meat tube

Locking your wheelchair lift and requiring disabled people to find an employee to unlock AND OPERATE it is a direct violation of the ADA.

“The [ADA] Standards require ‘unassisted’ entry and exit from lifts (§410.1). Situations in which platform lifts are locked and require users to request or retrieve a key for operation will not satisfy this requirement for independent operation.”

“Attendant operation, although recognized by the ASME A18.1 Standard, is expressly prohibited by the ADA Standards. Platform lifts must provide ‘unassisted entry and exit from the lift’ (§410.1).”

(Source)

[ID: @gavrielabrahams “It’s probably because people were peeing in it.”]

You think people were peeing. In an open wheelchair lift. In the middle of a museum. With public toilets around the corner.

I think not.

But even if people had been peeing in it or otherwise misusing the lift… It. Doesn’t. Matter. It’s not just “not great.” It’s ILLEGAL. It is just as illegal to lock off a wheelchair lift as it is to not provide one to begin with. 

The correct response to people peeing in an elevator is never to lock the elevator. It is to provide a toilet. If you think the correct response to any problem is to violate the civil rights of an entire group of people by denying them access, YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.

I was visiting the museum with friends. They went on around the corner while I finished looking at the previous exhibit. I then followed them around the corner only to find I couldn’t get up to the exhibit because the museum AS PART OF THEIR POLICY had illegally locked the lift. My friends didn’t know the lift was locked (why would the lift be locked?) and had no idea that I couldn’t get to them.

Now I, the disabled person, am forced to travel halfway around the building to the front desk to find someone to unlock the lift for me, wait for them to finish what they’re doing, and then travel all the way back to the lift. This was bad enough in a wheelchair. Who else uses lifts? Oh yes. People who struggle to walk. Can you imagine, as a person who struggles to walk, being forced to walk halfway around a building, and then back again, just to access an exhibit? You wouldn’t do it. You’d skip the exhibit. You’ve just been completely denied access.

So finally the museum employee unlocks the lift and then operates it (because yes, they’ve made it so I can’t operate it myself, which is also illegal). I finally get to the top probably ten minutes later, only to find that my friends have finished looking at the exhibit and are heading down again, wondering what has happened to me. 

After I’ve gone to all the trouble to get up there, fuck it if I’m not going to look at the damn exhibit. So I look at it, then head back to the lift to go back down, only to find they’ve locked the lift with me at the top and gone back to the front desk.

If one of my friends hadn’t stayed up there with me, I’d probably still be up there. As it was, my friend had to go down the stairs, back around to the front, find an employee, and get them to come back and let me down. Leaving me sitting up there. Alone. For another five minutes.

Now imagine if I had gone to the the museum by myself. Or what if there had been an emergency? You think if there was a fire some museum employee who couldn’t be assed to leave the damn lift unlocked until I had come back down would really have run back into the building to unlock the lift so I could get down? I think not.

Locking an accessibility feature is never the right solution. It is denying access to an entire class of people. Which is ILLEGAL and a CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATION.

The CDC has finally officially stated that COVID may be transmitted through air despite that we’ve basically known this all along.

The CDC offered to do contact tracing for the White House and notify all those potentially infected. The WH said turned them away. There are many reports of those who came in contact with positive cases only learning that they were exposed from news reports, not by any WH contract tracers.

Trump returned home to the White House and took his mask off pretty much immediately despite still being contagious and standing near other people. He then posted a bizarre video telling people not to fear COVID while also making dubious claims about his health. Here’s a transcript.

Both Florida and Texas online voter registration websites broke before the registration deadline. Residents of Florida were given an extra day to register.

Facebook removed a post Trump made claiming COVID is less deadly than the flu. He posted the same to Twitter, which only obscured the tweet with a disclaimer and did not remove it. PBS has put the past few years of flu deaths vs less than a year of COVID into a graphic to show the disparity.

Vice Commandant of the US Coast Guard, Admiral Charles Ray tested positive.

COVID exposure may have reached the Pentagon.

Trump says he’s killing any coronavirus aid package until after the election, tanking the stock market immediately. He is prioritizing the SCOTUS nomination and by extension, an overturn of the Affordable Care Act. This will throw I believe 20 million Americans off their health insurance.

Facebook banned QAnon across all its platforms to “bring to parity what we’ve been doing on other pieces of policy with regard to militarized social movements” and limit the “ability of QAnon and Militarized Social Movements to operate and organize on our platform.”

Up to 123 people at the Capital are COVID positive.

The St Louis couple who waved guns at passing protesters have been indicted.

The White House dropped their opposition and agreed to the FDA’s standards for release of the COVID vaccine, meaning it will not be rushed out before election day. The FDA has also created a new landing page about the vaccine.

Stephen Miller (senior advisor for policy for Trump) tested positive. There are now 23 people connected to the White House with positive COVID tests. Mid afternoon it was only 21, here’s a graphic. I can’t find an updated graphic but even if I did it would probably be outdated soon.

someone: do you care to elaborate on that?

me: 

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/zngmx8/the-myanmar-punks-feeding-yangoons-homeless

Show her punks fighting for/ supporting LGBTQA+ rights:

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/ywgdbb/londons-queer-punks-are-making-themselves-heard

Show her punks fighting against racism:

https://thebaffler.com/latest/punk-rock-and-protest-asim

Show her that punk is about protecting and aiding those who are oppressed and downtrodden in any way we can; that it’s about lifting the boot of the establishment from the throats of the vulnerable. Explain to her that that includes protecting others from a pandemic that our governments failed to protect us from.

And hey, if all that fails, show her how good we look in masks 🤘

always punch up

lift others up who need help

Also me: