2018 Writing in Review

I had a weird year in terms of writing. It started off normal, then I had a mental health crisis, then I had a professional crisis (brought on by my own harmful actions), then I continued to be in mental health crisis and I stopped writing much, then I got help, then I started writing, then my mom died and we had other family crises and I just kept writing faster, and now here we are.

I had 79 pieces published this year, down from 93 last year (thanks summer crisis brain!). 67 at Pacific Standard, 2 at HuffPo, 1 at CNN, 1 at NBC News, 2 at The Nation, 1 at Chronicle of Higher Ed. 

1. Fire, Flood, and Being Disabled in the Age of Catastrophe (Huffington Post, 12/22/18)
2. The Five Paragraph Essay Must Die! (Pacific Standard, 12/21/18)
3. The Death Penalty Goes Local (Pacific Standard, 12/21/18)
4. Alice Walker and Thomas of Monmouth (Pacific Standard, 12/20/18)
5. Restraint and the Murder of an Autistic Child (Pacific Standard, 12/20/18)
6. Free Speech Unless You are Pro-Palestinian (Pacific Standard, 12/12/18)
7. George H. W. Bush and The ADA (Pacific Standard, 12/6/18)
8. Ocasio-Cortez and the Politics of Digital Intimacy (Pacific Standard, 11/30/18)
9. Kevin Kruse and TwitterStorians (Pacific Standard, 11/28/18)
10. The Art of Stimming (Pacific Standard, 11/27/18)
11. A last meal with my mom (Washington Post, 11/21/18)
12. People with Down syndrome are not animals (Pacific Standard, 11/16/18)
13. Grievance Studies and the Humanities (11/8/18)
14. Voting Rights Now (Huffington Post, 11/8/18)
15. Gun Reform, not Mental Illness Stigma (Pacific Standard, 11/5/18)
16. Interview: Sarah Blahovec for NCIL (Pacific Standard, 11/5/18)
17. The Kentucky Terrorist (Pacific Standard, 10/29/18)
18. Dear Sarah Palin: Disabled Kids Ain't Props (Pacific Standard, 10/25/18)
19. #HimToo and Male Victims of Sexual Assault. Even me. (Pacific Standard, 10/19/18)
20. Texas Wants to Kill Kwame Rockwell (Pacific Standard, 10/17/18)
21. MN AG: Ellison vs Wardlow (Pacific Standard, 10/15/18)
22. Beat ICE, Run for Sheriff! (Pacific Standard, 10/11/18)
23. Interview: Bruce Schneier (Pacific Standard, 10/9/18)
24. Interview: Maysoon Zayid (Pacific Standard, 10/8/18)
25. Me and My Depression (Pacific Standard, 10/1/18)
26. Neglect and Indifference in Hurricane Maria (Pacific Standard, 9/28/18)
27. Interview: Mary Robinette Kowal (Pacific Standard, 9/20/18)
28. Norm Macdonald and Down Syndrome Jokes (Pacific Standard, 9/19/18)
29. Did Trump call Jeff Sessions "Retarded?" (Pacific Standard, 9/15/18)
30. Can Uber and Lyft Become Accessible? (Pacific Standard, 8/31/18)
31. Disability Groups come out against Kavanaugh (Pacific Standard, 8/20/18)
32. Climate Struggle and the Hugos (Pacific Standard, 8/17/18)
33. Introducing CAP Disability Justice (8/14/18)
34. Facebook Fails on Free Speech (Pacific Standard, 8/2/18)
35. Can We Save AP World History? (Pacific Standard, 7/26/18) 
36. On the Trail with Billie Sutton (Pacific Standard, 7/24/18)
37. Hospitals and Disabled Patients (Pacific Standard, 6/29/18)
38. First they came for Immigrants, and Lewandowski said womp womp (CNN, 6/20/18)
39. Interview: John Ross Bowie on Speechless (Pacific Standard, 6/20/18)
40. Advising as Customer Service (Chronicle of Higher Education, 6/13/18)
41. USA's "Colony" and Resisting Fascism (Pacific Standard, 6/8/18)
42. Disability and Disaster: We're not Ready (Pacific Standard, 6/1/18)
43. Don't Ban Straws (Pacific Standard, 5/31/18)
44. Interview: Nicola Griffith (Pacific Standard, 5/21/18)
45. Interview: Richard Painter (Pacific Standard, 5/17/18)
46. Koch on Campus (Pacific Standard, 5/11/18)
47. Texas Principal Jokes About Cops Murdering A Student (Pacific Standard, 5/8/18)
48. Arizona Strike (Pacific Standard, 5/3/18)
49. Abolish ICE (Pacific Standard, 5/1/18)
50. Fight the Alt-Right Terrorists (Pacific Standard, 4/30/18)
51. INTERVIEW: Kelly Baker (Pacific Standard, 4/24/18)
52. The Right-Wing Plot on Student Government (Pacific Standard, 4/20/18)
53. Sci-Fi and Assistive Tech (Pacific Standard, 4/18/18)
54. How to Hold Academic Predators Accountable (Pacific Standard, 4/17/18)
55. Regulate Sinclair (Pacific Standard, 4/12/18)
56. Deaf President Now Changed America (Pacific Standard, 4/11/18)
57. White Supremacists are Radicalizing (Pacific Standard, 3/26/18)
58. #MeToo and the Commodification of Women's Pain (Pacific Standard, 3/24/18)
59. Stephen Hawking's Legacy: Health Care and Social Supports (NBC News, 3/15/18)
60. No, The Irish Were Not Slaves Too (Pacific Standard, 3/15/18)
61. Higher Ed Has 99 Problems and NYT Op-Ed Columnists are One (Salon, 3/9/18)
62. Lawmakers Make Schools More Dangerous (Pacific Standard, 3/6/18)
63. How Would Democrats Protect The Environment? (Pacific Standard, 3/5/18)
64. Repeal the Second Amendment (Pacific Standard, 2/26/18)
65. Lemony Snicket and Sexual Harassment (Pacific Standard, 2/21/18)
66. Retailers Attack the ADA (Pacific Standard, 2/14/18)
67. Trump's Brain (The Nation, 2/13/18)
68. The New Gerber Baby. So what? (Pacific Standard, 2/13/18)
69. Down syndrome and Anti-Choice Propaganda in Ireland (2/8/18)
70. Don't Watch the Superbowl (Pacific Standard, 2/2/18)
71. Your Pills are Spying on you (Pacific Standard, 2/1/18)
72. IQ Tests and the Death Penalty (Pacific Standard, 1/25/18)
73. Interview: ADAPTer Anita Cameron (Pacific Standard, 1/22/18)
74. Unrest and Talking about Suffering (Pacific Standard, 1/16/18)
75. ICE keeps Raiding Hospitals (Pacific Standard, 1/15/18)
76. #MeToo is Not a Witch Hunt (Pacific Standard, 1/9/18)
77. The "Stahl Standard" for Mental Health and Politics Reporting (Pacific Standard, 1/4/18)
78. Republicans use Fear of Eugenics to Attack Reproductive Rights (The Nation, 1/4/18)
79. Companies that exploit disabled labor have a friend in Jeff Sessions (Pacific Standard, 1/3/18)

I am not a lizard person

New on anti-Semitic myths and the dangers they pose. From Thomas of Monmouth to David Icke's lizard people, there's a long history of people making up bizarre stories about Jews. Those stories, when allowed to proliferate, get us killed.

To be extremely clear, this is all dangerous nonsense. There does seem to have been a boy named William who was murdered in Norwich in the 1140s. The culprit remains unknown, according to the most recent scholarship. There was no international Jewish conspiracy to murder Christian children in the Middle Ages (nor was there in antiquity, nor is there today).
Also, the first time I taught this text in a classroom, a wide-eyed student exclaimed, "I had no idea this was true!"
The lesson is that no matter how preposterous a conspiracy theory, if you don't frame the material carefully, at least some people will believe it. When enough people believe these kinds of narratives, Jews or other marginalized people tend to get murdered. Neutrality, just letting the material speak for itself, only serves the anti-Semites.

The Death of an Autistic Child in School

New: Restraint in schools and the death of #MaxBenson.

"It shouldn't take the death of a teenage boy to stop overuse of restraint in schools. But, given how ingrained such practices are in our educational systems, and the 120,000 kids experiencing restraint or seclusion each year, I'm worried this one death won't be enough."

Disability and the Death Penalty

I am just finishing edits on my sixth piece on the death penalty in the last two years for Pacific Standard. Here's what I've written:

• First the Supreme Court established a better standard for determining whether someone was intellectually disabled (and thus protected from execution) by overturning the "Lennie" standard. Because Texas asked juries to compare people to "Lennie" from Of Mice and Men.
• But then Arkansas executed Ledell Lee, a man who was clearly disabled with fetal alcohol syndrome and possibly innocent. Few disability rights organizations (The Arc was an exception) seemed to care.
• That led me to ask just how many prisoners on death row were disabled? Answer: pretty much all of them.
• This year a tip from a friend showed me how "ethnic adjustments," the knowledge that IQ tests are racist trash, are used to artificially raise the score of convicted prisoners of color to make them eligible for the death penalty. 
• Then most recently I talked about Kwame Rockwell, a prisoner in Texas set to be the next disabled person executed in the U.S. He's mentally ill, not intellectually disabled, so his protections aren't as clear. His execution was halted at the last minute to re-assess competence though.

So what does all this mean about the state of the Death Penalty in the US in 2018? Check back with me at Pacific Standard next week.

Knock Knock?

Is there anyone reading this site who doesn't read me at Facebook, Twitter, or over on Patreon? I'm considering letting the blog posts mostly go here.

My latest update: Weekly Roundup: Spider-Man and Marc Lamont Hill.

UPDATE - SO GLAD TO SEE Y'ALL IN THE COMMENTS! I will keep posting here.

Ableism in Job Ads

My daily posts have mostly moved to my Patreon site. Today's is on a dozen or so ableist job ads in higher ed, an issue I've been covering for years.