Chief Seattle of the Independent Living Movement

Now all those Jewish, Catholic, Buddhist, or whatever hospitals are united racially, thanks to the efforts of various civil rights aficionados, and via coincidence of circumstances, Center Park is located in what in the 1980s was an African-American neighborhood that had used to be white and Catholic – there still are some people from that time frame who live there, as I attended their major church once, and hostilities and frictions that are probably entirely gone by now, although I suspect impoverished people yet live there. In the 80s I lived there, and wondered deeply about life itself, being a newbie professional writer and artist, working a day job helping the disabled.

I used to be sad and angry at how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., alias Michael King, had to keep up such a “preachy” attitude of going on to another place to get rid of this fallacy. He said he was going to “the Promised Land,” which everyone disabled or handicapped I have ever met up here in the Pacific Northwest seems to think is indeed - Canada.

Chief Sealth was the fellow our Emerald City in Washington State was named after, and he resides currently in a grave near an aboriginal people’s reservation. He was the leader of a tribe hereabouts, the name of which I have forgotten. He gave a wonderful “final” speech where he handed over his tribal lands, possibly the Duwamish were involved, and he asserted in a noble and peaceful way that “we” might be able to handle the privilege.

But who is the true Chief of Seattle; is it the Mayor, or someone else? Many communities exist here in our lovely area, led by many an interested party or person. But what makes a person such a being of involvement? Is it his or her heart, or brains, or beaucoup bucks that do this, or the fact there must be someone for greatness to be thrust upon?

Someone – everyone needs to be a somebody, like Jesse Jackson once put it; he said, you really should become that somebody. In a way, that will always be my John Tyler, part Indian or Native American, part white man, who ruled one floor of a multi-story apartment building as a radical who fought for the rights and freedoms of the underprivileged handicapped American. He was ably assist ed by one Jewish liberal named Ronald Gary Schwarz, who had been a Republican before he became disabled, and who when disabled, finally had found his life’s purpose was to assist those in wheelchairs to finally enable themselves to live their lives.

It has changed, somewhat, surely from what I saw when there at Center Park. It was the first apartment building built in the entire country for disabled people in wheelchairs. It got flooded by every other type of handicapped people who could find a way into it. The “laundry list” – meaning, the applications made out of paper in those times - was one hundred blocks long to get in. It looped around the block, which mind you, was more like a downtown office city block than a neighborhood one.

The office was run by ABs, or in other words able-bodieds, and so it was thought that if you did the tiniest thing wrong when you reported on anything to the obvious “lesbians” – overweight, underpaid white women with no sense of humor who also smiled these abysmally evil grimaces all the livelong day - who ruled the office, you would be destined to “go places” – namely, to a mental ward, or another form of The Poor House, as they used to put it in the Charles Dickens Dickensian days of Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol. Whichever place least suited; there you would then be stuck.

As power corrupts, and as absolute power corrupts absolutely, those ladies ruled the office in Center Park with an iron fist in a velvet glove, and you didn’t want to mess with them. Mark Twain, alias Samuel Langhorne Clemens, had warned me about the existence of such seeming Christian and God Fearing ladies, and how merciless they were, when it comes to putting you in “your place,” and Center Park of the doldrums was sufficiently depressing in and of itself, as I said, back in the Precambrian Times.

The “palace” for the disabled and handicapped back then was thought of as the hospital - or Death’s Door - by many. God’s verdant Land of Oz was accessible outside, in a marvelous garden that led around half the perimeter of Center Park, and it was as lush as the Garden of Eden, the temporary home of Adam and Eve. At the first thought of sex, unavoidable by all of the disabled handicapped and nearly incapable of having sex people of Center Park could thus see and feel, wasn’t a short life for one isolated person one’s place in the scheme of things? Unless you had a manual wheelchair – no exercise.

So what exactly is the palace or place of each person, so physically challenged, you might wonder, given the fact your life before the Internet involved television zombie status or only wandering around outside, waiting for a life you could lead? Perhaps if you weren’t too disabled, you could find a job of work. In those days, the days before Section 504 of the Washington State Code was put through and enforced, it was spectacularly hard for a disabled or handicapped person to get work. Once that law was put through, it made it easier for a soul in a wheelchair or whatever to find work, given they were thus to be judged on the same basis as an able-bodied person.

It was kind of an affirmative action program, the sort of thing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was only dreaming of in the 1960s. I met a man who knew about his place in the scheme of things was similar to Dr. King’s and his name was John Tyler – he was the “radical” of Center Park, and he had a succinctly short death sentence of polio and sleep apnea hanging over his head while he did his level best to get rights for the disabled going. It was what he thought of as his place, along with a handful of other disabled handicapped persons who knew it was.

Do you think if you knew your life was short, you would bother to help others?At the most, your place would not be there ere long. If such a place was even available, as their beds are often quite full, or you would be forced back into whatever disabled and for the handicapped institution you had left behind, to try for independent living at Center Park. The place had a laundry room, was made out of heat retentive cinder blocks, which kept it warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and was easygoing to live in.

That’s one of the reasons people there were suicidal, but most were unable to complete the act. They had a few places to dally, such as a common room, partial to elderly lady gossips and no one else, and an arts and crafts center, much the same as at your basic undefended mental institution, but when the excrement hit the fan, there was nothing much doing but watching TV. I would hope for your patient understanding about the mental institution reference; there was usually a long line downstairs during the day which was called “the medications line,” and many of the people were on mental health medications.

Seattle, Washington has been called the most livable city on the face of the planet, but to some extent, there have been disabled people who were forced to only die there. The Legend of Center Park was the man in a manual wheelchair who had managed to hump his way up to the locked door to the roof, pick the lock somehow by using his teeth and a bobby hairpin, and who wheeled off the roof in his wheelchair, seven stories up, and successfully died. That’s because in those days, there was no such Internet. Now those disabled people have the World Wide Web.

I suppose from what I’ve been told that the Legend of Center Park had no sex life, which was “the thing” before the WWW’s Internet took over. The pencil necked geek with the pocket protectors won, nowadays on Yahoo they have a Malcolm Little Shabazz “Showbiz” X version of hums going, which is pretty cute, and “the Disabled” can lead fuller lives, with something real to do other than having families - or be racist pricks with nothing to do but be impressive to colored people. I had a guy who did that to me just to laugh and somehow lord it over me. Taking care of handicapped people with no lives was once a specialty of mine, really, my day job.

The fact of the matter is that strictly under evolutionary law, there was a terrific day job that I worked while being a struggling political hack writer who only really cared about Center Park, the first apartment building built in the entire country, possibly the world, specifically for people in wheelchairs. That fact somehow blew my mind. It may have been fear of success on my part, but how can one comprehend it? They at least had elevators, and a radical hero there who kept tabs on everyone via the telephone.

Nobody in Center Park wants to live in “a rest home,’ because apparently, they kill people in there. Actually, they do, because they put them on psychiatric medications, and they kill you with those. Getting them in Center Park was another attempt away at being poisoned to death with the little pills. They’re horrible, and they make you high even. I hate psychiatry and loved my psychiatrist. He stopped me from committing suicide over the fact that he loves and serves humanity, and he has to dole out poison for a living. I see the little pill line in my mind; there it is at Center Park when you give up trying. At least I no longer need a psychiatrist, and I can now take my small amount of medication at home. For home is where the heart is, and now “we” have computers at Center Park.

The legend of Center Park was the guy who made it up the stairwell in his manual wheelchair, got onto the roof, and jumped off and successfully died. Really, there was nothing to do at Center Park. Nowadays, thank God, they have the internet. A life of contemplating suicide is no real life, don’t you think? The problem is now solved. But there are surely other such Civil Rights Movement problems to solve, including renaming the entire thing something weird, like the Independent Living Movement.

There’s still the most beautiful Adam and Eve garden you ever saw, which was really there. But they probably won’t let you smoke except for outside. Smoking was “not allowed” there back in the 1980s. I’m sure they still let them smoke outside. The wondrous garden, a fairytale paradise of sorts, was looped around the building, and it but now lurks in my mind’s eye – it’s where two ex heroes met.

We had both and several times tossed our lives away to save other people - and had completely forgotten that. He and I were personal care attendants, me in the home, and he in the hospital system. He and I were finally villains for a change with each other, and we dumped Center Park to get married and have an able bodied child. I went quite overboard to make sure she would be safe. And I am one of the “escapees” of Center Park.

What you need to learn from this article is that even autobiographical stuff can make one very happy and content person happen. Constantly. Anyway, this is really about Politics, and the way of the world is that even disabled people must suffer from losing one attendant at a time. Then, they get replaced by other ones. What truth this becomes is there is a job in politics awaiting you if you care for caring for other people. In short, disabled people need attendants, and this article advertises for the job. You can find it in the newspapers and on the Internet under “home health care aide” and other such titles.

You don’t have to think of it as politics so much anymore because of the Internet. Also, it’s a nursing oriented job that can lead to wonderful factionalism among the compadres who gather and create new things that make absolutely this entire world into a wonderful place. Meanwhile, I know this is true, because I am now disabled physically where I wasn’t before, it was going to happen anyway, and yes, I am now a professional writer. You too can do such terrific things with your life, such as writing for pay, and now all of we who are physically challenged have the WWW Internet at our polite disposal.

Isn’t life great?

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