Buddhist Marketer

Older Sister Arrested (Again)

My older sister Rahnee (shown in the below picture with Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky from Illinois’ 9th) was arrested yesterday!  From Mike Dorning on the AP wire [via Chicagoan arrested in DC protest]:

WASHINGTON– A Chicago activist for people with disabilities was arrested at a protest in front of the White House today.

Rahnee Patrick, 35, who has arthritis and psoriasis, said in a phone interview that she handcuffed herself to the White House fence after a meeting with Obama Administration officials to call attention to efforts to get more funding for long-term home care services for disabled people.

The Associated press reported that U.S. Park Police arrested 91 people for violating a regulation that requires demonstrations of more than 25 people outside the White House to gain an advance permit.

Patrick said she was released after being finger-printed on-site.

Unfortunately, I was not able to add “poked little sister in eyeball with wooden spoon in approximately 1980″ to the list of charges.

I tried calling her just now to get a quote but all I could hear was a bunch of chanting and yelling, suggesting that she’s at it again.  Go get ‘em, tiger!

How “We” Treat The “Marginal”

From Justin Hemenway’s “Nursing the non-elderly” in Champaign-Urbana’s online magazine Smile Politely:

There are some critics that argue that even supportive living environments are inappropriate for younger people with disabilities. Rahnee Patrick, co-coordinator for the Chicago branch of ADAPT, said that being forced from one’s home in any capacity can be deeply depressing. (ADAPT once stood for American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit but has since expanded its scope to long-term care solutions.) She experienced this firsthand at an early age; she was diagnosed with a “very extreme” case of psoriasis at age eight and arthritis at age 10.

“As someone who grew up with a disability, the scarce options don’t really give you much hope that you’d be able to be integrated in the community with your non-disabled classmates,” said Patrick. Unable to cover the substantial medical costs, Patrick worried for a long time that she would end up homeless. She even considered suicide. “I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that isolated, and it’s the system that’s set up to help us that actually makes us want to give up,” said Patrick.

Patrick said that there is a “system bias” which traces back to the country’s consideration of eugenics at the beginning of the 20th century. “At this point, people were to be removed from the gene pool and not allowed to live with non-disabled people,” she said. ADAPT argues that these facilities separating the disabled from mainstream society are an outdated carryover.

Instead, Patrick suggested that using Medicaid money to cover home care is her long-term goal. She and other members of ADAPT have organized protests, written letters, and have used civil disobedience in order to convince legislators to offer more options. “One of our goals when we started in the early ‘90s was to have Medicaid cover 25% of in-home services, and since then we’ve actually exceeded that,” said Patrick.

Even so, Patrick admitted that much work needed to be done, as there are still much younger residents in nursing homes. She said that she’s even seen some nursing homes in the state with cribs intended for toddlers.

“It’s a system that doesn’t serve the tax payers either, who are providing their own income and paying for wasteful services in the hope that people with disabilities can live quality lives, and that’s a real crime,” said Patrick.