Posts Tagged ‘advocacy’

13
Jun
2020

The Myka Stauffer “re-homing” drama, continued.

categories: personal; word count: 366 words

First of all, I’m going to come out and say that I’m glad that more and more companies are dropping her as an advertiser. She literally re-homed her child (yes, adopted or not, he is — was — her child) like he was a pet. She absolutely should face repercussions for this, especially because she tried to hide it for so long and then responded to it by not responding to it and then deleted all pictures of him from her Instagram account.

But what I actually came here to write about: it later came out after all of this came out that she stopped Huxley’s ABA therapy (that’s a completely separate post that I cam get into, my thoughts on ABA) and therapy services, probably because actually having an autistic child — even though she had the finances and the means to be able to care for him, and knew exactly what she was getting into adopting him (I continue to call bullshit on her “not knowing what they were getting into”, as Chinese children can only be adopted by United States citizens if they have disabilities to prevent what are called “tourist adoptions”) — was too much of an inconvenience for her. But if the reason that she actually “re-homed” him was because he had severe behavioral concerns and safety was a concern, there were things that she could actually have done to keep him safe that did not involve relinquishing her parental rights, such as a stay in a group home for whatever length of time was deemed appropriate for the circumstances, or even institutionalization (again, don’t get me started on my feelings on that, but it would probably have been better than this if the proper facility was selected). There is also respite care, which is offered by a lot of insurance companies, or she could even have paid for it out of pocket with the money that she had been making as a YouTuber with the sponsors that she had had before they had dropped her for this. But she shot herself in the fucking foot.

Basically: there was so much more that she could have done before she actually did what she did here.

25
Mar
2020

My activism is Barret Wallace and Katniss Everdeen.

categories: personal; word count: 465 words

As of Monday, my county had six more confirmed, positive cases of coronavirus (COVID-19). And it seemed that almost as a direct result of that, if not a direct result of that, the decision was finally made to issue a shelter-in-place (“stay home”, as some people like to call them so as not to incite unnecessary panic) order until April 3rd. I am still not sure what the local school district is going to do in regard to whether or not they are going to attempt to fling the doors back open on the sixth, as April 3rd is a Friday, but it would not surprise me in the least if they at least made the attempt since this district has never been known for making good decisions. As I’ve mentioned in previous entries, they are one of the last if not the last to “call” bad weather days… and sometimes they didn’t, even when every other district had, and even when the local two-year college (and four-year university) had. You can’t tell me that this district is not about the “dolla dolla bill” until they prove otherwise. And blocking dissidents, or people who don’t kiss their ass, on social media is not proving otherwise. Especially because the “manager” of the Facebook page admitted that they “were a nineties kid who attended the district (themselves)”, so yeah, I’m at least partway sure that you might know my name. Sing it loud and say it proud, I grew up to become the disabled Katniss Everdeen now, did I not?

Bub and Monster’s occupational therapist has cancelled in-person therapy sessions until further notice, so they may wind up seeing a new occupational therapist “to fill the gap”. Monster will begin seeing a new speech therapist at the start of the month assuming that things do not absolutely go sideways since the speech therapist that he has had since he was extremely young is moving to another clinic, and I did not want to uproot the kids from the clinic that they have gone to since they were extremely young unless I absolutely had to because there was no other choice in the matter… sniff. Their clinic is a really good place.

Soon, I want to get Bub back into speech therapy since he has been on break from that for a little while.

Catholics on Twitter are raging that all dioceses have shuttered church doors until further notice, holding no public masses. Must you insist on public masses in the midst of a global pandemic on the backs of your at-risk brethren for something not necessary to live? Are us at-risk folks really wor— wait, don’t finish that one.

I know that us at-risk individuals aren’t worth anything to you or else you’d peacefully quarantine at home…

23
Mar
2020

Several things mentioned in one post.

categories: personal, RPGs; word count: 398 words

As of Sunday evening, we hit double digits in terms of confirmed cases of COVID-19 (coronavirus) in my county, and confirmed community spread. Given the size of my county, this does not surprise me. To be completely honest, I want to see public schools shut down for the remainder of the school year in an attempt to contain this before it gets completely out of hand, but I do not have faith in this local school district, and my faith in this state wavers. But this school district is making it abundantly clear that they want to open doors back up as soon as possible, even if… like I’ve mentioned before, it is literally on the backs of the at-risk population. They are literally blocking people on social media that do not agree with them who are not willing to shower them in praise and it would be hilarious to mention if it were not depressing because of the whole “we are in the midst of a global pandemic and this district has a history of making poor decisions”.

I’ve gone to the mat over this and I will keep going to the mat over this. If anyone does not want to follow the CDC’s recommendations during a global pandemic, I will work to call them out on it… like GameStop, who had the nerve to attempt to call themselves “essential employees” and “an essential retailer” in a desperate bid to try and keep their doors open because they did not want to lose money. That went swimmingly well for them, because in at least two states they were forced to close their doors, and I anticipate it being more as time passes assuming that they do not take the hint and close their doors in the rest of them until this pandemic eases. Although I haven’t shopped in GameStop for awhile, for a number of reasons (one of which being the fact that I am actually friends with “GameStop girl”, and she is a positively wonderful human being), this absolutely takes the cake and I am going to make it a conscious point never to shop there again.

In gaming news: Bub and I have been playing the new Animal Crossing together and have gone to some friends’ islands! I am slowly but surely learning how to play this actual game for him, and it’s adorable, too!

21
Mar
2020

Never mind, everyone! I have been proven wrong.

categories: personal; word count: 346 words

When this school district got enough pressure put on it by people who kept pointing out that they were flying in the face of CDC recommendations, they made the “difficult decision” to close schools for another week. Yeah, I know. It must have been incredibly difficult to turn away all of the federal funding that you would have gotten from opening schools back up even though it would have come at the cost, and on the backs of, those who are at increased risk from the potential community spread of COVID-19 (you know, coronavirus), those that this could very easily incapacitate if not outright kill. Spare me your melodrama and how this was allegedly actually a “difficult decision” for you. This just lines your pockets a little bit less. You don’t have to deal with the harsh realities that come with the actual panic (not the “alleged panic”) of possibly catching this, getting hospitalized with this, winding up on a ventilator, possibly dying and leaving loved ones behind because someone’s pocket book was more important than keeping fragile members of the community safe. Spare me your manufactured melodrama about how this was actually a “difficult decision” for you. Shut up.

Our county is now at age three on the “action plan”. This means…

· stay home if you are sick
· avoid contact with individuals who are sick
· avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unclean hands
· cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue away
· clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces with a disinfectant
· don’t travel to areas with active community spread
· wash your hands with soap and water regularly
· use hand sanitizers with at least 60% of alcohol content when soap and water are not available

· Actively practice “social distancing”
· whenever possible maintain 6 feet distance from other persons
· avoid physical contact with other persons in social and workplace settings
· postpone or cancel all gatherings of 50 or more people if possible

But most recently…

· the county may issue orders prohibiting and/or restricting mass gatherings and/or movement of people

20
Mar
2020

Don’t imagine it, because it actually happened.

categories: personal; word count: 397 words

But imagine advocating so hard for the local school district to commit to an extended closure of schools, which other school districts in the area have done, that their response to you doing so over the course of several comments left on their social networking pages is to actually block you because they are that desperate to open doors and resume school for access to those federal dollars that they are willing to risk the health and lives of the at-risk students and members of their community as a direct result of this… and that they don’t even care, because the superintendent himself is literally willing to chalk it up as “panic” because he is literally all about that money. But as I’ve mentioned in here, I’ve attended this school district myself. I have absolutely nothing nice to say about this school district at all, and I mean every single word of this sentence. This school district has not improved at all, and their response to the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic absolutely shows that in their recent actions. They are willing to endanger their at-risk students, the at-risk parents of those students who may be in attendance, other household members or people that they routinely come in contact with, and other members of the community by being in such a rush to open the doors to these schools back up (so much for “social distancing”, eh?) that they make it blatantly obvious that they continue to be all about that federal funding that it absolutely sickens me. This district is just trash.

At this point, I think that this district will always be trash and that it will never, ever redeem itself. Ever.

If anything changes between now and the time that school doors are supposed to re-open, of course I will make another post in here reflecting that, but this school district has always put money above the health and lives of the populace at large because… let’s face it, when has it not? “Panic” takes on a whole new meaning when you yourself are a member of that at-risk population. When this is something that could incapacitate or kill you, it’s not something that you’re “panicking” over, it’s a real-life scenario that you have to try to avoid. Anyone who claims it’s “panic” who is not in the at-risk group is trying to flex on privilege.

11
Feb
2020

So far, my reasons for disability denials…

categories: personal; word count: 299 words

· you have a STEM degree (an associates’ in Biology obtained before the onset of any disability)
· you’re intelligent, so you can adapt to work (when my disabilities are all physical)
· “your functional limitations line up with your neurologist’s report on you, but we still believe you can work”
· the migraine aborters actually work 100% at taking all migraine pain away, so I “can work”
· “you may have some limitations” (ha), “but you can adapt to work” (and absolutely no work is listed)

I had a friend whose mother had to apply for disability for them four separate times while they were a child, just to get them approved. That was four separate applications that she had to put in. Another case that I heard about was the friend of several friends waiting for a hearing after having been denied twice, just to die in her sleep. And I read about someone who had to advance it to a hearing for leukemia, at which point they were approved, but they died soon after because they could not start therapy for their cancer in time to save their life. This is literally what disabled people in the United States have to deal with. They have to put in application after application, or advance it to a hearing and wait up to two years to get in front of an administrative law judge, hoping that they can hold their heads above water while they do, also hoping that they don’t actually die before disability benefits are granted. Like I’ve mentioned before, 13,000 people die per calendar year here because they actually are disabled and they kept being denied benefits. That is one hell of an “oops”. I’m starting to think that it’s intentional on the part of this country, a feature, not a “bug”.

01
Feb
2020

This is a travesty worth pointing out.

categories: personal; word count: 426 words

13,000.

That is roughly how many people actually die every year in the United States because they apply for disability benefits (SSDI or SSI) and are denied, sometimes continuously. That’s thirteen. Thousand. People.

They die for a number of reasons.

Lack of access to healthcare and medication.

Inability to afford housing.

Not being able to buy themselves food.

The list goes on, but I’m sure I’ve made my point by now.

Roughly two-thirds of applicants are denied when they submit their initial application, and a staggering 80% of applicants are denied if they request that Social Security reconsider their application. For those who choose to advance their application for benefits to a hearing with an administrative law judge after this second denial, the wait to get in front of a judge in some capacity can take up to two years in some states, and between half and 60% of applicants have their benefits approved at that stage… so no matter how you look at it, the odds do not exactly appear to be in your favor (although older individuals seem to have an easier time obtaining and securing disability benefits for themselves, and I’m told that children who “age onto the rolls” as adults seem to have a slightly easier time depending on just what their disabilities are).

And some of them die right after getting approved after having literally fought the system for years.

They die because they weren’t able to access the things that they needed in time because they had to fight to get what they were rightfully owed. They count here. Their stories are still important. Just as important.

This may not surprise very many of you given the… political climate in the United States, at least as far as it relates to healthcare, but it will probably sadden and shock those of you who are not familiar with the number, but that is the number. Because people with legitimate disabilities who are not able to work are being denied for sometimes the most contradictory, superfluous reasons, approximately thirteen thousand people die in the United States every year as a result of that, and to me, that is thirteen thousand people (or however many people actually die in the United States as a result of this) too many. I almost want to laugh — and sometimes I actually do — when people say, “oh, you’re disabled, just apply for disability” as though it were really that simple. I’m not sure if the system is intentionally set up to be like this or what. It may well be.

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