Frida Feminist-Disability Links #6

This week in the news:

Sheriff's officials in Tustin California claim that their use of a Taser stun gun to subdue an autistic teenager, who left a social services center where he was being treated, was necessary. But not according to his parents, who say they overreacted. Full story here.

In another disturbing tasering incident, a 56-year-old woman in a wheelchair died shortly after being shocked ten times for a total of 165 seconds with a taser gun during a confrontation with police. As reported in this article, officers say they arrived to find the woman, who also had a documented mental illness, armed with two knives and a hammer, which, according to the officers, she was swinging at family members and police. A medical examiner found that the woman died from hypertensive heart disease and cited the Taser gun shock as a contributing factor. On her death certificate, the medical examiner ruled Delafield's death a homicide.

Anger as airline refuses to fly double amputee disability activist, Carla Luis. According to this report, the Portugese airline TP pilot told Luis that she could not fly without a medical certificate or a companion. Although several passengers offered to accompany her, and Luis pointed out that she was not sick, the pilot refuse to take off and she was forced to take another flight.

A woman with epilepsy, who was bullied and called a "silly little girl" who "lacked a business brain by two company managers at Estee Lauder, where she worked, has setted her case with the firm after winning a tribunal claim for direct discrimination, disabaility discrimination and harassment. According to this report, Estee Lauder has apologized for what happened, told the woman that her job is still open to her, and that it will change the way it trains its managers so as to avoid bullying in the future.

Here is link to an article about disability activist Eli Clare. In it, Clare discusses his most recent work The Marrow's Telling, which will be available this month. Dedicated to the work by and for trans and genderqueer men, the Marrow's Telling is a collection of prose and poetry that examines embodiment, and in particular, the physical ramifications of Clare's cerebral palsy, rural upbringing, gender transgressions and his traumatic and abusive childhood. Clare is the author of 1999's Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation.

A link here to an article about Disability Action Movement Now, a new disability rights organization in Ontario, Canada. Officially known as DAMN 2025 (which reflects the target date to make Ontario barrier-free), the group brings together groups from across the disability spectrum.