4:51am August 17, 2014

➸ People First win freedom in Tennessee

Read the whole thing (click through the link at the top of this post), but here’s an excerpt. This is what DD people can do, on our own, without parent advocates looking over our shoulders all the time. We got help, but everyone needs legal help in situations like this. What matters is we only got the help we needed, wanted, and asked for. We did this – general-we, the DD self-advocacy community, mostly composed of people with intellectual disabilities. Don’t ever, ever, ever forget it.

“The one child looked at me and said, ‘Help me. Get me out of here.’ He was about six or seven years old. His eyes penetrated me.
"It scared me, and I thought if I could just get that child outside … but they are still in that institution. – Frances Hamblen

The child Frances speaks about, and 2,000 more adults and children — people who have been locked away in four different state institutions for people with disabilities — all will be free by the end of the year 2002. And People First did it.

In 1989, People First of Tennessee made a presentation on the subject of self advocacy to residents of Arlington Developmental Center. The residents voted to join People First.
In 1991, the U.S. Department of Justice (D O J) investigated complaints against Arlington Developmental Center from parents and ex-employees. People First met with the DOJ about that investigation, then met with Tennessee’s Commissioner of Mental Health/Mental Retardation to ask about the D O J’s Letter of Findings on the Arlington center.
In 1991, People First board members toured Arlington to view conditions and talk to members who live there.
In June of 1991, People First’s board of directors — 30 members — voted to sue the Arlington institution.
From June until December of 1991 when the suit was filed, members of People First visited the institutions, learned the law, became familiar with the state and community forces that make lockups possible, planned with their attorneys, and kept their planned suit a secret.