1995

 

"The great leader who is going to save is is not there.
We have to take the power and the responsibility to solve our own problems. We may not have created them, but it is up to us to solve them all."
Justin Dart

photo of Justin Dart

"Sheltered workshops are retarded."
-- Justin Dart

 

a page from Mouth's publication, "You Choose," shows two young boys, one of them disabled, living in freedom.
This is a page from Mouth's 1995 publication, You Choose.

 

"Disabled people are always at risk of fancy scientific ideas which allow old prejudices to strut around in the clothing of compassion."
-- Ken Davis

 

a page from the September 1995 Mouth announces that Idell S. (later called Helen L.) had won her suit to live in freedom. That case was the forerunner of the Olmstead case.
This page from the September 1995 Mouth announces that Idell S. (Helen L.) had won the right to live in freedom. Steve Gold, the attorney in that case, is pictured. Helen L. was the forerunner of Olmstead, and sounded the first ADA death knell for institutions and nursing homes.


"Committees are appointed and surveyors are sent out into the world to do assessments of our needs. Inevitably the surveys find that people with disabilities are poor because they have so many deficiencies."
-- Marcia Tewell

 

"Service systems teach people that their value lies in their deficiencies. They are built on 'inadequacies' called illteracy, visual deficit, teenage pregnancy. But communities are built on the capacities of drop-out, illiterate, bad-scene, teenage-pregnant women."
-- John McKnight

 

"Your dollar first became disabled when it was
collected by do-gooders."
-- B. Faw

 

cover of a 1995 Mouth has a photo of a British activist doing a spectacular and showy flip when three police grab him to put him under arrest. We see him upside down in mid-flip, but he's grinning happily. The police don't look nearly as happy.

"
The telethon looks like some kind of interminable Eastern European Politburo meeting where obscure regional collectivized farm managers give little speeches long into the night. The party chairmain is the hero and master of ceremonies. He struts across the stage, interrupting the low-level ministers, grabbing the microphone and shouting slogans to the masses."
-- John Hockenberry

 

"This is a war, right? Our people are dying. You are taking hundreds of casualties every day in the U.S. alone. It's just that nobody counts our casualties on the six o'clock news."
-- Alan Holdsworth

 

"Did your catheter get caught in an elevator door while your attendant was applying her makeup? It says right here it's your own damned fault."
-- Terry Roarke in "Fine Print"

 

"Some psych drugs do work. But so does suicide and so do a lot of other stupid things."
-- Rae Unzicker

 

"You're taught to be nice, you're taught to be liked. Then here you are going out, breaking all those rules. It takes a whole lot of courage for people to come out and do it. It's a really tense thing."
-- Mike Auberger

 

"The place reeked with the sweat of professionals who were envisioning the ends of their careers in the Choice Police."
-- Ken Dibble

 

"Every time I do civil disobedience, I get scared. But you can't stop pushing. You know what's going to happen if you don't do anything: nothing's going to happen."
-- Stephanie Thomas

 

"My teacher is a witch. One day I hope to be able to use my Liberator well enough to tell her where to go."
-- Daniel Klauditz

 

"As soon as the government starts paying people, they become advocates for the government viewpoint. In the long term, who do you think is going to win? The government, the one with the money."
-- Evan Kemp on CILs

 

"HUD has our blood on its hands. HUD knows this, but HUD has other priorities. We are beginning to learn what it is that makes HUD tick: corporate relations."
-- Josie Byzek

 

"The wearing of shorts may be a trivial thing. But for me it was the practical expression of my liberation as a disabled man. I love my body."
-- Johnny Crescendo

 

"If you have faced social workers with Joan Crawford shoulder padding, you realize that the female Suit is as deadly as the male."
-- J. Quinn Brisben

 

cartoon shows a crowded elevator with a guy in a wheelchair in the foreground. Behind him, everyone looks the other way and thinks to themselves, "Don't stare. Don't stare. Don't stare..."

"In personal relationships and business dealings, you must be a person of honor, integrity, and compassion. But in dealings with the system, you must be a heartless mercenary -- a lean, mean, cheating machine with a killer instinct."
-- Barbara Knowlen

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The photo of Justin Dart is by Tom Olin.
The "handicap awareness" cartoon is by Mike Brown.

The photo for You Choose is by Lydia Gans. The photo of the "Brit Flip" is by Eleanor Bentall.