Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract [Paperback]

Marta Russell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2002 | ISBN-10: 1567511066 | ISBN-13: 978-1567511062

A WARNING FROM AN UPPITY CRIP. Marta Russell exposes the neoliberal drive to shrink social services with the Reinventing Government mantra. "We are dangerously close to a Jerry Lewis democracy where middlemen beggars and corporate CEOs getting huge paychecks may replace entitlements with charity," reveals Russell in her devastating analysis of the "reform" of the social safety net.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The kind of analysis that virtually no one has done--to the peril of everyone in this nation." -- Mary Johnson

"Vividly written... goes to the heart of many matters, starting with the profound desire of 'normal' people, many of them supposedly broad-minded types squarely within the liberal tradition, to reach for the sterilizing knife, or the medicine cabinet of Doctor Kevorkian when confronted with an affront to their sense of the 'normal.'" -- Alexander Cockburn

"What Ralph Nader did for the consumer movement in his book Unsafe at Any Speed, Marta Russell has accomplished in her riveting BEYOND RAMPS. No one, left, right, or center, who reads this book about the role of the 'disabled' and the 'terminally ill' and the way they are treated will come away unchanged. Russell has centered our attitude in a historical stream of thought, which will at first make people stunned and ashamed, and then cause us hopefully to change the way we behave." -- Marcus Raskin

About the Author

Marta Russell is a writer/producer whose investigative reporting earned her a 1994 Golden Mike Award for the best documentary from the Radio and Television News Association of Southern California.

Disabled from birth, Russell began writing when her disability progressed and she had to navigate the disability policy netherworld to survive. She has been published in numerous newspapers and magazines, including the Los Angeles Times, Z Magazine and the San Diego Union Tribune. She has a seventeen-year-old daughter and lives in Los Angeles.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Common Courage Press (July 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1567511066
• ISBN-13: 978-1567511062
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #372,341 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for those with disabilities. September 23, 1999

By K. L Sadler VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Geez, and my parents thought I was too much of an activist. Marta Russell writes a thought provoking and scary book on where we 'differently abled' people fit in a capitalist society. She is well-read and writes well, bringing to her book her passion that in the midst of politics and the drive to make money, we, the disabled, become easy targets for people like Kervorkian,who try to convince others that the world is better off without us. Perhaps the most scary part of the book is the lack of medical ethics with which many in the medical world view us, and as Ms. Russell supports with facts that medical journals themselves have found, medical personnel seem to place meager value on our lives. Since this is a big issue in medical ethics, as I know from medical school, this book should be required reading for medical students, nurses, and those in public health. The need for more active involvement by the disabled in their own care and their own lives, and the need for political momentum to protect ourselves has been nicely elucidated by Ms. Russell. Well done. Karen Sadler University of Pittsburgh

26 of 32 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Keen Social Commentary Blunted by Demagoguery March 7, 2000

By Michael Muehe

Format:Paperback

Ms. Russell's book contains sharp and useful insight into how America's 54 million people with disabilities are viewed (or ignored) by our larger society. But her message is often compromised by frequent forays into political ideology. She uses her valid perspective as a disability-rights activist as a jumping-off point to espouse her far-left (veering into Marxism) political views. For example, by depicting "big business" as the bogeyman relentlessly trampling on the backs of Americans with disabilities, Ms. Russell ignores the positive effects capitalism has had on improving the quality of life for millions of individuals living with a disability. As one who has traveled by wheelchair in formerly communist eastern Europe, I can testify that the U.S. is light-years ahead in terms of accessibility and opportunity.

Ms. Russell would also have us believe that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is a paper tiger which has done nothing to increase opportunity for people with disabilities. On the contrary, polls conducted by Harris and others have shown that millions of Americans with disabilities (and many business leaders, for that matter) think the ADA has had a very positive impact. Ms. Russell's demagoguery risks alienating the political moderates among her readership and lessens the impact of her otherwise valid message that people with disabilities still have a ways to go before we can become full participants in our society.

Readers looking for a primer on the disability rights movement in the U.S. would fare better choosing No Pity by Joseph Shapiro.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Bridging the gap of despair March 2, 2001

By Robert Dorroh

Format:Paperback

This book - a remarkable work of brevity - boosts our society's downtrodden, whether they be elderly, disabled, discriminated against or poor. "Beyond Ramps" is a call for "identity groups" - not just the disabled - to form a universalist front against capitalist-driven oppression that favors greed above dignity and value for all.

It is the role of American government, Russell says, to fulfill its social contract to provide a measure of security for all people, from birth to death. Whatever your political persuasion, her passion for social and economic justice will encourage you to help the so-called least among us. "Normal" is a label the powerful use to choose those who should overcome their disabilities. Wrong, Russell explains: It's society's obligation to overcome its prejudice against the disabled by removing physical and psychological barriers.

She argues against "physicalism," or basing an individual's social value on able-bodied standards. We should demand, she adds, that elected officials mend and strengthen "government's contract with its citizenry to promote and not destroy human life and happiness."

Russell questions the motives of the right to die movement, sayng the mindset that drives it is akin to pseudo-scientific Social Darvinist policies used by Nazis to sterilize, kill and torture those whom nature selected as inferior. She links capitalism with Social Darwinisn, which marked the beginning of the need for people with disabilities to prove their worth.

Russell points out that Republicans and too many Democrats like Bill Clinton are helping to roll back entitlements such as welfare, job training, disability spending, unemployment benefits, public housing and Medicaid, Social Security and Medicare. These cuts allow more money for more prisons, corporate welfare and increased military spending.

Eschewing liberal "incrementalist" reforms, Russell calls for full-throttle democratic reforms. These include universal single-payer health care, national standards for local and state governments, mandatory full employment and living wages, corporate accountability, campaign finance reform, an end to corporate subsidies and excessive wealth, proportional representation instead of a two-party system, environmentally sustainable development instead of unlimited growth, and other reforms.

Though some may be put off by Russell's progressive leanings, it is hard to resist her sincere and fervent passion for a more democratic world that values human needs and dignity above profit and the unfair distribution of wealth.