DAWNing: How to Start and Maintain a DAWN Group
Edited and
written by
Joan Meister and Shirley Masuda
for
DAWN Canada: DisAbled Women’s Network Canada
This document expresses the views and opinions of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official policy or opinion of Human Resources Development Canada or the Government of Canada.
DAWN Canada wishes the information in this book to be available to as many women as possible. Women are therefore encouraged to photocopy any or all of this book for personal use or sharing with other women.
However, the illustrations may not be separated from the text, or copied, traced or reproduced in any way for any other purpose, without the permission of the copyright holder (E.J. Miller-Towle E.J.M. tm ) and DAWN Canada. Illustrations © 1998
We urge you to donate a copy of DAWNing to the public access place of your choice - such as public libraries, hospitals, adult education centres, community centres, etc.
Flyers could be posted at laundromats, in hospitals, on bulletin boards, at malls, doctors’ offices, union halls, women’s resource centres, pharmacies, day care centres, therapy clinics, etc. And you could send them to free newspapers, newsletters and radio and television stations.
There are many women with disabilities out there who have no where to turn for support and information.
Please help us get the word out!
ATTENTION! WOMEN WITH DISABILITIES
DAWN Canada: DisAbled Women’s Network Canada is a national organization formed to address the needs of women with disabilities in Canada. A new book, DAWNing: How to Start and Maintain a Group has been published to provide women with information on how to form their own local DAWN, groups for support, companionship and to bring about change.
DAWNing is full of encouragement and practical advice. Even if you don’t think you want to start a group, it is a "must read" for any woman with a disability who has felt alone and powerless. Written in Plain Language by women who live and work with disabilities of all kinds, it could prove to be a valuable resource for anyone who wishes to improve her situation or get to know about other women with disabilities.
Check it out and help yourself!
For more information, please contact:
DAWN CANADA: DisAbled Network Canada
Box 1138
North Bay, Ontario P1B 8K4
email: admin@dawncanada.net
CONTENTS
2. "We Are Who You Are" - Bonnie Sherr Klein
3. The DAWNing of Disability Culture - Catherine Frazee
1. How to Start Your Own Group - Joan Meister
2. Meetings, Meetings, Meetings - Joan Meister
3. Enabling the Environment - Maria Barile
4.Society Status: Pros and Cons - Joan Meister
1. A Consideration of Feminist Process - Lee Lakeman
1. Diversity (Differences) - Joan Meister
2. Cross-Disability - Joan Meister
3. Self-Identification - Joan Meister
5. Confidentiality - Joan Meister
2. Access in Action - North Shore Advisory Committee on Disability Issues
A. Use Plain Language - Barb Goode
SIX: Reaching Out, Reaching In
2. Doing Research - Shirley Masuda
3. Why Do Research? - Joan Meister
4. Networking - Eileen O’Brien
5. Electronic Communications - Kathy Hawkins
6. Conflict Resolution - Shirley Masuda
1. Where Does It Come From? (Writing Grant Proposals - Shirley Masuda)
2. Where Does It Go? (Keeping Track of the Money - Shirley Masuda)
B. Lists
1. DAWN Affiliate Organizations
2. Provincial Disability Organizations
C. Stationery
F. Order Form
The DAWN Canada Woman
Our woman is from a figure owned by the British Museum in London, England and she is described as "3rd Century Egyptian". DAWN Canada received permission from the museum to use her. Unfortunately, they call her a "fertility" figure. Until recently, all goddess figures were considered by archaeologists and museums to be little more than idols used by women who wanted successful pregnancies - just as society generally has seen women to be mainly babymakers. Far from being savage (bloodthirsty) and barbaric (uncivilized), these ancient cultures encouraged reverence (respect) for the Earth and honoured women as images resembling the "Great Mother". They believed that women possess the gift of creative force. Therefore, all women were considered to be sacred and were respected for our insight and wisdom, our ability to invent and the power that we represented.
For centuries, modern civilization has viewed women who cannot bear children, women past childbearing years and women with disabilities as having no value. A woman’s duty has been to bear children and to work to care for her husband and family. A woman who is disabled or who needs care is thought of as unable to be married and a drain on her family and society. A woman who cannot do enough physical work to earn her keep is despised. Unless she can be used for sex, she often doesn’t survive. The DAWN woman is our symbol of independence, defiance and power. She is from a much earlier time when a woman’s place was respected. She is strong and capable, valuable in her own right, just as we are. If you feel low, weak and frightened, think of her. She is within us all, even though others may not see it. She represents the strength of a community of women with disabilities, a power that stands behind us and she casts a big shadow. - E.J. Miller-Towle
Acknowledgements
This manual would never have been finished without the patience and encouragement of Eileen O’Brien and the rest of the Advisory Committee for DAWNing. This project started as a funding proposal by DAWN Canada in August 1997, went through at least three major revisions (changes) and many smaller ones, waited for a four month sick leave (see below) and never stopped sounding like a good idea. Thanks are due to Claudette Perron, our funding officer with Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) at that time. She saw us through many funding opportunities and the beginning stages of this long process and has since moved on. Best wishes to Claudette at her new job and welcome to Linda Brown, her replacement.
Many individual, wonderful women have put their best energies together to help to make this manual possible and useful. First of all, thanks to each of the contributors who gave abundantly (a great amount) of her time, knowledge and spirit. These women were asked to contribute because they are experts in different areas and what a bunch of experts we have! Maria Barile in Montreal, a founding member of DAWN Canada, heard about the project and volunteered to share her particular perspective (point of view). How else would we all learn how to conduct (lead) a bi-lingual (two languages) meeting as a chair with low hearing? If we can do that, we can do anything!
And then there’s our artist, E.J. Miller-Towle, who agreed to do the artwork and then volunteered to write an article on organizational image and the DAWN Woman. Sue Leon not only was the computer coach to the project but she also volunteered to do something on mentoring. We’re truly blessed.Special thanks go out to a group of women who agreed to be close readers of various drafts of this document. Maxine Thomas, Margo Massie, E.J. Miller-Towle (and Tim), and Pam Horton, the proofreader, all added their generous input and helped to shape this book. They read lovingly and thoughtfully and the contributions (gifts) of each helped to make this manual better and better.In our on-going efforts to make DAWN Canada as accessible as possible, all of the articles have been edited for Plain Language.
This is just a bit trickier than you’d think: there are two main parts to it. One is using plain, clear language to make things easier to understand and read. Lots of "un-plain" words appear in parentheses ( ) behind the complicated word. And sometimes it’s the other way around! The second part is formatting - how important it is to use headings, wide margins, numbering, bullets, white space and graphics (drawings) to make a document easier to see, understand and read. Thanks to Barb Goode for her assistance with reading the draft of this manual and for the materials on Plain Language that she contributed throughout the project. Kathy Hawkins is the DAWN Canada computer wizard who has helped in many ways. And thanks again to Sue Leon. She put all the technological pieces (computer stuff) together to create the first draft for the Advisory Committee while I was laying around for four months and unable.
The laying around for four months resulted from a pressure sore that went wrong and some plastic surgery. Patience is not one of my strengths. I learned lots about different systems - hospital, medical, rehabilitation and home support. A crash course. One thing’s for sure, we have a great deal of work to do, women. I hope this manual helps you to do some.Endnote: This manual took on a life of its own and grew like a mushroom. It needed, at the last minute, more money than we had in the budget. Special thanks to Linda Brown at HRDC for her extra efforts to get us more. Big thanks also to our printer, Jack Moller at Broadway Printers.
Forewards
from Joan Meister
The need for this manual probably occurred to me immediately after I became the Chair of DAWN Canada in 1987, way back on a cold winter afternoon in Winnipeg. It was the founding conference of DAWN Canada and I agreed to be Chair - I knew how to chair a meeting. I’d been active in my union, left wing politics and, of course, the women’s movement. "Rules of Order" didn’t scare me anymore. Why, I knew how to deal with "challenges to the chair" and a "preferential speaker’s list", too. Hah! Fools rush in ...
What I didn’t know was that chairing a meeting is only a small, small part of running, helping to shape and keeping alive a national organization like DAWN Canada or any other group. Chairing a meeting is important but there are so many other things that are also important:
- I spent an awful lot of time flying back and forth to Ottawa and many other cities
- I attended endless meetings with bureaucrats (government employees) and politicians (elected representatives
- I supervised all projects
- I answered the phone that never stopped ringing
MS and low energy had already taught me how to set priorities (putting things in order of importance) and it was a good thing that I already knew about that one.
Set Priorities
At first, when I started chairing DAWN Canada, I couldn’t believe how many things I was doing for the first time, things that I didn’t actually know how to do. Thank goodness I had Shirley Masuda here in Vancouver to listen to me, support me and help me lots and lots. And Maria Barile in Montreal and Pat Israel in Toronto and ...I also began to understand how lucky I was to have had relevant (similar, fitting) experiences doing things like chairing lots of meetings, taking hours and hours of minutes, participating in panels or what I learned when I was on my union’s negotiating (bargaining) team. All of these things helped me to be able to do many things for DAWN Canada. And thank goodness for that or it all would have seemed even more weird and lots scarier than it already was sometimes.Then I began to realize how few other women with disabilities had ever had those kinds of opportunities. I started using a wheelchair at 30 and I’d had a chance to do many (mostly inaccessible) things before that. I also began to learn that many women with disabilities have lived institutionalized, medicalized or just plain isolated lives since birth. Or that they have been unemployed or underemployed and never had the chance to go to a job interview never mind a union meeting.
I soon found that most of the political work that I had done before was suddenly not accessible to me. I didn’t stop being a feminist and a trade unionist but I did start using a wheelchair and my former world had too many stairs and was suddenly closed to me and beyond my reach. The women’s movement didn’t really "get it" about access and was suddenly also pretty much inaccessible to me.I turned to the disability community to do my political work and soon after, I realized that the disability community just didn’t "get it" about women’s issues. I turned there because I figured that it would be accessible. It seemed that these organizations which were mostly dominated (controlled) by men weren’t interested in doing - or didn’t have enough time or money to do - anything about an issue like mothering as a woman with a disability or about the violence in our lives. Different priorities.
Not too long after that, I started to wish that somebody had written down some of the things that I needed to know - in one place - and answers to the thousands of questions that I had. Questions like:
- How do you hold an accessible meeting?
- How do you form a society?
- And why should you?
- Just how do you go about getting money out of the government?
- Why doesn’t anyone have a simple checklist for access needs?
For the longest time I was zooming off to zillions of meetings with important people about important issues and never feeling as though I really knew what I was doing. My main objective during those first years was to get women with disabilities on the agenda – everybody’s agenda - and keep us there. I spent a lot of time asking a lot of different people for lots of advice about a lot of different things.
This manual is an attempt to give answers to those kinds of questions, put down in one place, so that you can feel a bit more confident than I used to feel. In those days, I relied heavily on my general belief that people with disabilities scared most non-disabled people or at least made them uncomfortable. I felt that having a disability gave me a tiny advantage in a world where, as a feminist in a wheelchair, I did not have much power or much ability to influence decisions. I still rely on that one sometimes. But DAWN Canada has made it mostly unnecessary for us to use those kinds of stupid devices. As women with disabilities, we have believable (credible) issues and, therefore, we are taken a bit more seriously than we were at the beginning..I hope that after you have a look at this book or even parts of it, you will know how to hold your meeting or how to get some money from the government or that this "process" stuff isn’t too mysterious. If you take it all apart into smaller pieces, it doesn’t seem so hard or big. But more importantly, I hope that you figure out how to reach out to other women with disabilities, get together with them and make your lives better. I hope that you share some good advice, good ideas and good laughs. I hope that you start some cross-disability, truly accessible groups for women with disabilities - whether you decide to become a society or not and no matter what your reasons are for getting together! And I sure hope that this manual gives you some clear ideas about how to get there. And why we should try and keep trying.
This manual is meant to be written in Plain Language. I have never done it before but it seemed like high time to learn. Plain Language is another way of meeting women’s access needs that helps us to connect better with each other. And with lots more women with disabilities and other women, too:
- women who have English as a second language.
- women who have low reading skills because of barriers like lack of large print, poverty or culturally appropriate, accessible, safe education.
- women labelled mentally handicapped.
- women with huge fatigue issues and tired brains
We just have to keep trying to get more and more accessible, to reach out to more and more women and make our voices heard.
from Shirley Masuda
Looking back over the last ten years I have many memories.
Life kept getting more interesting and a lot busier. As part of being a researcher and being the only employee of DAWN Canada, I wore several hats:
- I had to keep track of all of the money and pay the bills
- I had to travel and talk about my research and about DAWN Canada
- I represented DAWN Canada on many national committees and national women’s groups
I learned many, many things - things that we’ve put down in this book and things you might want to know.
My research took me to every major city in Canada and to many smaller ones. I met hundreds of wonderful women who participated in the projects. I learned something important from every woman I talked to - learned about her life, about her disability and about my own life as a woman with a disability.
The worst jobs that I had to do were keeping track of the money, going through government audits (when they check the accounts) once in a while and writing grant proposals. DAWN Canada lived from one project to the next and Joan and I spent a great deal of energy and time writing grant proposals (See ‘Where Does It Come From? - Grant Writing", p. 183) and going to Ottawa or being on the phone with the Funding Officers (bureaucrats).
The Secretary of State Department (now part of a huge new department called Human Resources Development Canada - HRDC) and Health Canada were our biggest funders over the years. We also got some money from the Solicitor General and the Justice Department. Grant writing and negotiating for money takes a great deal of effort and time and I have sworn off writing grant proposals now, but no telling for how long!
The work that I enjoyed the most and which I felt was making the biggest contribution to women with disabilities’ causes covered a wide range of things. As the DAWN Canada Researcher on violence against women with disabilities, I was very privileged to be able to work on the Women’s Consultation Group set up by Kim Campbell when she was Minister of Justice. This was a group of feminist from equality seeking national women’s organizations across Canada. It was set up to advise the Minister on how Canadian laws (especially those which addressed violence and human rights) affected and oppressed women.
The first legislation that we worked on was the "Rape Shield Law" and then the ‘Anti-Stalking" legislation and others followed. It started out being eight women and quickly grew into a more representative body, at the insistence of Lee Lakeman of the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres (CASAC). (See "Feminist Group Process", and "Coalition Building" ) She chaired the group and insisted that we must have representation from all national feminist organizations and that we must be as culturally diverse as the whole of Canada. This group of women still exists and over sixty women attended the last meeting.
There were many conferences and committees that I served on for DAWN Canada - far too numerous to mention or even to remember. Each one was a learning experience. Of course , the most memorable ones were the DAWN Canada conferences. It was, and continues to be, a profound (deep, very important) learning experience every time we organize a conference or a meeting for women with disabilities and make sure that every woman’s needs are met and voices are heard. We are getting very good at it but we will always have things to learn because the needs are as diverse (different) as the women who come. (See "Access Needs Checklist",)
There have been many speaking engagements, from dinner speeches to keynote (theme) speeches and workshops at conferences. The most thrilling one for me was to speak to hundreds of women at a Take Back The Night March in Vancouver, my home territory. (See "Invitations to Meetings") I have enjoyed a position of privilege and respect from the federal government, equality seeking women’s groups and women with disabilities all over the world.
One touching bit of evidence of this is the fact that my first manual, Meeting Our Needs was translated into German to be used by the German disability movement. There are many other occasions when I have felt honoured as an individual and as a representative of a feminist, equality seeking organization – that’s us - DAWN Canada: DisAbled Women’s Network Canada
Was it worth all the work - keeping track of the money, writing grant proposals, negotiating with the bureaucrats for money, the research, writing papers and manuals, the committees, the advisory groups, the speeches, the workshops, the travelling and ...? You bet it was!
I owe DAWN Canada a big Thank You for giving me the opportunity to do this work and to represent women with disabilities in Canada and internationally. I also owe a big Thank You to Joan Meister, my friend, my boss and my mentor. She never lost faith in me and taught me so much about democratic process, accessibility and accountability.
There are many changes happening to DAWN Canada right now - we will be opening an office soon with new workers and new projects and I hope DAWN Canada continues to be a big part of my life and maybe a part of yours, too.
I started with DAWN Canada not knowing what was in store for me. I learned as I went along. Sometimes it was difficult but always exciting. I wish there had been a manual like DAWNing: How To Start And Maintain A Group to help me out. No one can know all the answers all of the time.
But a good thing to think about is from The Rule Of Mental Leverage:
It is easier to remember where to get information when you need it than to memorize the information itself.
DAWNing: How To Start And Maintain A Group provides you with some very specific information about how to organize and maintain your groups. This is a woman’s book based on women’s experience and I am sure you will find it helpful in your work.
One: Why DAWN Canada?
In this section we tell the story of DAWN Canada: DisAbled Women’s Network Canada and share with you different perspectives on (ways of looking at) why DAWN Canada was started in the first place and why we are still a good idea.
1. A Short Herstory
Part One - Joan Meister
In the beginning ...
Back in June 1985, a critical meeting took place in Ottawa. It was the first time women with disabilities from all across Canada had ever got together as women with disabilities to talk about issues of concern to women with disabilities at an event that was organized by women with disabilities. A few good women had not only dreamed of getting just women with disabilities together, without any men, to talk to each other about really important things - they did it! The meeting took place. "We were in charge," says Maria, one of the organizers. It’s her favourite memory of that time.
The meeting was organized by Pat Israel (Toronto), Pat Danforth (Regina) and Maria Barile (Montreal). Each of these visionaries (people who see far into the future) had been working in the disability community for a long time. It was not supportive of issues of concern to women with disabilities. Each woman believed that a meeting to talk to other women was very important. They wanted to identify and discuss big issues in our lives as women with disabilities.
A fine old DAWN tradition was begun. The organizers applied for and got money from the federal government to hold this meeting in Ottawa at the Westin Hotel. For many of the 17 women, it was the first time they had slept in that kind of a hotel. It was the only hotel in Ottawa that had enough modified (changed to be accessible) rooms to accommodate us (meet our needs). It was very expensive; access can be expensive when there are no choices. The hotel is connected to a mall but no one went shopping!
Instead, 17 women with disabilities from all across Canada got together and started talking. We talked for three days. Non-stop. We met in a room with no windows and covered all four walls with four levels of flip chart pages. We talked like we’d never been in a room with that many other women with disabilities before. We hadn’t. It was exhausting (tiring) and very high energy at the same time. We were in charge.
It was a very well facilitated (run) meeting and we got a lot of work done. We defined six areas of major concern, issues that kept coming up when different women spoke:
- mothering
- self image
- employment
- health
- sexuality
- violence
Pat Danforth thought of our wonderful name, DAWN: DisAbled Women's Network. (See "Language") The name was a response to the idea that we should create an autonomous (independent), national organization to explore our issues of concern and be the voice of women with disabilities in Canada.
Not surprisingly, we realized that there was a lot of work to do. We decided that:
- we absolutely had to get to work on the issues that we had identified, we needed to do research on them
- we had to go home and start more groups, have more meetings like this one
- we had to stay in touch with each other on a national level
We thought about how if there were 17 of us in one room in Ottawa, just imagine how many of us there were out there in the whole country. We didn’t think about how we didn’t have one cent to do anything with, we just knew there was a need to do it.
We had big plans, though. We formed a Steering Committee to take us through the time before we could get the funding to hold the founding conference. We decided to return to our various parts of the country and organize DAWN groups locally. Most of us made a commitment to do lots of hard work.
It was an amazing three-day meeting; it was well organized and well run. It was our first taste of government funding. It was a first attempt to represent women with all kinds of disabilities. Or so we thought. We didn’t have a very good grasp of cross-disability at that first meeting. We did not have any women who represented women with mental illness or any who were labelled mentally handicapped. We didn’t even know about women with brain injuries or HIV/AIDS then. (See "Cross-Disability")
The Steering Committee was formed during the meeting to guide this brand new organization through it’s infancy. These women already had computers and all were attached to e-mail (electronic mail) and that was how we kept in touch. (See "Electronic Communications", ) We had absolutely no money so it was just as well that we were able to talk to each other electronically instead of by long distance phone calls. We still don’t have enough money to have a phone number listed for DAWN Canada!
At this time, when I returned to Vancouver, I was given the opportunity at a BC Coalition of People with Disabilities conference to hold a workshop for women. That was the beginning of DAWN BC. Groups in Quebec, P.E.I., Saskatchewan and Ontario were also being started up.
During this time, Pat Israel and Pat Danforth applied for and received funding on behalf of the Steering Committee of DAWN Canada from the federal government to hold our founding conference. I was busy getting the Constitution and By-Laws written as a draft to take to the conference. (See "Constitution" and "By-Laws") We were all busy getting our provincial groups organized. An "Angel" appeared here in BC to help the Steering Committee and we were given free postage and photocopying. We kept in touch.
Disabled Peoples’ International Conference
Not too long after the first meeting in Ottawa, DAWN Canada was offered funding from the federal government for five of us to attend the Second World Congress of Disabled Peoples’ International (DPI) in the Bahamas. DPI is the group that represents national groups of organizations of people with all kinds of disabilities. These groups are from all countries around the world. The conference was attended by a group (delegation) from Canada (Council of Canadians with Disabilities) and DAWN Canada was part of that delegation.
For me it was a very powerful experience because there were more of us than them - the guests with disabilities outnumbered the non-disabled guests. We didn’t feel weird when they got on an elevator with a bunch of us, they did. And it was so beautiful that it was a bit hard to pay attention to the agenda when I first got there. The conference was at the Paradise Island Resort and Casino! The vegetation (plant life) was spectacular (awesome) and the nights were soft, fragrant and black. It was hurricane season so the hotel rates were affordable. But luckily, there was no hurricane of a weather-related variety.
There was a big storm brewing, though. The DAWN Canada women called a women’s meeting and 60 women attended it. It lasted all evening and was translated into five different languages (English, French, Japanese, American Sign Language and Spanish) more-or-less at the same time (simultaneously) and spontaneously (without any planning). The work of translating for the meeting was done by women who are bi-lingual and who volunteered to do it.
DAWN was able to play a useful role since we had spent three days in Ottawa figuring out what the biggest issues were for us. We shared our knowledge with the women from around the world and we all had similar concerns. Imagine that. Anyway, there was this other big concern about the DPI Congress - gender parity (equal numbers of women and men participating equally).
That women-only meeting resolved to (decided to do it and act on it) make sure that Disabled Peoples’ International (DPI) made sure that women with disabilities had an equal voice and an equal place in DPI. This is a work in progress.
It was a very powerful feeling, though, to be working with all of these wonderful women with disabilities from all over the world. And feeling proud. And knowing that we all "got it". DAWN Canada had truly begun. We understood that we were really part of a pretty amazing network - women with disabilities from all over the world and all over Canada, too.
The Founding Conference
In March 1987, the founding conference of DAWN Canada: DisAbled Women’s Network Canada took place in Winnipeg. This meeting was held in the downtown YWCA. A group of young dancers who were auditioning (trying out) for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet stayed there at the same time and we all shared the (accessible) bathroom. Mornings were pretty crowded! A number of important things took place during this meeting. Not only did we ratify (approve) the Constitution and By-Laws, we decided to join the national umbrella organization for provincial disability groups in Canada, the Council of Provincial Organizations of the Handicapped (COPOH) which has since changed its name to the Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD). We also decided to join other feminists at the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC). (See "Lists" ) We approved (ratified) the six areas decided in Ottawa as priority areas for future DAWN Canada work and decided to ask the federal government for funding to do the research. No one had ever done any research before about issues of concern to women with disabilities and we felt that it was time. (See "Doing Research", "Why Do Research" and "Research Guidelines") The final piece of important business that was achieved by the founding conference was the election of a Board of Directors. The Board was representative of each region of Canada and almost all disabilities. The Board elected an Executive and DAWN Canada was born!
Starting to Work
The Board immediately began to put into action the directions from both the meeting in Ottawa and instructions from the founding conference in Winnipeg. Research, research, research. We all knew about the issues in our own lives and those of the women we personally knew but we knew nothing more general and representative about women with all kinds of disabilities in Canada and neither did anyone else. We applied once again to the federal government for funding (See "Where Does It Come From?") and we were given enough to produce papers on employment, violence and parenting. We hired Jillian Ridington as our first researcher and she gathered the information and produced the papers. This involved sending out a very long questionnaire to many women all across the country and waiting for their responses. Lots of women were interviewed for their more in-depth comments. During her work, Jillian found that all of the topics involved the issue of self-image and so she did an additional paper for us on that topic, too, bless her heart.
The response was overwhelming both in volume (numbers of responses) and in depth. Women let us know in detail about every aspect of their lives. From this response, we knew that we were heading in the right direction. We knew that our preliminary work at the meeting in Ottawa in 1985 was an accurate assessment of the concerns of women with disabilities all across this land. These papers, produced in 1989 are:
- Who Do We Think We Are?: Self Image and Women with Disabilities
- Different Therefore Unequal: Employment and Women with Disabilities
- Beating the "Odds": Violence and Women with Disabilities
- The Only Parent in the Neighbourhood: Mothering and Women with Disabilities
The papers proved to be absolutely the first research done by women with disabilities about women with disabilities in Canada and pretty much around the world. We’ve been recognized since then as world leaders on issues of concern to women with disabilities. We only had enough funding to produce a small number of them and these important documents are now out-of-print (we ran out). We still get requests for them. In 1991 there was another Annual General Meeting which was attached to a conference called "Self-Image: Who Do We Think We Are?". Pat Israel was elected Chair at that AGM and soon after DAWN received enough funding to open a national office in Toronto. Joanne Doucette was hired as the Coordinator. Pat also had this life that she was interested in living and she resigned before she burned out. Everything came back to Vancouver and, as Past-Chair, I ended up doing the same stuff I was doing before.
Working harder and faster
The next few years were a blur of activity for DAWN Canada. We were swamped with requests to attend government meetings, consultations and conferences, invitations to attend other organizations’ events, phone calls for information and requests for documents. We had no staff and no office. The business of this national organization was again being conducted out of my bedroom and all calls came to my home phone. I supervised all projects; Shirley and I had an excellent labour/management relationship! The fact that so many were interested in our existence let us know that we were providing a valuable and unique service to those who were well enough connected to know that DAWN Canada existed. Unfortunately these were mostly people like bureaucrats, politicians and other national organizations, not necessarily women with disabilities. DAWN Canada Board members were in touch with the women who were trying to organize on the provincial level. We hoped, anyway. The women at the provincial level didn’t (don’t) get much financial support either. I felt that my main job was to keep DAWN Canada alive. This meant keeping the Board of Directors in touch with each other and informed about the events that kept happening. Another important aspect to the work during the early years was to get DAWN and our issues on the agenda. Everybody’s agenda - the women’s movement, the disability community, the funders, the employers, the insurance companies, the politicians ...
"Funding-Driven" Agendas
It’s important to talk about federal funding since that is how almost all non-profit, national organizations like DAWN survive. As we learned from the first research we did, women with disabilities are:
- very poor
- poorly educated
- unemployed and underemployed
- often isolated
- twice as likely to experience violence as non-disabled women
- interested in being mums but it’s very hard
We also have little access to different resources and have a poor self-image And, of course, as women we face the same kinds of discrimination that non-disabled women face everywhere. We are not in a good position to do fundraising much beyond what we need for our everyday, disabled lives. The federal government has resources set aside to help individuals, through their groups, to "achieve full citizenship" as Canadians. Applying for and receiving funds from the federal government is how a group like DAWN continues to exist. (See "Money") But it can be a fickle (changeable) and arbitrary (dependent on other’s judgements) process. Sometimes there’s a big difference between what your project proposal (request) asks for and whether you get any funding at all, how much you actually get, if you get any, and how you are allowed to spend it. Government priorities can change from government to government (Liberal to Conservative), from Minister to Minister (politician to politician) and even from bureaucrat to bureaucrat (government employee to government employee). These are the people who make funding decisions. It’s called a "funding driven agenda" when a group must spend money according to someone else’s (often a politician’s or bureaucrat’s) priorities (agenda). You never quite know what’s going to happen next.
There are several reasons for this kind of funding uncertainty:
- politicians get elected every few years by people who vote in elections
- politicians and governments change
- politicians make decisions about how to spend tax dollars according to what kind of policy is described by the government that wins the election
- bureaucrats are directed by politicians to do the work of the government
- bureaucrats don’t get elected, they stay on
At each step of this process, your ideas for a funded project can be influenced or changed by someone else’s idea of how to spend money based on government policies, individual personalities or egos, elections or even world-wide events.
Remember to vote!
As an example of how dependent government funding can be on something like popular opinion, take the example of Rick Hansen’s "Man in Motion World Tour". Once it was certain that Hansen was becoming a popular media figure on a world scale, a hero even, the Canadian government got on the bandwagon and supported him with millions of dollars (remember "Independence ‘92"?). For a decade, people with disabilities became the federal funding "flavour of the month". It was good timing for DAWN Canada. We got some funding as well.
Government Funding
There are two kinds of government funding that are important in the life of a non-profit organization: "core funding" and "project funding". "Core funding" is very desirable because it tends to get renewed without too much hassle. You get it on a yearly basis and the relative certainty of it allows an organization to actually plan ahead. You can do some work which can move from one logical and sensible step to the next and the next. You can hire a staff person to deal with things like correspondence (opening mail and sending letters), filing and telephones. You can have an office instead of working out of your bedroom. You can have a phone listing in the phone book. DAWN was promised "core funding" a long time ago but it hasn’t happened yet. They can still withhold core funding or delay it but it’s more likely to be regular and reliable than project funding.
Try to get promises in writing
"Project funding" is also wonderful to get but is very limited in what you can do with it. It’s only allowed to be used for specific projects and never "capital expenditures’ or things like office rental, computers, photocopying machines, telephones, etc.. You can’t have conferences or annual general meetings, put out a newsletter, hold Board of Directors meetings or open an office. You do get to do research (which DAWN has done lots of) but you can’t develop the organization (which DAWN needs to do lots of). Project funding is the only kind that DAWN has ever received. It seems that the government is much more interested in the valuable information that we provide than in the development of a group that could become a constructive and maybe critical voice about the government’s policies on disability issues. The government pays so-called "experts" and researchers lots of money to provide them with information about all aspects of Canadian life, including disability, but they never hire us as consultants or experts.
The Fruits of Our Labours
Over the years, DAWN Canada has done lots of work and become very expert about some of the important issues in our lives by doing many projects about them:DAWN Canada’s Projects and Events
1985
First national meeting of women with disabilities planned by us
1987
Founding conference in Winnipeg
1988
The first issue of our newsletter came out:
Thriving, Vol. 1 No. 1
1989
Jillian Ridington researched and wrote:
- Who Do We Think We Are?: Self Image and Women with Disabilities
- Different Therefore Unequal: Employment and Women with Disabilities
- Beating the "Odds": Violence and Women with Disabilities
- The Only Parent in the Neighbourhood: Mothering and Women with Disabilities
1991
We held a conference and Annual General Meeting in Toronto:
Who Do We Think We Are: Self-Image and Women with Disabilities Conference
We put out another issue of our newsletter
Thriving, Vol. 1 No. 2.
Together with the Canadian Disability Rights Council (CRDC), we published
Four Discussion Papers On New Reproductive Technologies.
Two women in DAWN BC, Kelly Wheeler and Gem Wirszilas, published an anthology:
Visions Of Flight: A Journey Of Thought By and About Women with Disabilities.
1992
DAWN Canada worked together with the National Film Board to make a film about sexuality and relationships and women with disabilities. It’s (international) premier took place at the conference and exposition on disability held in Vancouver called, "Independence ‘92": Towards Intimacy
Shirley Masuda, with help from Jillian Ridington, researched and wrote:
Meeting Our Needs: An Access Manual for Transition Houses.
1993
Ellen Frank researched and wrote:
DAWN Canada’s Safety Net/Work Policing and Justice Project: Responding To Violence Against Women with Disabilities: An Assessment of Police Training Needs
1994
DAWN Canada and the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) put on a national conference for feminists on New Reproductive Technologies in Vancouver.
The Annual General Meeting attached to this conference elected a new Chair, Eileen O’Brien.
Ellen Frank did more work on the legal system:
Domestic Violence: Accessibility of Legal Information to Women with Disabilities.
Monika Chappell and Tanis Doe researched and wrote:
Breaking the Cycle of Violence - Healing Our Lives.
DAWN Canada put out another issue of Thriving.
1995
DAWN Canada and the National Action Committee on the Status of Women produced the conference summary report, prepared by Yvonne Peters:
NRTs...The Contradictions of Choice: The Common Ground Between Disability Rights and Feminist Analysis
We put out another issue of Thriving.
Monika Chappell wrote another report:
DAWN Canada’s Safety Net/Work Policing And Justice Report: Responding to Violence Against Women with Disabilities. An Assessment of Judicial Training Needs.
Shirley Masuda researched and wrote a manual on suicide and women with disabilities:
Don’t Tell Me to Take a Hot Bath: Resource Manual For Crisis Workers.
1996
DAWN Canada put on a Think Tank with women from the larger community on Employment and Women with Disabilities and later published the results:
Employment and Women with Disabilities: Transcript -Think Tank.
A German translation of Meeting Our Needs and the work on new reproductive technologies was produced in Germany.
A video by The Justice Institute in B.C. was made with DAWN Canada women participating in the video and participating in an advisory committee for it:
Charting New Waters: Responding to Violence Against Women with Disabilities
Monika Chappell moved out of the judiciary and into substance use and misuse and wrote:
Relief... At What Cost? Women with Disabilities and Substance Use/Misuse: Tobacco, Alcohol and Other Drugs, Summary of Themes.
Shirley Masuda produced a community kit:
SAFETY NET/WORK Community Kit: From Abuse to Suicide Prevention and Women with Disabilities.
1997
Monika Chappell wrote another important tool for women with disabilities for DAWN Canada:
A Way Out: Women with Disabilities and Smoking
1998
Shirley Masuda wrote a report for Status of Women Canada:
The Impact of Block Funding on Women with Disabilities: Canada Health and Social Transfer
Shirley Masuda researched the situation of women with disabilities in British Columbia and their health for DAWN Canada and the BC Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health:
Women with Disabilities: The Social Construct of Access to Health
At this time, Maria Barile is being a resource for the organizers of a conference for women with disabilities in Italy. They are translating Meeting Our Needs, Beating the "Odds" and the new reproductive technologies papers into Italian.
Meanwhile, back in the regions ... At the beginning, DAWN groups were popping up all over the country. There was a huge excitement in the air and women with disabilities were happy to get involved and talk to each other for the first time. The groups that were starting up had lots of enthusiasm but no experience or resources. Although we got funding to put out a few copies of a national newsletter, Thriving, DAWN Canada did not have the resources to do much communication or support work for the members in the regions.
Remember that for most of the time, we didn’t even have a phone listing, there was no staff and everything happened out of my bedroom. It was no better in most of the provinces. Ontario got some decent funding from their provincial government for awhile and they did some wonderful work, especially in the areas of health and sexuality. And then the provincial government changed from NDP to Conservative and that was the end of that funding. Quebec and Saskatchewan got some funding and so did a couple of other provinces but it didn’t last for very long. Over time, the lack of resources began to take it’s toll on the women who were trying to do DAWN work everywhere. We are not a bunch of whiners and complainers but we do have disabilities and our individual needs require some care and attention, too. We weren’t able to replace ourselves and get some new blood because we didn’t get funded to hold annual, Annual General Meetings or even regular meetings. We started to drop like flies.
The lack of resources took it’s toll on the organization as well as the individual women, of course. DAWN Canada began to falter and fade. We were no longer "thriving". We simply weren’t able to do the very necessary things that would have kept us healthy. Things like:
- communicating with each other - keeping in touch
- organizational development - starting and maintaining groups
- board meetings - taking care of business
- annual general meetings - renewing the Board and taking care of more business
- newsletters - sharing the information and not re-inventing the wheel, getting new members
I stayed on as Chair (and Past-Chair) for far too long because the government doesn’t fund annual general meetings (AGMs) and an AGM is the only time when an organization can elect a new Board of Directors (and Executive, including Chair). By the time we did manage to have an annual general meeting in 1994 and pass the torch on to the next Board, DAWN Canada was a mere shadow of it's former proud and vigorous (lively) self.
Don’t sweat the small stuff.
2. A SHORT HERSTORY
PART TWO - Eileen O’Brien
Eileen O’Brien has been the Chairperson of DAWN Canada since 1994 and has spent her life as an activist for social change. In her early adult life she was awarded a fellowship with Frontier College of Toronto for her community development work in Northern communities. Later on, her training as a registered nurse helped her move easily into the women’s health movement. There she worked with women in a transition house and rape crisis centre and after that with the Canadian Pelvic Inflammatory Disease Society.
Her commitment as a woman with a disability to the empowerment of women with disabilities within the women’s and disability movements is lifelong and tireless and she takes great pride and joy in joining her sisters in this struggle. Eileen is proud to be the mother of a daughter who is an active member of DAWN Canada.
When I became Chairperson of DAWN Canada in 1994 I knew, as Joan Meister had known before me, that we had our work cut out for us if we were going to sustain it (keep it going) and strengthen our national organization. DAWN Canada was run solely (only) by volunteer labour, except for the researcher employed on any current project who was very busy doing the work of the project.
We had been existing on only project funding since the beginning (1985) and the organization was primarily (mainly) a research and policy (planning) advisory group. We did projects by and about women with disabilities and spoke about our findings to various government bodies, DAWN members and allies. We had affiliate groups as well across the country that we shared information with but very little direct communication was possible (affordable) among the DAWN groups, members or supporters.
Our research was brave and revolutionary: we hired only women with disabilities and we worked hard to keep our voice our own. Shirley Masuda, our senior researcher, fought consistently for this. The research principles that she helped DAWN Canada develop have served as a model for other grassroots groups in both Canada and the United States. (See "DAWN Canada’s Research Guidelines")
We wanted to keep control of that process of speaking in our own voices and doing our own research. We wanted our struggle for freedom to be our own. We joined our voice with the sound of the international disability movement’s battle cry:
Nothing about us without us!
Maintaining a national group with no money meant that we had to develop community development principals into most research projects. Action research (See "Doing Research") with focus groups across the country became our way of ensuring a strongly representative voice. We tried increasingly to provide something concrete in the project itself that would improve things for our members, such as a self help manual or kit which could be used by the groups or individual women.
Another progressive research model was to train a woman who had strong skills and experience in a specific topic but lacked the necessary academic qualifications to be a researcher on her own. A DAWN Canada researcher who was qualified was paid to co-ordinate the project and oversee the methodology (process) and the DAWN woman in training took on the project. This team approach was very successful and we think that it allowed for a very in-depth commitment to the subject matter. It also provided our community with another trained researcher.
With little to no money we communicated with our Board and affiliate (member) groups in most provinces and the Yukon through working together on projects, using our Board of Directors as the Advisory Committee on most projects (including this one!). Our ability to communicate, however, was limited to project bulletins, questionnaires and advisory committee meetings.
As the result of a very successful project on New Reproductive Technologies we were able, not only to educate women on the very complex health and social costs of this technology, but also to send out a good batch of other information in the form of our famous newsletter, Thriving.
Our newsletter brought us responses from all over the world. It helped us to increase our membership and open doors to stronger alliances (partnerships) with the women"s movement as well as to women with disabilities in other cross-disability organizations. We were only funded to produce a few issues of Thriving and then were told that the government doesn't fund newsletters.
DAWN Canada had begun to work on justice issues (legal cases) before 1994 and had participated in some pioneering coalitions in two very important cases which affected women with disabilities and other women. Both cases involved the rights of sexual assault victims. DAWN Canada"s involvement in these legal cases opened the door for many more successful partnerships (alliances).
We were building coalitions to intervene in cases involving discrimination under Canada"s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We soon discovered that not only could we inform the courts and the lawyers and organizations we worked with about our issues but we could again use this experience to develop our own community.
We were able to learn about significant (important) Charter rights and their application (use, function) and to hear directly from specific women with disabilities who were affected by the decision. For the first time in history we have had an important (significant) voice in the courts of Canada and we hope, in the future, to guarantee that a community development aspect for DAWN Canada exists in each of the cases we work on.
This work was made possible by the strong commitment of the Court Challenges Program, funded by Canada"s Department of Justice. It gives resources to grassroots groups such as ours. We have worked with other equality seeking groups like ourselves and have learned that despite our broad differences, on the issue of discrimination we have much in common. We came to understand that a court case fighting for the rights to same sex benefits, for example, had broad implications (consequences, things that might result), for people with disabilities and very specifically women with disabilities.
DAWN Canada’s Human Rights Work
We have worked with Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF), Equality for Gays and Lesbians (EGAL) and the Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD) along with many other equality-seeking groups to support cases that will have direct effects on the lives of women with disabilities. Most of the following cases involved discrimination under section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These are some of the kinds of legal cases that DAWN Canada has been involved with, the issues and the outcomes:
1. Queen v. Rosenberg 1998
The Ontario Court of Appeal recognized that a same sex partner is a legal "spouse" (mate, husband or wife) regarding Canada’s Income Tax Act.
We were successful.
2. Queen v. Latimer 1998
The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal upheld the mandatory (compulsory) sentence of second degree murder for Robert Latimer who killed his daughter, Tracy
We were successful.
3. Ferrel v. Attorney General (Ontario) 1998
This case was a constitutional challenge to Ontario’s repeal of (withdrawing of) the Employment Equity Act. We intervened at the Court of Appeal of Ontario.
This fight was unsuccessful.
4. Queen v. O’Connor 1995
This criminal case concerned whether a counsellor for a victim of sexual assault must disclose (reveal, tell, show) all counselling records that the defence lawyers (acting for the abuser) wish to see. We intervened at the Supreme Court of Canada.
We were unsuccessful
5. Eldridge v. Attorney General (British Columbia) 1998
This Charter of Rights and Freedoms case addressed whether British Columbia can refuse to pay for medical interpreter services (sign language) for deaf persons needing medical help. We intervened at the Supreme Court of Canada.
We were successful.
6. BCGSEU v. PSERC
(British Columbia Government and Service Employees’ Union v. The Government of the Province of British Columbia as represented by the Public Service Employee Relations Commission)
This case concerns whether a physical kind of fitness standard applies to a female firefighter who was already performing her job because when she didn’t meet this standard she lost her job. It is proceeding to the Supreme Court of Canada and raises many critical (important) human rights issues.
No decision has been made yet by the court.
7. Queen v. Ewanchuk
This is a criminal case and is a Supreme Court of Canada appeal. It deals with several issues about sexual assault, including the definition of consent (agreement, permission) and whether there is such a thing as "implied (hinted at)" consent.
No decision has been made yet.
8. Godin v. Ministry of Health and Community Services
(New Brunswick)
This Charter of Rights and Freedoms challenge case concerns the availability of legal aid in state guardianship applications in New Brunswick. We intervened at the Supreme Court of Canada.
No decision has been made yet by the court.
9. Queen v. Darroch
This criminal case is about the significance (importance) of using a woman’s past sexual history in sexual assault trials. It refers to Section 276 (Bill C-49) of the Criminal Code. We were successful at the Ontario Court of Appeals and it is currently being heard by the Supreme Court of Canada.
No decision has been made yet.
Building Coalitions - Strange Bedfellows
The understanding of the need to work together on these kinds of issues has meant a new kind of alliance (coalition) building - a new kind of inter-dependence (depending on each other) which we think is crucial (very important) in light of current government cutbacks and rising incidences of discrimination against the most vulnerable (unprotected, defenceless) in our society.
Working with the Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD) has been a challenge in many regards. We have, I think, worked hard together to strengthen our common voice as people with disabilities on the issue of funding to disability groups and other issues related to social policy in Canada such as transportation, etc. We continue to value this process of working together as important in our development as a culture and as a movement.
As DAWN Canada, however, we find ourselves at odds with this very patriarchal (male, top-down, hierarchical) model of a group which is not used to the feminist process of consensus and coalition building. As a lobbying group, the CCD has been remarkable in it’s tireless negotiations for a place for people with disabilities on the government’s agenda.
However, as a grassroots movement, there is still much work to be done. The principle of hiring people with disabilities to do the research and to speak for ourselves is a basic premise (assumption) in the development of our community of women with disabilities. It is not understood or adhered to by the CCD. Discrimination against and ignorance of feminist principles is systemic (wide spread) and I think we must continue to fight where it is necessary.
Most women in the CCD are DAWN Canada members, though, and are very supportive of our issues if they get on the agenda of the meeting. The fight, of course, is to get them there. We have a written agreement with the CCD to have DAWN Canada work on all issues directly related to women with disabilities.
Without the necessary funding, we lack the resources to provide a gender analysis on CCD policies and position papers. The work continues on this level. I must say that I have learned to love and respect most of the people there and I think we have come a long way since the first meeting I attended.
The evolution of DAWN Canada continues. Most regions have had funding cut backs and we have seen many DAWN groups fold (die). Sometimes there are direct funding cuts such as the cutting of program funding to women’s centres and local DAWN affiliate groups by Status of Women Canada. As well, our research suggests that women are loosing our will and ability to participate as citizens of Canada. Cutbacks to things like:
- home care
- accessible transportation
- disability aides
- basic food and shelter allowances
- hospital services
- declassification of many medications
have left many of us exhausted, frightened, angry and worse. This has hurt us and it erodes (grinds away) the gains we have painstakingly (with great hardships) made.
We have, by sheer necessity, broadened our network through contact with individual women with disabilities wherever they find themselves fighting to survive. Some have become part of the network through various disability groups, others through women’s groups, transition houses and other feminist projects. Still others find us where ever someone has left a pamphlet, project report or newsletter.
Many women with disabilities in other countries through our contacts at conferences, Disabled People’s International (DPI), the newsletter and our different projects have also become part of our ever expanding network. There is a DAWN Trinidad and Tobago! Also, with the formation of our Girls and Young Women Committee, we have begun to make connections to the wonderful young women coming behind us. This year, for the first time, we have been given enough money to hire a co-ordinator, Kathy Hawkins from our Newfoundland DAWN group, and we have much hope for the future.
We are, I think, quite a rare breed. We have nothing to lose and we are fearless warrior women who are dedicated like no others. We are not going anywhere. There is no place to opt out. Freedom is like the air we breathe. We’ve acquired the habit and we are rather attached to the beautiful feeling that the fruits of our struggles bring us. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to have been a part of DAWN Canada in these last few years and I can’t wait until the next history installment!
2. WE ARE WHO YOU ARE - Bonnie Sherr Klein
Bonnie Sherr Klein is a stroke survivor and is the Volunteer Artistic Director of KickstART! A Festival of Disability Arts and Culture.
She has been a filmmaker ("Not a Love Story: A Film about Pornography"); broadcaster ("Bonnie and Gladys", CBC Radio); and author (Slow Dance: A Story of Stroke, Love and Disability, Vintage Canada Paperback.) Slow Dance won the 1998 VanCity Book Prize for best BC book on issues pertaining to women.
I recall vividly (strongly) my own "DAWNing", the day I first saw the light at the end of the darkest tunnel. My experience reveals (indicates) the difference a DAWN group can make in a woman’s life. It was exactly three years after I’d had a sudden and catastrophic (disastrous) brain-stem stroke at the age of forty-six.
After several years of intensive rehabilitation, I was "discharged" and dumped back to make it on my own in a world which seemed to have no place for me. I felt like I was the first person in the world in a wheelchair, or with severe energy limitations. I had avoided the other patients in rehab, thinking this was just a phase I would pass through on my way to becoming my old "normal" self. It was all too scary. What did "these people" have to do with me? Well, everything, as it turns out. These women were who I was now, though I was too frightened to accept it. Because I knew no other people living with disabilities (or so I thought) I had no role models of people like myself who not only lived but thrived in the world. Everywhere I went, even in my old feminist circles of friends and organizations, I felt alone and "Other." Often I wondered whether it had been worth the struggle to survive.
Three years after my stroke, when I was at my lowest point, beginning to suspect that I was going to remain disabled for the rest of my life, I recalled hearing something in my previous life as a feminist filmmaker about a network of feminists with disabilities, something like DAWN Canada. A true grass-roots (read: without funding) organization, DAWN had no office and was not listed in the Montreal phone directory. Somehow, through feminist networks, I tracked down the Montreal chairperson. I explained that I was "newly" disabled and wanted desperately to meet and learn from other disabled feminists. Maria Barile, bless her intuitive and flexible heart, responded immediately with a date and place for a meeting. Only afterwards did I realize she had called the group together especially for me! I almost didn’t go. I felt tentative (unsure), apologetic about my status as a formerly "able-bodied" woman. I felt illegitimate because I was not as disabled as some other people. I felt guilty about the privileges of class, career and family which made my experience so much easier than that of so many others. (Doesn’t this sound just like a woman?)
I found myself in a YWCA room with an assorted bunch of women, many shapes and appearances and ways of getting around, many races and ages and classes, many kinds and degrees of disability, including some "hidden" disabilities like chronic illness and environmental sensitivities. We seemed to have little in common except our diverse disabilities-which turned out to be quite enough. We told each other our stories. We laughed, cried, complained, and raged together.
I was horrified by one young woman’s story of being abused by her care-givers and I identified with another woman’s sorrow at the gardening she could no longer do. It was like the early days of consciousness-raising in the Women’s Movement: those "clicks" of recognition as we saw again that the personal is political. What I had believed were private, isolated experiences turned out to be systemic discrimination based in the way different systems operated against us. We moved naturally from sharing the brilliant coping strategies individuals had invented, to planning, lobbying and advocacy actions. DAWN had committees for research, employment, and disability benefits and we were part of a coalition to improve transportation facilities.
We couldn’t remove our disabilities but we could try to remove those disabling barriers (handicaps) caused by society’s ignorance and prejudice about disability. We could build a world which accommodates and values our differences. I was no longer alone. Here I was not Other because everyone was Other.
Now that I knew other feminists with disabilities, I was finally ready to accept that I would be disabled for the rest of my life. DAWN was the turning point in my re-entry to life. We who are separated, discriminated against and often isolated by society are in desperate need of peers, buddies, other women, for support and empathy (deep understanding and sympathy), women with whom we can talk openly, cry freely, laugh at ourselves and occasionally at the non-disabled Others. We need rolling-models for inspiration and challenge, and sisters for solidarity.
We do not get this kind of support from the health and rehabilitation service agencies (which are medicalized) or charities. We do not even get it from our disability rights organizations, which often have no time or space to deal with the personal when the political battles are so great. We have to create those spaces ourselves, and to reach out to women who need them and who don’t know that we are there for them. When women with disabilities get together, personal sharing usually happens naturally and spontaneously (without planning). But I would like to see it built into the organizing of DAWN groups, not left to chance or, after we get our "real" work done, we can chat.
Getting together as a discussion, support or consciousness-raising (self-awareness and broad understanding of your place in the world) group is what many women need and want. We need to do outreach to catch those women who fall between the cracks. Let’s be blunt: DAWN groups have historically evolved to fit government funding guidelines; they have creatively and resourcefully (work with imagination) responded to what was available, and often languished (sickened, waiting without hope) in between grants. But we all know many women who are longing to connect with others, who have no idea where to find that connection. Peer-support (women like ourselves) is a fundamental (basic) need for every person with a disability, and a legitimate purpose for a DAWN group. The chapters that follow describe some directions which DAWN has taken so far, and offer some practical skills that have worked, but remember that there is no formula for a DAWN group, DAWN can be anything you want it to be. It is whatever works for you and the women you want to be with. Laugh and let your hair down!
Here are some "how-to’s" for building personal connections:
- Decide on a policy of confidentiality (See "Confidentiality"), so women can feel safe to be honest with each other
- Agree on some basic rules of behaviour: - time is shared - no one is forced to talk - no one is interrupted - only one woman speaks at the same time - no one is put-down, attacked, or offended - offensive words or behaviour can be challenged without attacking the offending woman.
- In any meeting, take time to connect, to check in on feelings, to get close. Among women with disabilities, "How are you?" is not just a polite custom but a meaningful and sometimes loaded question.
- Take time to listen to the answer. Allow time for every woman to speak without interruption: try a "round" at the beginning and end of every gathering for each woman to say how she is, what’s going well (or badly) in her life, what she liked most at the meeting, what she appreciated most about the woman on her left.
Sound hokey or scary? Don’t let doubt or fear of being "touchy- feely" get in the way. We need each other; there’s often no one else to talk to. Certainly no one else has been there like we have.
What do we have to lose? We are champion survivors.
3. THE DAWNing OF DISABILITY CULTURE - Catherine Frazee
Catherine Frazee has been involved in the equality rights movement for many years, most notably during her term as Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission from 1989 to 1992. In addition to her private practice in mediation/arbitration, she currently holds a Research Fellowship at West Park Hospital, is an Associate in Research and Social Development at the Roeher Institute and serves as part-time Vice-Chair of the Ontario Worker’s Compensation Appeals TribunalMs. Frazee is an active participant in numerous volunteer committees, including the Council of Canadians with Disabilities Human Rights Committee and the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund Legal Committee.
Ms. Frazee is a committed activist who has lectured extensively in Canada and abroad on issues related to disability rights, disability culture and the disability experience.
What on earth is a section about "Disability Culture" doing in this manual?
Granted, the link between art and politics is not always obvious. But there is an important link. What is it that happens when two or more women with disabilities come together? We talk about the things that are important to us. We talk about the things that have happened in our lives. We talk about our struggles to achieve equality, respect and justice. We share stories, ideas, experiences and dreams. Those stories, ideas, experiences and dreams weave together. And in that process of weaving each of us becomes something more than one individual. We become part of a community, a community of women with disabilities.
Through the stories, ideas, experiences and dreams that we share, we build relationships, trust, confidence, understanding and culture. As we learn about ourselves and each other, as we stretch and grow in our sense of pride about who we are and what we have survived together, we are helping to build a lively and powerful Disability Culture.
Why is culture an important part of our political work? It has to do with how people’s attitudes and ideas are shaped. In an article entitled "Art on the Frontline", Angela Davis recounts how in 1986, President Reagan signed a bill declaring the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King as a national holiday in America. Prior to this, Reagan had openly and publicly expressed his opposition to such a move. Davis attributes the change in Reagan’s position to Stevie Wonder’s popular recording of "Happy Birthday", which mobilized thousands of young Americans in a groundswell of support that even the stubborn Reagan could not ignore. And it has to do with how people’s energies are charged. It is difficult to get a lot of people all fired up about ideas and it’s almost impossible to keep people fired up and ready to give their time, their energy and their resources over a long period of time with no certainty of positive outcome, if all you have to offer is a concept.
When the work is hard and/or disheartening (and disabled women’s advocacy is both) people have to feel passionate about it in order to sustain the effort. Culture brings us together on an emotional level. And when we are brought together on an emotional level through the medium of culture, aside from the stirring of our emotions, something else happens. Collectively, people begin to identify with each other.
Since feminism, saying "I am a woman", means much more than simply that I am biologically female. The statement "I am a woman" means that I am a member of the community of women - globally, locally, socially, historically and politically. Similarly, "I am a lesbian" tells you more about my personal, political and social identity than it does about what I do in bed. So too, as disability culture evolves, identity and a sense of community are nurtured.
So what is the place of art in disability culture? Whenever artists with disabilities pick up their paintbrushes or their guitars with their whole selves, disability will be there. Its very presence in the canvas and the music is essentially political. Even a love story is political if it shows sensitivity and respect for the disability experience. If it works with our real pains, joys and dreams. No artist can "control" the way an audience will receive her work. She can’t prevent unwanted responses, such as pity or distaste. But if the artist herself has an attitude of self-respect and pride, the work will reflect that attitude. Everyone who sees the painting or hears the song will do the same. Artistic work that is not explicitly (only about) political can also be very effective in gently bringing people around to a different understanding of disability.
In Canada, the United States and around the world, artists and performers with disabilities are contributing to one of the most radical and effective aspects of disability culture- challenging conventional notions (commonplace ideas) of beauty, form and motion.What are some of the features of disability culture? Like classical music and abstract art, our appreciation of disability culture may be improved by an understanding of how it works and what it all means. In order to understand how disability culture works, think first about the effects of discrimination in the world around us and what we do about it.
For example, people with disabilities everywhere share the experience of being labeled and described in unflattering and humiliating terms. Within the culture of disability, therefore, don’t be surprised to encounter our artists reclaiming, taking back words like "cripple" and "gimp", and using the power of these words in asserting a strong and fearless identity. Just as faggot and dyke are actually used within the gay and lesbian community as terms of endearment, within our community, gimp becomes a short form for "one of us" in a totally positive sense, and cripple is used increasingly to denote a kind of swashbuckling bravado.
I first ran across this attitude in an essay called "On Being a Cripple" by Nancy Mairs, who wrote: "People, crippled or not, wince at the word cripple as they do not at handicapped or disabled. Perhaps I want them to wince. I want them to see me as a tough customer, one to whom the fates/gods/viruses have not been kind, but who can face the brutal truth of her existence squarely. As a cripple, I swagger." What powerful words! People with disabilities everywhere share the experience of being segregated, institutionalized, marginalized (left out on the edges) and silenced.
We know that our very presence in mainstream (conventional) society makes some people uncomfortable. Disability culture responds to all of this with one very loud and clear message: "Get over it!" Artists with disabilities and performers make no apology. They are in your face. Not only are we visible and vocal, not only are we laughing and singing about our joy in life and love for ourselves and each other but we are allowing ourselves to express the depths of our rage and our pain. So, as we work within our communities for social and political change, let’s remember the contribution of artists with disabilities in using their creative talents to transform oppression (injustice) into a vibrant (lively) disability culture.
As American Simi Linton writes in "Claiming Disability": "We have come out not with those brown woolen lap robes over our withered legs, or dark glasses over our pale eyes but in shorts and sandals, in overalls and business suits, dressed for play and work, straightforward, unmasked, and unapologetic. ... And we are not only the high-toned wheelchair athletes seen in recent television ads but the gangly, pudgy, lumpy, and bumpy of us, declaring that shame will no longer structure our wardrobe or our discourse."
We are everywhere these days, wheeling and loping down the street, tapping our canes, sucking on our breathing tubes, following our guide dogs, puffing and sipping on the mouth sticks that propel our motorized chairs. We may drool, hear voices, speak in staccato syllables, wear catheters to collect our urine or live with a compromised immune system. We are all bound together, not by this list of our collective symptoms, but by the social and political circumstances that have forged us as a group. We have found one another and found a voice to express ourselves: not despair at our fate but outrage at our social position.
When women with disabilities burst forth in a flourishing (growing, thriving) culture of disability, we leave behind our passive and "closeted" selves and take our equal places in the social sunshine. The immediate reward is pleasure in ourselves and each other. The long-term reward, no longer simply a dry "concept", comes alive and present in our collective identity. We find ourselves living as if we have already won the rights, freedoms and respect for which we fight.
4. A HUMAN RIGHTS CONTEXT - Yvonne Peters
Yvonne Peters practices as an equality rights lawyer in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She provides legal consultation and advice to unions, community groups, human rights organizations, the corporate sector and government.From 1989 to 1993 she served as the Executive Director and Litigation Director of the Canadian Disability Rights Council. Before becoming a lawyer, Ms. Peters worked as a Social Worker and a Human Rights Officer. Ms Peter has worked for 20 years as a human rights activist. She has been a member of the board of directors of numerous community organizations at the national, provincial and local levels.
Currently she is a board member of the Canadian Centre for Disability Studies (CCDS), the Community Legal Education Association (CLEA) and the Canadian Journal of Women and the Law (CJWL). Ms. Peters is also a member of the Equality Rights Panel of the Court Challenges Program (CCP) and Chair of the Manitoba Legislation Committee of the Midwifery Implementation Council (MIC)
Uniting for Equality
1. Turning the Personal Into the Political
I have been asked by DAWN Canada to write a few words about why women with disabilities should unite our voices to fight for justice and equality. For many years I have been a member of both the women’s and the disability rights movements and so, to me, the answer seems clear and obvious. But, after reflecting on (thinking about) my own history, I realize that there was a time when I believed that, as a woman with a disability, I could make my own way and solve my own problems.
This was my attitude when I left the University of Saskatchewan in 1974. Armed with a B.A. degree I set off with the firm conviction that I would find a "good" job and that I would take my place in the "real" world. After all, I had followed my high school teacher’s advice and obtained a university education which, I was told, was the key to a good job. But, I was not ready for the negative attitudes and misguided stereotypes held by many employers about hiring an employee who is blind.
Although I managed to get a number of interviews they usually turned out the same. They focused primarily on my blindness and not on my qualifications (skills). I was given a wide array of excuses for why I was not suitable for the job, including:
- concerns that I would have trouble finding my way to the washroom
- fears that I might trip over equipment and injure myself
- worries that co-workers would not be comfortable working with me
Due to my inexperience, I did not handle these situations very well and often left the interview feeling frustrated and discouraged. My confidence began to wane (fade) and I was no longer as certain about my future.
Fortunately, I met an acquaintance from university who persuaded me to attend a meeting of people with disabilities. The topic was discrimination and the lack of human rights protection for people with disabilities. My initial reaction was one of reluctance. I was still convinced that I could fight my own battles.
But gradually the light began to DAWN. I realized that although individual strength is a very valuable quality, there are also benefits to working collectively (together) with like-minded people. In particular, I found collective action empowering and self-affirming. I also learned that individual solutions will not eliminate (get rid of) the many discriminatory attitudes and barriers that confront (face) people with disabilities in Canadian society. Most importantly, I learned that there is strength in numbers and that through solidarity (togetherness), political and legal change can be achieved (won).
Since my original encounter with society’s perception of disability, I have learned a great deal about the nature of discrimination and what it means to have equality. As I have already said, much of my learning has come about from working with groups and individuals who are also interested in a world in which equality is a priority (first choice). We have a long way to go before that priority is realized. However, through the collective efforts of groups such as DAWN Canada, small but important steps have been made.
Like many women with a disability, I still have to fight many individual battles, but for me, the most significant (important) victories have occurred by uniting and working together with others to make a difference. Highlighted below are some of the gains which have been made to date. I also offer some suggestions (ideas) as to how we can continue the struggle for equality.
2. What Progress Has Been Made in Achieving Equality?
To recognize (identify) that disability discrimination is often at the root (source) of the disadvantage and inequality experienced by people with disabilities is a relatively recent thought. The recognition of disability rights was pioneered (started) by a variety of disability rights organizations in the late 1970’s. These organizations challenged the view of disability as a "defect" or "illness" The goal of such organizations was to push to identify (recognize) the right of persons with disabilities to self-determination (See "Self-Identification", p. 113), individual autonomy and the right to participate in society as full and equal citizens.
Their efforts were noticed. By 1990, human rights legislation in all jurisdictions included both mental and physical disability as prohibited (forbidden) grounds of discrimination.
In 1982, the scope and importance of disability rights was expanded by the introduction of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and its constitutional guarantee of equality of all Canadians, including people with disabilities. Section 15 of the Charter provides a comprehensive definition of equality and has inspired many equality-seekers to use the courts as another avenue for (path to) claiming their rights. Thanks to the Court Challenges Program (a program which provides funding for equality rights test case lawsuits) equality-seekers such as women’s organizations and disability rights organizations have been able to ask the courts to provide legal recognition of their rights.
The case of Andrews v. the Law Society of British Columbia was the first case to consider the meaning of equality under Section 15 of the Charter. Both the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) and the Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD) participated in this case and made a significant contribution to the Court’s interpretation (version) of equality.
Traditionally, it was assumed that equality meant making sure that everyone was treated exactly the same. The concept of same treatment works if everyone is starting from the same place. However, for many groups, such as women with disabilities, social and economic barriers have prevented us from taking our place as full and equal citizens in society. For example, an employment training program which does not take into account the employment barriers encountered (faced) by women with disabilities because of our disability as well as our gender may not represent genuine (real) equality.
Andrews rejected the notion (idea) that equality means treating everyone exactly the same. It acknowledges that there are certain groups in our society who have experienced historical, social, political and legal disadvantage. With this new approach to equality, known as the "substantive" approach, laws and policies must not only be concerned with treating everyone the same but also with how they address (speak to) historical disadvantage.
In October 1997 the Supreme Court of Canada handed down another landmark (first important, monumental) decision in the case of Eldridge v. British Columbia (Attorney General). The Eldridge case is one of the most significant legal victories for the rights of Canadians with disabilities to date.
In this case, Deaf persons living in B.C., including a mother who gave premature birth to twins, were denied access to sign language interpreters when receiving medical care. The Court made these important decisions:
- that the failure to provide sign language interpreters discriminated against deaf persons.
- that governments have an obligation to ensure that programs, services or benefits offered to the public, do not discriminate against people with disabilities.
- that where discrimination is identified, the government is also obligated to take positive steps to overcome the effects of the discrimination.
The Eldridge case is bound to have far-reaching effects in the advancement of equality, not only for people with disabilities, but for all equality seekers.
A number of equality-seeking groups were permitted to appear before the Supreme Court to provide their views on how the Court should interpret equality in the Eldridge case. DAWN Canada, in collaboration (working together) with LEAF, provided both written and oral (spoken) arguments to the Court. In reading the Court decision, the impact of the arguments made by DAWN and LEAF is obvious. Thanks to the Chair of DAWN Canada, Eileen O"Brien, the views of women with disabilities, particularly those of deaf women were front and centre in the DAWN/LEAF submissions (presentations).
3. Furthering the Goal of Equality for Women with Disabilities
Many of the activities carried out by DAWN Canada have been aimed at promoting (advancing) the equality of women with disabilities. Sadly, ours is one of a very few voices in Canada to carry this message.
If we work together across our differences we will empower ourselves and develop equality skills to offer to the world.
The equality interests of women with disabilities continue to be under-represented, or in many cases non-existent in the development of government policy and program delivery. Likewise, there are very few equality test cases that deal with the multiple (many) levels of discrimination experienced by women with disabilities. It is vital, therefore, for DAWN Canada and its affiliates (member groups) to continue to fight for the equality rights of women with disabilities. Set out below are just a few ways in which this work can be advanced (taken forward):
- educate women with disabilities about our rights;
- encourage and support women with disabilities either as individuals or as a group to assert (declare) our rights;
- continue to conduct and publish research on equality issues of particular concern to women with disabilities;
- insist that all governments take into account (consider) the particular concerns of women with disabilities;
- continue to participate in test cases before the courts that have the potential (possibility) to develop a better understanding of the equality rights of women with disabilities.
- the Court Challenges Program provides funding for equality-seeking groups to:
- hold meetings to explore what issues might be tested in the courts,
- explore the potential of taking a particular issue to court, and
- take the government to court on the grounds that a particular law policy or practice discriminates against women with disabilities.
5. A FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE - barbara findlay
I am a 49 year old white, fat, lesbian lawyer. My ancestry is British. I was raised Christian and working class, and am a survivor of abuse and psychiatric institutions. I have hidden disabilities.
Working Together Across Our Differences for Our Welcome in the World
Where were you in your life when you first realized that the world was unfair and unequal?
- was it when you could not get into a building in your wheelchair or there was no sign language interpretation? ¥ or when someone called you a Paki, or a squaw, or a bimbo?¥ or when a meeting was scheduled on a Jewish holiday again?¥ maybe it was when you couldn’t afford to go to a meeting because it was held in a coffee shop and your welfare cheque didn’t leave room for cappuccinos.
- or when you realized it was not safe to let your caregiver know you were a lesbian because she was homophobic (anti-homosexual).
Or maybe it was for several of those reasons. Usually we come to realize that the world is unequal by our own experiences in it, by the pain that we feel when we are cut out or denied or scorned or laughed at or otherwise discriminated against. But it takes more than pain to recognize inequality. That’s because the pain is served up with humiliation (shame) and blame and we are taught to believe that it is our fault that people treat us badly or that we don’t deserve any better. Sometimes the pain of being stepped on, humiliated, beaten or ignored can overwhelm (crush, overcome) us. We end up in despair and maybe on booze or drugs as the only way we can deal with the pain.Internalized Oppression
In Canada today, the lessons that the dominant culture teaches us when we are growing up are that
- people with disabilities are somehow less than human
- aboriginal people are lazy
- people of colour are not "real Canadians"
- lesbians are sick or perverted
- men deserve to be paid more than women even if the jobs are the same
- poor people have no motivation
We all know the lists, the stereotypes, the attitudes that the world has about who deserves what. We know those stereotypes because we were taught them, too. They are what we were taught about ourselves! We grew up learning that we and others like us are unworthy and are somehow less than other people - that we must have done something to deserve this mistreatment and maybe it’s our own fault. Maybe the most painful part is that when we hear those stereotypes, we believe them. They become part of our self-image. That process is called "internalized oppression" and that means that we beat ourselves up.Healing from the Oppression It is not our fault that we take on their lies about us. It is like growing up with a mirror that gives back a distorted image of you and not realizing that it is the mirror that is warped, not you!.
Then at some wonderful moment,
- when you are talking about your experiences with someone who has had something happen to them like that
- when you are reading a book about a similar thing
- when you go to a group of other people whose lives are like yours,
you come to see that you did nothing wrong. You did not deserve to be fired or harassed or excluded. The problem is them, not you! Having a chance to talk to someone else who has had the same kinds of things happen to them as you have is a necessary step to healing and a step that can lead to action. Having this chance can happen in a group, at a meeting.Things that can get in the way
Unfortunately, sharing experiences with people is often not enough all by itself:
- African American women who worked in the civil rights struggle found that the men in the movement expected to be the leaders, that the women would do the support work.
- Lesbians working in the North American women’s movement found that straight (non-lesbian) women were often as not embarrassed by us, telling us that we should keep a low profile or else people would think all feminists were lesbians.
- Women with disabilities have found working with men with disabilities difficult because the men think their issues and opinions are more worthwhile than the opinions and the issues of the women.
- People of colour find that working with white people on any issue is very hard because white people do not take racism into account.
Being a target for mistreatment (abuse) in one way does not translate (interpret) into an understanding of how people are targeted for different kinds of mistreatment in another way.What is to be done?
First, it is important to find a group that you share enough with that you feel safe and comfortable even though, of course, no one has exactly the same experiences as anyone else. That is how the women’s movement came to be - it developed after women realized how much we could learn and how far we could go if we
- talked with each other
- relied on each other
- supported each other
without having to deal with men who undermine us or who make us feel like they were the only ones with any answers. There are now women’s caucuses (groups) in many places such as the workplace, schools and universities, political parties and governments. The next step? Decide to form a group where all aspects of who you are, are recognized and supported. Groups that do this are ones like DAWN Canada: DisAbled Women’s Network Canada. Vancouver Lesbian Connection and immigrant and visible minority women’s associations. But just as gay men don’t automatically understand sexism and straight women do not automatically understand homophobia (anti-homosexuality). Non-disabled women do not automatically understand disability issues. White women don’t get racism. That is because of the lessons that the culture has taught us about being white, non-disabled, male or raised Christian. That lesson about those aspects of ourselves is that we are, in those respects, normal. And that is called internalized dominance.Internalized Dominance When we go to a group, we take not only our internalized oppression (beating up on ourselves) but also our internalized dominance (beating up on others). Sometimes we just don’t see the problems - we literally don’t see. We take account (notice) of who is in the room with us but we don’t notice (take account of) the people who are not in the room with us. We forget to think about the people who are not there. We believe they are not there because they chose not to come. We don’t ask ourselves if they are not there because we have not made them welcome.Including Everyone (Inclusiveness)
There are some positive steps that you can take to make your group more inclusive.
1. Take time at the beginning of each meeting to do a round of introductions, and include the question of whether there is anything anyone needs to make their participation better or easier. This could range from
- the kind of seating someone needs if they have a physical disability,
- a need for regular breaks if they are a smoker or have Attention Deficit Disorder
- a need to be reminded not to take on any extra tasks
- a need to be out of the meeting by a particular time (e.g., for transportation)
- a need to detoxify (clean yourself) from an oppressive event by telling what happened to you since the last meeting.
2. Have people take responsibility for learning how your issue particularly affects people marginalized (who are stuck out on the edges) for other reasons. This means seeing who is in your group and who is missing:
- are you all white?
- all physically disabled?
- all Christian-raised?
- working class or middle class or poor?
3. Be aware of a group which is not represented and get one of the women who is there to find out about them. Also find out about:
- their priorities
- their views on the issues you are dealing with
- their willingness to make alliances (See "Coalition Building")
- what changes you might have to make to your own activities to accommodate (meet the needs of) people from other communities
4. Spend some time at your meetings finding out about the differences among you as well as the similarities. This could involve setting aside a half hour at meetings to ask people to talk about an individual difference. For example:
- a Jew in a group of people with disabilities can explain what it is like to be Jewish and what observances of Jewish Holidays are important to her
- an Indo-Canadian woman might talk about herself and about how prejudice against Indo-Canadian women operates in Canada
Solving Problems
Be willing to develop imaginative (creative) solutions for problems. Some of the most painful and fearful times in groups is when it appears as if the equality rights of one woman are contradictory (opposed) to the equality rights of another woman. Each woman believes that the other is prepared to leave the group if that is what it comes down to. In the face of a lifetime of being left out and a group where both women believed that her differences would be welcomed and respected, this is a very threatening and painful time. (See "Conflict Resolution")
When such an issue arises here are some suggestions for getting through these hard times:
- a woman not directly involved can be a mediator (referee, negotiator), reminding each of the women that an acceptable (agreeable) solution is one that helps everyone
- others need to understand that the disagreement is something that is sure to come up from time to time
- we all need to understand that this kind of issue is important and not just a detour from the group’s "real" agenda of the meeting
We must expect, prepare for and deal with these kinds of misunderstandings because we have not developed ways of dealing with these kinds of issues in our groups before. When you are dealing with these situations of conflict, think "both/and" (including both women in the solution) instead of "either/or" (choosing between them and leaving one out). If a question seems to be, " Who is right?", think about how to ask the question differently. Often people feel powerless in situations of this kind and that has been taught to us. For example: My mother told me, "If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all." She taught me to avoid scenes. If someone else was "rude", for example by saying something racist, I was taught to look down (so no one would think I agreed with the person who said the racist thing) but to say nothing, so that it would go away more quickly. In fact, in situations like this, there is no neutral place.
If I, as a lesbian, hear an anti-lesbian or gay (homophobic) slur in a room full of people and no one says anything, I have to assume (believe) that they agree with the speaker. There is no other sure assumption (belief) that you can make. Feeling powerless and not knowing what to say - these are the ways our society has taught us to keep quiet when we see behaviour that targets others right before our eyes. But if we keep quiet, nothing will ever change.
Another thing we often feel when we have to deal with a sticky situation is that we don’t have the skills. We are afraid that we will do it wrong, make it worse. It is true that we have not been taught these skills. We have to learn them from each other and teach them to each other. It is also true that there are "a thousand ways to be right" - in other words, there is no one, magic formula which is the only thing that can work in any given situation.
When you are dealing with conflict between members, especially across a difference between them (a woman keeps forgetting to take her hand away from her mouth when she speaks and the woman who is hard of hearing cannot hear without being able to read her lips, for example) remember that each of us comes with our own internalized oppression. (The woman who keeps her hand over her mouth when she speaks might think that nobody really wants to hear what she has to say.) Every time someone in the target group (those being oppressed) has to speak up to protect her accessible space, her right to hear or to challenge beliefs held (assumptions made) by the dominant group (those doing the oppressing, the oppressors), she pays a cost from her dignity. It costs to be the one to point out that the group is making no space for you to hear better.
It costs because when you are that woman, you have to bear (tolerate) the humiliation (embarrassment) of being laughed at, overlooked or mistreated in the first place. On top of all of that, you have to put up with (bear) the embarrassment (humiliation) of drawing attention to yourself and to your disability.
If you are in the dominant (oppressive) group, be grateful that the woman who is feeling hurt and oppressed has enough trust to talk about the problem, instead of just leaving the meeting.
Diversity Working Together
When diversity issues come up in a group, they often seem to be "off the topic", not "on the agenda". But if a diverse group is going to work together for very long, diversity issues can never be treated as "off the topic". The group has to have an understanding that diversity issues may come "out of left field", but that is their nature! (See "Diversity") The group must also have a commitment to spend group time and energy dealing with diversity issues. It will never work to "schedule the issue of racism for our April meeting" or "include diversity issues on our list of priorities".
Diversity is about how we work together, whatever we are doing. And because none of us has had much training or experience in how to make that happen, our meetings may be slower and bumpier than they would be if all the people in the group were "people like us". Speaking of people like us, remember that you are all some of us, and we are all some of you. (See "We Are Who You Are") All communities of people of colour have lesbian daughters and gay sons. All communities of gay and lesbian peoples include women with disabilities. People with disabilities include people of colour with disabilities. Or lesbians of colour with disabilities. Or Jewish working class people of colour. We are all some of you and you are all some of us.
So when we make divisions between "us and them", the divisions are artificial and not real. And those divisions cut us off from the world. One of the most pervasive (noticeable) features of internalized dominance is that we are taught to be completely ignorant of the situation of people in the target position. Heterosexuals know nothing about lesbians, gay men, bisexual or transgendered people. White people know nothing about the lives of people of colour. Non-disabled people probably have never given a thought to the ways women with disabilities manage our lives. And so on and on and on... Ignorance is not our fault (mostly).
We were not taught what we need to know about the lives of people less powerful than we are in this society. Think of what you learned in a Canadian school about the lives of:
- people with disabilities?
- working class people?
- aboriginal people?
- immigrant people of colour?
- homosexuals (gays and lesbians)?
- Jews?
And we were certainly never taught about the lives of working class lesbians of colour or Sephadic Jews with disabilities or Chinese-Canadian immigrant families in small towns or second generation Muslim girls who find themselves to be lesbian. Those complexities (complications) were not included in the pages of the textbooks that we learned from. So it is very easy to make a mistake about the ways someone is different from you, by acting on a stereotype, not having information or misinterpreting something according to what is considered to be "normal" in the dominant culture. What we did learn in school and in our culture, is that making a mistake, any mistake, is baaad. It is something that we avoid at all costs. So we tend to be defensive if someone says we did something or said something "wrong". For one thing, we tend to think it means that we are bad people.
Mistakes happen.
If you can adopt the attitude that making a mistake is a chance for a joyful learning experience, you will cause yourself much less pain and defensiveness. You will learn much more, too, and you will have a much better time doing it! Of course, it takes a while to change the "wrong = bad" equation, but the relief you feel when it begins to change is enormous.
Similarly, it is important to be supportive of other people who make mistakes. Do not disown a white person who says something racist - it will only raise the stakes for them for making a mistake. Instead, you can
- talk to them
- acknowledge times when something similar has happened to you
Sharing Power
A group that works together across the differences within it for the welcome of everyone is a group that must share power willingly. The structure of the group must be one that makes it possible to share power easily. Otherwise the patterns of putting people on the fringes (marginalization) and exclusion (leaving them out) will be repeated in the group.
If there are important positions that only a few people share, for example, Chair or President, make sure that the diversity of the group is represented there. One good way to do this is to have a two-person or three-person Co-Chair (sharing the chair) position, so that at the very top diverse groups are represented.
TWO: STARTING A GROUP
This section takes you through some important steps that you should consider when you think about starting a group. Why do you want one? What kind will it be? What kinds of things will it do? What kinds of things can it do? Who do I want to do it with? How do I start one? Don’t forget that you can start whatever kind of group meets your needs. This manual hopes to tell you about some basic skills that you might find useful for starting your own group - what you do in your group is up to you.
1. How to start your own group - Joan Meister
I have MS but didn’t start using a wheelchair until I was 30. I got my first power chair early this year and shortly after, I got the pressure sore from hell, went to the hospital, came home to a rented hospital bed, lay down flat for three months, had plastic surgery and was flat for another month. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I also was the first Chair of DAWN Canada for too long. I’m very lucky in my life because I have a wonderful home and friends, financial security and Sherman, the elder statesdog.
I got a B.A. (Hons. Eng. ‘77) and worked at SFU where I became my union’s Coordinator before I had to stop working and go on Long Term Disability. I believe in worker’s rights and the right of all persons to have the opportunity to work at meaningful, well paying jobs. I was also active in the women’s movement and left wing politics. These experiences only just began to prepare me for the job of DAWN Canada Chair, the second hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I’ve been on different national and provincial Boards and Executives (e.g., Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work, Women and Words, National Action Committee on the Status of Women, BC Coalition of People with Disabilities, DAWN BC). Currently, I am the Chair of the Board of Directors of the BC Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health and President of ORW: Opportunities through Rehabilitation