Friday, March 05, 2004
Writer focuses on disability issues
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An author and journalist who has covered the disability rights movement for more than two decades will speak at University of Southern Indiana Tuesday, March 16, in conjunction with Disability Awareness Month. Mary Johnson’s free public presentation will begin at 6:30 p.m. in Mitchell Auditorium in the Health Professions Center. She also will deliver a Lunch and Learn program for the campus community at noon March 16 in Room 206 of the University Center. Johnson is the author of Make Them Go Away: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve, and the Case Against Disability Rights (The Advocado Press, 2003). Make Them Go Away examines the case against disability rights and the fact that proponents of civil rights for people with disabilities - rights guaranteed by federal law - remain essentially silent. The title references movie celebrities Eastwood, who fought an access suit, and Reeve, who insists what’s needed is a cure. In the book, Johnson argues that a nation ignoring disability rights places itself at peril since anyone can suddenly join the disabled minority. Johnson founded the Advocado Press, a small non-profit press publishing information on disability rights issues, in 1980 and began publishing The Disability Rag, a magazine now published as The Ragged Edge. She is editor of The Ragged Edge, and her freelance work has appeared in USA Today, The Nation, The New York Times, and The Columbia Journalism Review. The USI/Epi-Hab Center for Disability Studies and the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence are sponsoring Johnson’s presentations on campus. |
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