Why Invest Common Sense, Passion, and Persistence in Citizen Advocacy?
· The images created about people with disabilities by the media, human service efforts, and in literature often create and support negative, stereotypical attitudes. From these attitudes comes our conscious or unconscious action or our choice not to act. Personal relationships between people allow us to reassess our stereotypes.
· Many people who are seen and treated as negatively different will need to be protected from conscious and unconscious prejudice and discrimination.
· Abuse and neglect exist in all human services effort. The involvement of ordinary citizens in relationships with people who have disabilities is one way to monitor and decrease this reality.
· The most predictable outcome of current human services spending and practice is organized segregation, which has kept people apart and unknown to one another. Personal relationships between people help to overcome fear, myth, and discomfort that comes from people not knowing one another. Continue reading Why Invest Common Sense, Passion, and Persistence in Citizen Advocacy? →