Rights, Values, and Lives

Advocacy is about lives that matter.

Thats the title of an article by Marty D. Omoto of the California Disability Community Action Network. Omoto is writing about the protracted efforts to pass the state budget. As yesterday's New York Times noted, billions will be cut the budgets of California schools, healthcare institutions and entitlement programs. In his article, Omoto writes that California's Department of Developmental Services is seeking to cut some $100 million, with an additional 7.1% cut to regional center provider payments beginning September 1, 2009. Such cuts are nothing new: Going back to 2001 and into the 1990s, "cuts were made not only to developmental services- but to many other services and programs impacting people with disabilities, mental health needs and seniors."

It's not, Amoto writes, that there should be "'no cuts'" to services and programs for these three constituencies It's that there should be "'no more cuts'":

But even if the budget language didn't make that clear, it should be clear to us as good advocates that our advocacy demands that we bring up and sometimes force attention and consideration of different public policy ideas that the State may not have considered, may not want addressed or may not want to focus on. They have their job - and there are tremendously good and decent people working in the Department of Developmental Services. But we have our job too. And we should do our job as advocates.

We should not as advocates allow any report or document to somehow control our commitment to rights or limit our vision for the future or diminishing our hopes for the people we love. That's not being unrealistic or avoiding a hard choice - it recognizes reality and the limited choices we often face. I know that from personal experience, as I know so many families and people do.

"It should be clear to us as good advocates that our advocacy demands that we bring up and sometimes force attention and consideration of different public policy ideas that the State may not have considered, may not want addressed or may not want to focus on." Being a "good advocate" means calling the powers that be to consider ideas and issues that they "may not want addressed or may not want to focus on"----it's about seeing where following established ways of doing and thinking is not only limited, but ineffectual and even contrary to what actual individuals actually need.

Advocacy, according to Omoto, is in part a visionary enterprise. It's about imagining a world where the things that hold individuals with disabilities back are missing. It's a reminder that advocacy involves something more than "raising money for research" or simply "helping other people": These have their place, but making a real and concrete difference in the world and in someone's life---by working to end the use of restraints and seclusion and taking a stand (and being political) about issues like discrimination, students' rights, human rights. As Omoto writes at the end of his article:

Because if we always remember that every life matters, than we will remember that we are talking about lives, about values and about rights - and not just about savings and a budget line item

Rights, values, and lives----those are something more than worthy to advocate for.

Image by meirlag.