🧵A thread on fetishising #labour ("the clue is in the name"). Today is #WorldDownSyndromeDay The article "System Error", below, by the human rights organisation Memorial, talks about how people with Down syndrome were made invisible in the Soviet system. memo.site/down_syndrome - ThreadSky

scribblerpen.bsky.social • 27 days ago

🧵A thread on fetishising #labour ("the clue is in the name"). Today is #WorldDownSyndromeDay The article "System Error", below, by the human rights organisation Memorial, talks about how people with Down syndrome were made invisible in the Soviet system. https://memo.site/down_syndrome

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scribblerpen.bsky.social•27 days ago

At the heart of this was an ideology that valued people by their capability for work.
"If a war veteran or a worker injured in the workplace was at least once useful, the least useful "burden" were children with disabilities due to congenital mental and psychological impairments".

scribblerpen.bsky.social•27 days ago

We see this same view in @teamlabouruk.bsky.social
rebranding as "the party of work (the clue is in the name)" and the policy slant in the DWP green paper that those who've lost jobs to ill health should be treated more favourably in the #DisabilityBenefits system than those who could never work.

scribblerpen.bsky.social•27 days ago

This is not as "left vs right" an issue as some think, or not in the way they think. Once you start fetishising #work, weighing up and pitting one disability against another, you are on a slippery slope — including towards ableist brands of socialism best left behind in 20th century history books.

scribblerpen.bsky.social•27 days ago

Lives are not made more or less worthy by work, or measured by it. Disabled people and their lives are worthy in their own right, for their own sake. They are not invisible in our society, and they are not alone. Families and friends, all of us, will stand with those singled out for discrimination.

scribblerpen.bsky.social•27 days ago

When we respond to the DWP green paper, to the policy efforts to pit one form of disability against another, to discriminate on the basis of age, let's remember — these are fundamental #HumanRights issues. The article is a tough read, but it's a reminder that this should never happen again.

scribblerpen.bsky.social•26 days ago

In our society, people with Down syndrome participate and thrive. Yet when Covid hit, they were more likely to die, some had DNAR notices applied without consent. An amendment to safeguard them in the #AssistedDyingBill was recently rejected. Equality shouldn't be so fragile it caves under pressure.

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