The Battle of the Intellectually Disabled for Jobs, Not Drugs: A Socialist versus Medicaid History. Issue 4 (2nd October 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Terrar, Toby
• Is Part Of: International critical thought. Volume 8:Issue 4(2018)
• Page Start: 609
• Page End: 625
• Publication Date: 2018-10-02
• Subjects: Intellectual disability history -- habilitation rights -- over-medicating -- full-employment -- people versus profit; Critical thinking -- Periodicals; Current events -- Periodicals; 153.4205
• DOI: 10.1080/21598282.2018.1539920
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2159-8282

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article is about the economic rights of Washington, DC's so-called "intellectually disabled." They have a history of resisting being drugged up, unemployed and impoverished, in short of being the underdog members of the city's working class. Structurally the essay proceeds in a chronological fashion which first sketches the historical background of the struggle beginning with the century-long period when there were city-owned training and full-employment programs and a labor theory of value philosophy that backed them up. Then follows the popular resistance to the growth, beginning in the 1970s of the eugenic-dominated Medicaid program. In the name of medical necessity, fiscally conservative members of DC City Council worked to abolish its publicly-owned and locally-financed factories and farms. The article's final section highlights the resisters' use of the DC Superior Court's Mental Health and Habilitation Branch, as it played an important part in their fight for gainful employment, normal family relations and a limitation on the psychotropic and seizure medication which the city and its Medicaid contractors promoted as a substitute for employment and a meaningful life.