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Need for research; rights versus independent living; disability culture
Jacobson
What are the areas that you feel need research and further resolving?
Saviola
I think, first of all, we need to stop the erosion of the rights we've already had. You know, I think we have to really be
very vigilant about that. And I think research-wise, people really need to look at the difference in where we were ten years
ago, fifteen years ago, and where we are now, and where we want to be in another ten years. Look at it broadly.
Jacobson
Is there anything you want to add?
Saviola
Not at the moment, but I'll probably tell you something by tomorrow.
Jacobson
Yes, I know. Let me get out my tape recorder and go, no, wait let me get that on tape.
I have one more question. It seems that there's a very defined line between the disability rights movement and the independent
living movement.
Saviola
I think it's very defined sometimes but when it's issue driven, where there's an issue it's not that defined. I think that
if there is a crisis that everyone has to rally on and get behind, they'll work together and whatever. I think that the line
is blurry at times like that, and doesn't exist. I think it just goes--. Again, it's reflective of why we can't keep a sustained
coalition or a structure for the disability rights.
Jacobson
People talk now, there are disability studies courses at university, and people are talking about disability culture. What's
your view on that? Is there a culture?
Saviola
I think there is. It think there's a disability culture by just a common experience. I think that the disability culture,
by the way we call and refer to each other, you know. We use words to describe each other that no one else, that if someone
able-bodied would say, we'd be offended. I think that we've gotten some art, some very--. Poetry, plays, dance, whatever.
There's really become a body of artistic--paintings, whatever--that respect who people with disabilities are. So I think that's
true in that sense. I think that any movement has a history to it. And that translates into a culture, because of common experience
and stuff like that.
What comes for me is that when I've been talking to other people with disabilities, and they talk about when they were younger,
they didn't want to be around anybody, they weren't like "those people."
Jacobson
Is that a stage of development or is that something that can be resolved?
Saviola
I think many people who acquire a disability as a young adult or something else go through--that phase becomes much more pronounced
for them than for someone who grows up with a disability, who's been around other people with disabilities forever. I think
a lot of people who are going through their own adjustment process to a new disability don't see it as anything permanent.
Or don't want to believe that it's anything
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permanent. So, for them to identify with other people means that theirs is permanent, too.
Jacobson
Let me turn the tape over, I've got one more question.
Saviola
Okay.