Author: Ingrid Tischer
Working While Disabled: All About M.O.I. Versus the T.E.A.M. Access Approach
Dear Respironics Bi-Pap S/T,
I’m feeling like such a loser because I can’t get hired for even one job and all I’m suddenly hearing about is this big push for disabled people to get employed. And then there are disabled people like this guy who act like it’s just my attitude that’s the problem.
Signed,
Feeling like an Uninspired, Unmotivated Kid with a Disability
Dear FUUKD,
First, take a deep (assisted) breath. Now let’s get your head right: Go watch the late (god, I hate writing that) Stella Young’s epic take-down of inspiration porn.
Sure, you’re going to hear that all landing a job, or whatever, really takes for a disabled person is to adopt the All About M.O.I. approach. That narrative certainly has the charm of simplicity, plus it comforts you by giving you all the control. Meaning: If you’re not yet working, for example, it’s just that you’re not trying hard enough to:
Motivate yourself
Overcomerate your disability
Inspirate all who meet you with your “What, me disabled?” attitude
But there’s a more accurate name for this narrative: Magical thinking.
“As a Respironics Bi-Pap S/T, I support you venting because you have to manage your pressures and everyone’s settings are different. Venting, moreover, leads to bitching and bitching can lead to some very interesting shifts in what you think personal responsibility can accomplish versus what takes political action.”
And MEL saideth to the Catholic school teachers, “What did you expect?”
There’s a parable in the Old Testament’s Book of Mel called, “The Parable of the Sheriff and the Town of Rockridge,” that roughly translates into the modern idiom as an infinitely rueful, “What did you expect?”
Sadly, this parable sprang to mind instantly when I heard about the protests against San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone (pronounced “COR-LEE-OWN”) regarding his proposed morality clause for teacher and other school employees’ contracts.
“What did you expect?…
‘Welcome, Fornicators?’
‘Marry whomever you want?’
‘Mazel on the IVF?’
“You work for a scary church, a church that’s long been out of hand, that despises women in the West… you know…Catholics.”
I don’t fault them for stubbornly continuing to hope that they’ll be treated with respect. Nobody EXPECTED the Inquisition.
The Archbishop, though, is doing just what it seems I should expect, given his ilk’s track record. So to him, I’d say: I’m just spit-ballin’ here but if I were really trying to get a firm grip on the whole morality thing, I’d put my energy into controlling something other than employees’ masturbation, reproductive, and marital choices. Like, oh, let’s see…child abuse? Feeding students who are hungry? Maybe continuing to clean up that giant immoral mess that your fellow priests inflicted on children?
I Want Them to Want Me Because I Will Need Them to Need Me But If That’s Not Going to Work, I Want a Lawyer.
Every time Gretchen saw the forms on her desk at home, a wave of resentment rose. How did she know what it was like to use a feeding tube? Or a ventilator? Or have minimal brain function, for god’s sake? It was like asking an eight year-old to sign up for – or against – puberty.
Oh sure, she fumed in the dark, awake and annoyed. Tomorrow, Dr. Gabriel would repeat the official line: She could choose all medical interventions. She could elect to have whatever she wanted.
Oh, that was such bullshit. It wasn’t really her choice at all. The problem wasn’t too much extraordinary medical treatment, it was the limits of ordinary medicine to worry about, mostly financial. She didn’t have a problem being kept alive through artificial means now – she’d never seen a dollar bill push out of the dirt in spring – so she didn’t see any reason to assume she would resent it later on.
“Dear Valued Healthcare Provider,
“I’m glad everybody’s so concerned about honoring my choices. I choose to have my medical care continue regardless of ability to pay or insurance coverage, deductibles, prescription benefits, or other cost issues….”
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Letters to a Young Fundraiser: #GivingTuesday Ennui
My Dear Friend,
Thank you for your letter. Your deep and loving trust in my counsel truly makes it possible for me to do the work that I do. I can do no more than thank you. I cannot comment on the style of your year-end fundraising campaign; I cannot take on the role of critic. This is best left to your board, your director, your program staff, Facebook posters, Twitter trolls, and, of course, the otherwise kindly fellow who, upon receipt of your latest missive, alerts you to the missing serial comma in the final paragraph. It is almost always so among our kind and I will speak no more of it. You have made the inexpressible expressed in your ask and to the inexhaustible yearning — How much must I give? — you have said, Any amount that is meaningful to you. And you put this in the PS, as well. You can do no more.
But to continue, year after year, as I have, when the phrases once fresh to a yearling fundraiser, ring as predictably as the morning alarm. Having said these things at the outset, I now dare tell you only this: It’s only going to get worse for you. You wrote to me because you feel the heavy, herding step of #GivingTuesday. You feel an unintended consequence of so much caring that has been calendared months in advance, when each of our individual concerns, housed in the apparatus of our organizations, presented through The Individual Story, a chorus line of concern where your own shapely leg kicks out, but that draws attention more to its whole than some of its parts.
The only cure for this ennui is authenticity and this, my dear, dear friend is difficult to define. You must at times wait for The Angel to speak to you. Go inside. When you know why you must fundraise — it is who you are, it’s October and your year-end numbers are going to tank if you don’t get it in gear — you find your cause and write. And rewrite and show it early in the process to someone who will have to approve it anyway, and start over and then when you need for it to be done, you’ll redo it for the digital version. And #GivingTuesday.
With my sincerest devotion and respect,
IT
PS If you have an inexhaustible yearning to give, this is a very shapely organization that kicks a lot of ass.
Tales From the Crip 
