Author Archives: Amy Farr Robertson

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About Amy Farr Robertson

Civil Rights Lawyer. Dog Lover. Smartass.

Drive Like Your Kids Live Here*

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Image: Red lawn sign with white letters that read "Drive Like Your Kids Live Here." Other lawns in the background have the same sign.These preachy little signs are popping up all over our neighborhood. Every time I see one, two thoughts float through my head:

First thought:  I don’t have kids, you sanctimonious shit, so I’ll drive the way I would if my imaginary kids lived there and my imaginary kids all drive for NASCAR.

Second thought:  let’s apply this standard universally:

  • Provide access like your kids used wheelchairs.
  • Provide interpreters like your kids were Deaf.
  • Locate fracking like your kids lived there.
  • Make cops treat all kids like your kids.
  • Fund public education like you had one imaginary kid in each school in the country.  (Hey, if the Duggars can do it . . .).
  • Generally do unto others like you would do unto your kids.

Wasn’t there some guy a while back who had a whole philosophy, a religion, actually, IIRC, around a concept sort of like this?

Actually, a third thought often sneaks in, which is this:  I HATE this sort of sanctimony . . . FLOOR IT!  I honestly think this reaction would not be unusual, and that they’d have better results with a sign that read something like, “radar speed camera ahead.”

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* Shouldn’t it be “like your kids lived here.”  It’s the subjunctive, you sanctimonious UNGRAMMATICAL shits!

A [completely fictional] fairy tale

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Image: cartoon of Shrek (green ogre in leather vest) and donkey.Once upon a time, there was a young lawyer who was working with a slightly older and much cooler lawyer representing a plaintiff in a civil rights case. The young lawyer and the cool lawyer set out on a journey to a village to the south where the young lawyer and the cool lawyer defended the deposition of their client, taken by a man who was a Well Respected Member of the Bar. During the deposition, the Well Respected Member of the Bar threw a pencil at the cool lawyer.

Time passed and the young lawyer became an old lawyer. She still represented plaintiffs and even though she aged and acquired experience and gray hair, she remained a woman.

Recently, she came before an Elder of the village’s Judicial Tribunal. For the first time since she was a young lawyer, the other attorney was that same Well Respected Member of the Bar from the village to the south. He was older and grayer, and still a man. During the proceeding before the Judicial Tribunal, the Elder posed questions to the once-young-now-old lawyer about her case, using words that showed sympathy, ableism, sexism, and condescension.

After the preceding, the elder asked the Well Respected Member of the Bar about his golf game.

And the once-young-now-old lawyer thought to herself, “I wonder if the Elder of the Judicial Tribunal knows that Well Respected Member of the Bar once threw a pencil at my co-counsel during a deposition.”

The End.

“The Case Against Gay Marriage: Top Law Firms Won’t Touch It”

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The Case Against Gay Marriage: Top Law Firms Won’t Touch It – NYTimes.com.

Here is what I wrote to the author:

I find it funny that the unwillingness of big law firms to handle cases that might affect their bottom line is getting a lot of attention around the marriage equality issue. We run a small civil rights non-profit that files lawsuits to enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act, and honestly, big firms that will represent tobacco companies and death row inmates won’t touch our cases. Why? Because we are asking their [potential] clients to be accessible to people who use wheelchairs, to deaf and hard of hearing people, to others with other disabilities. It’s not front page news; it’s business as usual for us.

Here is what I wrote on Facebook:

Oh cry me a fucking river. Your position is unpopular. Deal with it. Grow some balls and speak up for what you believe in. It’s not “crushing dissent” when you self-censor for economic gain.

Dignify THIS!

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I’m done. I’m done being polite.* I’m done shutting up about good liberals who seem to get every sort of civil rights and civil liberties except the equality of rights, respect, and dignity of our brothers and sisters with disabilities. I’m done with disability rights as a “when we get around to it” right. I’m done with people who are willing to use respectful terminology except — *big sigh* — avoiding using the word “retard” is just one step too far toward thought control.  And I’m done with “civil rights” law firms in inaccessible offices and “civil rights” lawyers who don’t hire interpreters. I’m done.

What pushed me over the edge was this voicemail, from a fellow attorney who would, I believe, describe himself as favoring civil rights. I suppose it’s my one last shred of not-yet-quite-doneness that leads me to keep him anonymous.

But who he thinks he is and who his words and actions show him to be should not be anonymous. It needs to be out there for good liberals — chock full of self-righteousness and non-disabled privilege — to observe and perhaps see themselves.  And become real civil rights lawyers by according people with disabilities the same rights and respect you accord other groups you work so hard for.

First let’s play the “protected class switcheroo” game. Imagine I got this voicemail:

Hey Amy, [Name Redacted] here. Trying to get in touch with you and/or Tim. I’m working with a group that is sponsoring legislation to increase penalties for disrespecting police officers. They got bogged down because of some African-American, ah, community concerns – said it would be used as a sword instead of a shield. Um, I think it’s miscommunication. I think the African-American community should be absolutely in favor of it and I wanted to hook up with folks, the right folks, in the African-American community and I thought you would know the behind the scenes politics of who best to contact. . . . .

Pretty gross, eh? No good liberal would talk that way, at least not in public in 2015. This is, in fact, the voicemail I received. Verbatim.

Hey Amy, [Name Redacted] here. Trying to get in touch with you and/or Tim. Um, I’ve done work in the past through when I was at the ACLU with the Hemlock Society; they’re now the Compassion and Choices organization and they sponsored some legislation about right to choose or to refuse treatment. They got bogged down because of some disability, ah, community concerns – said it would be used as a sword instead of a shield. Um, I think it’s miscommunication. I think the disability community should be absolutely in favor of it and I wanted to hook up the Compassionate Choices people with folks, the right folks, in the disability community and I thought you would know the behind the scenes politics of who best to contact. . . . .

And here is my response:

[Name Redacted] –

Thanks for your voicemail.  I think I can say with a fair degree of confidence that there was no miscommunication on the disability rights side.  The position of CCDC, Not Dead Yet Colorado, and a long list of prominent disability rights groups opposing physician assisted suicide is well thought out and thoroughly researched.  I can’t possibly improve on the information on NDYCO’s website, so I’ll provide a link:  http://www.notdeadyetcolorado.org/.

To be clear, Colorado’s bill was not about refusing treatment:  anyone can do that at any time without the proposed legislation.  It is also not about choices:  we can all choose to buy a gun and shoot ourselves; to drive in front of a train; to stop eating and drinking; etc.  Instead, the discussion revolves around getting a doctor to assist you in killing yourself to avoid — tracking the title of the bill — an undignified death.  What is characterized as “lack of dignity,” however, are conditions that many people with disabilities live and thrive with every day:  the need for a vent; a feeding tube; colostomy; urostomy; assistance with activities of daily living.  Statistics from Oregon, for example, a state that has legalized assisted suicide, demonstrate that people do not chose assisted suicide to relieve intractable pain — the purpose for which it has been sold to the public — but rather to address perceived loss of autonomy, inability to engage in activities of daily living, and loss of dignity.

These perceptions and the urge to kill oneself over them result directly from a society that does not value people with disabilities — and such perceptions are (circularly) reinforced by bills like these and the rhetoric that surround them.  Assisted suicide is urged in an environment in which people with disabilities do not have universal access to attendant care in their homes and communities, to assistive technology and mobility devices, to accessible vehicles or modifications, or to home modifications — hell, to accessible homes to start with.  These are all things that people need to continue to live — with dignity — in the community.  In the absence of this sort of support, many disabilities fit the bill’s definition of “terminal,” making it the worst sort of health care rationing:  cheaper dead than disabled.

A bill proposing that it was “undignified” to live as an African-American, an LGBT* person, or — to take an historical example — as a Jew, thereby justifying easy access to death would be rejected with horror.  Yet good liberals appear completely at home with providing a cheap and easy path to death for people with disabilities.

Furthermore, the concerns of people with disabilities reflect a great deal of thought and considered analysis; it is patronizing to suggest that they result from miscommunications.  I can’t imagine any other group active in the civil rights dialog that would be the subject of a voicemail like this.  When LGBT* groups oppose civil rights rollbacks, are they perhaps just victims of a miscommunication, which can be corrected by identifying the “right” groups?  How about African-Americans calling for law enforcement reform?  Shall we identify the “right” groups to support our men and women in blue?

The debate over physician assisted suicide has been plagued by this sort of condescension, as liberal and radical disability rights groups are accused of being pawns of religious conservatives, as if incapable of independent thought.  This infantilizing of our movement underscores our fears that disability is so stigmatized that ostensible civil rights champions would rather be dead than disabled.

Ultimately, if the ACLU is devoted to nondiscriminatory civil liberties, it should support a universal right to assisted suicide.  Anyone, anytime, can request a lethal dose, not just those in circumstances defined in terms of a protected classification.  This I would support, though I believe other members of the disability rights community are more compassionate than I am.

I would be happy to put you in touch with any of the groups on this list to help with any miscommunications:

  • Access & Ability Colorado
  • ADAPT
  • ADAPT Colorado
  • Assn of Programs for Rural Independent Living
  • Autistic Self Advocacy Network
  • The Center for Rights of Parents with Disabilities
  • Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition
  • Disability Rights Center
  • Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund
  • Justice For All
  • National Council on Disability
  • National Council on Independent Living
  • National Spinal Cord Injury Association
  • Not Dead Yet USA
  • Not Dead Yet Colorado
  • Patients’ Rights Action Fund
  • TASH
  • The World Association of Persons with Disabilities
  • The World Institute on Disability

Sincerely,

Amy

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* Yes, I know, there is clear and convincing evidence that I was done with politeness, as a general matter, a long time ago.

What the fucking hell: “In U.C.L.A. Debate Over Jewish Student . . .”

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In U.C.L.A. Debate Over Jewish Student, Echoes on Campus of Old Biases – NYTimes.com.*

I don’t have time for a well-thought-out blog post, so I’m going to express my views, even more than usual, though profanity.

What the fuck?  How did we get to the place where a bunch of entitled little shits at a prominent university, ostensibly full of smart people, could question a student’s fairness based on her religion.

I blame:

  1. The students.  Grow up, get your heads out of your asses, and think like decent human beings, not self-important Judgers of the Universe.  You’re 20ish.  Know, now, that you don’t know shit.  Think before you talk.  Maybe even consult a grown-up before you talk.
  2. A sound-byte culture in which it’s always less than a step from reasoned disagreement to ad hominem vilification.  Disagree with American policy?   You’re unpatriotic, a “fifth column.”  Disagree on middle-east policy?  You’re a suspected Mossad agent and/or ISIS sympathizer.**  Believe that women should control their own bodies?  You’re a baby-killer.  Think that we should perhaps consider the growing life inside the woman’s body?  You’re “fighting a war on women.”***  I’m sure there has always been plenty of invective to go around — since the invention of the swear word in prehistoric times — but it seems now that this the culture kids are steeped in.  They grow up on the internet perhaps thinking that the self-righteous, self-centered and generally nasty world of internet comments is normal or OK.
  3. Whatever passes for history teaching these days.  How the fuck could these smart kids get to their early 20s and not get — viscerally — that what they were doing was deeply, deeply wrong.  Any sort of reasonable instruction in the holocaust and the civil rights movement should have made this assaholic move impossible.

I’m concerned that these — and likely other — factors caused these kids’ brains to turn off and their sound byte/talking head/internet troll training to take over.   I sentence them to a intensive course in 20th Century History and a serious time out.

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* I truncated the headline in my blog title because once you get to “debate over Jewish student,” you’re in “what the fucking hell” territory.

** I guess the “and” side of the “/” is fairly unlikely.

*** I’m not suggesting false balance (“and now over to Dr. Schmuck, for the flat-earther position”), but merely that when discussing even those views we personally think are utter horseshit, we stop and think about the substance and keep the discussion on that level.  I’m just fucking tired of media talking shrieking heads and what it’s doing to the culture in which we hope to raise a rational next generation.

 

“Outdoor” “exercise” at the Colorado State Penitentiary

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Since throngs of you* have been asking, “hey, what’s up with that outdoor exercise case you all were working on,” I thought today — the day after a massive two-brief filing** — would be a good time for an update.

In 2010, we and the Civil Rights Clinic at the University of Denver filed a lawsuit against the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) on behalf of Troy Anderson, who had been in solitary confinement at the Colorado State Penitentiary (CSP) for over a decade without outdoor exercise. Instead, he was permitted to exercise here for one hour per day five days a week.

Image: Bare concrete cell with two tall slit-like windows at the far end.

CDOC called this “outdoor exercise.”  As it turned out, Judge Jackson did not.  In August, 2012, he held that this limited exercise violated the Eighth Amendment and ordered CDOC to provide Mr. Anderson with

access for at least one hour, at least three times per week, to outdoor exercise in an area that is fully outside and that includes overhead access to the elements, e.g., to sunlight, rain, snow and wind, unless inclement weather or disciplinary needs make that impossible.

Anderson v. Colorado, 887 F. Supp. 2d 1133, 1157 (D. Colo. 2012).

Instead of providing outdoor exercise at CSP, as the Eighth Amendment requires, CDOC moved Mr. Anderson to Sterling Correctional Facility where he exercised here:

Image: Concrete enclosure approximately 6 and a half feet wide and 20 feet high. Concrete extends to eight feet high on all sides of the end of the enclosure, with mesh over the sides and top. A man stands in the middle, his back to the camera, with his hands extended out to each side. He can almost touch each side of the enclosure. The only other thing in the enclosure is a chin-up bar mounted on the concrete wall on the left just behind the standing man.

In September, 2013, Judge Jackson held that that wasn’t outdoor exercise, either, and believe it or not we’ve been jawboning with the CDOC ever since. That’s a whole nother post!

Meanwhile, back at CSP, inmates in solitary still weren’t getting outdoor exercise, so in December, 2013, we filed a class action lawsuit to essentially enforce the outdoor exercise holding in Anderson. This case — Decoteau v. Raemisch — is still pending before Judge Martinez. Six months after we filed, the CDOC announced changes in the regulations governing solitary, but still did not provide for outdoor exercise. A month after that — late July of last year — the CDOC announced a plan to seek funding from the legislature to build an outdoor exercise area at CSP by the end of 2016. Progress, right? Contingent on the legislature. Over two years away. But glimmers of progress, right? Not so fast: the plan still did not incorporate outdoor exercise for inmates in the status the CDOC now calls Restrictive Housing Maximum Security Status or “Max.”

Last October, we filed a motion for partial summary judgment in the Decoteau case on the claim that inmates in Max were not getting outdoor exercise. In response, Defendants announced that they would provide outdoor exercise for Max inmates for one hour a day, three days a week. Here

 Image: Two reddish-pink walls about 20 feet high, in the corner of which is an 8' x 10' by 8' high steel-mesh cage. Orange traffic cones are laid out in the area between the camera and the cage to show the outlines of two identical future cages.

in that cage.   Or one of two others to be built where the cones outline their perimeters.  The ceiling of this slightly-less-than-700-square-foot area is 20 feet above the ground and made of steel mesh and (in part) razor wire.  Here is the ceiling

Image: four-sided opening covered with steel mesh and razor wire.

and here is an architect’s 3D rendering, as seen from above.

Image: sketch of an irregularly shaped space largely occupied by three steel-mesh cages.

Inmates who have been in Max for more than nine months will be allowed to exercise in one of the cages for one hour three times each week.  The remainder of the space around the cages constitutes the “outdoor exercise” available once each week to inmates in a status called “close custody transition.”

On Friday, we filed our reply brief, as well as a response in opposition to the CDOC’s motion for summary judgment.  Big kudos for all the great work by clinic students Jenny Vultaggio and Kevin Benninger and their professors Lindsey Webb and Lauren Fontana.  And stay tuned for further developments in “outdoor” “exercise”!

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*  Actually, just my step-dad.  Hi, David!

**  Thanks & a shout out to our paralegal, Sophie Breene, a/k/a the PACER-whisperer, who discovered mid-filing that the CDOC had put such impenetrable security features on the pdf of its regulation that not only was she unable to add an exhibit sticker, but the federal court’s electronic filing system would not accept it.  Now that’s security!

[Cross-posted at the CREECblog.]

Kitchen technology

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In yesterday’s installment of “adventures in remodeling,” we packed up our kitchen.  For the next few weeks, we’ll be camping out in the living room, cooking with a single burner and a microwave.  In other words, the same way we’ve been cooking for the past 20 years, but in the living room.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

This process required us to pack up everything except a small collection of kitchen equipment that we’ll use in our living-room camp-out.  I thought it was telling that our first two must-have choices were a martini glass (Tim) and a colander for pasta (me).  What we’d want on a desert island.

As I packed up the various drawers of random kitchen equipment, I came across a couple of interesting items that I think I tossed in the boxes coming from my Dad’s house in 1997.  I find them funny for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is: my father essentially didn’t cook.  He knew how to make his own standard breakfast (two fried eggs over easy; burned* & buttered toast); a couple of standard dinners (hamburgers;** steak; roast chicken****); and vacation food (lobster*****).  I don’t think he was unable to cook; he just liked those things and didn’t see any reason to expand his food horizons.  When he and I traveled to China in 1981, he survived largely on packaged peanuts.

Anyway, here are some of the tools I inherited from Dad.  First, a snicker for your inner 11-year-old:

Image: scissors-like tool with two scoops at the end, in package that reads "Swedish & Cocktail Meat Baller."

If the meat baller weren’t enough, he also had a melon-baller, though from Spain or Mexico, so we miss the English-language snicker.  I love  “¡¡si!!” on the packaging.  Whatever problem this tool is solving, we are clearly intended to be very happy that it has solved it.
Image: tool with very small scoop at the end; packaging is in Spanish.
I loved the idea of a culture so into eating sardines that it would develop a single tool for opening the sardine can and eating the contents.
Image: Tool still in packaging that permits opening a sardine can and eating the sardines using the single tool.
What is this and why did Dad have one?
Image: unexplained tool with hook at the end.
What is this and why did Dad have two of them?
Imate: Two identical tools consisting of a handle and an approximately two-inch by four-inch set of parallel blades.
Prehistoric food processor:
Image: small cylindrical grating blade in a plastic housing with a turn handle.
And finally, just a couple of cool, old, weathered kitchen tools:
Image: old cheese parer with handle and single blade.
Image: weathered bottle opener.
Image: Old style jar opener.
Detail:
Image: close up of old style jar opener showing the words "jar wrench wizard."
In conclusion, show of hands, how many people think I should (1) learn how to use the white balance****** features of my camera and software; and (2) get some real lighting equipment:
Image: Camera set up to photograph objects on a table. Lighting comes from a desk lamp on top of a cardboard box on top of a stool.

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* Intentionally.  And when he ordered bacon in a restaurant, he would go to great pains to insist that it be burned as well.

** Classic divorced dad moment:  he wanted to make hamburgers for us; little shits that we were, we*** wanted McDonalds.  Dad: “OK, then, if you want a McDonalds hamburger, I’d be happy to step on your burger before I serve it to you.”

*** And by “we” I mean “Bruce.”

**** IIRC, Dad’s recipe called for dowsing the chicken in butter every five minutes while it roasted.  No question, that was an excellent roast chicken.

*****  Steamed; dipped in butter.

****** This has to do with the temperature of light, not some weird-ass reverse affirmative action.

Far more Americans are killed each year by the shooters in our midst like Craig Stephen Hicks than have ever been killed by all the jihadist terrorist outfits that have ever stalked this earth. That’s the price, or so the rhetoric goes, of our wild freedom. But maybe to understand the Chapel Hill murders better we need to imagine how it would be playing out if it were the other way around—if some gun-toting Muslim, with a habit of posting hate messages about secular humanists, took it upon himself to execute a defenseless family of them in their home.

via The Chapel Hill Massacre Blues – The New Yorker.

In Without Sanctuary, historian Leon Litwack writes that between 1882 and 1968 an estimated 4,742 Blacks met their deaths at the hands of lynch mobs. The impact this campaign of terror had on black families is impossible to explain so many years later. That number contrasts with the 1,401 prisoners who have been executed legally in the United States since 1976. In modern terms, that number represents more than those killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom and more than twice the number of American casualties in Operation Enduring Freedom — the Afghanistan conflict.

Turning to home, this number also represents 1,700 more than who were killed on 9/11.

via A Black Mississippi Judge’s Breathtaking Speech To Three White Murderers : Code Switch : NPR (emphasis added).

My evolution as a photographer

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When I found this in the middle of the kitchen floor this morning, my first thought wasn’t “ew!” but “that will be an excellent photography subject!”

Image: photo of a chunk of a wasp's nest sitting on a black background.

Image: close-up of part of the wasp's nest.

The culprit is undoubtedly Holly, our year-old Golden Retriever, who has proudly retrieved — and often attempted to eat — sticks, mulch, a bird, a plastic box containing mouse poison,* and a four-foot length of plastic piping that was only recently an integral part of our sprinkler system.  I guess the fact that she retrieved a tissue-thin wasp’s nest and deposited it in the middle of the kitchen floor shows she can be very delicate — the “soft mouth” so valued by hunters.  Given her soft mouth, excellent retrieving skills, and laser-like focus on the squirrels, rabbits, and birds that frequent our backyard, I fear she’s wasting her true talents with indoorspeople such as Tim and me.

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* After a quick trip to the vet and a couple of induced pukes, it was determined that she only ingested a couple of shards of plastic, and no actual mouse poison.