In June a woman with a disability was pushed to the street in Vancouver by a police officer. He walked away without helping her up.

While the Vancouver police department claims the incident was under investigation, the officers are still on the beat.  We expect some official response that exonerates the officers will appear many months from now.

It’s clear from the video the woman has a disability. She has Cerebral Palsy (CP) which gives her a distinct walking pattern and affects her speech. She may sound intoxicated however anyone who has experience with CP can easily spot the symptoms.

This is not the first incident of police brutality nor is the it the first time an adult with CP has been abused.  Physical and passive aggressive abuse is a way of life for many people with disabilities.

Cute as children abused as adults

Children with cerebral palsy and down syndrome are the favourite poster children for Easter Seals telethons and charity fund raisers. When they grow up, they become easy, adult targets for bullies and human rights abuse.

No longer cute and cuddly,  adults with disabilities are victims every day. How many people spend the time to grant a person like Sandy her dignity? How many strike up a peer conversation with a person with a disability? Sandy is a human being and besides not deserving policy brutality she deserves respect.

How many social groups invite the disabled to join? Does Rotary want people with disabilities in their membership or do they just want cute kids to raise money? Other than a few Easter Seals ambassadors who are giving the royal treatment, Rotarians are ill-at-ease having the disabled in their club. Rotary is not unique in ostracizing the disabled.

Half of all people living below the poverty line are disabled, which is the probable reason Sandy is living on Vancouver’s East Side. In the CBC National video Ian Hannimansing tries to weakly blame the disabled for their abuse by the system. “Part of the problem is where the encounter took place.”

OK, so if the disabled weren’t poor and living on the down side of town they could expect better treatment.

All Sandy has to do is get herself an $50,000 plus annual salary working in a white collar office job and the abuse will disappear. The reality is employers discriminate against Sandy and other people with disabilities and get away with it. Canadians living with disabilities are routinely discriminated against in employment, housing, and in their contact with government.

What’s worse, the cop pushes Sandy to the ground once or Canadian society that keeps her on the ground for her whole life?

Video is copyright CBC News

Despite numerous protests, UPEI refuses to allow people with disabilities to park closer to classes.

The President Wade MacLauchlan and the Board of Governors have refused to discuss the issue.

President Wade MacLauchlan signaled that he will not accept the HR commission ruling that declared mandatory retirement illegal.

UPEI is asking the PEI Supreme Court for a judicial review which is the first level of appeal. UPEI could appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada if their PEI court appeal does not succeed.

The process has taken five years so far. Additional appeals will frustrate justice. The professors are getting older. They might not be capable of teaching in 3-5 years as the case works its way through the courts. Additional legal costs will be a burden to the professors. UPEI will be spending public dollars to defend the indefensible.

MacLauchlan telegraphed his displeasure with the PEI Human Rights Commission in a letter posted on the UPEI website.

“As we move toward that future, the following actions or considerations will help to ensure that we retain the greatest possible range of options for our long-term achievement as a University:

Review the decision of the PEI Human Rights Commission on the merits, notably as regards two issues: (a) the Commission’s holding regarding the UPEI Pension Plan and the Commission’s interpretation…”

In the typical attack by big business on human rights, UPEI says it just can’t afford to grant human rights to aging professors.

“Those reasons are related to the university having a bona fide pension plan, which the university does, as well as the Supreme Court ruling back in the early 1990s that allowed mandatory retirement to exist based on the need for academic renewal,” said Bradshaw. “If the panel’s decision is found to be binding on us then it has long-term financial implications as well as, again, it will impact the university’s ability to have renewal in both our faculty complement and eventually academic programing.” CBC

The courts have already ruled that economic necessity is no reason the deny human rights. That is the only argument UPEI uses in its defense.

If UPEI has professors who are not doing their jobs according to qualitative standards, there should be a mechanism to deal with that. Simply retiring people at 65 is against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms since the only determinant of dismissal is age.

A UPEI student summed it up in his comment “As a student of UPEI i am ashamed that our President Wade McLaughlin will project such an uncivil and negative image upon our University. As a student of political studies, I am told not to accept such ignorant policies and to preserve our civil rights, yet my University is doing the opposite.

He must believe that he is higher than our constitution to appeal such a simply protected civil right. Wade McLaughlin please retire, before you waste our money, and have to raise our tuition (yet again) to fight a case that our charter will never allow. Accept the civil laws of Canada, and save us students on footing the bill.” CBC

The process of establishing human rights in Canada is daunting. The Professors are essentially on their own pursuing an well-endowed former employer. The scales of justice are weighed in favor of UPEI who have the money to frustrate their rights for a long time.

Islanders with disabilities are accustomed to UPEI’s human rights abuse. MacLauchlan took away accessible parking almost two years ago and substituted parking that is too far for the disabled to walk. Despite law on their side, disabled students and employees have not been able to change the stubborn insistence on disability discrimination.

Transcript – “My mom and I were summoned to a, a part of the university clinic in Heidelberg, in Schlierheim, and there I was examined. And during the examination my mom was sitting on the outside of the room, and she overheard a conversation that the doctors would do away with me, uh, would ab…would abspritz me, which means that they would give me a needle and put me to sleep. My mom overheard the conversation and, uh, during lunch time, while the, uh, doctors were gone, she, uh, grabbed hold of me, we went down to the Neckar River into the high reeds and there she put my clothes on, and from there on we really went into hiding because now we knew that they really were after us. So, uh, we went to my father’s father’s house where we also stayed until I started school.”

Born Mannheim, Germany
1937
Robert and his family were Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Nazis regarded Jehovah’s Witnesses as enemies of the state for their refusal to take an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler, or to serve in the German army. Robert’s family continued its religious activities despite Nazi persecution. Shortly before Robert’s birth, his mother was imprisoned briefly for distributing religious materials. Robert’s hip was injured during delivery, leaving him with a disability. When Robert was five years, he was ordered to report for a physical in Schlierheim. His mother overheard staff comments about putting Robert “to sleep.” Fearing they intended to kill him, Robert’s mother grabbed him and ran from the clinic. Nazi physicians had begun systematic killing of those they deemed physically and mentally disabled in the fall of 1939.

Video and text copyright United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.

Performers get subdued when they play for the President of the United States. Bob Dylan becomes Unplugged. Yolanda Adams smiles during A Change Is Gonna Come.

It was left to two older groups to show the spirit to the well dressed White House crew: The Freedom Singers and Blind Boys of Alabama. My pick for rocking it out goes to the Blind Boys of Alabama for this swinging version of Free At Last.

They were infectious. People had to smile, clap, sway, tap their feet. Watch the bass player who has been more or less subdued all night. The Boys have him dancing on the stage on one leg.

Like a true spiritual, Blind Boys of Alabama stray from the original words to improvise a church service call and answer version. The lead singer calls out to the audience “Are you with me? Do you want to be free?”

There wasn’t much hope of freedom for black slaves in America. Stripped of their human dignity and freedom they found solace in the gospel message of heavenly hope. Freedom might not come on earth but when the Lord took them into his arms they would be free at last.

Free at last, free at last
I thank God I’m free at last
Free at last, free at last
I thank God I’m free at last

Way down yonder in the graveyard walk
I thank God I’m free at last
Me and my Jesus going to meet and talk
I thank God I’m free at last

On my knees when the light pass’d by
I thank God I’m free at last
Tho’t my soul would rise and fly
I thank God I’m free at last

Some of these mornings, bright and fair
I thank God I’m free at last
Goin’ meet King Jesus in the air
I thank God I’m free at last

The song was well known as a black spiritual for more than 100 years when Dr. Martin Luther King quoted it in his famous “I have a dream” speech.

‘Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring—when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics—will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”‘

The song was first collected in print by J.W.Work III in “American Negro Songs and Spirituals”. The song credit is generally listed as “Traditional African American Spiritual.” I couldn’t find any reference earlier than Work, although it is said to have originated in the early chant spirituals which would place it somewhere between 1865 and 1925. Work also arranged and composed his own spirituals although no one claims he wrote “Free At Last.”

The video is public domain from The White House.

In the early evening of June 20, 2009, Neda Agha-Soltan was in her car stuck in the traffic on Kargar Avenue in Tehran. She was with Hamid Panahi, her music teacher, and two others people who have not been identified.

They may have been going to the election protest to participate or just to watch. No one can say for sure. The protests or demonstrations had a social aspect that drew people.

The air conditioner broke down so they stopped and got out to walk, about 1 kilometer from the main protest.

Neda was standing on the sidewalk watching and you can see her fall from the gunshot in the video. She was shot in the chest and the bullet entered her heart.

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The video is taken outside of Iran, ostensibly in Germany since the woman is speaking in German. Although their is no proof she is Neda’s sister, the video is widely accepted as authentic. The close relatives of the dead girl lived under house arrest and any communication with those left in Iran would have been impossible.

The narrative translated into English:

I am here in order to tell you that she died in her father’s arms.
I am here in order to tell you that my sister had big dreams.
I am here in order to tell you that my sister was very modest [in her dreams].
She longed – like me – after one day feeling the wind in her hair,
and just like me she loved poems by Farukh (?), a Persian poet,
and she longed for freedom and equality.
She longed for one day being able to say, ‘I am Iranian’ with her head held up high.
She longed to one day fall in love with a man with, giving birth to a daughter, singing lullabies at her cradle, plaiting her child’s long hair.

My sister died because she was not allowed to live like a human being,
my sister died because injustice would not end,
my sister died because she loved life so much,
and my sister died because she cared lovingly for her fellow humans’ well-being.

All our brothers and sisters in Iran: You are not alone!

The killing of Neda Agha Soltan

In the early evening of June 20, 2009, Neda Agha-Soltan was in her car stuck in the traffic on Kargar Avenue in Tehran. She was with Hamid Panahi, her music teacher, and two others people who have not been identified.

They may have been going to the election protest to participate or just to watch. No one can say for sure. The protests or demonstrations had a social aspect that drew people.

The air conditioner broke down so they stopped and got out to walk, about 1 kilometer from the main protest.

Neda was standing on the sidewalk watching and you can see her fall from the gunshot in the video. She was shot in the chest and the bullet entered her heart.

Related Stories

Iran State TV Suggests Neda’s Iconic Death Was ‘Faked’
Neda Agha-Soltan her death shocked the world
Neda Agha-Soltan, a young girl is killed by plainclothes in Tehran
New Tribute to Neda Agha-Soltan
Neda Agha-Soltan’s fiancée sadly remembers her tragic death
Neda Agha-Soltan’s sister speaks for her murdered sister

Neda Agha-Soltan was an innocent young woman in Tehran, Iran walking with her music teacher after their car’s air conditioner shut down. The next minute she caught a bullet from a plain clothes policeman and lay bleeding to death on the street.

The image of her body dying for no reason has galvanized people around the world in support of freedom in Iran. It still evokes sadness months later about the tragedy brought home in the death of one young woman.

Video from LiveLeak.

Related Stories

Iran State TV Suggests Neda’s Iconic Death Was ‘Faked’
Neda Agha-Soltan her death shocked the world
Neda Agha-Soltan, a young girl is killed by plainclothes in Tehran
New Tribute to Neda Agha-Soltan
Neda Agha-Soltan’s fiancée sadly remembers her tragic death
Neda Agha-Soltan’s sister speaks for her murdered sister