Disability rights run parallel to the "rights" of victims
     in societies based on privilege, 
 
Being disabled is to either be invisible
     or a triggerer of the abled.
     A disturber of the peace.  

"Disability rights "are not built into the
     metabolism of class-based society,
     At best they are trickle-down examples of "toleration:"
     they are the "caprices of charity."

Capitalism measures everyone according to their
     ability to create surplus value for the ruling classes. 

Thus disabled people are considered a "burden"
     to systems that have lost their humanity,
     who try to save face in neo-Liberal gestures
     that funnel money
     toward the caretakers of the disabled,
     but not the disabled or into society itself.

​It is the antithesis of :
     each according to [their] ability,
     each according to [their] need.
     Karl Marx
 
Instead is it: 
​     ​"don't ask for much;
     you are not entitled to anything; 
     -- internalize this." 
​
​I am, in part, "disabled,"
     because people who came back from war,
     brought the front home with them.

And any "benefits" created by rank-and-file soldiers
     for "the nation,"
     were and are subsumed into the entitlements
     of the people who sent them to war. 
     The Commonwealth, where wealth is not common.

Growing up in Canada, alcohol-addicted veterans
     were invisible, and society gave
     nary a shit for their mental health nor their families'.

​I am no lover of the colonial/imperialist mindsets that created,      among other things, anti-democratic antagonisms toward          the self-emancipation of the poor and oppressed classes,            races, genders, and infirm. 

I draw figures, and the human body triggers me.
     Ironic.  
 
In my mind's eye, my figurative self-portraits come out as                 mirrors, backsides, and  amputees.*  My arms and legs and       head and face often go missing
     in a lived sense of alienation and impotence.

          *I apologize to anyone who has suffered amputation                     and  finds this visual metaphor offensive.

Mine is the frustration of an invisible disability
     (ptsd for lack of a better anonym),
     that manifests itself in making art
     in my mind's eye.   

Because there is no "nation" for people like us,
     we must actively inhabit the world
     beyond alienating borders. 
     My concern for disability is
​     in solidarity with all systemically-alienated peoples.    
​                                       

                    amputee, identifying with your captors, 1995


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