PHOTO/RANA HALPERN & DIONE JOHNSON TYSON
Listening to the radio the other day I came across this report talking about people with disabilities and how they were being mistreated in our own state, in California. It was about caregivers who go into disabled people’s rooms and have sex with them because they had no voice.
Can you image not being able to talk and this is happening to you? Just think if it was your child or loved one and you didn’t know what was going on when you went home.
Sometimes it seems like people can do any and everything to people with disabilities. As a person with a disability I think it is a hard enough life to go through without living in fear. It takes a lot just to get up in the morning. Most people that have disabilities don’t even get enough doctor or dental care.
I have had some bad caretakers who were in it just for money, but I was lucky, I have a good support system on my side, a family who takes care of me at home for love, because they really care. This has given me a chance to go back to school. I will graduate next year, and if someone would have told me years ago that I could get my Masters degree I would not have believed it. At the same time, independent people with disabilities are an easy target because we often go places by ourselves. I have not been going anywhere by myself for a while because I’m scared and my family is scared also.
We talk about the system breaking down and the safely net falling apart. This can cause the people who are suffering – either as people who need care or who just need a decent living – to hurt each other. The thing that we all need to do is take back the things that the system has taken away from us, because all the system is doing is making us suffer and kill one other, so they could say that we were fighting with each other. As long as we believe that, the less work they have to do.
And its not only one race, it’s all races. Take the case of the man who shot Trayvon Martin to make sure he would never walk the streets again. This goes for our elderly too because they are being mistreated by the system as well. A common defense is that society gives people with disabilities too much help already. In my way of thinking society needs to take care of the elders and people with disabilities. It’s a basic right.
So in closing let me say let’s take care of those people that we love and take care of those who can’t take care of themselves. Everyone has a right to be treated like a human being and not treated just for the money.
