For The Brave Ones, The Enabled Disabled

You’ve been in rehab from an IED, but now they’re sending you home.

All you recall is being blown out of the Humvee turret, the blast of fire under you, the screams of your buddies trapped. The blast threw you in the air and then you were sitting by the road 40 yards away with incoming rounds skipping off the dirt, and your right hand gone at the wrist. Like a movie, in slo-mo. So unreal.

You realized the hand was gone when you tried to find your P9 sidearm, and the dripping stump was like a cartoon thing at the end of your arm. And you laughed, you were so numb, then scared, the huge need to help your buddies worse than anything else… then you passed out and you woke up in the hospital in Germany, where they kept telling you everything would be fine, just fine.

Now, after a year of operations and therapy, you’re being sent home. They gave you full disability, and then the parades where you felt vaguely foolish and resentful, wondering why. But that’s not enough for you.

You will be facing the more cruel world of employment search. Because you refuse to eat yourself alive with rage, and sit in a chair and watch TV and drink beer the rest of your life.

You are going to use the education programs you earned in service. That’s right.

Educate yourself, build a life, have a family, earn a good living. Damn right. But it’s going to be a long hard fight. Worse than the war, maybe.

Higher education has an incredibly positive impact on the labor market activity of severely disabled persons. But only if they fight for their rights.

Only if they work hard to achieve their goals, harder than the so-called “able-bodied” persons without such obstacles to face.

For instance, disabled UC Davis Law School graduate Sara Granda will be allowed to take the State Bar exam. But she had to fight.

The California Supreme Court said it would allow Ganda to take the July 2009 Bar Exam provisionally, subject to some conditions. Granda, who is paralyzed from the neck down because of a car crash, said she initially failed to qualify for the exam, because the state paid her $600 registration fee by check, instead of paying online with a credit card. The state is paying because Granda is disabled. Her only source of income is an $870 a month state disability payment, and she doesn’t have a credit card.

A federal court judge denied the 29-year-old UC Davis law school graduate’s request, for an order prohibiting the State Bar of California from preventing her from taking the test.
On Monday morning, the State Bar filed a request for guidance with the California Supreme Court on how to proceed with Granda’s effort to take the bar exam.

Sacramento attorney Stewart Katz took her case before the California Supreme Court.

Granda will now be able to take Tuesday’s exam. Because she fought for her rights, as a disabled person, to educate herself, to better herself.

And now, UC Davis School of Law Dean Johnson, says, “Sara Granda has faced challenges most of us can only imagine. We were all proud to see her graduate and wish her enormous success. We have seen her overcome many other obstacles, and we are glad this issue has been resolved quickly.”

For workers with disabilities, additional education not only improves the chances of labor market activity, but also reduces the gap in the labor market participation between workers with severe disabilities and workers with no disability.

Passed in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits discrimination against disabled individuals in employment in public services, telecommunications, and other areas. Title 1 of the Act, covering employment, prohibits employers from discriminating against an individual with a disability in regard to job application procedures; the hiring, advancement, or discharge of employees; employee compensation; job training; and other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment.

American colleges and universities, by law, provide special services for the disabled status students. Full advantage should be taken of these services.

For workers with less than 4 years of high school, 75.2 percent of those with no disability reported labor market activity, compared with 17.3 percent of those with severe disabilities, a gap of 57.9 percentage points.

For workers with college degrees, ninety percent of those with no disability reported labor market activity. Compare this with 52.4 percent of those with a severe disability, a gap of 37.6 percentage points.

When considering workers with severe disabilities, it is possible that the disability affects both education and labor market activity. That is, a condition may both impede acquiring an education and make labor market activity more difficult.

About 5.4 million people with disabilities were employed in April, 2009, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. These workers represent about 4 percent of total employment.

As the charts show, workers with disabilities were distributed across occupational groups in a way similar to those without disabilities. Notable differences existed in the share of each type of worker in two occupational groups.

The percentage of workers with disabilities employed in service occupations was somewhat higher than the percentage of workers without disabilities.

And in professional and related occupations, the share of workers without disabilities was notably higher than workers with disabilities. However, these two occupational groups also employed the largest share of both types of workers.

This BLS chart highlights the stats— occupational employment of workers without disabilities, and workers with disabilities—

Data in the chart comes from the Current Population Survey.

According to the data, 23 percent of people with disabilities were in the labor force in April, which means that they were either working or looking for work.

About 13 percent of people with disabilities in the labor force were unemployed that month, compared with the almost 9 percent unemployment rate for workers without disabilities.

Approximately 30 percent of persons aged 20 to 64 years with severe disabilities either worked, looked for a job, or were on layoff during the last four months of 1994. This contrasts with activity rates of 81.6 percent for those with moderate disabilities and 84.5 percent among persons with no disabilities.

A landmark USGOV survey a decade ago broke ground, revealing the power of education to self-empower the so-called “disabled”—

The pattern of lower rates of labor market activity among persons with severe disabilities, and broadly similar rates among those with moderate or no disabilities, occurred in many demographic groups.

Among labor market participants, persons with disabilities—moderate or severe—were more likely than those with no disability to report that they were looking for work or were on layoff.

While just 4.6 percent of workers with no disabilities were looking for work or on layoff during the month before the survey, 8.0 percent of workers with moderate disabilities and 13.3 percent of workers with severe disabilities were looking for work or on layoff.

Education empowers. Anyone can benefit from greater knowledge and skills. We all know this is a fact.

3 of 10 persons with severe disabilities are active in the labor market! They are fighters!

A degree can be a great equalizer— for those of us with disabilities, higher education can mean able, not disabled!

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