Skip to main content

'Conversations About Activism and Change: Independent Living Movement Ireland and Thirty Years of Disability Rights' edited by Sarah Fitzgerald

This compelling anthology of interviews features individuals who have devoted their lives to activism. It has been brought together by Sarah Fitzgerald and the Independent Living Movement Ireland (ILMI) and commemorates 30 years of that organisation's existence. These are the stories of the disabled activists in their own words and illustrate not just their dedication to their cause, but also the very human aspect of their struggle, underscoring the importance of friendship in sustaining their activism.


It is tragic to witness, the creeping prevalence of anti-science rhetoric within the dialogue of Ireland's Disabled Persons' Organisations (DPOs), particularly when it concerns autistic people. Empirical evidence can shine a light on our way forward, outlining the steps to progress. However, it is crucial to remember that it is the individuals - the ones who are meant to benefit from this evidence - who must ultimately decide the path to follow. Science should serve humanity, not merely exist as an end in itself, devoid of guiding values. Much to their credit, these contributors diligently evade this pitfall. Often the contributors reflect on the alliances and the intersectional work that can not only claim rights for disabled people but also progress other social issues, including the rights of women, children, workers and the travelling community. It is the courage and commitment of communities like these that progress our entire society forward, in so many instances we are led from the margins. Issues that were once on the fringes have been brought into the mainstream by the sustained work of these people. But progress is not linear and the pendulum can swing the other way.

The prevalence of pseudo-scientific thinking will slow our progress, divide our communities and harm those subjected to its many forms of quackery. These are the stories of our leaders, and we owe them, but the journey is far from over; there is a long road left to travel.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to win friends and influence people. Dale Carnegie. A review and some thoughts.

Dale Carnegie's 1936, 'How to Win Friends and Influence People,' has remaining in continuous print since 1936, selling over 30 million copies.  Something is selling here.  Carnegie has distilled a distinct ideology one deeply ingrained in the Western corporate world’s ethos of mandatory optimism.  While Carnegie's insights are not inherently flawed, their luminescence casts a particularly dense umbra. Carnegie's book aligns with something we know about ourselves, echoing George Orwell's observation: 'The best books tell you what you already know.' The book plays into our innate longing for acceptance and affirmation, fostering a confirmation bias where we gravitate towards ideas that affirm our pre-existing beliefs. Reading Carnegie I could not help thinking of it's antithesis. Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman' (1949) delves into the perilous consequences of such biases.  Willy Loman, epitomises the tragic fallout of conflating charm,...
Post a Comment
Read more

American Pastoral, American Berserk

This is a beautiful book, rendered in exquisite prose. If all of life is light and shadow, then American Pastoral shies neither from the light nor the shadow. It shows us unconditional parental love and the callous indifference of our societies at large. It takes a cold hard look at the essential contradictions in American society, and in doing so, is an essential autopsy of the American Dream. The central theme I took from the novel is that it asks what went wrong? How can our loved ones be capable of such terrible things? However, unlike other novels that have asked similar questions, I am thinking of 'We need to talk about Kevin’. by Lionel Shriver. Roth considers the interesting angle of having a familial relationship as almost entirely loving. With parents painstakingly, human, even superhuman. And yet, these horrors still enters their lives. Leaving us to wonder what causes this to go wrong. Roth shows how the political is personal, brushing your teeth is political...
Post a Comment
Read more

Half of a Yellow Sun a novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I was inspired to pick up this book after listening to Chimamanda's 2022 Reith Lectures on the Freedom of Speech. Chimamanda, argues that it feels like freedom of speech is under attack. She names cancel culture, arguments about “wokeness" (I am old enough to remember when we called this political correctness) and the stabbing of Salman Rushdie as producing this atmosphere. Meanwhile, autocrats, populists and an anti-science identity culture have undermined the very notion of an accepted fact-based truth which lives above politics. So how do we calibrate freedom in this context? 'Half of a Yellow Sun,' is as profoundly human, as it is unsettling. The terror and the domestic are cheek by jowl. They live side by side, in the same spaces. I have heard it said that Iris Murdoch's contribution to ethics is that she (along with other feminist philosophers) reframed ethics from the public to the intimate. Similarly, Adichie's narrative highlights that ethics canno...
Post a Comment
Read more