Age is not a disability. Disability knows no age.

[maradydd]

I recently learned that a disabled friend of mine, who has a connective tissue disorder and gets around with the help of various assistive devices and a service dog, has been getting hassled by neighbours who want everyone to park at one end of the street and walk home during the day when kids are playing (and have gotten a city street permit to this effect, though they're using it inappropriately -- they can't legally block residents from driving to their own homes, but they're doing it anyway.)

That alone is plenty out of line, but when my friend went to talk to her neighbours about why this wasn't going to work for her, they blew her off -- one of the reasons being "well, Mr. So-and-so is 92 and he doesn't mind."

News flash, people: being old and being disabled are not the same thing. Some old people are ridiculously healthy and spry -- my granddad was still climbing ladders to fix stuff in the garage when he was 90, and the first indication that nature wanted him to slow down was stage 4 lung cancer. (He died two months later.) Certainly there are disabilities that are more common among the elderly -- you don't see a lot of young people with Alzheimer's apart from that one poor family in Holland -- and many chronic conditions, such as polycystic kidney disease, tend to worsen over time, but being old does not mean ipso facto being disabled.

Everyone reading this will either get old or die young. Some of you will get old and never slow down; some of you will end up with osteoporosis, or arthritis, or diabetes. Perhaps the correlation between age and disability makes some people uneasy around young people who walk with canes or have motorized chairs -- perhaps it makes them think of their own inevitable mortality someday. But people who are young and disabled are disabled now, and it's inhumane to pretend that their problems don't exist.

Perhaps if we can get people to realise that disability and age aren't as causally linked as people seem to think they are, both the elderly and people like my friend won't have to put up with this kind of rudeness any more.

Comments

[avani.livejournal.com]

I would pay good money to see these people smacked down in court.

[deza.livejournal.com]

I regularly hear "You're too young to need a cane" or "you're too young to use a chair." Funny, I didn't realize that crippling bone fusion had an age limit. *eyeroll*

[digitalusrex.livejournal.com]

*applause*
i have nothing to add because your post is perfect. well, maybe i'd add that if someone my age had a physical handicap, i wouldn't blow them off by comparing them to a spry 92-year old. some 92-year olds are less decrepit than people half their age! you can't compare excellent health to a disability no matter the age. disability is disability.

some people are such cunts.

[patrickat.livejournal.com]

It's generally not legal to block anyone from using a street for its intended purpose, be they a resident or not, unless it's an undedicated (private) street or a dead end road permitting no through traffic. Most streets are in a public right-of-way and it's hard to imagine the municipality would grant a permit allowing a permanent or recurring blocking of the road. Typically, that kind of permit is only granted for a one-time thing like a block party or a parade. So they city may have already acted contrary to law... and in doing so they are, in this case, also aiding this group of residents in running afoul of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This would be a really fun lawsuit, and just the hint of it coming would probably be enough to make the city rescind the permit.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

What asshats. I hope your friend has the stones to just drive right through their barriers.

[fuschia17.livejournal.com]

Let us know what happens.

This is her home. It's a nice idea for the kids in principle, but only works if you can accommodate everyone.

How did they get this passed by the council when it's clear that not everyone agrees to these new conditions?
Here in Australia, the local council requires written permission from everyone - neighbours on both sides and at the back,- to have something as mundane as three dogs in a suburban house to demonstrate that they are ok with this.
I can't imagine your American city council being so different that they won't require proven active permission about something which will be permanently affecting everyone in the street. Is all I'm saying...

[briaer.livejournal.com]

OH YEAH lay the ADA smackdown on that shit!

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Wow, I thought this was a post on gimp_vent for a few minutes. can I just say how happy it makes me to see a not-physically-disabled person complain about this shit sometimes? (I mean, spouse-of-cripple-people and the invisibly disabled are the most likely folks, but it still made me happy.)

[akumadaimyo.livejournal.com]

I had some idiot road workers block off the entrance to our apartment complex a few years back when they were fixing the road. Apparently these fucking morons didn't know they couldnt do that. Seriously? How the hell do you NOT know that? It's illegal. I think our residents and the manager called the Police about this bullshit and the cops had to waste their time to tell these fucking morons that NO you can't block off the entrance to work on the road. People need to get in and out. People DO have jobs and lives you know. Derpa Derp Derp.

Update, ish.

[songblaze.livejournal.com]

Today we had to call the police to drive onto our block.

They didn't come until after 4, and when they did, predictably enough my neighbors lied to them.

But hey, he told the neighbors they had no right to stop me from getting on the block, and told us that they had said all they asked was for us to wait for them to get the kids out of the way, so...the neighbors know I'm serious, and it's on police record that there have been issues. He also made it quite clear (at least to us, hopefully to them) that they have no right to demand I park at the end of the block.

I think the officer believed me more than them, because he said if there were problems again, I should seriously think about contacting the Streets Department and explaining what was going on.

...and besides, seriously, who would call the cops about being asked to wait a minute so the kids could be corralled? The neighbor's lies had to look pretty obviously like lies in that light.

I had also told the dispatcher, and the officer, about the verbal assault on Wednesday and the fact that its virulence had led me to feel that the situation might escalate to physical assault.

That's part of why today, I made sure it was my boyfriend and I together. By myself, I was afraid that the harpies might actually come hit me. While the boyfriend is a solidly built man, he is the most non-violent person I have ever met, though they had no way of knowing that.

[staghounds.livejournal.com]

Get a video camera. Because he's your beau, he's both an interested witness AND more likely to do something that can be spun as irrational.

Run a camera every time. It's better than a million witnesses. I do court for a living.