Jerry Lewis humanitarian award demonstrations set for this weekend
Jerry Lewis, disability parasite and pariah
Lewis is seen as a parasite by the disability community
From Feminist Response in Disability Advocacy, FRIDA
Los Angeles, Ca. - Disability community leaders from across disability advocacy will protest the decision of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to grant Jerry Lewis the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at this Sunday’s Oscar Awards ceremony. Lewis has described disabled individual is “half a person” and referred to a wheelchair as “a steel imprisonment.
“For more than two decades, disability rights advocates have objected to Lewis’ portrayal of life with a disability as tragic and pathetic. In response, Lewis snarled, “You don’t want to be pitied because you’re a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house!”
Dismissing the disability community’s objections, the Academy has decided to proceed with the award. In a letter to the activist group The Trouble with Jerry, Academy director Bruce Davis compared Lewis’ insulting, outdated attitudes to “some scratches in the paint job… of a Lamborghini.”
“To outsiders, Jerry Lewis may be perceived as a humanitarian, but to us Lewis personifies one of the biggest barriers facing people with disabilities: outdated attitudes,” said author and activist Laura Hershey, a protest organizer. “While the Motion Picture Academy has chosen to award Lewis the Hersholt award due to the money he has raised on his MDA Telethons, we counter “The cost is too high. Money can’t buy respect,” said Hershey. “We experience the side-effects of Lewis’ pity-mongering every day, when people see us as victims rather than as contributors, as recipients of handouts rather than equal citizens Every dime raised has been at cost of our dignity.”
Over 30 organizations endorse The Trouble with Jerry campaign, and to date over 2600 individuals have signed a petition protesting the award. The petition states in part, “Rather than working for equality and social inclusion of disabled people, the MDA Telethon portrays us as hopeless, pathetic, eternal children.’”
Demonstrations will take place during Oscar weekend in Los Angeles and around the US. Local LA protest schedules and locations are as follows:
▪Friday, February 20, 12 noon, Motion Picture Academy, 8949 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills.
▪Saturday, February 21, 12 noon, Kodak Theatre, Highland & Hollywood Blvd.
▪Sunday, February 22, 2:00 p.m., near the Kodak Theatre, Hollywood & Vine
Correspondence between the Trouble with Jerry and the Motion Picture Academy, as well as some history of disability rights protests against Jerry Lewis, and current protest information, can be found at http://thetroublewithjerry.com/ The Trouble with Jerry.
[...] By Stephen Pate, NJN Network, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada, February 20, 2009 with a story from FREDA, Jerry Lewis humanitarian award demonstrations set for this weekend [...]
We don’t want your stinking Easter Seals « NJN Network
February 20, 2009 at 1:18 PM
Jerry Lewis does not deserve the humanitarian award. It’s not just the derogatory comments he continues to make. It’s that all his work for the MDA — the Labor Day telethons and so forth — do far more harm to than good for people with disabilities.
The will MDA is not saving kids’ lives. In fact, I’m not sure the charity itself isn’t corrupt.
Which is why disability-rights activists from across the country are converging on Hollywood to protest this award. We have more than 2000 signatures on a petition, but the Academy doesn’t care.
What I do know is that Lewis exploits kids with disabilities (including me, 40 years ago) to use pity as a strategy for fund-raising, which sets the cause of disability rights back a generation or two. “Help Jerry’s kids” is insulting. More important, it’s dangerous for our social status and self-esteem. No, it’s not easy being a person with a disability in an able-bodied world. But we certainly don’t need Jerry’s raising pity, or Jerry’s bucks for medical charity, making matters worse.
Would you hire one of Jerry’s kids for a job? Would you want your son/daughter or brother/sister to marry one of Jerry’s kids? Clearly, the whole idea does not further equality or full integration of the disabled. It marginalizes us.
For two decades Lewis and the MDA have refused to work things out with us. We have tried. Instead, Lewis threatens us with nothing short of assassination. The organization does not join the fight for disability-rights legislation, does not employ people with disabilities in any meaningful way, and does not hold its corporate sponsors to any kind of standard of fairness. Neither the MDA nor Jerry Lewis fit the definition of humanitarian.
I would be happy to discuss this with anyone interested. For more information, go to http://www.TheTroublewithJerry.com
Ben Mattlin
February 21, 2009 at 3:20 PM
[...] Stephen Pate, NJN Network, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada, February 20, 2009 with a story from FREDA, Jerry Lewis humanitarian award demonstrations set for this weekend Just like Americans with disabilities don’t want the Jerry Lewis TV freak show, we [...]
We don't want your stinking Easter Seals | NJN Network
February 26, 2009 at 2:03 AM
I have Myotonia Congenita, and for a while I was misdiagnosed as having Myotonic Dystrophy. During that time of my misdiagnosis, I went to a couple of MDA summer camps in Kentucky and found the attitudes their to be reminiscent of the Lewis’ attitudes as described in this blog.
What I found to be most disturbing, however, was that for many of the kids who attended the summer camps throughout their childhood, the summer camps were their only way of connecting with other kids who had similar circumstances–one of those circumstances being the knowledge that they probably wouldn’t live past their 20th birthday. Yet, it was MDA’s policy that once you had your 18th birthday, it was summer camp no more.
Listening to those at the camp describe what that was like for their friends who had turned 18 reminded me of an old dog going off into the woods alone to die.
MDA is so insistent on spending every dollar they get to help find a cure, but that does nothing for those kids they abandon in the meantime. How about putting a little of that money towards improving those kid’s quality of life. Having a disability is more than bearable–being without your friends is not.
theheraldic
April 27, 2009 at 6:50 PM