This terse e-mail provoked two reactions:

1. It is surprising that I have not had more to say about the rights of the disabled thus far. Two of the writers at this magazine have disabilities. One of them, one of the sweetest people you would ever want to know, once worked in health care and was devastated upon contracting the disabling ailment. A marriage was put at risk. The other has confided in having their personal disability cost them a number of jobs during the course of their career. Another very close friend of mine, an attorney with a prestigious international law firm, is a quadrapeligic who I met when the individual represented a person in opposition to a property management firm I worked for in San Francisco. Again, this person is one of the people who has enriched my life and who I care very deeply about. This attorney is also very involved in disability rights issues, yet very little space here at the G21 has been devoted to these issues.
2. Frankly, I resented the tone of the message. Ms. Russell's message seemed to be an accusation rather than a suggestion. She seemed to be implying that I was somehow remiss in my "duty" as International Crusader for the Oppressed. She did not appear to take into account for one moment that others might be making similar entreaties that I or the magazine consider their causes.

I fully accept that one of the responsibilities of publishing is to "comfort the afflicted." Lord knows, I work hard every week to see that we do just that. At the same time, my reaction to e-mails like Ms. Russell's is that I MIGHT JUST ACTUALLY have a queue of VERY IMPORTANT issues demanding space here and my attention. When I received this e-mail, I already had a file bulging with the following items:

• Two reports from CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), one involving an allegedly unwarranted assault on an Arab American by agents protecting Secretary of State Albright, another on Senator Arlen Spectre's repudiation of an anti-Islamic organization which claimed he was a member of their Board of Directors;
• A request to report on the recent oil fires in Nigeria (18 October, 1998) which led to the burning deaths of more than 500, many of whom were interred quickly in mass graves, and the link to corporate oil and governmental corruption and environmental crimes in Nigeria;
• A request to look at the plight of ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia, based on the fact that I had earlier reported on the Cambodian elections;
• The complete text of an academic paper, Lawrence Bobo, James R. Kluegel, and Ryan A, Smith, "Laissez-Faire Racism: The Crystallization of a 'Kindler, Genter' Anti-black Ideology" (Russell Sage Foundation: June 1996) for my consideration;
• A Nat-Journ report on the importance of the Amnesty International Human Rights report on the United States for Native Americans and Mexican migrant workers;
• Copies of a recent article looking at African-American student performance in Shaker Heights, Ill. and its suggestion that their was "peer pressure" for students to under-perform or be ostracized as "oreos;" and
• A request from a Vietnam vet to report on his PTSD(Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) lawsuit against the veterans administration.

Simply put: there seems to be a growing number of individuals out there who believe (mistakenly, I suspect) that I or the G21 have some type of impact on issues. The assumption is made that we have enough of a readership to "get the word out" about their concerns. While this is a flattering notion, my suspicion is that it is laughably far from the truth.

The foregoing is not written to minimize, in any respect, the importance of the issue of our (mis)treatment of disabled citizens. G21 reviewer Bob Powers, in fact, has written about Ms. Russell's referenced book at the Columbus[OH] Free Press site.

As Ms. Russell says most eloquently in the introduction to her book:

"Americans seem to have lost sight of the fact that policies are social decisions and that these decisions can result in the de-valuation and even loss of human life. I am often asked why I write so much about disability. Other topics are far more 'sellable' (that is certainly true). But the past years have made it insidiously apparent that the plight of disabled people, like canaries released into the coal mines to detect whether there was enough oxygen in the air to survive, is a barometer for the 'progress' or lack of it in our over-capitalized civilization. Disability and disability policy--past, present and future--is a tool for all to rate our present socioeconomic order."

I think immediately about the kvetching so many of our "business people" here in the United States did after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act(ADA) and how lax the enforcement of the Act remains. But I also think about some of my fellow webmistresses and -masters here on this new medium who, though they know about the Bobby site, simply haven't bothered to review the recommendations there or run a simple diagnostic of their accessibility.

And I think about the number of municipalities that are woefully lacking in making even the most reasonable accomodations in public transportation, in convention facilities, in public meetings, for people with disabilities. The fact is, to paraphrase Ralph Ellison, we have made what can only be considered a conscious attempt to get people with disabilities out of sight. WE HAVE TRIED TO MAKE THEM INVISIBLE PEOPLE. Worse than a reservation system, we have relegated them to the status of "benign neglect." It speaks to the very nature of our Western capitalist system that this has taken place. I can't even think of a single disabled person portrayed on national television here in the United States except that lone doctor on ER!