Tag Archives: disability rights

Boston Landlord WinnResidential Reveals Miracle

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An attorney for a Boston-based landlord says the landlord can take away handicap-parking privileges from elderly tenants with disabilities and not put them in danger, simultaneously.

Now, that’s a miracle! 

Serious medical conditions must be present to get the permit in the first place. 

I’ll tell you how I found out about this miracle. I received a letter from Winn’s attorney, Katherine Higgins-Shea of Lyon & Fitzpatrick. She was rejecting my reasonable accommodation, on Winn’s behalf, in which I asked them to stop endangering lives in real time because it traumatizes me, secondary to my disability. 

My disability is the combined challenge of managing a brain injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I was held up and shot in the head at point blank ranger in 1984. The bullet remains lodged in my brain.  Knowing lives are endangered around me in real-time puts me is traumatizing.

Imagine my relief when I learned that, as far-fetched as this does sound, lives were not being endangered at all when Winn takes aways handicap parking rights. 

According to Higgins-Shea, WinnResidential, headed by Gilbert Winn and crew, Winn “strongly disagrees that it is placing anyone on the property in physical danger through its rules, policies or practices,” one of those practices is making elderly tenants with disabilities move their cars unsafe distances and unsafe conditions.

Winn is owner and landlord of two over-55 apartment buildings, in Ludlow, Massachusetts. Tenants up into their 90s, with disabilities, are told to move their cars (in snowy, wintry conditions) or they might get towed at their expense, because Winn wants to clear snow. 

Never mind that doctors have documented that one or more of the following conditions applies to the tenant:

  • Can’t walk 200 feet without stopping to rest.

  • Can’t walk without the assistance of another person, prosthetic aid, or other assistive device.

  • Tenant is restricted by lung disease.

  • Tenant uses portable oxygen.
  • Tenant has a Class III cardiac condition.

  • Tenant has a Class IV cardiac condition.
  • Tenant has Class III or Class IV functional arthritis.
  • Tenant has Stage III or Stage IV anatomic arthritis.
  • Tenant has been declared legally blind.

  • Tenant has lost one or more limbs.

Now, that’s a miracle!  Don’t believe me? Don’t blame you. Ask their attorney, Katherine Higgins-Shea: KHigginsshea@lyonfitzpatrick.com 

If you’re going to lie to me….

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I don’t ask for much in life other than respect, so, if you are going to disrespect me by lying  to me, the least you can do is make an effort to make it a good, show a little creativity for God’s sake.

I’ve decided to rummage around in my mind and, perhaps the minds of others, to develop some fun, at least for me, responses to people who lie to me so brazenly and obviously I don’t know whether to burst out laughing and ask them if they’re joking or simply stupid enough to think I believe them, or smack them upside their “head” with a verbal dagger that says, we both know you’re lying and you’re such a self-absorbed little twit you’re going to stand by your stench-rubbish anyway.

Anyone who knows me knows I have no ability to be silent when someone’s rights are being denied. I don’t care of it’s people with disabilities, people who are Jewish, African American, Latino, Muslim, veterans, members of the LGBT community, women, etc., etc., I’m not about to stay silent. People who know me also know it is very likely, particularly of you are a public official or someone in a position of authority, that I am going to expose your bigotry for all to see. 

All that aside, let me say there is a special place in hell for people whose claim to care about the rights of others is nothing more than lip-service smoke screens. A form of dishonesty so glaringly obvious I want to grab them by the throat and say, “Why not grow some backbone and say out loud that you don’t give a rat’s ass about these people and you just care about money and power?” 

What’s somewhat amusing is the feigned indignity performances I get to see when I call someone out for lying, for being a hypocrite. They put so much effort into their performance (without exception they’re lousy actors) I’m surprised they don’t snort and dribble out of the corner of their mouths, go into convulsions, and start speaking in tongues. Some feign astonishment to such I degree I expect them to allow their simian roots to take over and start pounding their chest.

Many of the lies I see these days  come from those who claim they are committed to protecting the rights of New York residents who live with brain injury disabilities. Since their commitment is limited to the effort it takes to say they are committed, the least they could do is make a commitment to develop their lying skills. I’ll probably catch them anyway, but at least catching them might pose a sliver of a challenge. However, exposing them will not.

So, here’s the thing, if you’re going to lie to me, make an effort, or give us both a break and shut up.

If you’re going to lie to me….

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I don’t ask for much in life other than respect, so, if you are going to disrespect me by lying  to me, the least you can do is make an effort to make it a good, show a little creativity for God’s sake.

I’ve decided to rummage around in my mind and, perhaps the minds of others, to develop some fun, at least for me, responses to people who lie to me so brazenly and obviously I don’t know whether to burst out laughing and ask them if they’re joking or simply stupid enough to think I believe them, or smack them upside their “head” with a verbal dagger that says, we both know you’re lying and you’re such a self-absorbed little twit you’re going to stand by your stench-rubbish anyway.

Anyone who knows me knows I have no ability to be silent when someone’s rights are being denied. I don’t care of it’s people with disabilities, people who are Jewish, African American, Latino, Muslim, veterans, members of the LGBT community, women, etc., etc., I’m not about to stay silent. People who know me also know it is very likely, particularly of you are a public official or someone in a position of authority, that I am going to expose your bigotry for all to see. 

All that aside, let me say there is a special place in hell for people whose claim to care about the rights of others is nothing more than lip-service smoke screens. A form of dishonesty so glaringly obvious I want to grab them by the throat and say, “Why not grow some backbone and say out loud that you don’t give a rat’s ass about these people and you just care about money and power?” 

What’s somewhat amusing is the feigned indignity performances I get to see when I call someone out for lying, for being a hypocrite. They put so much effort into their performance (without exception they’re lousy actors) I’m surprised they don’t snort and dribble out of the corner of their mouths, go into convulsions, and start speaking in tongues. Some feign astonishment to such I degree I expect them to allow their simian roots to take over and start pounding their chest.

Many of the lies I see these days  come from those who claim they are committed to protecting the rights of New York residents who live with brain injury disabilities. Since their commitment is limited to the effort it takes to say they are committed, the least they could do is make a commitment to develop their lying skills. I’ll probably catch them anyway, but at least catching them might pose a sliver of a challenge. However, exposing them will not.

So, here’s the thing, if you’re going to lie to me, make an effort, or give us both a break and shut up.

A word on oppressors & advocacy

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Any company, agency,  government, school, healthcare provider, individual, who seeks to minimize the voice of those they claim to serve is an oppressor. To be fair, some get caught up in group-think and find themselves supporting decisions, methods, laws, protocols, directives that oppress a group or groups of individuals. Others know bloody well what they are doing. Some oppress out of a palpable dislike for those they claim to serve, while others do so because those they serve, people with disabilities (PWD) for example, are little more than revenue streams in their eyes. Moreover, PWD have been used as fodder for those who revel in the sewage of arrogant self-aggrandizement.

The question is, a willful oppressor or an oppressor out of ignorance, or, equally relevant, out of fear? Fear of reprisal if he, she, or they hold the oppressors accountable. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was absolutely right when he said, “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Back in 2008 I lost all income and all employment because I would not remain silent when a particular New York State health care provider, a Traumatic Brain Injury Waiver provider to be exact, was denying the rights of those participating in the program in part by community-based warehousing. In other words, put as many difference services on the shoulders of the program participant so you can bill (make money) as much as possible. It was made very clear to me that I needed to go along to get along or lose everything (meaning, in this instance, all my income and healthcare coverage). I chose that latter.

I knew then, just as I do now, that real human rights advocacy (as opposed to lip-service advocacy) can be a bloody business. If you are the real deal on the advocacy front you’re in good company: Mandela, King, Gandhi, Susan B. Anthony, Malcom X, Medgar Evers, Harvey Milk, Elie Wiesel, Simon Wiesenthal, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Frederick Douglass, Malala Yousafzai, just to name a few.  All of the aforementioned paid dearly for their advocacy. Loss of freedom, loss of life. So, when it comes down to it, any price I may have paid pales in comparison.

It seems to me the job, if you will, of any real human rights advocate, is to, by any non-violent means necessary, drag the oppression and the oppressors into the open, and hold them accountable.

Recently I was pondering a column about accountability. I found myself wearing a rather large smile when several thesauruses listed accountable and responsible as synonyms. I know  a few oppressors who, on the one hand, would, with misplaced pride and predictable defiance, say they do their jobs responsibly. Yet the moment you hold them accountable,  these folks would slither under a rocks with remarkable speed and spit out venomous accusations of unfairness at those holding them accountable.

Oh well.

BIANYS Avner sinks to new low

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The executive director of the Brain Injury Association of New York State stopped people with brain injuries from being on the committee representing people with brain injuries, say several of the committee members whose identities will be protected.

When committee members complained that there was no one with a brain injury on the committee, Judith Avner is said to have claimed she and BIANYS represented people with brain injuries and pointed out that one of the  committee members had a family member with a brain injury. Avner does not have a brain injury.

Avner did not respond to several requests for comment.

The committee was comprised of providers and others and was tasked with drafting a proposal on behalf of New Yorkers with brain injuries for the state’s Medicaid Redesign Team. The proposal had to be filed by a specified date. Not long after Avner took her  stance against people with brain injuries being on the committee, the committee folded.

People with disabilities, including those of us with brain injury disabilities, encounter people and systems who hold to the inaccurate and misguided belief that we are unable to speak for ourselves. Slowly, slowly, this perception is eroding. However, when someone who has been in a leadership position in brain injury for years oppresses the very people she claims to care about, it is beyond unconscionable. It is a kind of moral fraud. It is also bigotry.

What would happen if a committee claiming to represent Jews or Italians or African-Americans refused to allow Jews or Italians or African-Americans to be on the committee? One would hope there would be an uproar of indignation. One would also hope that those blocking the participation of people they claim to represent are fired.

Life with a brain injury disability can be difficult enough; it is made all the more so when those who claim to care are some of the biggest oppressors.