Mel Baggs, 1980-2020
May. 4th, 2020 05:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livI was really sad to learn of the death of Mel Baggs. I have been following Mel's writing for many years and learned a great deal about disability and activist communities.
In particular, Mel disabused me of the view of autism that says, autism is all very well if you're also highly intelligent, but it's a terrible tragedy to be autistic as well as intellectually disabled, or autistic and non-speaking, or "low-functioning". And in general lots of concrete ways of being a respectful fellow citizen towards the the kinds of disabled people who don't get much activism airtime.
It seems that Mel didn't die "of" Coronavirus in the strict sense of the word, but of complications of a number of other illnesses and conditions. Mel had posted a fair bit recently about not getting access to needed personal care as an indirect result of the pandemic and the dangerously inadequate official response to it. I don't know whether inadequate care was a contributory factor in Mel's death but it did cause a lot of suffering, and I have seen way too many reports of people not getting the care they need, and I'm not even that plugged in to the disability community.
Anyway. Mel was someone I admired greatly, and a huge influence on me, and the world is poorer.
In particular, Mel disabused me of the view of autism that says, autism is all very well if you're also highly intelligent, but it's a terrible tragedy to be autistic as well as intellectually disabled, or autistic and non-speaking, or "low-functioning". And in general lots of concrete ways of being a respectful fellow citizen towards the the kinds of disabled people who don't get much activism airtime.
It seems that Mel didn't die "of" Coronavirus in the strict sense of the word, but of complications of a number of other illnesses and conditions. Mel had posted a fair bit recently about not getting access to needed personal care as an indirect result of the pandemic and the dangerously inadequate official response to it. I don't know whether inadequate care was a contributory factor in Mel's death but it did cause a lot of suffering, and I have seen way too many reports of people not getting the care they need, and I'm not even that plugged in to the disability community.
Anyway. Mel was someone I admired greatly, and a huge influence on me, and the world is poorer.
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Date: 2020-05-04 08:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-05 04:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-06 01:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-07 04:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-05-07 11:13 pm (UTC)