Celebrating an Activist

These past few years, I have lost contact with an extraordinary woman - Diane. Her emails and letters bounce back, not only from myself but others, and many of us are sad to think that she may have passed on.

I was thinking about her today because I believe we need more activists like Diane - individuals willing to agitate for positive change for the sake of positive change - not public recognition or wanting to appear trendy. We also need more people willing to stick their neck out, without worrying about who they may offende.

I met Diane over six years ago, and at that time she was in her 70s. When I had a chance to visit her, she would tell me incredible labour activism stories, including harsh tactics employed against a manager who viciously dehumanized and oppressed largely racialized women employees. Tactics like the ones she described would immediately brand someone a "terrorist" or at the very least get them arrested in this day and age; but they were effective, and Diane would settle for nothing less.

When I met Diane, she was Blind and used a motorized wheelchair. She was active in disAbility rights movements and worked towards full accessibility for all. She campaigned relentlessly against sandwich board signs on sidewalks, a hazard for people who are Blind, Deaf-Blind and partially sighted. She also fought for her local recreation board to be accessible to all People with disAbilities.

Diane worked with numerous human rights and disAbility organizations, such as the BC Human Rights Defenders, BC Paraplegic Association, the Raging Grannies and Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians, amongst others. She helped form a group called "Access Awareness" which worked toward fully accessibility in the Lower Mainland (BC), and was particularly concerned and vocal about the dangers LRT stations (without any sort of barrier between the passenger area and the tracks) created for people who are Blind, Deaf-Blind and partially sighted.

Along with other Raging Grannies, Diane was nearly arrested for singing to BC Premier Gordon Campbell. When he was first elected as Premier, Gordon called for a review of everyone receiving disability benefits (contributing to huge amounts of stress, and insinuating that people with disAbilities were liars) and also slashed and burned funding to sexual assault centres, women's centres and addiction treatment centres. (Note: Soon after he became Premier, he was arrested for drunk driving in Hawaii, an extra slap in the face when he said he would participate in alcohol treatment - something even less people would have access to because of his funding cuts).

Diane also provided support to recently disAbled people in a direct and honest way. While some of her directness may have (erroneously) come off as lacking compassion, Diane wanted people to know that they could still be independent and have a disAbility, and that they needed to start that process now.

My fondest memories of Diane include her critical emails to Jack Layton, head of Canada's NDP political party. I believe Diane viewed herself as an NDP supporter, but that didn't mean she didn't regularly critique their disAbility policies. In fact, Diane was known for shit-disturbing within organizations she supported; she expected nothing less than a total commitment to human rights.

She would cc her emails to Jack Layton to every disability organization and person she thought might be interested. And in her back and forth emails, we would all get to see both Diane's and Jack's responses. I get a sense that Jack was a bit frightened of Diane; he certainly didn't want to piss her off. And he was right to be frightened. If Diane took up a cause, she gave it 110%; you didn't want to be her enemy!

Perhaps Diane's greatest legacy was her push for independent thought. Regardless of the group or work she was involved with, she was never afraid to be critical and cause a ruckus. She fought paternalism and dependence in disAbility groups, and subsequently was very critical of the CNIB. She didn't want Blind people dependent on service agencies, but rather, to work together, to learn together, to be their own experts, and to fight the fundamental root of ableism - attitudinal discrimination and prejudice, including the ideas that having a disAbility is worse than death or that people with disAbilities are innately "brave" through the act of waking up every morning. (Diane writes about this here).

I truly hope that Diane is still kicking around somewhere, stirring up trouble and I am honoured to have met a modern day Lucy Eldine Gonzalez Parsons. Last time I spoke to Diane, she was in Ontario. And while I dread the thought of Diane in a nursing home somewhere, I can see her organizing and unionizing all the workers.