Olympic Spin Doctors

Olympic Spin Doctors

Leave it to a Harvard Law Professor to make exploitation of persons with
disabilities into a benefit. (William P. Alford and Timothy P. Shriver, "For
disabled, China has risen to the challenge," Boston Globe, September 8, 2007)
The dominant paradigm of support for persons with disabilities at Harvard, at
the Boston Globe and in Massachusetts is the health care model, or the business
model. Persons with disabilities are thought of as consumers or clients, not
citizens with rights. This is particularly offensive coming from a Harvard Law
Professor.
Special Olympics is one of the more prominent not for profit services
provided to persons with disabilities. Like the human services industrial
complex (MA State Rep. Marie Parente) the Special Olympics keeps persons with
disabilities in a dependent relationship with their mentors.
Saying "Special Olympics, [will] improve the quality of life of Chinese
citizens with intellectual disabilities." is unsubstantiated. There is no doubt
that "Sino-American team[s] of social scientists ha[ve] done unprecedented
research on popular attitudes toward the intellectually disabled." In the US The
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill claims to fight stigma. But their fight
benefits the drug companies which fund NAMI. NAMI promotes drug treatment, not
the rights of persons with disabilities.
They say "materials focused on diversity, tolerance, and integration have
been developed." Huh? By whom and for whose benefit? This idea is unknown to
Cambridge MA host city for Harvard Law School. The Superintendent of Schools for
Cambridge released his affirmative action report to the City Council on Monday
September 10, 2007. In it persons with disabilities are not mentioned. This is
after ten years of my complaints that the city ignores the rights of persons
with disabilities, 34 years after the Rehabilitation Act prohibited disability
discrimination. No persons with disabilities are the focus of the two
affirmative action officers of the city who earn more than $80,000.
The Cambridge Human Rights Commission excludes persons with disabilities
from their forums on discrimination. The Cambridge Police Reveiw Board excludes
persons with disabilities from forums on police profiling. But we are to believe
that China which kills prisoners and sells their body parts is more humane than
Cambridge MA?
Alford and Shriver refer to "a spirit and imagination similar to that we
have found in the United States and elsewhere." Is that the spirit which the
City of Cambridge has toward persons with disabilities, i.e. they ignore them?
When it comes to spinning the facts there are few more adept than Harvard
lawyers and their PR flacks.

Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM

For disabled, China has risen to the challenge
Boston Globe
By William P. Alford and Timothy P. Shriver
September 8, 2007

THESE ARE not the happiest of times in the US-China relationship.

Stories of tainted foods and dangerous products have been news for weeks.
Controversies continue over exchange rates, labor conditions, outsourcing, and
intellectual property infringement. And long-standing issues regarding human
rights, the environment, and foreign policy remain prominent.

The media in China are far from reserved in articulating Chinese concerns about
the relationship. While they acknowledge problems surrounding sub-standard
products (from which Chinese citizens suffer more than we do), they also express
anxiety regarding the United States. Some Chinese observers suggest that
enmeshed in legitimate US concerns is a desire of today's superpower to check
the rise of a China that might otherwise be the world's next dominant power.

Nor does this picture look likely to change in the year before the 2008 Beijing
Olympics. Foreign media and human rights groups understandably see this as
providing an unparalleled opportunity to scrutinize China. At the same time, the
Chinese authorities are determined to present the most positive picture they can
of their nation and its accomplishments - even if, in so doing, their actions
have the unintended effect of heightening, rather than abating, foreign
concerns.

These tensions have largely obscured an increasingly powerful, if little
noticed, form of interaction that holds much promise for the future of
Sino-American relations. In recent years, China and a number of nongovernmental
organizations have found ways to work together to advance shared goals in areas
such as education, healthcare, and disability. Without glossing over the many
challenges that persist, this cooperation and the learning it has spawned is
building a basis for a different type of bilateral engagement.

One such example is the work that Chinese and Americans (and a host of others)
have been conducting over the last several years, under the auspices of the
Special Olympics, to improve the quality of life of Chinese citizens with
intellectual disabilities. Since it first became involved in China in the
mid-1990s, Special Olympics has enlisted hundreds of thousands of individuals
with intellectual disabilities in athletic and other programs situated in
locales, urban and rural, rich and poor, throughout China - along the way
involving comparably large numbers of their fellow citizens as coaches,
volunteers, and supporters.

This initial phase of the Special Olympics work in China will culminate in early
October as more than 7,500 athletes with intellectual disabilities from more
than 160 countries gather in Shanghai for the Special Olympics World Summer
Games. But there is far more to this work than an olympiad. China's first
national medical and legal centers devoted to intellectual disability have been
launched, while a Sino-American team of social scientists has done unprecedented
research on popular attitudes toward the intellectually disabled. New curricular
materials focused on diversity, tolerance, and integration have been developed,
and a national campaign is underway to raise public consciousness. And, at a
more human level, family support networks are being nurtured, and every
participant in the Shanghai Games will receive free head-to-toe health
examinations and whatever medical, dental, optical, nutritional, and other
assistance they need.

These undertakings would not have been possible without the efforts of many
thousands of Chinese and other volunteers - which itself represents an
enormously important development. When Special Olympics first embarked on its
work in the PRC, many observers (including a number of old China-hands)
counseled that we would find little interest in the disabled and even less in
volunteerism. Happily, our experience suggests otherwise, as Chinese citizens
have thrown themselves into the endeavor with a spirit and imagination similar
to that we have found in the United States and elsewhere. Over the long term,
this energy displayed in promoting the dignity of society's most vulnerable
individuals is a powerful tool in building common ground.

The problems of product safety and political economy remain. But so, too, do the
inroads volunteerism has made and the outlets that it is creating. We would be
naive to think that these joint efforts at building civil society have fully
addressed the challenges that confront Chinese with intellectual disabilities
(or their American brethren), let alone ameliorated the many tensions that mark
the US-China relationship. That said, it would be no less naive to allow those
tensions to cause us to overlook what has already been accomplished and what may
yet be accomplished when citizens join hands in common endeavor.

William P. Alford is vice dean and Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law at Harvard.
Dr. Timothy P. Shriver is chairman of the board of the Special Olympics.