20 years ago, Illinois was rocked by a scandal after the widespread practice of locking schoolchildren, especially those with disabilities or special needs, in small, confining boxes was revealed. The teachers who imprisoned these children argued that they did so out of the interests of safety -- that of the imprisoned students, of the other students, and of school staff. Read the rest

Bernie Sanders has released A Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education, a detailed and bold suite of public education reforms reminiscent of the kinds of policy planks being laid down regularly by rival candidate Elizabeth Warren (I'm a donor to both Sanders' and Warren's campaigns). Read the rest

L.A.’s infamous Chateau Marmont was the brainchild of famed attorney Fred Horowitz, who built it after returning from a vacation in Europe, where he’d been photographing the gothic castles and chateaus along the Loire Valley River in France. In 1929, The Chateau Marmont opened its doors to the Hollywood elite, billed as “Los Angeles’s newest, finest and most exclusive apartment house superbly situated…” (Google the rest.)

The Chateau was never meant to become a playground for the modern day self-proclaimed Hollywood Antidisestablishmentarianist, otherwise known as Beverly Hills kids with Los Feliz attitudes (which is irony in itself, as Los Feliz has now become the city of lost feelings where the average go to be uniquely average). If I hear one more malnourished, vapid ‘It girl’ say, “Oh my God let’s go to the Chateau! Their Bolognese is like sooooooo good!”, I’m going to poke my fucking eyeballs out with the pointless pen they have tucked behind their ear in hopes that it will provoke someone into asking them if they are a writer. So let me break this down for you.

First of all, the Bolognese is shit. Mediocre at best.

Second, judging form the slender physiques of their patrons, frequent trips to the bathroom, white creamy shit in the corner of their mouths, and their inability to shut the fuck up…NO ONE IS GOING THERE TO EAT!

Third, and finally, the Chateau Marmont is where douchebags go when they need to fill their social inadequacies.

As I write this I am actually at the Chateau wondering, “Am I an L.A. Read the rest

Josh Winkler is the engineer & inventor behind Cripple Concepts - an innovative startup that provides assistive tech for people with disabilities, made and designed by people with disabilities. Read the rest

A man with physical disabilities was forced to crawled off a plane at Reagan National Airport in Arlington VA, when United Airlines failed to provide him with help disembarking. Read the rest

Klippel–Feil syndrome is rare and it likely doesn't describe one single disorder. Instead, it's more of a catch-all, a name for a variety of conditions that all share one common feature — being born with some of the vertebrae in the neck fused together.

Besides that, Klippel-Feil syndrome is pretty diverse. It's associated with a wide variety of birth defects that not everyone with the syndrome has. So it's hard to say what an absolute outcome for Klippel-Feil would be. But, for one man who lived 4,000 years ago in what is now northern Vietnam, Klippel-Feil syndrome likely meant complete paralysis of the lower half of his body. There's a good chance his arms were at least partly paralyzed, as well. His head would have been torqued to the right. It was probably hard for him to chew. Basically, he couldn't have easily kept himself alive with no help

And yet, this man — known as Burial 9 — lived into adulthood. Discovered in 2009, he is only one of a collection of prehistoric burials demonstrating that, even while living under harsh conditions, our ancestors went out of their way to care for people who couldn't care for themselves and make space in the community for people who had to live differently than the norm. In the New York Times, James Gorman writes about this archaeology of compassion:

Among archaeological finds, she said, she knows “about 30 cases in which the disease or pathology was so severe, they must have had care in order to survive.”

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Developmentally disabled news reporters cover the weird world of the 2012 RNC and DNC. We interview director Arthur Bradford, and backer Matt Stone (South Park, Book of Mormon).

Brendan Gramer, who is deaf, writes in Wired News today about how AT&T's recent announcement that it will block FaceTime on its networks affects deaf people, who use FaceTime to converse in sign language.

It’s disappointing that AT&T is standing in the way of innovation that addresses the needs of its deaf and hard-of-hearing customers. Sometimes it takes a while (and some prodding) for technology and technology companies to catch up to and embrace accessibility. In this case the technology is there, but it’s AT&T that’s throwing up the barrier.

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