Everything You Know Is Wrong,

Part Two

It's no crime to grow older.

Photo of a woman who's very very old. But the most
striking thing about her is the anger in her raised fist.

Dolores King
had nearly run out of hope. For more than two years she was kept -- against her will -- in a nursing home not far from her own apartment. She hadn't broken the law; she had lost her sight to diabetes. Her only crime was the crime of having a disability.

Dolores had called on every state and county agency which was in a position of authority to override the (nursing home's) doctor's order that kept her locked up. He'd said she couldn't possibly live on her own, being blind like that. Dolores knew better. She asked, she demanded, she begged for help to get home, and to get the supports she needed for the first weeks until she learned to live on her own again. Some of the agencies she appealed to even told her they wished they could help, but they didn't have the power to help her get home again.

Finally,
she did what any desperate American might do when all else fails; she wrote a letter to her President. She reasoned that he, if no one else, would have the power to get her released from that nursing home.

His reply is printed below.

Dolores King did not, bless her, give up. She lives in freedom today not because anyone helped but because she waged guerilla war on that nursing home. Read her own hair-raising account of how she made her escape.

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This article is edited and reprinted from Mouth #49, the Segregation issue.

Ready for Everything You Know is Wrong, Part Three? This one's about the right to die. Just click here for a quick, cheap, and oh-so compassionate death.