Just putting this up as a note. Because I’ve checked in and haven’t heard/seen anything on Day 4. And dang it, I want another good pre-packaged letter I can send to my duly elected congress critters, to let them know how unhappy I am, without all the hard work of being truly unhappy myself.
I’ll delete this at the first sign that it needs deleting. Anyone know what’s up?
Update [2005-12-15 15:24:47 by BostonJoe]:Mischief managed — please unrecommend this diary. I don’t want to snuff out various conversations, so I won’t delete it. And go check out Susanhu’s, and send off some letters and spread the world to the blogosphere at large.
Tell your Senators, no to Alito:
Save the Court Petition
And while you’re at it: sign Planned Parenthood’s anti-Alito petition, too:
Planned Parenthood Petition
NARAL is shooting for 500,000 signatures, please add yours:
Naral Anti-Alito Petition
Campus Progress’ “Stop Alito’s America” Campaign
Stop Alito’s America Petition
And don’t forget: urge Congress to support Plan B:
Plan B Petition
And for those of you “tired” of this action — apparently, others aren’t: from 2 to 20 Kossaks contact their senators to protest Alito’s nomination every time I post it.
(And through actions like this, Save the Court has prompted nearly 55,000 citizens to contact their Senators to protest Alito.)
I also get thanks from those new to the site, because they didn’t otherwise know how to contact their congress people, and I don’t know how many others (but it appears, nearly 200) also signed Planned Parenthood and NARAL’s petitions, and urged Congress to support Plan B.
If I were to circulate a petition in my physical neighborhood in Los Angeles, it would mean only that my already left-leaning California representatives would be contacted yet again: the above action, has collected signatures from nearly every state in the union (including the square states.)
It’s great that Kos provides the dialogue that gathers all of us together, but talking amongst ourselves should lead to action.
So, if you’re “tired” of this one, skip it. You know what it looks like, don’t bother to read it. Move on to what’s new to you, or what you’d rather comment on.
Or grade me down, I don’t even know what that means (I just learned what html was last week.)
Hi Joe. I’ve been wallowing in confusion and chaos trying to get my part ready for tomorrow. I found in Tampopo’s ‘writers needed’ diary that Susanhu volunteered to take day 4. She’s probably overworked, so we must forgive this delay, or maybe write our own version of the threat to people with disabilities. I’ll search my notes for something and post (later) here what I can find.
Thanks Alice. For the info, and for the link to the diary. I could whip out something this afternoon, but I will try to contact SusanHu first. I’m sure she is getting to it and just busy as heck. It is a damn busy time this Holiday Season. Even for an atheist. Or worshipper of pasta. But we’ll get something up early this P.M. I hope and trust. 🙂
Is the topic Alito on Disabled Rights?
Will work for Chicken Cutlet Parmesan.
Beg if necesarry.
Man. Chicken Cutlet Parmesean. You better be getting fed by someone like CabinGirl then, because around here, it is cold pizza and beer. And that is only if the kids have been good.
But here’s a diay from daily Kos diary that might help you compose a letter.
Alice – thank to you, too, for monitoring this!
BTW – I am so sorry not to have responded to you in my draft diary – you thought you were talking to yourself! I could read, but couldn’t respond cause my computer would just freeze.
Has anyone sent an email to Susan?
HI EVERYONE!
It would help to have a LINK to yesterday’s diary. I’m working on it but need the template.
Here’s the link to Day 3.
old activist friend old buddy old pal.
(I love “It’s a Wonderful Life”).
I sent susanhu e-mails (and covered about same ground you did in these posts. Got to check out for a bit — will be back later).
Ignore my requests.
I found what I needed.
it’ll be up soonest!
Also: I just got up an hour and a half ago.
I live on the West Coast.
And I was up half the night with my own disability. …. it’ll be up soon.
I think we have another project in the making here in albert’s diary.
Yeah. Sounds like your chance to go kick some fundie butt locally, CG. Good luck. Keep me posted. Have fax, will hit “send” button.
thank goodness i’m not going crazy. i was wondering about it too.
well, i wrote an alito piece yesterday; feel free to do with it what you will:
http://www.boomantribune.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2005/12/14/193327/04
wackiness.
Cedwyn – thanks so much for your support and involvement in this! You amaze me!
I just sent the below to this group… and then thought… what the fuck. I might as well let it all hang out. I have to try and keep from crying, screaming today while I’m doing things for my son in these personal times… IOWs, I have to keep my hair from catching fire while silently sending letters along. I’m following and sending letters. I just… I’m not shy as you all know, I’m not quiet but this is so close to home and so raw and during a very difficult time for my son. I’ve fought with Patty “lets kill all the disalbed to save money” Berg on the radio, in print and at home. Now we must fight Alito.
my email:
I placed this in SusanHu’s diary regarding Alito.
The shit is already bad as we all know.
This is what happened last year to my family.
http://www.mchcinc.org/healingstories-display.php?StoryID=2
There are a few glitches in the story:
The wait was THREE MONTHS not ONE and now there is only ONE surgery center in Northern CA. Norther… not redneck area like Lake County – San Fucking Francisco is in that region. Only ONE in SF. That is where Wes had 5 hours of surgery and then outpatiented out. He could barely walk and was still throwing up blood then 3 hour drive home.
Imagine… being sent home with your child in that condition…
Three months of listening to my son whimper and BEG.
Fuck Republicans. Fuck “greatest country”… Fuck Arnold.
It’s only become worse, folks.
Letters sent, you betcha. This is too close to home for me. I’m rather silent on the boards about it because Wesley could have died waiting for dental surgery. A part of the story that we didn’t allow to be covered was… and this will make you madder… they also did a biopsy. His gums were rotting. So we were waiting to find out also if my son had cancer.
Was the hardest time in my life, but harder still is knowing that others are still waiting. Waiting. Waiting…
Get the letters out. My love to all of you.
Thanks for sharing that story DJ. I kept inserting Dammit in front of your name in story. Made it more entertaining.
You know, for someone who has been through so much, you sure don’t complain much. I would be bellyaching contstantly on these blogs about what life and the system have dealt me. But I scarecly even know your story (probably my own inattention, as much as your being stoic on the subject of personal challenges).
Alito hates disabled people. Gee, I guess I shouldn’t be really surprised the “compassionate conservatives” would nominate someone like that. As I’m reading more about him, I think he may hate everyone who isn’t white, over fifty and holding an Ivy league degree. What’s not to like having him on the bench deciding which rights we should no longer possess.
On health insurance — a personal whine of my own. I grew up without it for many years. So we pretty much learned that you didn’t go to the doctor or hospital. I still hold that as a personal value. And I’ve given that value to my kids. So last week I kept my five year old from seeing a doctor for two days with a stomach ache. When I finally took her to ready-care on day three because she was crying, the doc felt her stomach and said, “I think I feel a abcess. I think it (appendix) has already ruptured.” That was a fun ride to the emergency room. Thinking I may have killed the kid because of my no-insurance/no-doctor attitude (and we’ve got insurance now). Tests were all negative. First doc was wrong. Good deal. But our country is going to pay for not wanting to take care of people. We are a stupid, stupid, stupid people sometime. Myself included.
I’m glad your daughter is okay. Don’t flog yourself too much. I kept Danni from rollerblading, a sport she LOVES, because I was afraid she’d break something when we didn’t have insurance….
AS to bellyaching… I find that when I step out of myself and see things globally, I can get more done. I speak, fight, act more efficiently. This is just so close that I remain vigilante but, for now, while the same son is having some major issues… I need to … I don’t know – it’s a fucking balancing atc. Part Mom, Part Angry Liber, Part Hell-Raiser… Part Really tired woman… 🙂 But whole part is I’m grateful to be mixed up with you merry band of whomping stomping activists – who apparently can read my typos and rants.
Boxer does reply. 🙂
Janet !@#$ What a !#$
You know, they should just start adding a subject to the public school curriculum.I’m of two minds as to what it should be:
Either 1) Untying the Gordian Knot one thread at a time: Essential skills for your lifetime battle with the System
= OR =
2) Stupefication: Strategies for not caring how you are being screwed by your own country.
My fight has never been with autism.. it’s been with the agencies, schools that are supposed to help autistics but instead just send a brick flying at your forehead.
You’d crap your pants if you knew all the things we fought. Found out the last school had a file on me… luckily it had a file on the challenges we fought and won. Like time out rooms… that story would make you rip your child out of school… But thanks to the Hughes Law… can be vigilant against disabled students being locked up in a room, box, toilet stall…
All in the past ten years my friend. I have battle wounds, and scars. From fighting the ones who were supposed to protect our children.
Sadly, I am not surprised. Bettelheim may have reluctantly accepted modern science and stopped blaming parents/moms for children’s autism, but it is clear that many school staff haven’t made this critical shift!
As a psychologist, I have seen about everything (Totally dark bookroom used as “time-out”? Check! School system trying to turf a very disturbed kid to an orphanage rather than fund the intensive 1-1 treatment he needed? Check! Kid’s record including comments on the cleanliness of the mother’s underwear? Check!).
You lay it out clearly. Parents have to be girded for battle. They may find advocates for their children to help them, but they may not.
Claerly, the majority of Republican voters would have gotten A’s in your second class suggestion.
That is absolutely horrendous! It’s ALMOST unbelievable to think that Wes was denied care, even though you were willing to pay for it out of your own pockets, simply because you had no insurance.
We are headed for a real disaster with healthcare in this country.
thanks so much for sharing Wesley’s story with us. I can’t imagine the rage and frustration that must exist when you see a broken system take advantage of someone you love. I noticed that the tag for the link was “Healing Stories” – may your strength to alert the public of this outrage cause a real change in policy so that noone has to suffer like this at the hands of incompetence and greed – that there will be healing in the end.
(((Janet)))
so which one are you? Mooney, Wormtail, Padfoot, or Prongs…
😀
Daughter got this Potter trivia game with DVD for birthday. I know it all now man. I am like Harry Potter trivia man.
My LTE during the “time out rooms controversy” where disabled children were locked in room for up to 4 hours instead of having behaviour plans or IEPs accroding to ADA/IDEA. Can you imagine!!! It was a fucking controversy???
Here was a reply to the Mr Ridgel the local asshole in Lake Country CA who was also the Republican Party Leader. I received so many threats afterwards but luckily Mike Thompson, then State Sen and now Congressmen, stepped in and took over the investigation. The school involved lost 6 of the 5 administrators (who went on to out of state schools – where we mailed everything onto their neighborhoods)
But it reminds me of Alito… FWIW my first LTE. Ridgle had used 3 adjectives to describe disabled students… I threw it back in his face. Repeatedly although redundantly…
—
To compare concern over the prohibited use of locked and unsupervised seclusion with that of witch trials is ludicrous, ignorant and offensive.
To compare expectations that all children be treated with care, respect and that their safety and dignity is guaranteed, with radical political correctness is
more dysfunctional and disturbed than any disabling diagnosis.
To prefer to stereotype children with disabilities as “sexual deviants, dysfunctional, violently disruptive and mentally disturbed” and to try to endanger their right to be titled “student”, is revolting, mean-spirited, and intolerable.
To suggest that the rights of the majority are more precious than the rights of the minority, is albeit familiar but nonetheless still frightening.
To applaud the entertaining efforts of the film “Rain Man” but then to suggest that educating and facilitating the needs of a real autistic child is depleting funds in insensitive, immoral and shameful.
To suggest withholding Braille from a blind
student so as to SPARE “normal” children from reality, diversity and empathy, is cruel, sickening and impotent.
To attempt to divide regular education parents and special education parents and to proclaim that children can be civically and financially
discriminated against as long as they are not considered “normal”, is oppressive, insulting and tragic.
To point an accusatory finger at a physically or neurologically crippled child rather than a corrupt and crippled system is disgusting, hateful and heartless.
To endanger the rights and needs of any child rather than empower and provide supportive solutions to improve our educational catastrophe, is typical of a lazy, uneducated and selfish mind.
To provide an opinion that is riddled with misinformation, animosity and fatuity, is typical of one who is lacking compassion, kindness, and humanity.
JA
Whoa! I would hate to get on your wrong side DJ. Very strong words. And, from the snippet of the controversy you’ve shared, seemingly very effective. Glad you are on our team.
RubDMC says that as well… glad I’m on your side. Do I come off as hagula or something?? LOL
Seriously though… the letter and tone was a needed firecracker in the ass of a horrid school, good ole boys system. To this day, there are families with wounds and scars but thankfully they aren’t fresh ones.
As I’ve said a few times, we’re healing… on many levels.
I am one of the few parents in the investigation who will never know if their child was “timed out”… however Wesley will still run and hide in his closet and hit his face when he thinks he’s in trouble.
… some think my son is a “burden” the only burden is trying to protect him and others from the rat bastards that get paid to serve them.
I would die to protect him from ever going through that again.
you’re still reco’d. take that!
: p
mebbe just change the diary? something wacky fun? or you could make it an action item open thread!
the fundies are attacking progressive insurance:
http://www.politicalcortex.com/story/2005/12/14/22229/324
stevens throws another tantrum over ANWR:
http://www.politicalcortex.com/story/2005/12/15/151932/81
“patriot” act action:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/15/143855/87
Shop NOLA:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/15/143855/87
etc.
BostonJoe – thanks so much for monitoring this.
I had checked twice before leaving for work, knowing Susan is on the west coast, I figured (hoped) it would be up when I got home.
Having just got in, I saw StevenD’s front page posting, Susan’s Diary and then your diary.
Thanks.