This article was originally published on our CEO’s personal blog but we thought it was great and wanted to share it with you. http://duintheusa.wordpress.com/2013/09/10/liberty-and-equality/
All my life I have believed in the right to equality, access, freedom of choice and the right to independence. Through my experiences as a child through to adulthood, it has often perplexed my why such basic concepts would be used by the masses to allude to a better world, yet the elude those who need its realisation. That is part of the reason that I started Deaf Unity and have sought out the sharing of knowledge and best practice, to save the mistakes of the past becoming a burden of the present and future.
Today I met with a tangible beacon of that desire – the Statue of Liberty. To some it is just a tourist site, to others an icon: to me its story echoes the story of the deaf and disabled community.
The SoL (as I am now calling her) was dedicated in 1886 and her full name is ‘the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World’ – a gift from France to the American people. In more than one way, she is a good personification for the Rights Movement and for disability equality. Obviously, she is a celebration of ‘freedom and democracy’ and hailed as a symbol of fairness and trueness. But she has another side to her: people think that she was a sign to the freedom of the slaves – an abolitionist proclamation, but that is not true. Rather than being a triumph of a human rights violation, she celebrates a political freedom – the expulsion of the British from the American shores!
I sometimes feel that the disability rights movement is the same thing – often, people think that as deaf and disabled people we are fighting to be recognised as a ‘real person’: someone with an identity and a right to live. Whilst true to some extent, the real fight and the true victory will be political: an end to a political oppression by decision makers. A political oppression that has removed our ability to move along with society, to enjoy the freedoms that are already out there and which people are willing to give, yet are pulled back by ‘red-tape’ and legislative restriction. (Interestingly, the SoL was dedicated the same year as the Milan Conference of 1886 in Europe which outlawed the use of sign language in education throughout Europe and began a cycle of linguistic oppression by educators lasting well into the 1980′s.)
So, I think that the SoL is a good personification, as she is often misunderstood: her origins, her makers, her shapers. She seeks to ‘Enlighten the World’, yet people have misunderstood her intent to some degree. I feel the same way: sometimes when we ask for equality, people take us the wrong way, think we are asking for too much, or misunderstand our reasons.
I think, with all respect, she symbolises the empty declarations of those in power. She is a symbol of liberty and freedom, yet when erected, slavery was both still legal and rife within the USA. It is the same with the experience of those in the deaf and disabled community – we are given one thing with one hand, yet the other takes away. Sign language is recognised as a language in its own right, whilst at the same time Deaf schools are closed and mainstreaming is imposed. Funding is given to interpreting training whilst access budgets are cut, changed or thrown out. Sometimes the path to ‘Liberty’ can be a journey full of twists and turns.
In one part of the museum, there is a wall that has different letters written by immigrants. They remember that the SoL was their first sight of America – the first sign of their new life beginning, the realisation of the ‘American Dream’. There was this lovely excerpt from one of the letters:
This hit home to me. I was thinking about legislation that we have received – the stuff that dreams are made of: sign language recognition, the DDA, the EA. All of these held ‘such promise’ and we envisaged a ‘new world’. Yet, as with many immigrant’s dreams, the promises of those legislative pieces have not come to fruition.
I hope I can take this lesson and use it, not only when disseminating my findings from this project, but also when communicating my vision for Deaf Unity and those whom we support. Our message needs to be clear, it should not be confused with other issues and not be buried under too-large statements. It needs to be simple – lift the political opppression and live like the citizens, people, fathers and sons that we already are: equal in everyone’s eyes except for those with the gavel. We need to fully represent the people whom we say we work with and for – not getting distracted with out own agendas. We need to make sure that changes that are effected are long-lasted and do not result in another area of provision being cut.
Hopefully, Deaf Unity can become a Statue of Liberty and Enlightenment to the Deaf world. This trip to America is definitely helping shape the monument.
