illustrate inadequate funding to help people live in communities of their own choosing undermining the inclusiveness of the 'cross-disability' mission of AAPD and its allies in the Independent Living IL movement. Mental/behavioral/psychiatric illness can often be dual diagnoses or co-occur or be intersectional with developmental disabilities (including Autism Spectrum Disorder ASD) with degrees of intellectual disability too low for eligibility criteria for publicly-funded social safety net services. Perhaps Imparato ignored the consumer/survivor and other parts of the mental health community because of stigma that killed 'political will' to overcome bipartisan social liberalism and fiscal conservatism (neoliberalism and neoconservatism, market anarchism, left libertarianism, pre-Keynes 'classical liberal' economics views against deficit spending, 'independent' and other political partisan 'labels' intersectional with voting for mostly Republican or Libertarian-leaning candidates in elections).
By 2014 a #scotus case disputed but ultimately upheld
the 2003 Atkins vs. Virginia outright ban on executing people with intellectual disability (formerly known as mental retardation in 2003) by inconsistent standards of medically diagnosing ('labeling') a person as living with intellectual disability formerly known as (FKA) mental retardation. Disputes from the 2014 case will continue to misinform public policy and law to further harm the interests of people with all types of disabilities to live in communities of their own choosing by restraining the growth of public sector spending to levels inadequate to meet the needs of people with all types of disabilities. The private sector and 'individual and community resilience' cannot adequately substitute for the lack of adequate public sector spending to pay the costs of inclusion in communities of individuals' choosing that individuals cannot pay.
The disabled (#PwD-led or 'self-advocacy') and disability 'identity politics' communities (civil rights act protected classes under local, state and federal levels of civil rights law) are not healthy communities for all choosing voluntarily to participate in them. The disabled community-led ('self') advocacy and disability 'identity politics' communities (civil rights law protected classes at all levels of government) will not be healthy communities for all people choosing voluntarily to participate in them unless and until the person with disability-led 'self-advocacy' community rhetoric of inclusion matches the demands for a better social safety net. That better social safety net would pay the costs of inclusion, that people cannot pay themselves in money or time, for truly all people with disabilities regardless of type of disability and intensity of need/degree of impairment performing major life activities as the federal ADA and local and state disability civil rights laws broadly define them.
