Halifaxgate Continued: The Public Responds

Filed under: Themes, Blind Visionaries

Our discussion on the implications of Halifax, Nova Scotia’s recent decision to stop providing free bus passes to blind people has lead to international conversation. Below are some of the responses we’ve received from the Halifax community and the global community. Respected and gifted people, with and without visual impairment, with and without disability, with and without agenda, have come together to express themselves on this highly complex issue. Scroll down to read opinions from Lee Stringer, Sara Miles, Jeff Moyer, Jackson Hunsicker, an editor from the BBC, and more…

***

“At first glance you might think that this is an issue about the blind, their limitations, their needs, their rightful place in society and so forth.

Or, if you buy into Lori Patterson’s abstract reckoning—that because there are now a more extensive variety of handicapped people using the busses, you can lop off passes for the blind—it’s about quotas.

But at  the heart of this or any social problem the issue is always the same: How are we, in an increasingly textured world, to reasonably exist? How are we to remain human to one another?

So despite whatever else any of us think is being debated here it is really not about the blind, but about us. Because above and beyond whatever else, all social policy is essentially a statement about the kind of people we choose to be.

Arguments about outcomes or incomes, or feasibility or impact are only the workaday noise by which we avoid the search of our souls demanded by the bottom line question: Do we or do we not want to be the kind of people who would give a ride to a blind person?

So, everyone. Stop talking. Ask yourself that question and go with your instincts. This is and has always been how we continue to reasonably exist, to remain human to one another: we just keep at it.”

Written by Lee Stringer—Lee lived on the streets from the early eighties until the mid-nineties, and is a former editor and columnist of Street News. His essays and articles have appeared in The Nation, The New York Times, and Newsday, to name a few. He is the critically-acclaimed author of “Grand Central Winter: Stories from the Street,” “Like Shaking Hands With God: A Conversation About Writing” (with Kurt Vonnegut), and “Sleepaway School,” a memoir. He lives in Mamaroneck, New York.

Visit Lee’s site. Read Lee on Irked.

***

“I heard about the Halifax Regional Municipality reversing the policy: How low can they go… What’s next, they’re going to tax guide dogs and blind cane users!!! Maybe the people who made this decision should go blind for a day and ride the bus and see what happens after that!!! It’s too bad the city had to go this far to get attention, what goes around comes around…

Here is my update on my speed skating. This season I have won 5 gold and 3 silver medals against able-bodied speed skaters. I’m off to Richmond, British Columbia for the Masters International Championship Feb 20-22nd. I am the only disabled skater at this event.

Cheers,

Kevin Frost

P.S. In March I will be training with the Canadian Adaptive Rowing Team. I am ranked 4th in Canada, and I hope to make the cut for the Poland World Games for Aug 2009.”

Written by Kevin Frost—Kevin lives with Usher’s Syndrome type 2, and is both deaf (15% hearing, 90 decibels) and blind (8% tunneled vision). He is known in Canada and around the world as The Deaf-Blind Speed Skater. He believes and KNOWS that his dream and goal to be the first Deafblind speed skater to achieve a winning medal at the Olympics will one day come true.

Visit Kevin’s site. Read Kevin on Irked.

***

“The whole idea that governments can objectively decide who ‘deserves’ certain benefits leads to this kind of insanity, where one group of disabled people is pitted against another. I mean, who among us ‘deserves’ clean drinking water, or education, or food, or medical care, or shelter, or transportation? It shouldn’t be a matter of deserving: these are universal human needs.

Either governments provide these benefits for all, in recognition of the inextricable bonds of the common good, or they wind up parsing and choosing in ways that are inevitably unfair. Does a poor blind old woman deserve more help than a poor quadriplegic teenage boy? Does a rich blind child deserve more help than an unemployed sighted mother of four? Does a blind refugee with TB deserve more help than a blind citizen with AIDS?

All aboard the bus.”

Written by Sara Miles—Sara is the critically-acclaimed author of “Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion,” “How to Hack a Party Line: The Democrats and Silicon Valley,” and co-editor of “Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan” and the anthology “Opposite Sex.” Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Out, The Progressive, La Jornada, and Salon, among others. She has written extensively on military affairs, politics and culture. The founder of St. Gregory’s Food Pantry, she lives in San Francisco with her family.

Visit Sara’s site. Visit her Food Pantry. Read Sara on Irked.

***

“I am still disappointed that transit has taken the passes from us, but like I explained to Ryan [Baker, reporting for the Halifax Commoner], the issue is very touchy. I see both sides of the issue, the other disabled groups feeling that we have a privilege that they do not, and I see the side of the blind community, that this is our way of travel. Not having the bus pass is going to make commuting a great deal more difficult for some individuals, but we are a tough and strong community, and will get through this. I am not losing faith in either transit or CNIB that eventually there may be a compromise, but do not have any such information about if that will be taking place.”

Written by Jennifer MacNeil—Jennifer is visually impaired, and coordinator of Halifax’s youth chapter of the Canadian Council for the Blind (CCB).

Visit the CCB site.

***

“This is a complex matter. Here are my thoughts:

Blindness presents many barriers to independence, mobility being one of the most critical. Public transportation becomes the primary means of mobility for education, employment, recreation and other personal requirements. People with visual disabilities experience one of the highest unemployment rates of any disabled group as well, making even bus fare a consequential expense. Reduction or elimination of standard bus fares has been a time-honored and widely-adopted means of providing easier access to this essential service to those most dependent upon it and yet least capable of affording it.

Raising the fare for blind passengers presents a barrier in a time when barriers physical, attitudinal and monetary should be reduced.

You know, for blind folks that are working and can afford full fare, this accommodation is refusable. That is a key element as well.

Not all people with visual disabilities are unemployed and many might be able to afford full fare. For those individuals, the reduced fare provision has always been a refusable accommodation—one of the aspects of societal adaptations to disability that work the best. But to deny this simple and useful reduction in cost to the many can only be described as mean-spirited and heavy-handed.”

Written by Jeff Moyer—Jeff is blind, and a hero and living legend in the world of human rights and disability culture. He fights the good fight. He rises to occasions, speaks tirelessly on behalf of the voiceless and the visionless, and champions a Fully Accessible World. He’s also a phenomenally-talented singer-songwriter, and has even performed with the great Peter Yarrow. Oh yeah…and in 1990, Jeff performed at the United States Senate following the signing of The Americans With Disabilities Act.

Visit Jeff’s site. Read Jeff on Irked.

BONUS! Click to hear Jeff’s “The ADA Anthem”: 

***

“Canada, in many ways, has always held up a mirror to the United States, a micro-mirror, showing us our flaws and warts. Not in this case. Not in Nova Scotia’s decision to start charging the visually impaired for bus passes. There are many other ways the municipality can save money, raise money. Get busy Nova Scotia, start thinking outside the box. How about a municipal lottery, 50 cents a ticket at a chance of winning a month/yearly pass? Or how about raising the price of a ticket 5 cents? Good Golly. Get busy. We need you down here as a country to still look up to. Don’t let us down.”

Written by Jackson Hunsicker—Jackson has worked for the Associated Press, was a field producer for PBS-CPB and wrote for television and film. She also directed two children’s films—The Frog Prince starring Helen Hunt, and Oddball Hall with Burgess Meredith and Don Ameche. In the mid-90s, she invented “Memo-Mate,” a digital recording device you attach to your keychain that was an Infomercial phenomenon (Memo-Mate even found its way into a skit on the David Letterman Show). Then cancer and recovery came along. So did hair loss, hats, wigs, bandanas—and, eventually, Jackson’s breathtaking coffee table book “Turning Heads: Portraits of Grace, Inspiration, and Possibilities.” She lives in Los Angeles.

Visit Jackson’s site. Read Jackson on Irked.

***

On the complexity of being a blind traveller, the editor of BBC Ouch told Irked:

“People often make the mistake of thinking blind people don’t have mobility problems. Technically there’s nothing wrong with our legs, we can walk well enough. But we are ‘information impaired’ in the travel area. Basically speaking, we can’t read road signs, commit all routes we might need to memory, or find someone to train us on all the routes we will ever need—least alone own a car. That means we have to take public transport more than your average … not necessarily because of physical inability to walk, but because the bus travels down designated routes and has designated bus stops that the driver or on-board accessible system will announce. So, in short, buses help us know where we are. They’re a navigation aid helping to mitigate the lack of roadsign and route information we have due to the fact we can’t see.”

Written by the editor of BBC Ouch—Ouch is a BBC website with an aim to reflect the lives of disabled people right here and now in the third millennium. Ouch has articles, blogs, a very busy messageboard and an award-winning downloadable radio show, The Ouch Podcast.

Visit the BBC Ouch site.

***

“I have used adapted transport for a number of years. In the region of Quebec that I live in there is no public transit. I have MS and at one time I did own a van that I drove. It was equipped with hand controls. As my disease progressed I found I could no longer operate the vehicle safely. Adapted transport in the Laurentians of Quebec covers a huge geographical area. Costs to users are kept to a minimum. I am able to travel a round trip distance of about 80 kilometres for $10. If I could not afford to pay, my ride would cost me nothing. Individuals who would otherwise not be able to go to exercise classes and at the same time be able to get out of their homes and socialize are thus able to.

If the income level of blind users of mass transit in the Halifax area [and Canada] is far below that of the average person, certainly there could be a way of granting free bus passes to those who can show that the extra cost of a pass would be a true burden.

I do not believe this is a matter of ’showing pity’ for a certain group of people, but more to the point showing a little humanity—something which is often sadly lacking in the bureaucratic coldness of government officials at all levels.”

Written by Brian Segal—Brian was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis about 18 years ago. His humour, wit, and gumption are sharp as knives, and he is one of Irked’s most cherished, most prolific writers. He is happily married, has a very friendly and extremely cute husky cross named Shadow, and lives in the country north of Montréal (amid the magnificent Laurentian Mountains).

Read Brian on Irked.

***

“I am sorry to hear that Halifax, Nova Scotia is attempting to save money by penalizing and pushing blind citizens back into lives of isolation for lack of transportation. Worse yet is the concept of setting up a kind of competition for resources among different disabled groups. It will be tragic if losing this resource limits participation in public life by low income blind and visually impaired citizens.”

Written by Lynne Murray—Lynne is the critically-acclaimed author of the Josephine Fuller Mystery Series. She’s constantly writing fiction, essays or book reviews, and working at her day job—providing editing and office support services privately and through Tigerfish.

Visit Lynne’s site. Read Lynne on Irked.

***

“At the National Autism Research Symposium in Toronto (ON) in November 2007, [it was] reported that unemployment and underemployment is as staggeringly high for people with Autism Spectrum Disorders, including Asperger Syndrome, as it is for people who are blind. (Source: Neglected or Hidden, a study by Alar Prost and David Redmond in collaboration with the Canadian Abilities Foundation)

Because of issues and co-morbidities associated with Autism, many Autistics cannot drive cars just as people who are blind cannot drive cars.

Autism is permanent and life-long just like blindness can be permanent and life-long. The major difference is that a person with a visible disability like blindness is way more likely to be hired for a job than a person with an invisible disability like Autism, because Autism is misrepresented by the media so much that people think Autistics are violent and weird and scary. No one thinks blind people are scary just because they’re blind.

That being said, with the economy being as bad as it is and projected to get worse, it doesn’t make any sense to put another obstacle in blind people’s lives whether they are living in Halifax or anywhere else.

From a socialization aspect, isolation is never good. Let’s face it. Even a big city can be isolationary when residents can’t be the masters of their own lives and yes, using the bus to get to meetings, appointments, jobs, grocery shopping and more means that you are, definitely, the master of your own life.

However, maybe there’s a compromise here.

Maybe Metro Transit could charge a sliding scale amount in keeping with the incomes of people who are getting these free bus passes until the end of June. That way, people who need subsidized bus passes can feel good about contributing some money to buying a bus pass while people who can afford to buy a bus pass outright can have the pride of being self-sufficient.”

Written by Lewis Schofield—Lewis is a truly awesome young person. He’s a professional kid with Asperger’s and cool ideas. Several years ago, Lewis declared that “just because I have an alphabet soup of disorders doesn’t mean that I am alphabet soup.” That’s when we asked him to be Irked’s one-and-only Alphabet Souperintendent. Lewis has Asperger Syndrome and a lot of other disabilities like Anxiety Disorder, Sensory Integration Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Learning Disabilities, Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities, Severe Allergies and Asthma. He also has Myasthenia Gravis.

Visit Lewis’ site. Read Lewis on Irked.

***

“The unemployment rate for blind Canadians is atypically high. And anyone who has ever tried to budget prudently knows that $60 a month is a lot of money to pull out of thin air. Something’s gotta give.

The main reason for Metro Transit’s decision to stop providing free bus passes to visually impaired Haligonians is that the city’s new accessible buses make public transit available to people with other disabilities. The Halifax Regional Municipality is using accessible buses as political fodder against disabled people! They’re claiming that ‘other groups claimed the benefit was unfair and threatened legal action.’ Picture it: a major Canadian city, cowering in the face of being sued by anonymous disability groups—for something it’s doing right. So instead of adding civil rights, Halifax is subtracting them. That’s ass-backwards. That’s effete. That’s regressive.

‘We’re just trying to be fair to everybody,’ says Lori Patterson on behalf of the city.

Self-evidence 1: The only way we’re going to improve is if we actually go out and get better.

Self-evidence 2: Unless we change the direction we are headed, we might end up where we are going.”

Written by Sacha Vais—editor @ Irked.

***

Any thoughts on this? What do you think about this issue? Please leave a comment below, and help enrich this dialogue!

Permalink / Comments