Disabled Employees Are Not the Problem!
Our president proves once again that he dislikes the disabled. Why that's not an okay way to move our world forward.
I cannot even make myself share a photo of the calm blue ocean I usually do when I write about things that enrage me.
You’ve have to be living under that proverbial rock in the United States to have not seen the air tragedy involving an American Airlines flight and a military Blackhawk helicopter on Wednesday night. More than 60 people lost their lives during the event when the helicopter and the airplane collided over the Potomac River. The Potomac is the dividing line between Washington D.C. and Arlington, Virginia. The plane was attempting to land at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when the catastrophe happened.
Over the past few days I’ve been watching the coverage with great interest. Reagan National is one of the three different airports I routinely fly into on my trips back stateside from Costa Rica. I have flown with American many times, even if truthful I prefer Delta to all other airlines. Mostly I fly into Baltimore-Washington now because it’s closer to my children’s homes in Maryland. Now that I’m disabled I fly on the shortest flights with the least amount of car travel because it’s just too much on my health to do otherwise.
To hear the very next morning our president blaming the disabled for the crash was almost more than I could wrap my brain around. We all know that people able to find employment through DEI also includes the disabled. Those of us who qualify in many other ways, but need some sort of accommodation for disability need that extra help. Shoot, even the accommodations aren’t usually amounting to much. I’m so happy to be retired after some of the barriers I’ve come up against in disability access. I can hardly imagine how difficult those same barriers are in the work world. Anything that levels the playing field for those who would be great employees save for something you literally could not help is a great idea.
Please, no, don’t let the demented ravings of the senior citizen who has attained our presidency impact your ideas about what disabled people aren’t capable of. You’d be believing a lie based in nothing factual. If you take nothing away from the coverage of the crash please let it be that the handicapped are just as capable as anyone else in the job market.
It’s too early to assign blame for what has happened near Reagan. That’s literally the job of the NTSB, who always take great care in their investigations. So much so that it’s a lengthy process that can take more than a year. While I have my thoughts on what likely happened, particularly in light of the insane amounts of air traffic in that area, I’m not going to be spouting my own under-educated opinions on blame here. But I doubt seriously it comes down to anything to do with disability.