This came today from longtime Network friend Harriet Johnson, a Charleston lawyer and writer who is a nationally recognized activist. She’s also a hero in her home state. She is one of the Network’s past Thunder and Lightning Award winners, an annual tradition of honoring our best and brightest. Her law practice works primarily on securing benefits and civil rights claims for people with disabilities. She is a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine and to the disability press, and is the author of the books Too Late to Die Young and Accidents of Nature.

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Friends, colleagues, and comrades: I just got my MDA patient magazine, and there in the middle was a full-color spread with Jerry Lewis’s picture and caption “Yup, it’s that time again.”

Yup, it is that time again. Time for the 17th annual telethon protest in Charleston.

So please join me in downtown Charleston on Labor Day morning to let people know that there are two sides to the telethon. Sure, the money does some good, but at a great price. The telethon continues to reinforce harmful stereotypes about disability, especially neuromuscular disease. MDA continues to put children on the air and tell the world that they are dying, when the truth is that they are also living, and some of them may live long enough to get that letter from AARP.

MDA also continues to employ a notorious disability bigot as its spokesman. Jerry has never apologized for calling us “half persons,” or for saying that disabled kids are “mistakes who came out wrong,” to name just two of many insults. He justifies this by saying he raises a lot of money. But other charities raise money and do good without insulting the people they are supposed to help.

Beyond that, the telethon protest is a chance to remind the public that we shouldn’t have to beg for flu shots and wheelchairs. Everyone, disabled or not, should have such basic needs met.

We gather at 10 a.m. and pass out leaflets for a couple of hours with a police permit. The tourists are generally curious and often supportive. Following the protests, lunch is on me. RSVP 843-722-0178 to find out where. HARRIET

PS: We finish in time for you to go to the ILA Labor Day picnic and then come back downtown for the 7 p.m. Labor Day program at the College of Charleston School of Business (organized by one of our favorite historians, George Hopkins). This will be a great lead-in to a series of eclectic programs sponsored by the Social Justice Project throughout the year – including an Oct. 3 appearance by Laura Hershey.

Hope to see you soon!

Harriet Johnson
hmjohnson1@earthlink.net