gimpled

I know what it is to sleep rough. I lived in the city, with other young people.  I was only fourteen, and the streets were the safest place for me.  It was safer living under a bridge than it was living at home, because there was nobody on the streets who had ever tried to hurt me. In the eyes of the law, I would not have been regarded as a 'genuine homeless' person.  I had a home, with a bed, with a blanket.  In the eyes of the law, I would have been seen as a runaway.  In the eyes of someone like the Lord Mayor of Perth, I would have been seen as someone who was 'not actually homeless'.  In the eyes of the City of Perth, I would have been regarded as someone who should be 'moved on'. That's what happened last week to more than 100 mostly Aboriginal people living at Matagarup, a registered heritage site and Aboriginal meeting, camp site and hunting ground. Homeless folk were forced to leave by police and council rangers, who arres...

Yesterday, people with disability got mad. They got mad because they were asked to use an unsafe, terrible ramp (at a brand new restaurant called 'Petition') to get to the accessible toilet. You can read about that here. Petition has been built as part of a larger refurbishment, one that cost 108 million dollars.  After the blog was published, a City of Perth Councillor told us that actually, there was an accessible toilet. It just wasn't easy to get to, and it was a shame nobody was directed there, he said. He pointed out that it was a heritage listed building, that getting upset was a bit 'silly' and that the developers had gone to great expense to install lifts.  We thought we'd go and see for ourselves. Jackie, Tom and I set out for lunch at Petition.  This what happened. 11.45am:  We arrive at the Kings car park and make our way down to St George's Terrace.  The City of Perth councillor has told us that there are lifts on the Terrace, a...

Their website proudly boasts, ‘Over 100 years ago, petitioners would gather in the centre of Perth to lobby for causes they believed in. They would march down the terrace, lining the building where Petition now stands; on the Barrack St. side of the State Buildings. Here sits Petition Beer Corner, Petition Kitchen and Petition Wine Bar & Merchant. Three spaces that offer an 18-tap craft beer bar, a bistro and an inner city wine bar. Come and add your signature.’ Such a cute idea for a brand-new eatery . I hold fond memories of the State Buildings, where, as a sixteen year old outside clerk, I traipsed up and down stairs or into rickety lifts to deliver documents or have titles searched or stamped. Back then, I was not yet a wheelchair user. As a disability activist, it thrilled me that the old buildings held a history of social activism, of places where people came together for a cause. That’s why it shocked me when I spotted this post in a friend’s newsfeed on social med...

Caption - the author, five years ago. Text description - A woman half sitting on a car bonnet with a forearm crutch in her hands. You don’t see that every day, the article says. The headline is compelling. ‘A man has sensationally jumped out of his wheelchair after Roger Federer hit an unbelievable shot in his three sets to one loss against Novak Djokavic at the Australian Open semi finals’. A miracle, they say. ‘The ~miracle~ occurred after Federer managed to get onto the end of a particularly slight touch from Djokovic’, the article reads, and is followed by a flurry of Twitter posts mocking or denouncing the man in the wheelchair, who had the audacity to stand up in his excitement. Well, it’s miracle time at my house – along with the homes of millions of other wheelchair users who do not have a spinal cord injury. Let’s explain wheelchairs. They are mobility devices, used to assist people who cannot walk, who cannot walk far, cannot walk without pain, cannot walk fo...

Image description: A woman with red hair and a green shirt is being pushed in a wheelchair. A sign on the back of the wheelchair says, 'Black lives matter. Disabled lives matter.' “Will you come and march with us on January 26?” I think about it. The young man who is asking me is a young indigenous man named Clinton, and we are sitting at the outskirts of a homelessness community at Matagarup, a place that means ‘leg-deep’. It is home to a dozen homeless families, a few hard core activists protesting the closure of black communities, a few people who are travelling from interstate or who have moved to the city after their communities have been closed. ‘Why would we march?’, I ask. I am a disability rights activist, but I sometimes visit the island. The people there are always warm and polite and helpful. Sometimes I take food. Always, I learn something. ‘For change,’ Clinton says. ‘For the Australia we want to be. Do you want anything to change in Australia? ...

Let's put it into tiny little words, simple little concepts. Do you remember the time your mother said to you, 'I feel so much grief and anger that I had you instead of the child I really wanted'? No, neither do I. You can't talk about love and grief in the same mouthful and expect your child to buy it. What, you'd never say it to their face? Do you not think that they see it in your eyes every time you look sad on their birthday, every time you look resigned that they didn't achieve on the same level as their peers? End this bullshit myth that disability is tragedy and that disabled children are lesser, unworthy. I'm tired of it. I want to see we parents pulling the Welcome To Holland posters off our fridges, tearing the awareness bracelets off our wrists, stopping the channeling of hate and disappointment through our own internalised ableism. It is the only way we can change the world for our children. The buck stops with us.

He’s not a good bloke. He’s a murderer. Two days after Damien Little drove his car off a Port Lincoln wharf with his two children, we’re calling for some balance. You’re not a victim if you take out your two small children with you – you’re a criminal. The same goes for Geoff Hunt, who gunned down his entire family in Lockhart last year before killing himself. A ‘good bloke’ would not have shot his eight year old daughter in the face as she sat up against the bedhead. These are unquestionable truths. A murderer, by definition, is a person who commits murder. By annihilating your entire family, you become a criminal and a perpetrator of familicide and filicide. The upholstery in Damien Little’s family car will still be damp, and we’re dissecting the details of the murder with enormous gusto. He was mentally ill, his mother speculates. This is part of a wider discussion about violent men, say the feminists. Google indicates that there are 25,700 results for the sea...