Fighting for Disability Rights

Amazing story from Croatia by Human Rights Watch. “I want to leave but I can’t,” Ana told me. “I have a guardian. I told my sister and my doctor [that I want to leave this place], but my guardian has a say.”Ana is among 18,000 people with intellectual or psychosocial disabilities placed under guardianship in Croatia, and stripped of their legal capacity – the right to make basic decisions - to marry and form a family,  to consent to medical treatment, or to sign an employment contract. A significant majority have been placed under full guardianship, under which guardians – often nominated by the state – make all decisions for them.But that’s about to change.

Opinion: U.N. Treaty Vote Defies Even Dole

It may be difficult for many to remember how formidable Bob Dole was. The respected lion of the Senate, former Senate majority leader and standard-bearer of the Republican Party in 1996 worked miracles across the aisle with Democrats. It was a different era.

And that’s why it was so heartbreaking to see the 89-year-old Kansan, in his wheelchair, return to the Senate floor trying, in vain, to persuade fellow Republicans to vote for an international treaty to ban discrimination against people with disabilities.

Still in Shadows with an Uncertain Future

Guest column from the Twin Cities Daily Planet by Tom Judd of Excelsior, who serves on the national board of The Arc, Tim Nelson, president of the board of The Arc Minnesota, and Steve Hayes, chair of the board of The Arc Greater Twin Cities. The Arc is the nation’s largest and oldest human rights organization for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families.

Five decades ago, Minnesota and the nation began to develop an awareness of members in our society who had been long out of public view. President Kennedy talked openly about his sister with intellectual disabilities and called on the nation to bring all citizens with intellectual disabilities “out of the shadows.”
In Minnesota, advocates opened the doors of our state institutions, made us aware of the horrendous living conditions there, and then worked to create a world where people with intellectual and developmental disabilities could live in and contribute to their communities.
Since then, we’ve seen progress in some areas. Legal protections have been passed. In Minnesota, we‘ve worked hard to create services that keep people with disabilities in the community and keep families who have children with disabilities together.
Despite these gains, we are concerned that progress is grinding to a halt, if not reversing.

Opinion: Don't Warehouse People with Disabilities

Guest column in The Record of Bergen County, N.J., by Lowell Arye, executive director of the Alliance for the Betterment of Citizens with Disabilities in Hamilton.


The urging of some to halt plans to close Vineland Developmental Center would move New Jersey in the opposite direction of 30 years of public policy toward community living for people with developmental disabilities.
In his budget, Governor Christie boldly announced the closure of a state developmental center over the next two years. New Jersey has not closed a developmental center since 1998, when it shut down North Princeton. It is far behind the national trend of deinstitutionalization.