A Promise and a Plan

“Americans with intellectual and developmental disabilities historically have been shuttled far from society’s mainstream into segregated lives and workplace serfdom, earning wages as low as pennies per hour for the most repetitive and menial jobs. The Supreme Court in 1999 pronounced this kind of treatment a civil rights violation under the Americans With Disabilities Act, but abuse and isolation from society have continued to this day…….The need to end the economic servitude and social exile of people with disabilities has long been clear. The Providence agreement is a promising but overdue starting point”
New York Times Editorial Board
Published 4/11/2014

And here we have it – could have been written by Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1954. It puts the issue of the segregation of people with disabilities in the area of work firmly in the arena of civil and human rights, and out of the “this is the best we can do, as a society, for those people” mindset. Bravo NYT. You can read the entire editorial here, which applauds the planning and care with which the state of Rhode Island is approaching the issue of moving towards positive futures and meaningful days for people with disabilities.

This is a story that has been growing and gaining momentum over time. The National Disability Rights Network unveiled one of the worst recent atrocities around the bondage of devalued people in the past decade in their 2011 report.

This story, of 60 men with disabilities freed from an institution in Texas only to be (one can only say) enslaved and exploited at Henry’s Turkey Farm in Atalissa, Iowa, for decades, was brought to life in the accompanying film “The Men of Atalissa” a few months ago. You can view the film here.

Alongside this vivid portrait came a national outcry and commitment to close sheltered workshops, with a predictable and understandable backlash of “Isn’t the workshop better than sitting at home all day?” I suppose it could be so, for some people.

Some of the great teachings I hold to (and credit Social Role Valorization principles for) includes two that are relevant here: First, all of us humans, in the face of complexity, tend to resort to either/or thinking, losing site of all the possibilities between either and or. So it has to be sitting at home OR in the sheltered workshop. Along with this comes an associated fear that the sheltered workshops may transition into adult day programs, often another repository for people to experience intense segregation all day long, and for life.

Second, we should be mindful of stripping roles away from people (even negative roles like eternal workshop client) without focusing on carefully constructed new and positive roles for people to move into. This means we had better be focused on crafting what should be, rather than just eliminating what should not be. Both these teachings apply here, and we can be cautiously optimistic about the way Rhode Island is approaching this – planning for individualized employment and job development, preventing continued segregation in day programs, and setting strong expectations that include a firm trajectory towards career and a meaningful post-school life starting young for people with disabilities and their families. We are watching you, Rhode Island, show us the path. We have the promise, and we have a reasonable plan.