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April 04, 2006
Barriers still exist for disabled workers
People with disabilities are nearly three times more likely to live in poverty than people without disabilities; 26 percent of people with disabilities had an 2004 annual household income below $15,000, versus 9 percent of those without disabilities, the survey found.
"Employers still have fears and misconceptions about people with disabilities," said Nancy Starnes, vice president and chief of staff at the National Organization on Disability, a nonprofit focusing on the participation of people with disabilities in all aspects of community life.
Architects Maul Eerie River Ruin
Now, the Roosevelt Island Visual Arts Association with Coler-Goldwater Hospital asked designers to breathe new life into the site that was once dubbed Welfare Island.
The presentations that make up "Southpoint: from Ruin to Rejuvenation" featured work from young architects from around the world, but 28 of the entries came from New Yorkers.
The entrants not only had to come up with a multi-use arts facility on Roosevelt Island, but also come up with a plan that would be useful to the high number of disabled residents of adjacent Coler-Goldwater Hospital.
A Resplendent Park Respite, Mosaic Tiles Included
Bryant Park "has consistently pushed the envelope as to how refined a park can be," Mr. Benepe said, adding that the Department of Parks and Recreation "can aspire to this level in our bathrooms, although we probably won't go as far as the cut flowers."
Mr. Benepe said that his department has embarked on a campaign to restore its bathrooms and retrofit them to increase accessibility for the disabled. "We're making a concerted effort to make sure park comfort stations are open, decent and clean," he said. "You know, we have an informal motto--we actually say this in our meetings--it's our business to help New Yorkers do theirs."
April 05, 2006
Willowbrook State School survivors spurned
Some of them survived the horrors of Willowbrook, and now a group of 16 developmentally disabled adults are looking for a new home in Mariners Harbor.
But neighbors of the proposed Community Resources residences at 16 and 22 DeHart Avenue voted 11-1 against the proposal last night during a meeting of Community Board 1's Mariners Harbor area committee.
April 10, 2006
Not just another pretty face
Before the collapse, [Chuck Close] was big, burly and blunt. Now his 6-foot-plus frame has folded into a wheelchair, but there is added buoyancy to his spirit, coming from having faced a near-death experience and rebounded. His work was on a successful trajectory before the paralysis. But even with extreme limitation of movement, Close was able to pick up and move on with almost no discernible difference in the quality or quantity of his output. He has said in the past that not painting was never an option; that if he had to, he would spit the paint on the canvas.
...Close does not rely on a traditional painterly style of portraiture. He divides his canvas into a grid, giving each square an initial color that will have little or nothing to do with the final colors. Then he begins painting in the upper left hand corner, moving from left to right, top to bottom, chewing off a row at a time, like a mechanical typewriter. A mechanism installed in his New York City studio moves the large canvases up through a slot in the floor as he finishes each row so he is always eye-level with the row to be painted. Working each square one at a time is like painting thousands of individual abstract paintings, and he feels slightly celebratory, he says, when each is finished.
New York on a splatter
Byrnes took a huge gamble when she left Sydney and moved to New York in 1999 with just a suitcase. When the art market went cold after the September 11 terrorist attacks she just worked harder - painting every day and late into the night.
Then there is her disability. She has Friedreich's Ataxia, a rare degenerative illness that affects one in 50,000 people. The symptoms begin at puberty and worsen until walking becomes almost impossible. Speech is impaired and life expectancy diminished.
In a wheelchair, there are practical difficulties in negotiating a new city. But now she has a green card and New York is home. She paints in a massive studio in Manhattan's Chelsea district and her clients include the Hollywood director M. Night Shyamalan who made The Sixth Sense and Signs. She has become a classic New York success story.
April 13, 2006
Autopsy Confirms NYPD Detective Died As A Result of Rescue and Recovery Work at Ground Zero
Much the same way the U.S. government denied the chemical defoliant Agent Orange was the cause of widespread deaths and cancer among military personnel returning from Viet Nam, the City of New York and the New York City Police Department have repeatedly refused to recognize that hundreds, if not thousands, of rescue and recovery workers, who toiled at Ground Zero, are now seriously ill or dying from the effects of exposure to the toxic cloud that hung over the area for weeks following the terrorist attacks 9/11.
Any such admission by the City and the NYPD would have far reaching effects since it would potentially force the re-classification of disability pensions and death benefits due to the injured police officers or their survivors.
April 16, 2006
Enabling Pessah
Years ago there was a controversy in my neighborhood - the Riverdale section of the Bronx in New York City - about establishing a group home for the mentally challenged.
An evening was set aside by the Community Board to debate the issue. I'll never forget arriving to speak on behalf of the group home, only to find many of my congregants in the opposition.
Catching up with playwright David Marshall Grant
Among successful stage and TV actors, David Marshall Grant is a breed apart. After playing the gay character Russell on the 1980s prime-time TV soap "Thirtysomething" and then lawyer Joe Pitt in Tony Kushner's "Angels in America," he shifted creative gears and assumed the role of respected playwright. In 1998, he began his writing career Downtown with the Off-Broadway play "Snakebit," which played in the West Village before being transferred to a more commercial run at the Century Theater in Union Square in 1999. His equally successful "Current Events" followed at the Manhattan Theater Club, and now Grant has written "Pen," a dark drama about a wheelchair-bound, domineering mother and her rebellious son living in Long Island in 1969. We caught up with Grant a few days before his new play opened at Playwrights Horizons to talk about his Downtown roots in the theater and the transition from acting to writing.
New Fees And Charges In Projects Finalized By Housing Authority
The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) has notified residents at its 344 developments that it is implementing a final schedule of proposed fees and charges that will offer substantial discounts to 82% of residents; elderly, disabled as well as residents who pay less than ceiling rent.
Agency rescinds plans for disabled adult homes
Community Resources has decided not to go ahead with its plan to house 16 developmentally disabled adults in Mariners Harbor.
Disabled man finds Medicare plan no help
The 55-year-old Albany man signed up early for Medicare Part D, excited that he had found a drug plan to help him pay for medication to keep his multiple sclerosis from worsening. He filled out every piece of paperwork and made every phone call.
But after months of dizzying denials and roadblocks, Copeland has discovered, months later, that the new Medicare drug program won't work for him. A co-pay that was supposed to be $3 is at least $211 -- way more than he can afford on his modest disability pay.
April 17, 2006
Lost Puppy Love
A severely disabled boy and his sister were traumatized after a Brooklyn pet store sold their family a pair of sick puggle puppies, which had to be euthanized just weeks after becoming part of their Chelsea home, the family of the children claim.
...The $1,900 puggles--a popular crossbreed of pug and beagle--were more than just pets, Kushlefsky said.
Jaden and his family had to get the dogs in order to get a trained assistance dog.
April 20, 2006
Learning to Savor a Full Life, Love Life Included
A generation ago, young adults like Ms. Graham and Mr. Ruvolo were generally confined to institutions, with no expectation of a normal life. All that changed in 1975, when a court order closed the notorious Willowbrook State School on Staten Island and moved its residents, and others like them across the country, into community settings to live as fully as their limitations allowed.
That could include attending neighborhood schools and holding salaried jobs. Now many men and women in their 20's and 30's, encouraged from childhood to be independent, expect the same when it comes to expressing their romantic and sexual needs.
Wheelchair Users, Disability Advocates Win One for Civil Rights and Accessibility
Disabled in Action,a 36-year old organization comprised of and led by people with disabilities, has fought ceaselessly to obtain accessibility for everyone, and their fight, unfortunately, isn't even close to being over and won.
But today, they turned out in force in midtown Manhattan to announce a landmark settlement.
They filed a Federal civil rights lawsuit in 2001 against one of the largest pharmacy chains in NYC, Duane Reade, for inaccessibility. They were able to bring this lawsuit, in large part, because of the existence of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
April 21, 2006
Judge says NYC program unfairly penalized disabled
A city program that was supposed to offer extra help to welfare recipients with physical or mental disabilities became a logistical nightmare for some of them, a federal judge said.
U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain ruled late Wednesday that New York's WeCARE program also unfairly discriminated against disabled people by forcing them stop using regular neighborhood welfare offices and travel instead to one of three special "disabled only" service centers.
Disabled in Action and Duane Reade Reach Agreement on Accessibility of Stores to Persons With Disabilities
Disabled in Action (DIA) of Metropolitan New York, several individual plaintiffs and Duane Reade Holdings, Inc. today announced that they have reached an agreement on measures to ensure that Duane Reade stores are accessible to people with mobility disabilities. The agreement is the culmination of five years of negotiations and legal action brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and related accessibility laws.
April 23, 2006
Wheelchair Unbound
by Harriet McBryde Johnson
I'm at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, touring an exhibition: "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race." Tomorrow evening I will be interviewed onstage by a museum official. In a sense, that will make me a temporary display, an object of interpretation, a body in a wheelchair, a body so pared down and twisted up by a genetic neuromuscular disability that it doesn't need a nearby Nazi to get a reaction. In another sense, I will be an interpreter, talking from experience as a disability rights lawyer and activist.
New home sweet for disabled man
There's a happy ending in sight for a disabled Holocaust survivor who has been living as a virtual prisoner in his Brooklyn home.
After two years of legal wrangling, tomorrow Chaim Indig, who uses a wheelchair, is set to move into a handicapped-accessible co-op in Premier House - a luxury Midwood building whose board initially had turned him away.