Queerness & Disability

A review by Margaret Spelman:

Robert McRuer’s Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability examines contemporary culture, yet its argument is rooted in the nineteenth century.  During that century, the notion of “normal” came to dominate medical and social discourses, and the effects of this shift are still felt today.  Lennard J. Davis conducted an extensive study of the rise of “normal,” showing that while it was initially a mathematical (statistical) term, in the 1700s it began to denote an idealized bourgeois position.  Davis explains:

The average man, the man in the middle, becomes the exemplar of the middle way of life … [an ideology that] saw the bourgeoisie as rationally placed in the mean position in the great order of things.  This ideology can be seen as developing the kind of science that would then justify the notion of a norm.  With such thinking, the average then becomes paradoxically a kind of ideal, a position devoutly to be wished.(1)

Davis’ analysis is worth quoting at length here because it provides the link between normality and class that undergirds McRuer’s book.  Although its subtitle identifies the work’s focus as “cultural signs of queerness and disability,” Crip Theory is at heart a critique of neoliberal and capitalist ideologies which construct middle-class, white, straight, and able-bodied as positions devoutly to be wished.  Its title could make it seem a “niche” study, but Crip Theory is in fact an expansive argument showing that every institutional context, local and global, relies on queerness and disability to support the ways it distributes power and access.  Often oppressive, these institutions are also sites where dissent breaks out — or, to use McRuer’s phrase, where “crip reality keeps on turning” (63).

“Inversion Therapy” by Margaret Spelman, a review of Robert McRuer’s Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability

Going After Palin

… MINUS the sexism.  From Glenn Greenwald, who goes straight at her, the way everyone should:

… in October — when Palin was elected Mayor of Wasilla. According to The Anchorage Daily News article reporting her victory, “the final tally was 617-413.” There are High School Student Council elections with more votes than that. She ran her campaign, and won, based on the precise GOP wedge strategies that John McCain, to this day, pretends to decry. As a Wasilla councilman put it at the time:

Palin offers no management qualifications, basing her campaign on the buzzword planks and the political might of the far-right Republicans. She obtained endorsement by the NRA. Why is the Republican Party so interested in local elections? Why is the NRA involved in such a contest? The three council seats up this year also saw challengers running on the basis of the Republican Party platform, using the same tactics.  

I would never suggest that an individual or organization refrain from participating in any election, but I had hoped this valley and Wasilla could avoid the nationwide tendency that sees such elections become more and more partisan. Bad enough that state decisions are made more often on the basis of party politics and in party caucuses. We don’t need that at the local level.

Time today reported the same thing: “While Palin often describes that race as having been a fight against the old boys’ club, [then-incumbent Mayor] Stein says she made sure the campaign hinged on issues like gun owners’ rights and her opposition to abortion (Stein is pro-choice).”

 

The first thing Palin did after being elected was fire six department heads in the City, including the Police Commissioner and the librarian. As The Anchorage Daily News put it: “the newly elected mayor of Wasilla has asked all of the city’s top managers to resign in order to test their loyalty to her administration.” It added:

She’s also been criticized by the local semiweekly newspaper for a new policy requiring department heads to get the mayor’s approval before talking to reporters. An editorial in The Frontiersman labeled it a “gag order.”

In January of 1997, Palin seemed actually to lie about what she did, as the same paper reported:

Palin said she planned to meet with [Police Chief Irl] Stambaugh and [librarian Mary Ellen] Emmons this afternoon. She also disputed whether they had actually been fired. “There’s been no meeting, no actual terminations,” she said.  

Stambaugh’s response was to read part of the letter given to him.

“Although I appreciate your service as police chief, I’ve decided it’s time for a change. I do not feel I have your full support in my efforts to govern the city of Wasilla. Therefore I intend to terminate your employment. . . . ”

“If that’s not a letter of termination, I don’t know what is,” he said.

Perhaps the most disturbing revelation about Palin yet appeared in the Time article linked above — that one of the very first things she did after being elected Mayor was pressure the librarian to ban books which she found offensive in some way:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving “full support” to the mayor.

Indeed, while reading through the early accounts of Palin’s tenure as mayor, the most mystifying aspect was that she not only immediately fired people like the Police Chief and Finance Director — one could argue that a new Mayor would want loyalists in those positions to carry out her new agenda — but also the City Librarian.

Read the rest here

Because this is what we really need to know

UPDATE:  From Matthew Yglesias - on Sarah Palin’s promise to be an advocate in the White House for “special needs” children:

… this is a nice idea:

“To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters. I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House.”

But then you read:

“However, a comment here notes that Palin actually slashed funding for schools for special needs kids by 62%. Budgets: FY 2007 (pre-Palin), 2008, 2009 (all pdfs).”

Well that’s less appealing.

UPDATE II:  “Sarah Palin: Vice Wrapped in Virtue” at Dissident Voice.  Here’s a bit:

So while Democratic centrists stay silent, they pass up a peerless opportunity to ask why the “culture of life” honors those who aren’t yet alive while making sure those who are alive don’t stay alive.

Why indeed.

Art & Disability

Disability in the Mirror of Art:

Disability breaks the mirror of art as traditionally conceived by putting into question the art object’s relation to perfection, but the beauty reflected in the broken mirror grows more beautiful as a result. The more we enter the modern age, the stronger the equation between art and disability—and to the point where we sometimes perceive the presence of art itself in the image of disability. Disability, disease, and injury have become the figures by which aesthetic beauty is often recognized. Hal Foster associates wounding and injury with an aesthetic realism born of the trauma of modern existence (Return of the Real 1996), while Linda Nochlin claims that the modern in art is made out of the loss of wholeness, embracing the impression that fragmentation reigns, connections in life have been shattered, and permanent values have disintegrated (The Body in Pieces, 2001, 23-24). She traces the essence of modernism to the French Revolution as the historical moment when the body in pieces becomes for modernity a “positive rather than negative trope” (8). Leonard Barkan’s Unearthing the Past (1999) attributes the origin of modernity’s appreciation of the fragmentary, broken, and injured to an earlier period, in the unearthing of classical fragmentary statuary in Renaissance times, calling the modern idea that fragments have “value independent of any potential for being made whole again” “a category shift” (122), one that reorients the “whole project of making art in response to broken bodies” (209). In an increasingly global world, modern art moves away from cultural languages to the biological diversity of the body, and disability marks the outer boundaries of the body diversely conceived. In fact, so strong is the equation between art and disability that we begin to view past works of art in terms of the irrepressible image of disability given by the modern world.

Read the whole thing here

Everyday Torture

From John Buell:

In Portland Phoenix articles, Lance Tapley points out that about 35,000 U.S. citizens are held in solitary confinement at “Supermaxes” (including Maine’s). Many are subjected to torture in the form of beating, sleep deprivation and mental abuse that rival practices at Guantanamo, according to Tapley.

Torture’s political invisibility is remarkable given its counterproductive consequences. Tapley points out that the torture of Supermax prisoners, most of whom are mentally ill, leads to high rates of recidivism and poses great public risk.

Frank Rich, commenting on [Jane] Mayer, suggests: “torture may well be enabling future attacks… false confessions and [an] avalanche of misinformation since 9-11… compromised prosecutions, allowed other culprits to escape and sent the American military on wild-goose chases.”

Some Americans do oppose torture, but even many who are opposed won’t acknowledge that “we” torture individuals not privy to secret bomb information. For example, prison authorities, major media and political leaders have not challenged Tapley’s specific factual assertions. Nonetheless, none have acted on his findings. Many national leaders even engage in tortuous redefinitions of torture.

These responses may have deep origins. Our world now presents shrinking employment options, rapid changes in neighborhoods and complex interdependence. Social turmoil leads many Americans, steeped in traditional notions of the U.S. as “a city upon a hill” in possession of unique truth, to embrace a problematic conviction: individuals whose differences in religion, lifestyle or ethnicity pose no direct threat really are dangerous.

The world is seen as irrevocably divided between a virtuous “us” and a dangerous “them.” We would never torture or would do so only for overwhelming reasons. When victims of our torture attack or murder us, their actions merely confirm our conviction that they are “basically evil.”

Greater equality and adequate security might blunt xenophobic responses to economic crisis. Nonetheless, especially in a world becoming ever more multicultural, achieving progressive reforms is unlikely without also challenging some prevalent forms of fundamentalism. These dogmatic and exclusionary creeds blind us to the limits of our own intelligence, deny opportunities for full self-development, and preclude social justice movements across racial and religious lines.

Read the whole thing here

Taser Co. Hosts Police Chiefs

Oh gimme a wtf break:

Taser International is a major sponsor of an upcoming police chiefs conference at which new research into electronic stun gun safety will be presented.

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police commissioned a review into conducted energy weapons last fall after Robert Dziekanski of Poland died at Vancouver International Airport after being hit with the device by RCMP. At least five other Canadians have since died after being tasered by police.

Steve Palmer, executive director of the Canadian Police Research Centre, said he will present an overview of the report at the conference later this month in Montreal, but said the full review into the weapons commonly known as tasers is not yet complete.

“It’s an update,” said Mr. Palmer, who declined to give details. A final report is expected by next year after a full and independent peer review.

Called RESTRAINT, Risk of Death in Subjects That Resist, the review compares tasers with other methods police use to subdue difficult people.

It also looks at the characteristics of those who have been zapped, including excited delirium, a condition in which suspects are in a heart-pounding state of agitation. Excited delirium has been repeatedly cited to explain the sudden deaths of people after being tasered.

Taser International is one of the platinum sponsors of the conference that runs Aug. 24-27. The corporation has sponsored similar events in Canada and around the world.

For a minimum $25,000 fee, platinum sponsors can display their name on banners and signs, provide promotional items in delegate kits, be given an advance list of participants and attend conference sessions.

Steve Tuttle, vice-president of Arizona-based Taser International, said the company’s presence is important.

“You have to be there. It is a major sales event. It is advertising,” said Mr. Tuttle, who will be at the conference to answer questions about his company’s products.

Mr. Tuttle said while the new Canadian research is important, he has DVDs that contain 130 studies that have found the devices to be safe.

“You want to be there to be a conduit for information because clearly we have controversial issues in Canada, and the last thing that we want to be is shy. We stand behind our technology.”

Hilary Homes of Amnesty International Canada, which has called for a moratorium on stun guns, said having Taser as a sponsor and exhibitor sends a mixed message.

“It is very troubling,” Ms. Homes said from Ottawa. “What we need now is an objective discussion and accountability and this doesn’t seem to be creating the proper context for what needs to be a very frank and open debate.”

Officials with the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police were not available for comment.

Taser staff will be on hand to exhibit the company’s trademark X26 model used by the RCMP and other Canadian police forces. Taser is not listed as an exhibitor under its own name, but under its Canadian distributor, M.D. Charlton Co. Ltd.

The company will also be promoting new products such as a wireless taser round that is fired from a shotgun and has a range of 20 metres, he said. There will also be information on new products being developed, including a system called Shockwave that fires multiple taser rounds that can incapacitate a number of people in an area up to 100 metres.

A special video camera and audio device that police can wear to show what happens when an officer restrains someone is also in the works. Cellphone video of Mr. Dziekanski’s death that was shot by a member of the public made headlines around the world, but there was no police video of the encounter.

“Right now we have officers that are being called into question because of controversial uses,” Mr. Tuttle said. “The rage right now is that people are recording police officers with their cellphones.”

A total of 22 people have died in Canada after being hit with tasers, which can deliver a shock of up to 50,000 volts.

I’m not sure that I can say anything you’re not already thinking.  It horrifies me that tasers that can affect more than one person are in the works, though why wouldn’t that be the case?  Taser use for crowd control is a pretty scarey thought though, given the tendency of the police to overreact in such circumstances.  To say nothing of the fact that there is less ability to make any judgments about the meaning of the behaviours of more than one person.  Freedom of speech and the right to demonstrate are more and more at risk.

Given the fact that the police have often shown little insight into the meaning of the behaviour of one person, that’s not exactly comforting.  This is an issue for the rights of the mentally ill as well.

Harper and Our Prisons

The social costs of the Harper government’s law and order shite, argghhh:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has increased the “mandatory minimum” sentences judges must impose for people convicted of gun-related crimes. A proposed bill does the same for those convicted of drug crimes, including mandatory jail time for anyone caught with just one marijuana plant. And it plans to toughen laws against young offenders.

Experts denounce the measures as American-style justice, where tougher mandatory minimum sentences have led to astronomical prison costs and the highest incarceration rate in the developed world, with little or no reduction in crime.

The new laws resonate with Canadians looking for quick fixes. But few consider their likely targets: The poor, the homeless, the poorly educated, the mentally ill, the unemployed and those addicted to drugs or alcohol.

Indeed, statistics seem to back Elliott’s description of a society that criminalizes its troubled citizens:

• More than 70 per cent of those who enter prisons have not completed high school.
• 70 per cent of offenders entering prisons have unstable job histories.
• Four of every five arrive with serious substance abuse problems.
• 12 per cent of men and 26 per cent of women in prisons suffer serious mental health problems.
• A Toronto study of 300 homeless adults found 73 per cent of men had been arrested and 49 per cent of them incarcerated at least once. Twelve per cent of women had served time.
• Two out of three in the youth justice system have two or more diagnosed mental health disorders.
• Federal and provincial data obtained by the Star through freedom of information requests indicates that GTA neighbourhoods with the highest levels of incarceration are those with lower incomes, higher unemployment, more single-family households and lower education.

Despite the statistics, talk of tackling the root causes of crime is sometimes dismissed as being soft on criminals. Harper recently denounced the criminal justice system as one that has “coddled criminals” for decades.

The Tory measures come as the overall crime rate hits a 25-year low. It indicates, experts say, that the decision to increase the country’s incarceration rate is strictly political, one that has more to do with perceived electoral benefits than crime prevention.

Craig Jones, director of the John Howard Society, believes it smacks of an “Old Testament, eye-for-an-eye ethic,” which sees crime as the moral failure of individuals rather than the collective responsibility of societies that marginalize its less-advantaged citizens.

Rather than fund policies that improve equal opportunity – supposedly a cherished Canadian value – the government will be locking up more of those it has let fall through the cracks, Jones argues.

“From the standpoint of social justice, it’s a bad day in Canada,” says Jones, whose group serves offenders in and out of prisons.

Attacking root causes doesn’t have to be expensive, especially if savings from reduced incarceration are reinvested in troubled neighbourhoods. With crime costing an estimated $70 billion annually, $1.8 billion of it for prisons, cost-benefit analyses have repeatedly shown such investments would save many more billions in the long run.

The debate, experts say, is not about being tough or soft on crime. It’s about what works. What doesn’t is spending millions more locking people up.

[...]

… studies have consistently shown that early childhood development programs can cut future anti-social or criminal behaviour by half. In June, Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. David Butler-Jones, reported that every dollar invested in early years saves $9 in future spending on health, welfare and justice systems.

But a 2006 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranked Canada dead last among 14 industrialized countries on investment in early childhood education and care. We spend 0.25 per cent of GDP compared to Denmark’s 2 per cent, Sweden’s 1.7 per cent and Norway’s 1.5 per cent. Even the U.S., with almost 0.5 per cent, spends nearly twice what Canada does.

[...]

A Toronto Star analysis of federal and provincial sentencing data revealed last week that 10 postal areas in Toronto will each cost taxpayers more than $12 million in incarceration costs by the time their residents are released from provincial and federal jails. The most expensive, M8V in Mimico, figures to cost taxpayers more than $25 million.

A map of the highest rates of incarceration indicate that offenders often come from Toronto’s most troubled and neglected neighbourhoods, such as Kingston-Galloway, Jane-Finch and Jamestown.

In the U.S., the Justice Mapping Center has described incarceration as an expensive and lazy way of responding to poverty. It persuaded several state governments to release low-risk inmates and provide alternatives to prison for those who violate minor release conditions. The money saved from incarceration is given directly to the communities the offenders come from.

That poverty fuels crime won’t surprise many. Yet anti-poverty advocates accuse Canadian governments of inexcusable inaction.

Canada’s child poverty rate ranks us 19th among 26 developed countries. Despite economic growth since the mid-90s, 13 per cent of Canadian children – 872,000 people – live below the StatsCan low-income cut-off. That’s the same rate as in 1989, the year the House of Commons unanimously vowed to eradicate child poverty by the year 2000.

[...]

Canadian prisons are more crowded, and inmates more dangerous and more wracked with mental illnesses and addictions. Yet the number getting rehabilitation programs has dropped significantly. Many come out worse off than when they went in.

Core rehab programs, such as anger management courses, only account for about two per cent – $37 million – of Correctional Service of Canada’s budget.

Nor are offenders getting useful job skills while locked up, according to a federally appointed panel that reviewed the prison system last year. Poorly rehabilitated and poorly trained, many released offenders end up homeless, too.

At least 40 per cent are convicted of a new offence within two years of being released. Needed immediately are more resources for rehab and job training in prison, and for housing on the outside.

With aboriginal Canadians, advocates say their scandalous overrepresentation in prisons would drop significantly if courts simply applied the law. (Aboriginals make up about 19 per cent of the prison population, but only 3.8 per cent of Canada’s.)

The Criminal Code states that reasonable alternatives to prison “should be considered for all offenders, with particular attention to the circumstances of aboriginal offenders.”

In many cases, this should result in conditional sentences that place native offenders in traditional forms of “restorative” justice, including healing circles, rehabilitation programs and making amends to victims, says Jonathan Rudin, of Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto. But it rarely happens.

[...]

There are noteworthy attempts to tackle the root causes of crime in Canada, most struggling to find the funds to match their long-term ambitions.

In some cases, such as Toronto’s action plans for 13 “priority” neighbourhoods, local agencies juggle short-term funding that abruptly ends programs after barely a year.

In others, such as the Waterloo Region Community Safety and Crime Prevention Council, local officials have toiled without a penny of provincial or federal money.

“We have done this work often in isolation, if not opposition, to other orders of government,” says Waterloo’s crime prevention director, Christiane Sadeler, whose $450,000-a-year budget has come solely from the regional government since 1995.

Sadeler’s 36-member council meets once a month. It includes local police, school boards, housing agencies, groups providing an array of social services and community representatives.

They try to educate the public and governments about the social factors fostering crime, co-ordinate strategies to tackle those causes and make sure there aren’t gaps in the services needed.

A current priority stems from the fact that more than half of crimes in the region are linked to substance abuse. But waiting lists for rehab programs are “ridiculously” long, Sadeler says.

Children suffering from mental health disorders anywhere in Ontario are also largely out of luck, says Judy Finlay, Ontario’s Chief Advocate of the Office of Child and Family Service Advocacy from 1991 until last August. They’re “congregating in the youth justice system” because there’s nowhere to send them for help.

A model similar to Waterloo’s was recently adopted by Alberta. Irvin Waller, founding director of the University of Ottawa’s Institute for the Prevention of Crime, calls it the “most progressive crime reduction program in the country.”

The province is investing $480 million in policing, early intervention, crime prevention and treatment programs. In May, Premier Ed Stelmach appointed a community safety secretariat, led by a “safety czar,” and staffed by officials from 10 ministries.

Waller, author of Less Law, More Order: The Truth About Reducing Crime, gives Ontario a far lower grade. Premier Dalton McGuinty gets credit for setting up the ongoing “Roots of youth violence” review panel. But overall, he has simply given more money to police, Waller says.

“We don’t have a plan,” he says, referring to a Canada-wide initiative to effectively reduce crime. “Until we do, we won’t succeed.”

Further argghhh, you should see the comments on this piece at The Star!  Or not.  Ackkkk, arrrrrgghhhhh!
And if you’re really into this prison shite and want some more, see this earlier post

Leprosy & Mental Illness

An essay from a series on mental illness in The Globe & Mail:

‘In no other field, except perhaps leprosy,” a Canadian report on mental illness said 45 years ago, “has there been as much confusion, misdirection and discrimination against the patient as in mental illness … Down through the ages, [the mentally ill] have been estranged by society and cast out to wander in the wilderness. Mental illness, even today, is all too often considered a crime to be punished, a sin to be expiated, a possessing demon to be exorcised, a disgrace to be hushed up, a personality weakness to be deplored or a welfare problem to be handled as cheaply as possible.”

[...]

 … stigma is not just name-calling. It’s also “sticks and stones” that can have concrete consequences. According to a Scottish study, people with mental health problems reported experiencing more than twice as much harassment as the general population. The perpetrators were typically neighbours and teenagers. Almost all those surveyed said that the harassment had made their mental health worse. Almost one in three moved as a result.

People living with mental illness are also less likely to report any offence or crime committed against them, because they report that police are unsupportive. And if they do press charges, they often end up being branded “unreliable” witnesses in court.

British research confirms that 80 per cent of people with longer-term mental health problems are out of work. So poverty and small, fragile social networks add to their problems. In Canada, it is no better. Almost half of us believe that if someone at work was dealing with depression and missing work, they would be more likely to “get into trouble and maybe even fired.”

Current research has found that the public is generally better informed about mental illness than it was a few decades ago. Researchers at Columbia University report that there is greater awareness of mental illness and its biological underpinnings, as well as the availability and effectiveness of treatment.

The bad news is that, in lockstep, there has been a corresponding increase in stigma, discrimination and social distancing. Increasingly, the public is attaching stereotypes, such as “dangerous and incompetent,” to people with mental illnesses.

[...]

Perhaps the most shocking evidence of the deep-seatedness of stigma is in a study by the Michigan Psychiatric Society, in which half of the psychiatrists surveyed said that they would treat themselves in secrecy rather than have mental illness recorded on their medical chart.

Agent Orange in Elmira

The Globe and Mail in Hanoi and Elmira, Ontario:

Agent Orange tainted everyone it touched, and so binds Vietnam not only to the United States, whose fighters also paid a price for the misery they created, but to Canada as well.

More than two decades after ailing U.S. veterans were awarded $180-million in compensation (in addition to the billions spent on their medical care), Ottawa is offering $20,000 each to an estimated 4,500 Canadian soldiers and civilians exposed when Agent Orange was secretly tested on a New Brunswick military base.

And just as Vietnam continues to press a stubborn U.S. government to help clean up the damage Agent Orange caused, a sleepy Ontario farming town is still struggling 40 years after the fact to rid itself of the fallout from a local chemical plant that brewed up millions of litres of the stuff for the U.S war effort.

Mirlande Demers RIP

From The Gazette, via No One Is Illegal – Montréal:

Mirlande Demers never fully recovered from the trauma she experienced while volunteering in Senegal in 2003, but she continued to help others until her sudden death two weeks ago at the age of 26 in Indonesia.

Her mysterious death, which happened aboard a ferry, has shocked the Canadian development community, with many calling it a great loss.

“She had the ability to fight and you don’t see that very often in life,” said Alexandra Simard, a friend who had been travelling with Demers in Indonesia but returned to Canada before her death.

A defender of women’s rights, outspoken advocate for the disabled and anti-racism activist, Demers was wise beyond her years, say those who worked with her.

“She could bring people together, listened and was able to manage people very well,” said Estella Muyinda, executive-director of the National Anti-racism Council of Canada, an umbrella organization of 120 groups.

Muyinda described Demers, who was chairperson of the organization’s governing board, as a very “determined lady.”

“She was one of those spirits or souls who, when focused on something important, gave it their all,” she said.

The Gazette first wrote about Demers in 2004, after she’d returned from volunteering in Senegal for a Victoriaville-based organization called Solidarité nord-sud des Bois Franc.

Still suffering from being gang-raped in the African country, she was in a wheelchair, had been taking drugs for what turned out to be a false-positive HIV test, and was in a bureaucratic struggle with Quebec’s workplace health and safety board.

She also contracted mononucleosis, hepatitis, malaria and typhoid fever.

Friends say that, despite her physical restrictions, which never seemed to improve, Demers never complained and her positive attitude was contagious.

“She held herself with such dignity that you’d never think of her as poor or in need,” Muyinda said in an interview from Toronto.

While in Senegal, Demers was supervising a group of volunteers working to advance women and youth rights. She also volunteered with Canada World Youth in Indonesia, as well as other work in El Salvador, and Haiti, her birth country from which she was adopted by a Quebec couple at the age of 6 months.

She had recently started her own non-governmental organization, the Quebec Coalition Against Discrimination, and tried to get groups outside of Quebec interested in the reasonable accommodation debate.

“Despite her short life, she had a lifetime of impact,” said Suzanne Cooper, policy director with Status of Women Canada. “She was a dedicated and passionate young woman.’

Demers played a pivotal role in getting the issue of women with disabilities in the United Nations resolution on HIV/AIDS at the UN Commission on the Status of Women in March, Cooper said.

The circumstances of her death remain a mystery, but what is known so far is that she died suddenly on a ferry travelling from Pontianak on the island of Borneo to the capital Jakarta, on Java Island. Foul play is not suspected.

Dizzying Disney

Kissing Abusive Princes

Disney’s Media Monopoly