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Daniel Geisler (Jun 05 2020 at 10:03):In 1983 I has hired to work with violent developmentally disabled adults as a result of the deinstitutionalization movement. My first client was 6' 4" and didn't telegraph punches. So I was powerfully hit in the head several times a week. After half a year one day I was hit with a powerful punch to the head. I was exacerbated and said without thinking, "I love you and I'm not going anywhere". My client broke down into heart broken crying and was a different and much more non-violent person afterwards. This was someone locked up in an institution because their IQ wasn't high enough.
So, who are we helping and who doesn't get our help. Do we always have to wait till something terrible happens before we act?
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 05 2020 at 10:14):Indifference and ignorance are the default state. It might be a poor excuse for inaction, but no one acts on a problem they aren't aware of or haven't been made to care about, and very few people go out of their way to seek upsetting situations. The result is that without a (usually terrible) triggering event, people will not automatically act.
So to answer your question: if we're active, we're helping the people we have been shown that need help. Which ultimately means that the causes with the most media coverage get the most support in raw people-numbers, if not financially.
Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Jun 05 2020 at 10:19):That sounded super cynical, but it's not necessarily a bad thing: the social media connectivity of the Western world is what has allowed the horrific instances of a week ago to gain and maintain activist momentum. Annoyingly it's also what makes the existence of a new suspect in a ridiculously overfunded investigation into a missing minor case from thirteen years ago somehow make national news here in the UK :shrug: .
Daniel Geisler (Jun 05 2020 at 17:57):In a Universe shy of silver bullets, education is THE silver bullet. So I strongly support this movement for educational opportunities. My sister, with a PhD in Education, talks about the difficulties of people from families that have had poor educational and financial opportunities for multiple generations. I'm someone who desperately wanted to be a part of academia, but being autistic, bipolar with parents that only finished freshman high school and came from families of extreme poverty, I had little chance to do what I feel I was born to do. But maybe I was wrong about what I was born to do. So please sign me up for any program that will help others.
Alexis Hazell (Jun 06 2020 at 00:48):Daniel, I can relate. I'm a disabled, queer, transgenderqueer woman, with partners who also have chronic health issues. My disabilities mean academia is a pipe dream for me - for a start, anything that requires me to gain qualifications via exams rather than course work is a no-go. So I instead try to do volunteer work in support of broadening access to knowledge and learning (hence my volunteering to work on the tech side of the nLab).