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Excel Debate Universal Design Affirmative 2012-2013 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1AC CONTENTION 1 – INHERENCY.................................................... 2 CONTENTION 2 – HARMS........................................................ 3 CONTENTION 3 – SOLVENCY.................................................... 10 CASE AT: NO MEDICAL MODEL IN STATUS QUO.........................................16 AT: AFFORDABLE CARE ACT SOLVES.............................................17 AT: UNIVERSAL DESIGN ALREADY IN PLACE......................................18 AT: AUTO INDUSTRY IS KEY TO HEGEMONY.......................................19 AT: NO EUGENICS............................................................ 20 AT: BIOPOWER GOOD.......................................................... 21 AT: CARS GOOD FOR ECON..................................................... 22 DISADVANTAGES AT: ECON DA................................................................ 23 AT: POLITICS DA............................................................ 26 AT: FEDERALISM DA.......................................................... 28 AT: TAXES BAD DA........................................................... 29 COUNTERPLANS AT: GENERIC CP............................................................. 30 AT: CONSULT/PROCESS CP..................................................... 31 AT: MEXICO BUILD CP........................................................ 32 AT: STATES CP.............................................................. 33 KRITIK AT: GENERIC K.............................................................. 35 AT: PREDICTION K........................................................... 38 AT: CAPITALISM K........................................................... 40 1

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Excel Debate Universal Design Affirmative 2012-2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS1AC

CONTENTION 1 – INHERENCY................................................................................................................. 2

CONTENTION 2 – HARMS......................................................................................................................... 3

CONTENTION 3 – SOLVENCY.................................................................................................................10

CASE

AT: NO MEDICAL MODEL IN STATUS QUO.............................................................................................16

AT: AFFORDABLE CARE ACT SOLVES...................................................................................................17

AT: UNIVERSAL DESIGN ALREADY IN PLACE.......................................................................................18

AT: AUTO INDUSTRY IS KEY TO HEGEMONY........................................................................................19

AT: NO EUGENICS.................................................................................................................................... 20

AT: BIOPOWER GOOD............................................................................................................................. 21

AT: CARS GOOD FOR ECON...................................................................................................................22

DISADVANTAGES

AT: ECON DA............................................................................................................................................ 23

AT: POLITICS DA...................................................................................................................................... 26

AT: FEDERALISM DA................................................................................................................................ 28

AT: TAXES BAD DA................................................................................................................................... 29

COUNTERPLANS

AT: GENERIC CP...................................................................................................................................... 30

AT: CONSULT/PROCESS CP...................................................................................................................31

AT: MEXICO BUILD CP............................................................................................................................. 32

AT: STATES CP......................................................................................................................................... 33

KRITIK

AT: GENERIC K......................................................................................................................................... 35

AT: PREDICTION K................................................................................................................................... 38

AT: CAPITALISM K.................................................................................................................................... 40

AT: STATES BAD K.................................................................................................................................... 41

TOPICALITY

AT: TI ≠ DISABILITIES............................................................................................................................... 42

AT: INCREASE ≠ CREATE........................................................................................................................ 43

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CONTENTION 1 – INHERENCY

1. Current funding for transportation infrastructure has alienated people with disabilities from society by robbing them of their mobility.

AAPD, 2012 (The American Association of People with Disabilities, “Equity in Transportation for People with Disabilities”, May 23, http://www.infrastructureusa.org/equity-in-transportation-for-people-with-disabilities/)

Congress is currently debating reauthorization of the surface transportation bill, with heated debate over spending amounts and policy needs. As the nation considers its transportation policy for the 21st century, it is crucial to consider the needs of all individuals living in the

United States, especially those who have traditionally been left behind. Transportation and mobility play key roles in the struggle for civil rights and equal opportunity in the disability community. Affordable and reliable transportation allows people with disabilities access to important opportunities in education,

employment, health care, housing, and community life. Because our nation’s investments in transportation infrastructure have disproportionately favored cars and highways, those who cannot afford cars or do not drive cars often lack viable transportation options. People with disabilities—particularly in rural areas—need accessible, affordable transportation

options that bring employment, health care, education, housing, and community life within reach. Unfortunately, adults with disabilities are twice as likely as those without disabilities to have inadequate transportation (31 percent vs. 13 percent). Of the nearly 2 million people with disabilities who never leave

their homes, 560,000 never leave home because of transportation difficulties. Leaving people out has real costs to the nation. Keeping people with disabilities at home keeps them out of jobs, away from shopping, and out of community life, and it prevents them from making valuable contributions to our society as individuals, as workers, as consumers, and as taxpayers.

2. Despite the American with Disabilities Act, public transportation is still inaccessible for people with disabilities

AAPD, 2011(American Association for People with Disabilities, "Equity in Transportation for People with Disabilities", 7/16/2012, http://www.aapd.com/resources/publications/transportation-disabilities.pdf)

Train travel has also improved, yet still imposes certain obstacles. With regard to previously existing rail systems, the ADA only requires that key stations be made accessible. Key stations include transfer rail stations, major

interchange points, stations where passenger boardings exceed average boardings, and stations serving major activity centers. In cities that have subways, commuter rails, or other systems built before the ADA took effect, including some large East Coast systems such as

Boston and New York, there are few accessible stations. Requiring only key stations to be made accessible, rather than incrementally making all existing rail stations accessible, has led to gaps in accessibility. Furthermore, it is difficult to agree on a “key” station. Any station is

key to those who use it. A significant barrier on some rail systems is a lack of elevators or the failure to maintain elevators in working order and to inform riders when they are out of service. Issues with platform accessibility also continue to deter individuals using mobility assistive devices from accessing rail systems. Overly wide gaps between the train and the platform can be problematic. While newer systems have been built with minimal gaps, older systems have larger gaps that can make transportation prohibitive. Stop announcements for people with visual or cognitive disabilities are often unreliable, when agencies fail to test systems regularly, monitor them closely, and make changes necessary to ensure that they function properly. When people with disabilities cannot access a station or bus stop, they may be forced to go out of their way to find one that is accessible, and in some cases, this may make travel prohibitive.

Thus the plan: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase its investment in Universally Designed transportation infrastructure in the United States.

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CONTENTION 2 – HARMS

ADVANTAGE 1 – THE MEDICAL GAZE

1. Current transportation infrastructure reinforces the medical model of disability and result in forced social exclusion.

Audirac, 2008(Ivonne Audirac, Florida State University, 5/16/2008, “Accessing Transit as Universal Design”, Journal of Planning Literature 2008, Sage Journals, http://jpl.sagepub.com/content/23/1/4.full.pdf+html)

Although influential transportation planners believe that given the low share of transit travel, transit cannot be the public strategy for improving mobility for disadvantaged individuals

(Pucher and Renne 2003, 74),4 disability theory and activism have challenged these views as exclusionary on

several fronts (Corker and Shakespeare 2002; Pothier and Devlin 2006). First, on the basis that mode-split statistics are a poor measure of transit demand, since they do not account for suppressed trips (i.e., forgone trips for lack of transit service or impaired accesses to it) (Hine

and Grieco 2002). Second, that mainstream transportation planning and design are based on the

notion of a “universally able and disembodied” subject (i.e., without biological and social attributes) (Hine and Mitchell 2001; Imrie 2000;

Langan 2001) and thus exclude not only impaired but also many nonimpaired people. Third, that transportation planning espouses the medical model of disability whereby the individual’s body, rather than the built environment and social attitudes against disabled people, is the main debilitating cause in personal mobility (Langan 2001).

Fourth, that the transportation disciplines and lobbies have endorsed and promoted a universal system of auto-

mobility that alienates impaired people and discriminates against all who, for financial, physical,

temporal, or psychological reasons, cannot access or use automobiles (Imrie 2000; Hine and Mitchell 2001; Langan 2001). The literature on mobility and exclusion research identifies several forms of social exclusion (i.e., physical, geographical, from facilities) resulting from the organization of transportation and the quality of transit service provision and its relation to the built environment, urban form, and land use patterns (see Table 2). These mobility-limiting factors also include economic, fear-based, and time-based exclusions, which condition people’s immobility and capacity to participate in mainstream society (Cass, Shove, and Urry 2005; Church, Frost, and Sullivan 2000; Grieco 2003; Hine and Mitchell 2001; TCRP 1999).

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2. How we think about those with disabilities is a litmus test for our conception of normalcy and otherness—the social construction of the disabled legitimizes eugenic extermination.

Bagenstos 2000(Sam Bagenstos, Professor at the University of Michigan, Ex-Harvard Law Prof, 2000, “Subordination, Stigma, and Disability,” Virginia Law Review, Vol. 86, No. 3, p.437-45, gscholar)

Erving Goffman’s notion of stigma is a useful tool here. Although “stigma” refers colloquially to animus and prejudice, Goffman used the term to refer to a broader problem. He described the condition as an “undesired differentness” from what society deems to be “normal” or expected. Under Goffman’s approach, the core aspect of stigma occurs when prevailing social practices treat particular “undesirable” traits as universally discrediting. As Goffman emphasized, those who deal with stigmatized persons “tend to impute a wide range of

imperfections on the basis of the original one.” As a result, people with stigmatized traits are not considered to be among the “normals” for whom society, and its institutions, are designed. Stigma is as much about social attitudes as about the traits themselves; even if an

individual can “cure” a stigmatized trait, she may still not be accepted in the community of “normals.” Goffman’s construct of “stigma” provides a useful tool in giving content to my subordination-based understanding of disability rights law for at least two reasons. First,

Goffman’s analysis strongly influenced the thoughts of many of the disability rights activists on whose work I rely. Second, that analysis provides a way of connecting the animus- and stereotype-based discrimination experienced by many people with disabilities with their more systemic neglect in the design of the environment. It therefore provides a way of treating the three basic manifestations of disability

discrimination under a single rubric, and it provides a way of predicting which types of impairments are likely to be associated with systematic deprivation of opportunities. Because Goffman wrote primarily about individual interactions between “the normals” and “the stigmatized,” his notion of stigma most directly helps to describe the prejudice and stereotypes people with disabilities experience in such interactions. It is especially useful in explaining the “spread effect,” under which an impairment to a particular life function is seen as universally disabling. But Goffman’s analysis of stigma helps to describe the society-wide neglect of people with disabilities as well. In particular, it helps to explain people with disabilities as well. In particular, it helps to explain why people with some impairments are likely to be systematically neglected by social decisions, and why those people are likely to be the same people as those who experience animus

and stereotyping. If stigma means that an individual is not considered to be one of “the normals,” then people with stigmatized impairments are likely not to be a part of the social “norm” considered by those who design the social and physical environment. Even if the environment’s “designers” do not harbor prejudiced or stereotyped thoughts

about people with stigmatized conditions, they are likely not to consider their needs in the same way that they consider the needs of those

who are “normal.” Disability rights advocates have long made this precise point about “disability.” They have argued that “the entire physical and social organization of life” is frequently structured as

though everyone were physically strong, as though all bodies were shaped the same, as though everyone could walk, hear, and see well, as though everyone could work and play at a pace that is not compatible with any kind of illness or pain, as though no one were ever dizzy or incontinent or simply needed to sit or lie down. This phenomenon is most obvious in the built environment. Architects design structures with a model of the “normal” user in mind, and that model has typically been a person without any discernible impairments. This “assumption of ablebodiedness as the norm” can be seen in buildings with unnecessary stairs, doorways that are too narrow to accommodate wheelchairs, and entrances that fail to provide any detectable warning for people with visual impairments. But the phenomenon of neglect extends beyond the decisions that have constructed our physical architecture. It affects our patterns of social organization as well. Among other things, it affects the structure of jobs and the means by which businesses and governments deliver services. Why have those who constructed our social and physical environment failed to consider people with disabilities as among the “normal” users? One explanation might look to the very history of prejudice and stereotypes noted by Congress. For much of our history, people with a variety of physical and mental disabilities were “shunted aside, hidden, and ignored.” People with impairments ranging from epilepsy to blindness to mental retardation were segregated from the community in a collection of congregate institutions. Such segregation “perpetuated unwarranted assumptions that persons so isolated are incapable or unworthy of participating in community life.” Even among those who were not institutionalized, people with disabilities frequently did not work, patronize businesses, or use government services outside of the home. (In some cases, they were required by law to stay at home; as late as 1974, some major American jurisdictions still maintained “ugly laws” that prohibited “unsightly” people—a category that encompassed people with disabilities—from appearing in public.) A person designing a particular building, production process, or job description could thus be forgiven for failing to think of people with disabilities as potential customers or workers. The designer might have had no particular negative attitudes toward “the disabled.” Indeed, it might never have entered her mind that people with disabilities might wish to use her building or work in her business; she might simply have had no available model of people with disabilities as ordinary people with ordinary needs and tastes. Although people with disabilities have become more and more integrated into society at large in the last two decades, the history of exclusion may

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have a particularly long “tail.” Buildings and processes designed without people with disabilities in mind may be used for many years to come. And prejudice and stereotypes—which have themselves been fed by the absence of people with disabilities from the larger community—may linger even longer. The historic exclusion of people with disabilities from “normal” society has interacted in complex and reciprocal ways with broader ideological currents. Lennard Davis has argued that the notion of “norms” dates only to the development of a science of statistics in the early nineteenth century. Until then, Davis contends, the place now occupied by the “norm” was held by the

notion of an “ideal,” which was understood to be unattainable by any human. But the newfound “concept of a norm, unlike that of an ideal, implied that the majority of the population must or should somehow be part of the norm.” Early statisticians made this point expressly: They

argued that social institutions should be built around the broad middle group of persons who fit the social norm. As Davis demonstrates,

their arguments both provided justification for, and drew strength from, an ideology that accorded a morally privileged position to

the middle class. More darkly, they fed the eugenic ideology that led to the institutionalization and sterilization of many people whom we now label “disabled.” The nineteenth-century notion that institutions should be designed for the “norm” persists. But our vision of “normal”

human attributes has become increasingly idealized, as the eugenics movement (which sought “to norm the nonstandard”) may have been the first to demonstrate. Rob Imrie’s account of modernist architecture points out the effect that such an ideology of the “norm” has had on our built environment. In seeking to make form follow function, and to “tie buildings back to the scale of the human being,” modernists harbored a particularly able-bodied vision of who “the human being” was. Imrie illustrates this vision by pointing to Le Corbusier’s “Modular,” which “utilized the proportions of the (able) body to enable the architect to create the built spaces.” The “Modular,” a diagram of a muscular six-foot tall man, was “the person for whom functionality in building design and form was being defined.” Many inaccessible features of today’s buildings, Imrie argues, trace directly to modernism’s exclusion of people with disabilities from its idealized version of the “norm.” As we move to a new millennium, we seem to believe as strongly as ever that everyone should fit an “ideal” body type. Although there are surely a variety of reasons for this development, the most notable are a consumer/advertising culture that idealizes beauty and a widespread belief in the ability of modern medicine to enhance our mental and physical lives. As a result, the ideological currents that

exclude people with disabilities from our notion of the “norm” stubbornly remain with us. The stigma attached to “disability” thus both represents the legacy of a history of exclusion and reflects a series of broader ideological developments. Whatever the underlying reason for its

persistence, however, that stigma can help us to understand the means by which disability-based subordination is transmitted. More importantly, stigma can serve an evidentiary function: It can help us identify cases where impairments are likely to be associated with systematic deprivation of opportunities. Seen in this light, the “disability” category embraces those people who experience impairment-based stigma—that is, those people who, because of present, past, or perceived impairments, are considered by society to be outside of the “norm.” As Carol Gill puts it, “disability is a marginalized status that society assigns to people who are different enough from majority cultural standards to be judged abnormal or defective in mind or body.” Although I would argue that stigma identifies and explains—but does not necessarily define—disability based subordination, Gill’s analysis substantially overlaps my own. In this view, “disability” is a group status, but it is not one defined by anything inherent in the members of the group. Rather, the attitudes and practices that exclude people with “disabilities” from many opportunities to participate in society are the very ones that create the “disability” category.

Although individuals embraced by the category have vastly different impairments and limitations (indeed, some have no impairment or limitation at all), what is crucial is that society treats them as essentially similar. In Wendell’s words, “widespread perceptions that

people with disabilities are similar in very significant ways create the category, ‘people with disabilities.’” The widespread acts of “discrimination, segregation, and denial of equal opportunity” directed at people with disabilities have effectively marked that group as a “dependent caste.”

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3. Understanding “disability” as personal instead of environmental biologizes life and is the root cause of violence.

Elden 2002(Stuart Elden, politics at University of Warwick, 2/29/2002, “The War of Races and the Constitution of the State: Foucault's «Il faut défendre la société» and the Politics of Calculation,” Boundary, http://boundary2.dukejournals.org/content/29/1/125.full.pdf)

The reverse side is the power to allow death. State racism is a recoding of the old mechanisms of blood

through the new procedures of regulation. Racism, as biologizing, as tied to a state, takes shape where the procedures of intervention ‘‘at the level of the body, conduct, health, and everyday life, received their color and their justification from the mythical concern with protecting the purity of the blood and ensuring the triumph of the race’’ (VS, 197; WK, 149). 37 For example, the old anti-Semitism based on religion is reused under the new rubric of state racism. The integrity and purity of the race is threatened, and the state apparatuses are introduced against the race that has infiltrated and introduced noxious elements into the body. The

Jews are characterized as the race present in the middle of all races (FDS, 76). 38 The use of medical language is important. Because certain groups in society are conceived of in medical terms, society is no longer in need of being defended from the outsider but from the insider: the abnormal in behavior, species, or race. What is novel is not the mentality of power but the technology of

power (FDS, 230). The recoding of old problems is made possible through new techniques. A break or cut (coupure) is fundamental to racism: a division or incision between those who must live and those who must die. The ‘‘biological continuum of the human species’’ is fragmented by the apparition of races, which are seen as

distinguished, hierarchized, qualified as good or inferior, and so forth. The species is subdivided into subgroups that are thought of as races. In a sense, then, just as the continuum of geometry becomes divisible in Descartes, 39 the human continuum is divided, that is, made calculable and orderable, two centuries later. As Anderson has persuasively argued, to suggest that racism has its roots in nationalism is a mistake. He suggests that ‘‘the dreams of racism actually have their origin in ideologies of class, rather than in those of nation: above all in claims to divinity among rulers and to ‘blue’ or ‘white’ blood and breeding among aristocracies.’’ 40 As Stoler has noted, for Foucault, it is the other way around: ‘‘A discourse of class derives from an earlier discourse of races.’’ 41 But it is a more subtle distinction than 37. See Etienne Balibar, ‘‘Is There a ‘Neo-Racism’?’’ in Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (London: Verso, 1991), 26. 38. On the treatment of Jews in this way, see Sander L. Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), 30–35. 39. See Elden, ‘‘the Place of Geometry.’’ 40. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 149. See Balibar, ‘‘Racism and Nationalism,’’ in Balibar and Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class, 47–48, 207–8. 41. Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire, 30.148 boundary 2 / Spring 2002 that. What Foucault suggests is that discourses of class have their roots in the war of races, but so, too, does modern racism; what is different is the biological spin put on the concepts. 42 But as well as emphasizing the biological, modern racism puts this another way: to survive, to live, one must be prepared to massacre one’s enemies, a relation of war. As a relation of war, this is no different from the earlier war of races that Foucault has spent so much of the

course explaining. But when coupled with the mechanisms of mathematics and medicine in bio-power,

this can be conceived of in entirely different ways. Bio-power is able to establish, between my life and the death of

the other, a relation that is not warlike or confrontational but biological: ‘‘The more inferior species tend to disappear, the more abnormal individuals can be eliminated, the less the species will be degenerated, the more I— not as an individual but as a species—will live, will be

strong, will be vigorous, will be able to proliferate.’’ The death of the other does not just make me safer personally, but the death of the

other, of the bad, inferior race or the degenerate or abnormal, makes life in general healthier and purer (FDS, 227–28). ‘‘The existence in question is no longer of sovereignty, juridical; but that of the population,

biological. If genocide is truly the dream of modern powers, this is not because of a return

today of the ancient right to kill; it is because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of population’’ (VS, 180; WK, 136). ‘‘If the power of normalization wishes to exercise the ancient

sovereign right of killing, it must pass through racism. And if, inversely, a sovereign power, that is to say a power with the right of life and death, wishes to function with the instruments, mechanisms, and technology of normalization, it must also pass through racism’’ (FDS, 228). This holds for indirect death—the exposure to death—as much as for direct killing. While not Darwinism, this biological sense of power is based on evolutionism and enables a thinking of colonial relations, the necessity of wars, criminality, phenomena of madness and mental illness, class divisions, and so forth. The link to colonialism is central: This form of modern state racism develops first with colonial genocide. The theme of the political enemy is extrapolated biologically. But what is important in the shift at the end of the nineteenth century is that war is no longer simply a way of securing one race by eliminating the other but of regenerating that race (FDS, 228–30). As Foucault puts it in La volonté de savoir: 42. Some similar ideas are found in Michael Banton, The Idea of Race (London: Tavistock, 1977).Elden / The War of Races and the

Constitution of the State 149 Wars are no longer waged in the name of a sovereign who must be defended; they are waged on behalf of the existence of all; entire populations are mobilized for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity. Massacres have become

vital [vitaux— understood in a dual sense, both as essential and biological]. It is as managers of life and survival, of bodies and the race, that so many regimes have been able to wage so many wars, causing so many men to be killed. (VS, 180; WK, 136)

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ADVANTAGE 2 – AUTO-MOBILITY

1. Federal spending associated with auto-mobility is a form of segregation that supports the mobile able body. We must strive for a reduction of disparity in mobility.

Langan 2001(Celeste Langan, Associate Professor of English at the University of Californiaat Berkeley, 2001, “Mobility Disability” in Public Culture 13(3): 459–484)

As Wasserman points out, the issue of disability rights raises two central problems. First, as noted above, the problem is deciding among competing claims for the redistribution of resources. The second problem is the possibility that “securing the right of people with disabilities to ‘live in the world’ demands an indefinite commitment of resources” (Wasserman 1998:180). Even if it were possible (though I maintain it is

not) to formalize a category of physical disability that did not depend on the rejected medical model but was still capable of distinguishing between socially constructed physical impairments and socially constructed poverty, the retrofitting of the public sphere to make it fully accessible to the disabled is not a one-time expenditure. Wasserman (1998: 179) quotes one judge distressed by this implication of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973: What must be done to provide handicapped persons with the same right to utilize mass-transportation facilities as other persons? Does each bus have to have a special capacity? Must each seat on the bus be removable? Must the bus routes be changed to provide stops at hospitals, therapy centers, and nursing homes? Is it required that buses be able to accommodate bedridden persons? This barely suppressed rant demonstrates the ambiguity of what the ADA will later identify as “reasonable accommodation.”

There are, of course, different ways of imagining what constitutes a “reasonable” expenditure to facilitate the full participation of disabled people. But the issue has real effects. In her review of the impact of the ADA on accessible transportation,

Rosalyn Simon (1996: 300) establishes two important trends: “paratransit services grow steadily to meet increasing demand and utilization of increasingly accessible fixed-route systems remains low.” It is difficult to reconcile this apparent preference and growing diversion of resources with the premise of the ADA, for as Simon (1996: 306) goes on to point out (and as Silvers would undoubtedly insist), The ADA is a civil rights statute, not a transportation or social service program statute. The ADA clearly emphasizes non-discriminatory access to fixed-route service, with complementary paratransit acting as a safety net for people who cannot use the fixed route system. Under the ADA, complementary paratransit is not intended to be a comprehensive system of transportation for individuals with disabilities. Moreover, Simon (1996: 319) suggests, the unintended expansion of paratransit is having a measurably negative effect on what we might call a general “social progress” in mass transportation: “Paratransit is becoming a disincentive to fixed route expansion, as transit systems admit limiting

the expansion of fixed route service because of the corresponding paratransit service area implications.” Of course, what this focus on the possibly negative effects of ADA provisions on the availability of mass transportation in

general risks leaving out of consideration is the far larger public funding of automobility for the (ostensibly) nondisabled. We do not frequently consider federal spending on new or retrofitted highways in the same light in which expenditures on curb cuts, ramps, or wheelchair lifts for buses are regarded—either as a luxury or as a questionable redistribution of resources. Yet, spending on highways does amplify the mobility of some, and it may decrease the free range of others. But this means that spending on curb cuts, chair lifts, and

accessible bathrooms might also affect the mobility of others. It suggests the inadequacy of imagining the repair of social injustice on the model of automobility. What are we to do, then, in the

situation that now obtains, in which the privileging of “disability” over other disadvantages threatens to become a real issue? Shall we, because cuts in public transportation would appear to dispossess equally all citizens of that mobility option, decide that it is nondiscriminatory? Or do we weigh into the equation the fact—proved in the legal case the Bus Riders Union brought against the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (the subject of one of the Wexler documentaries, discussed below)—that cuts in the extent and frequency of service have disproportionately negative effects on a population that can be classified not in terms of race, gender, or physical disability, but rather as transit dependent? I want to insist that the development of what might be termed, after Bullard and Johnson

1997, just transportation, entails the continued attempt to diminish disparities in relative mobility, rather than (as Silvers and others would have it) merely maintain disparities of class across disabled and nondisabled populations. Otherwise, the problem of segregation—which disability activism makes the cornerstone of the claim for

redress from discrimination— will not have been fully addressed. Even Silvers (1998: 21) suggests that

paratransit fails to fulfill the spirit of the ADA on these very grounds. “We should recognize,” she writes, “that both public and private special

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services programs for people with disabilities are aimed at individuals whose participation is feared to disrupt the efficiency of our ordinary transactions.” Surely it is not merely coincidental that both the civil rights movement against race disability and the more recent (physical) disability rights movement should have focused particular attention on access to public transportation. Although I have been somewhat selective in my accumulation of examples, it is certainly the case that mobility is a far more frequent subject of disability scholarship than sensory or cognitive difference. So much public funding and public property is devoted to transportation that the identification of citizenship

with physical mobility is somewhat inevitable. But there is, as I have suggested, a split in that identification: the notion of freedom attaches to the automobile, symbol of privacy and relative social mobility, while mass transportation represents the bottom limit, or floor, of equality.

This opposition is, of course, patently false, since the extent to which supposedly “private” modes of transportation are subsidized by public funding projects can be

documented. But the conceptual hierarchy of transportation options also lends a particular affect to the figure of the bus, generally framed as the poorest relation. The bus has a history of enabling and extending participation in the public sphere. We might invoke Washington Irving’s (1864: 455) description of the 1832 Reform Bill—“the great reform omnibus moves but slowly”—as a particularly telling example, for although Irving may have meant to indicate nothing more than the generality and internal contradictions of the bill, the prototype of the modern bus was making its appearance concurrently in the streets of Paris; during the July Revolution, the Annual Register (1830: 188) reported, “A barricade was formed across the street by one of those long coaches to which Parisians have given the name omnibus.” The bus is a singularly slow vehicle of transportation— a traveling cripple, one might almost say, when compared to other forms of mass transportation or even the automobile—because it has more interests to serve. Having usually a greater number of points for access and departure along its fixed route, the bus is more irregular in keeping its appointments; it is this openness to contingency that makes it, finally, not only a portion of the public sphere, but also a figure for the transitivity or progressive aspect of that public sphere. Or that is the lesson, I hope to show, of the remarkable series of documentaries by the filmmaker Haskell Wexler.

2. This focus on automobility results in millions of deaths and injuries per year: it ensures both the production of impairments and continued exclusion of people with disabilities, ensuring shorten life spans for countless individuals.

Aldred and Woodcock 2008 (Rachel Aldred and James Woodcock; School of Social Sciences, Media, and Cultural Studies University of East London and Department of Epidemiology and Population Health London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine ‘Transport: challenging disabling environments’ Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability; pgs 7-9; http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a901696392)

The case of transport demonstrates the importance of extending the social model to deal with impairment. By this we do not mean returning to the medicalized focus on individual experience and suffering criticized by disability theorists (Oliver 1990). Rather we mean theorizing

how impairment is socially constructed discursively (disabling structures shaping our concepts of

what is an “impairment”) and materially (economic and social forces producing such impairments). This latter, linking social theory to critical epidemiology, is particularly crucial to people in the Global South at higher risk of injury from war, unregulated toxic industries, road

crashes, etc. (Stone 1997). “As far as the majority of the world’s disabled people are concerned, impairment is very clearly primarily the consequence of social and political factors.” (Abberley 1997:9).

For transport this approach can connect the threat of environmental catastrophe (hence “eco-social model”) to the creation of impairment and disability within a

movement for inclusive, sustainable environments. Road traffic injuries are a major cause of temporary and permanent impairment. The World Health Organization estimates that 1.2 million people were killed and 50 million injured on the roads in 2002 (Peden et al 2004), most pedestrians in low income countries. Even in the UK there is

a strong class gradient for injury risk. In the European Union more than 150,000 people are 8 permanently disabled by crashes each year

(Peden et al 2004). Motorized economies construct diverse roads to impairment and ill-health (Woodcock et al 2007). The stress of traffic noise and danger can harm mental health, as can post-traumatic stress after an injury.

In the longer term urban sprawl entrenches inequalities and depletes social capital.

Cross-sectional studies show worse self-reported health among people living in sprawled cities (Strum 2004). As Crow (1999:8) comments, the types of interventions made to prevent impairments matter greatly, and should interest disability theorists. Currently “[t]he isolation of impairment from its social context means that the social and economic causes of impairment often go unrecognized.” Those “at risk” are targeted at an individual level: for transport safety this has meant protecting, restricting, and marginalizing vulnerable road users (e.g. USA laws forbidding “jaywalking”) while leaving the source of danger unchecked. This approach increases physical inactivity, a major cause of impairment through conditions including diabetes with its associated risks of visual impairment and amputations (Williamson 2004).

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Disabled people, disproportionately excluded from the streets, have higher rates of physical inactivity and obesity (Ells et al 2007). Traffic noise is the main source of noise pollution,

disrupting sleep and increasing cardiovascular risk (Dora and Phillips 2000). Air pollution creates impairment through respiratory morbidity, allergic illness and symptoms, cardiopulmonary

mortality, non-allergic respiratory disease, and myocardial infarction (Krzyzanowski et al 2005). Many of these conditions can

limit mobility. People with impaired mobility or other disabilities may move more slowly through traffic and so suffer greater exposure to pollution. Transport leads us to analyze the process of disablement with its biological and social components, including social organization and oppression, functional limitation, impairment, and pathology. A recent study found that for a given level of physical function, older adults reported greater independence in more walkable environments with

mixed land use (Clarke and George 2005). An embodied account integrates social life and its structures of power, production, and consumption with our biology.

Roads to disability and disadvantage are not coincidentally joined but represent the playing out of social processes, including capital accumulation, impoverishment, racism, sexism, and disablism.

3. United States automobility policies are modeled globally

Springs 7 (Mary Alice, School of humanities @ college of Charleston “Inequity in transportation: The Problem with Auto Hegemony)

While problems with auto hegemony have only recently surfaced in wealthy nations, poor nations are evidently experiencing immediate drawbacks. In

describing this trend in the worldwide proliferation of the automobile, Peter Freund and George Martin explain several reasons why poor nations have

“[faced] challenges in their attempts to adopt the automobile culture” (226). Adopting fellow sociologist Dr. Wolfgang Sach’s terminology, Freund and Martin refer to the first world countries as the global “north,” the location of the majority

of industrialized nations, and third world countries as the global “south,” where most of the

developing nations are located (227). In the south, the car culture has only spread to a minority population consisting of the elite and middle class (Freund and Martin 229).

Because only a small percentage of people in the global south are car owners, there is still diversity in transportation choice (Freund and Martin 229). Many of the southern nations are “relatively poor and debt-laden,” which makes auto transport costs less socially constructive because it drains scarce public resources

(Freund and Martin 229-30). However, because the elite minority has the most political influence, chances are that these costs will continue to rise as the facilities needed to maintain efficient use of the automobile will most likely continue to expand at their request. South Africa serves as a viable case study. As a result of extreme dissonance between wealth and poverty, South Africa has one of the worst traffic safety records in the world (Freund and Martin 232). The few luxury cars that are on the road are mixed in with “overcrowded trucks (used as buses), donkey carts, cows, and pedestrians to produce a deadly combination” (Donald McNeil qtd. in Freund and Martin 232). Freund and Martin observe that “black townships do not have sidewalks, adequate lighting, or pedestrian overpasses on the roads through which affluent-owned high-powered vehicles race” (Freund and Martin 232). The residual impact of Apartheid is evident in the fact that “one out of two white South Africans owns a car [while] only one of 100 blacks do” (John Griffin qtd. in Freund and Martin 232). In many cities in China, along with Bombay, Jakarta, and Calcutta, rickshaws are starting to be viewed negatively because they are seen as “archaic” and impede the flow of auto traffic, and therefore have been banned from the streets in several cases (Freund and Martin 233). In these urban areas, this policy greatly infringes upon household incomes where many of the poor propel these non-motor vehicles to earn money (Freund and Martin 233). The authors also note that arable land is in scarce supply in the global south more so than those in the north (Freund and Martin 231). As Robert Smith observes, China has four times the population of the U.S. living on about the same amount of land area (qtd. in Freund and Martin 231). A large proportion of the country is either desert or mountains, so “its population is crammed into dense concentrations around river valleys” (Smith qtd. in Freund and Martin 231). As a result, China must feed its population, which makes up one-fifth of the world’s population, on less than one-fifteenth of its arable (Smith qtd. in Freund and Martin 231). Meanwhile, other southern countries such as Egypt, Bangladesh, and Indonesia face the same situation (Lester Brown qtd. in Freund and Martin 231). For Freund and Martin, this situation in the developing world begs the question, “does it make sense for [these countries] to pave over arable land or land usable for dwelling

spaces?” (231). It is evident that the same inequality that exists in the United States due to auto hegemony is spreading on to a global scale via the ever-increasing presence of the global capitalistic economy. However, if the United States can set a better example for establishing a more diversified repertoire of transportation

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choices, then hopefully developing countries, such as China, will follow this example rather than continuing down the more conventional but hazardous path toward auto hegemony.

CONTENTION 3 – SOLVENCY

1. Universal design is crucial for accessibility of transport.

Audirac. 2008 (Ivonne, Director-Program in City and Regional Planning. University of Texas-Arlington, “Accessing Transit as Universal Design”, Journal of Planning Literature 23: 4)

Accessing Transit as Universal Design UD applied to transit is an inclusionary strategy that seeks to redress the aforementioned forms of social exclusion. Accessible transportation focused previously on technical solutions to removing physical barriers affecting specific disabled groups and providing dial-a-ride or specialized demand services. These strategies largely segregated and stigmatized users as “seniors” or “disabled.” Instead, UD emphasizes transportation that caters to all users regardless of age and ability in a single integrated system that combines both mass transit and real-time demand-responsive systems (Grieco 2003; Mitchell 1997). Enabled by ICT and borrowing from freight logistics, the European literature refers to this

system as the “complete transportation chain” (Mitchell 1997; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 2000; Ståhl 1999), while the American literature terms it the new “mobility management model” (TCRP 1999, 2000, 2002). These models require seamless integration of the supply side (i.e., system’s operation, infrastructure, and quality of service delivery) with the demand side (i.e., mobility needs of the widest number of users). Consequently, this often entails a complete reorganization of transit operations from traditional fixed-route, hub-and-spoke, and set schedule systems to flexible schedule systems with intelligent reservation centers that can identify passenger needs and aggregate individual preferences in real time, providing door-to-door service (Hine and Grieco 2002). Despite its technical feasibility in the current ICT era, institutional, organizational, legal, and old market structures remain important barriers to the full realization of these integrated-transit models touted as the means to bring about “a new relationship between accessibility, mobility and the previously socially excluded” (Hine and Grieco 2002, 4). In a conceptual discussion of UD and accessibility, Iwarsson and Stahl (2003) differentiate between three dimensions of physical accessibility5: (1) micro accessibility related to the immediate proximal environment, (2) meso or neighborhood or city-level accessibility, and (3) macro or metropolitan or regional accessibility. This article applies these scales of accessibility to the previously discussed dimensions of mobility-related social exclusion (i.e., immobility) to assess the transit features requiring a UD approach. As shown in Table 3, a UD perspective applied to transit underscores the notion that: 1. Addressing physical exclusion at the micro level of accessibility involves planning, designing, and operating transit systems that are easy for all users. This includes not only passengers with physical, sensory, or cognitive impairment but also those with language or cultural barriers, people with children, individuals carrying baggage or parcels, or those who are new to the area (Suen and Mitchell 1999). Micro-level accessibility requires barrier-free retrofitting of the existing physical built environment; however, future development to be served with transit requires planning for UD to avoid the need for retrofitting or re-adaptation. This includes consideration of pedestrian infrastructure and streetscape (e.g., sidewalks, traffic signals, crosswalks, street crossings, and street furniture) and their interface with automobile facilities (e.g., park and ride, kiss and ride), and transit passenger facilities (e.g., terminals, stations, stops). Universally designed transit accessibility at the micro level requires bus-stop boarding pads and street curbs that are leveled with low-floor buses. This not only makes shorter and easier bus boarding and alighting for all (i.e., wheelchair passengers, frail and/or ambulant disabled people, patrons with small children or those carrying baggage or parcels), it also reduces bus dwell time. Low-floor buses with lifts or ramps meet barrier-free design criteria, but strictly speaking, ramps and lifts are ADA bus design re-adaptations that increase bus dwelling time and stigmatize wheelchair users or anyone needing them. Thus, although they are a form of inclusive design, they are not UD solutions to micro-level transit accessibility. 2. Fear-based social exclusion is another form of person-environment accessibility occurring at the micro and meso levels. Fear of crime holds many people without cars hostage in their own homes and prevents them from walking and using public transportation. Women, older, and disabled people are particularly affected. Although generally outside the scope of UD literature, crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) is typically a planning and design intervention applied by transit facility designers in collaboration with transit managers and security personnel (Audirac and Higgins 2004). Implicit in these interventions is the belief that redesigning certain aspects of the physical environment can lower crime levels by enhancing “defensible space” opportunities that deter or discourage crime. A synthesis of practice on crime prevention and control by the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) found that CPTED is among the seven strategies most widely used by transit managers. However, video surveillance, staff involvement, police presence, and community outreach and education are necessary for CPTED to effectively work6 (Needle and Cobb 1997). This raises the larger issue—further discussed below in operator-based accessibility—that “transit for all” requires close cooperation among all levels of transit personnel and external

stakeholders, and it implies an equally strong emphasis on UD of services. Consequently, to deal with accessibility and social exclusion, attention to social and organizational barriers is as

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important as the emphasis on physical ones. 3. Geographical exclusion at the meso and macro levels

of accessibility underscores the importance of transit for non–automobile users to reach neighborhood and metropolitan destinations beyond normal walking range. The characteristic low-density car dependent urban form of metropolitan America and the scattering of services, employment, shopping, entertainment, and so on across the metropolitan region makes traditional mass transit (such as fixed and hub-and-spoke bus service systems oriented to the central business district) ineffective in reaching peripheral and suburban destinations

and in taking people where they want to go. Effective transit accessibility at the meso and macro levels should address geographical as well as “from-facilities,” economical, and time-based forms of social exclusion. This would require the aforementioned shift in transit service paradigm and full development of intelligent integrated systems under the “complete transportation chain” or “mobility management” models. At the system’s level, achieving the above would require that conventional

city transit agencies shift from being transit operators to mobility managers of a family of services. These would include fixed route and fixed-schedule transit serving high-volume destinations together with feeder transit services, flexible-schedule and demand-response transit, and taxis and community-based transportation options7 that cater to mobility-impaired individuals. (see Burkhardt, McGavock, and Nelson. 2002; Pagano and Metaxatos 2006; Spielberg and Pratt 2004; Suen and Sen 2004; Ståhl 1999). 4. In the above models, designed to offer the greatest possible choice of travel to all users, the mobility management agency provides fare subsidies to those in need, thus tackling this form of economic exclusion. 5. Time-based exclusion can be minimized with real-time information about vehicle arrival and trip duration available at bus stops or internet-based tracking via cell phones and other wireless devices. These systems have been used in Norway. The City of Kristiansand’s Bussmetro offers to passengers GPS-based real-time info that tracks where the bus is located at all times. Bus stops have visual and audio displays showing count-down time for bus arrival. Hearing and visually impaired individuals can also receive this information via personal remote control devices. 6. Operator-based social exclusion is related to lack of information and assistance about service, discourteous staff attitudes, and drivers’ behavior toward impaired and older people. These conditions contribute to suppressed journeys, and thus, to social exclusion. In addition to staff training and education, internet-based reporting of service quality hosted by disability and elderly advocacy NGOs have been proposed as a means to insure service accountability and quality assurance (Grieco 2003). Outside of UD of student services (Burgsthahler n.d.), customer care system design has been less prominent in the UD literature. However, this is clearly an area where more UD research and development is needed, since to be truly accessible for all, complex systems like city transit require planning and design of both its physical and socioorganizational components. UD applied to transit has focused primarily on planning and design guidance of the physical side at the micro-accessibility level. However, extending UD considerations to geographical accessibility, as intended in “complete chain” and “mobility management” models, has recently drawn attention to the fact that “accessible transit for all” implies that the physical chain of accessible transit must be seamlessly integrated with a regional administrative chain (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 2000; Steinfeld 2001). There have been a number of lessons learned in Nordic countries, where land use and transportation planning plays a major role in implementing universal design as “Town Planning for All” (Petren 2004). These include the importance of effective intergovernmental cooperation, smooth collaboration across administrative boundaries, successful consultation arrangements to obtain user input, and heeding the advice that “small mistakes

in planning and implementation often have big consequences” (Petren 2004). Despite the challenging complexity of implementing universally designed transit at the various micro and macro scales, a small but growing literature on UD performance evaluation is starting to appear (Preiser 2001; Preiser and Ostroff 2001). It offers user-driven feedback design methodologies that can be applied both to facilities at the micro-accessibility level and to the organizational level of agencies providing transit services. Nonetheless, UD performance evaluation research is still in its infancy. It will take time for

design and planning education to fully embrace the UD paradigm and for public awareness to demand universally designed products and services before significant private and public UD research and development becomes the norm (Ostroff 2001).

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2. Universal design deconstructs the medical model through infrastructure investment

Sullivan 11 (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, 5/2/11, Kathryn, “The Prevalence of the Medical Model of Disability in Society”, Ebsco)

Many designers are now beginning to acknowledge the social model of disability by recognizing that in designing, they have the power to create or eliminate disability. A badly designed interface might unnecessarily create a population of users who are “disabled” with respect to that system (Mankoff 4).

This lends to the importance of designing inclusively, to avoid marginalizing atypical users. Universal design seeks to design all products,

buildings and interiors to be used by all people to the greatest extent possible regardless of their physical abilities (Bailey). Some key principles of Universal Design include equitability and flexibility in use, as well as avoiding the stigmatization or segregation of any set of users (1997 NC

State University, The Center for Universal Design). These principles “provide designers with the tools to effectively eliminate disabilities caused from barriers within the environment” (Bailey). Examples of features in line with universal design principles include closed

captioning on televisions, and visual and audio display of information in subway cars. When the needs of different people are considered in design, this is a step towards the social model of disability and towards acceptance of people with disabilities. Assistive technology is

beneficial because it can allow greater independence and functionality to people with disabilities, bridging the gaps that might exist between what the people would like to do and what the existing social infrastructure doesn.t yet allow them to do (Harsh 15). However, assistive technology can often have a strong health or rehabilitation flavor. After WWII, most assistive technology research and development focused on medically related technology such as prosthetics and orthotics (Albrecht 675). This has linked the technology needs of people with disabilities with the health domain. Since the medical model focuses on the physical and functional limitations a person may demonstrate, assistive technology designers often see this as a clear design objective that would have measurable results (Mankoff 4). Thus when the medical model is used in the design of assistive technology, there is typically less emphasis on aesthetics or form, since the rehabilitative function has priority. In one study, people with disabilities indicated a belief that manufacturers of proprietary technology do not appear to

make an effort to make their devices aesthetically appealing (Shinohara 5). Assistive technology designed for medical purposes such as “fixing “ the impairment has historically been designed for use in

an institutional setting; this institutional appearance can stigmatize the individual and confirm the “otherness “ of disability (Bailey). The medical model of assistive technology depict its users as passive and

dependent on other’s (often professionals.) impressions of what is best for them. People with disabilities might often not be considered users or consumers, but rather poor and powerless patients (Newell 172). This is devaluing to people with disabilities. Letting the designers make decisions on behalf of people with disabilities without valuing them as users leads to the persistence of medical model views. Designers may have assumptions and stereotypes about people with disabilities that can become embedded within the design

(Ratzka). A solution is to apply many of the universal design principles to the design of assistive technology: It is better to lean towards the social model in the design of assistive technology, where there is more of a focus on solving problems of access, rather than on fixing a person’s impairment.

When the social model is incorporated, people with disabilities are valued as customers, consumers, and people in the design process (Newell 173). They thus have more of a say in the design of products and services they will use, and can take more charge of their lives rather than having someone else decide what is best for them. The US Government’s website on Disability Technology advocates for “Access and Independence through technology”, rather than treatment or assistance ("Technology: Disability.gov."). This phrasing represents steps towards acceptance of the social model of disability. Much assistive technology that exists has been designed with the medical model in mind, which serves to portray people with disabilities as deficient and dependent. When designers value those with

disabilities as users and not as patients, the medical model is less prevalent. Universal design of technology is a step towards granting more access to all citizens and portraying people with disabilities as normal members of society. However, even with the growing popularity of

universal design principles, the pre-existing attitudes of many designers (influenced by the media and other factors) may still be present in the design of technology. The medical model can portray people with disabilities as abnormal, dependent, and inferior, as less-valued members of society. We need to be conscious of these negative attitudes and how we may be reinforcing them. A solution is to aim for the

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adaption of more humanistic models of disability such as the social and diversity models. Attitudes and policies in line with these models

recognize people with disabilities as important contributing members of society. Pushing towards these models of disability,

towards less ableist views, and towards reduction of negative portrayals of those with disabilities, is optimal. While strides have been made towards this goal, the medical model

unfortunately still remains entrenched in society to some extent and so long as it is, people with disabilities will be seen as different from “normal” people and will be marginalized in society. The Olin College survey showed that students held attitudes that were based primarily off the social model but still had some medical model tendencies. It is my hope that this paper will allow the reader to be more conscious and aware of how the models of disability influence their beliefs and attitudes, and to try to avoid thinking of people with disabilities as deficient or less capable people, but rather as unique individuals who have a lot to offer to society.

3. And, focus on accessible transit solves the ideology of disability reinforced by car culture.

Aldred and Woodcock 08 (Rachel Aldred and James Woodcock; School of Social Sciences, Media, and Cultural Studies University of East London and Department of Epidemiology and Population Health London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine ‘Transport: challenging disabling environments’ Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability; pgs 9-11 ; http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a901696392)

People with mobility impairments would gain much from inclusive urban environments, as would other marginalized road users. Such environments need regular resting facilities for wheelchair users,

visually impaired people, stick users, and others (Wixey et al 2005). However, this way of being in the world is marginalized by motor-centric cities; it is more pleasant to speed along a busy, noisy road by

car than to sit down by it. Policies to promote social participation and health – and avoid environmental crisis – demand fundamental

change. This means challenging car dominance in favor of accessible, inclusive environments with major increases in walking and cycling, and a major reduction in car use. Even now most trips are short trips; in London 72% of car trips are less than 8 km long, a distance suitable for cyclists or vehicles of similar speed, such as electric scooters. However, like the Department of Transport’s handbooks on transport (1982 onwards)

the DPTAC prioritizes private cars, stating that for many disabled people private cars are the only form of accessible transport, and that

restrictions on car use are negative for disabled people. This demonstrates a failure to understand the harms of car based transport systems and to imagine how people with impairments could benefit from a society prioritizing active and green transport. The DPTAC pays little attention to electric scooters and less to cycling. Yet these could play a key role in enabling local

mobility, if combined with measures to counteract urban sprawl and provide employment, services, leisure activities, and retail close to where people live. BOX: We conducted expert interviews with two people involved with disability cycling to supplement our analysis in this under-researched area. Their words are paraphrased below to indicate the potential options, and possible benefits from cycling. Jim Blakemore recently set up Bikeworks, a not for profit inclusive cycling company, in East London. Currently his activities include cycle training for adults and children with learning difficulties (on traditional two wheelers and recumbent bikes, tricycles, and linked cycles) and for people with obesity referred by health professionals. For some people cycling is primarily exercise, fun, and independence, whilst for others a form of transport, perhaps an accompanied cycle journey (e.g. cycle trains, linked cycles, or multi-user cycles) replacing a taxi or community bus ride Paul M. Smith sits on the British Handcycling Association Committee and studies health benefits of handcycling, suitable for many wheelchair users (and others). He finds that handcycling offers considerable health benefits, improving energy balance, developing aerobic fitness, and 10 postponing secondary diseases. It is less likely to result in overuse injuries sustained by wheelchair users. Handcyclists travel considerably faster than a standard day wheelchair and can cope with varying terrain more effectively. Some handcycles can be attached to the front of wheelchairs, while others resemble recumbent bicycles. Jim and Paul agree the biggest barriers to take-up are knowledge and cost. Many disabled people cannot afford traditional or modified cycles, even though they are much cheaper than modified cars. Unlike modified cars, there is no national subsidy scheme available, and very limited project funding is available. Jim finds that other problems include stereotypes: support workers may assume that people with learning difficulties are unable to cycle, whereas they may actually only need additional training. There is a lack of instructors and inclusive, effective cycle training is only now being developed. The health benefits from increasing active travel, makes it important that people with impairments are not excluded. Cycling can be more inclusive than is often realized (see box) and a range of electric scooters exist, with speeds ranging from cycling to

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walking paces. Smaller and lighter than cars, these vehicles have much lower greenhouse gas emissions, and a much smaller environmental footprint. If necessary they can be enclosed. Scooters could offer a high degree of independent non-car based mobility, with

door to door access, in the urban environment. But in a system prioritizing the car and those without impairments, these vehicles appear inferior – and the risk of injury in heavy motorized traffic is real. This can lead to conflict on the pavement as vehicles better suited for the road

compete with pedestrians. Cycling for disabled people is a neglected area lacking support. Small organizations, often reliant on short-term grant funding, exist in some areas including Jim’s Bikeworks in East London and Cycling Projects in North West England. York-based Company of Cyclists provide disability try-out roadshows stating that “[c]ycling is liberating for disabled people …[y]et the potential and the possibilities are largely unrecognized by both the public and professionals in the caring services.” Increased financial, social, and

organizational support are needed to realize this potential. In a society that prioritized active and green transport, all people travelling by active modes, semi active modes (pedal cycles

with a small electric motor), and small electric scooters would be much safer than at present. As the number of cyclists increases, so cycling becomes safer (Jacobsen 2003). There would be a range of low energy

travel options, with low maximum speeds, and urban speed limits of 20 mph or less producing much safer and calmer environments.

Such an environment would not re-create the current “disabled”/”non-disabled” binary. A range of 11 active transport options would be used (including skateboards, scooters, and rollerblades).

Many people with impairments can use traditional cycles, including some who find walking difficult. Electric scooters and power-assisted cycles (foot or hand pedal) would fulfil important functions; in hilly terrain, for longer journeys, or when pulling heavy loads. Taxis would retain a role, although they could be replaced by light electric vehicles, rickshaws, and tandems. For long distance travel, a comprehensive and accessible public transport system is essential. However, here we concentrate on the majority of journeys that could be substituted by pedestrian travel, cycling, or electric scooters.

4. As students participating in policy debates we have an obligation to put disability at the center of our discussion because what we debate about here says a lot about human conduct on a larger scale – this is not a meta-theoretical quibble but central to change the way that disability is represented and conceived

Bérubé, 2003 (Michael, Paterno Family Professor in Literature at Pennsylvania State University, “Citizenship and Disability”, Spring, http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=506)

LET ME EXPLAIN. First, the idea of participatory parity does double duty in Fraser's work, in the sense that it names both the state we would like to achieve and the device by which we can gauge whether we're getting there. For in order to maintain a meaningful democracy in which all citizens participate as legal and moral equals, the state needs to judge whether its policies enhance equal participation in

democratic processes. Yet at the same time, the state needs to enhance equal participation among its citizens

simply in order to determine what its democratic processes will be. This is not a meta-theoretical quibble. On the

contrary, the point is central to the practical workings of any democratic polity. One of the tasks required of democrats is precisely this: to extend the promise of democracy to previously excluded individuals and groups some of whom might have a substantially different

understanding of "participatory parity" than that held by previously dominant groups and individuals. Could anything make this clearer than the politics of disability? Imagine a building in which political philosophers are

debating, in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the value and the purpose of participatory parity over against forms of authoritarianism or theocracy. Now imagine that this building has no access ramps, no Braille or large-print publications, no American Sign Language interpreters, no elevators, no special-needs paraprofessionals, no in-class aides. Contradictory as such a state of affairs may sound, it's a reasonably accurate picture of what contemporary debate over the meaning of democracy actually looks like. How can we remedy this? Only when we have fostered equal participation in debates over the ends and means of democracy can we have a truly participatory debate over what "participatory parity" itself means. That debate will be interminable in principle, since our understandings of democracy and parity are infinitely revisable, but lest we think of deliberative democracy as a forensic society dedicated to empyreal

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reaches of abstraction, we should remember that debates over the meaning of participatory parity set the terms for more specific debates about the varieties of human embodiment. These include debates about prenatal screening, genetic discrimination, stem-cell research, euthanasia, and, with

regard to physical access, ramps, curb cuts, kneeling buses, and buildings employing what is now known as universal design. Leftists and liberals, particularly those associated with university humanities departments, are commonly charged with being moral relativists, unable or unwilling to say (even after September 11) why one society might be "better" than another. So let me be especially clear on this final point. I

think there's a very good reason to extend the franchise, to widen the conversation, to democratize our debates, and to make disability central to our theories of egalitarian social justice. The reason is this: a capacious and supple sense of what it is to be human is better than a

narrow and partial sense of what it is to be human, and the more participants we as a society can incorporate into the deliberation of what it means to be human, the greater the chances that that deliberation will in fact be transformative in such a way as to enhance our collective capacities to recognize each other as humans entitled to human dignity. As Jamie reminds me daily, both deliberately and unwittingly, most

Americans had no idea what people with Down syndrome could achieve until we'd passed and implemented and interpreted and reinterpreted a law entitling them all to a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. I can say all this without

appealing to any innate justification for human dignity and human rights, and I can also say this: Without a sufficient theoretical and practical account of disability, we can have no account of democracy worthy of the name. Perhaps some of our fellow citizens with developmental disabilities would not put

the argument quite this way; even though Jamie has led me to think this way, he doesn't talk the way I do. But those of us who do participate in political debates, whether about school funding in a specific district or about the

theory and practice of democracy at its most abstract, have the obligation to enhance the abilities of our children and our fellow citizens with disabilities to participate in the life of the

United States as political and moral equals with their nondisabled peers-both for their own good, and for the good of democracy, which is to say, for the good of all of us.

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AT: NO MEDICAL MODEL IN STATUS QUO

Against their argument that the medical model is not enforced in the status quo, we have three responses.

1. Extend our 1AC AAPD evidence, both cards. These indicate that the current transportation is inaccessible due to the medical model. They argue that our perception of disability and those who are disabled is influenced heavily by this model, which explains the current problem.

2. The negative offers no competing interpretation for why people with disabilities are not being serviced at equitable levels. Therefore, you have to prefer our evidence.

3. Their argument is not credible because it mentions nothing about the medical model, and EVEN IF the medical model Is not perpetuated by the federal government in the status quo, the states are perpetuating it.

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AT: AFFORDABLE CARE ACT SOLVES

Against their argument that the Affordable Care Acts solves disability oppression, we have three responses.

1. Extend our 1AC AAPD evidence, both cards. These indicate that the current transportation is inaccessible due to the medical model. They argue that the disability oppression is already being solved.

2. The negative offers only example of how health insurance is helping people with disabilities, but this is completely irrelevant to the debate, we’re debating about transportation infrastructure. Their evidence doesn’t indicate how ACA solves stigmatization due to transportation disability. Therefore, you have to prefer our argument.

3. Their argument is not credible because it’s only saying that health insurance is helping people, but in reality, it’s still medical model because the mindset is still on “fixing people.”

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AT: UNIVERSAL DESIGN ALREADY IN PLACE

Against their argument that the universal design is already in the status quo, we have three responses.

1. Extend our 1AC AAPD evidence, both cards. These indicate that the current transportation is inaccessible due to the medical model.

2. The negative actually offers no reason for why transportation system is accessible. Therefore, you have to prefer our evidence.

3. Their argument is not credible because it mentions only about the benefits of universal design, they provide no example of any kind of universal design that is already in place.

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AT: AUTO INDUSTRY IS KEY TO HEGEMONY

Against the negative argument that the auto industry is the key to hegemony, we offer the following.

1. Extend our Springs 7 evidence. This indicates the problem with auto hegemony is that increases the gap between poor and rich nations.

2. The warrant behind their argument that auto industry is key to hege is because our military tech is made using the same factories and tools as the auto industry. This means if we prove that there would be no reduction of these factories then we win this debate.

3. We don’t decrease the use of these factories because we use the same factories to increase transportation infrastructure for Universal Design.

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AT: NO EUGENICS

Against my opponent’s no eugenics argument, we have three responses:

1. Extend my 1AC Elden evidence, which indicates that the medical model labels people as “normal” or “not normal” according to physical characteristics. This was the justification for eugenics

2. Even if we don’t actively incarcerate or sterilize people now, we effectively incarcerate them in their own homes through transportation disparity.

3. And, the eugenic gaze cast by our relationship to disability culminates in genocidal impulse.

Hughes, 2002 (Bill, Professor of Social Policy at the University Glasgow, Disability Studies, p. 60-62)

The dominant framework for understanding disability in the modern period has been the medical model. From the early nineteenth century

onwards, biomedicine legitimated the view that biophysical ‘abnormality’ or

‘maladaptation’ leads to, or is the cause of, social ‘abnormality’ or ‘maladaptation.’ In other words, to be

defined as a ‘flawed body’ is simultaneously to be defined as incapable of adequate social participation. The corporealization of disability meant, in practical terms, the segregation of those so labeled. The logic of the medical model runs from diagnosis to social response. In causal terms, there seem to be three linked elements in the chain: impairment leads to disability, which in turn leads to confinement or ‘institutionalization’. The social respond to the ‘flawed’ body particularly in the nineteenth century – was anthropoemic. This concept refers to the expulsion or exile of alien persons. The Victorian penchant for excluding people from social participation on the ground of what today might be called ‘difference’ was summed up by Foucault’s (1969) notion of the ‘great confinement.’ The segregation associated with

confinement was not only equivalent to a custodial sentence – often for life – but was also the sentence of a ‘social death,’ which was – in itself a sort of tacit legitimation for the denial of human rights and the application of oppressive practices of care (Barnes 1990). These institutional spaces of exclusion, into

which disabled people were cast, were, after all, ‘civilized’ by medical jurisdiction. The very authority that had objectified disabled people by reducing them to their impairments now had the opportunity to define disabled people’s needs and, in many cases, act in locl parentis.

[continues] The medical model of disability is, and has been, strongly associated with the potentially reactionary, theme that ‘biology is destiny,’ and is embedded in popular culture by the ‘naturalization’ of

the view that natural aptitudes determine life chances. Nurture is causally impotent in the social world, it is natural endowment that is the most efficacious variable. At its worst, in the nineteenth century, the medicalization of disability dovetailed with what Foucault called the ‘racisms of the state’ (1979: 54), with the Darwinist and eugenicist perspectives which promised to cleanse the social body of impunity, imperfection, degeneracy and effectiveness. [continues] The concept of ‘fitness’ was used, in such contexts, as a criterion for making

‘humanity’ – defined in terms of aesthetic ideals of embodiment – into a relative term. Modernity is riddled with such eugenic conceptions of social hygiene. They are based on the view that disabled people are either ‘unfit’ to be in society or to reproduce. The eugenic gaze proposes collective solutions to the

contaminant that disabled bodies represent, but does not propose collectivist explanations. It is imprisoned in the repertoire of socio-biology

and social Darwinism, and treats disability as an error of nature that should be righted. When wedded to a rigid

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concept of heredity, biological reductionism may at its worst translate into a politics of genocide.

4.

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AT: BIOPOWER GOOD

Against the Negative’s argument that biopower is good, I present the following:

1. Extend our Elden 2002 card, this shows the downside of biopower. This biopower mindset creates two groups: able bodied and non-abled bodied. And makes it okay to segregate and to have eventual extinction of the non-abled bodied.

2. Through Universal Design transportation has mobility for all.

3. Second we are protecting personal freedom our plan gives equal access to society for all. Let me reiterate, we are giving more to the people instead of taking away.

4. Their argument is not credible because not only did they not understand what biopower is, and our plan solves for all the problems that the negative brings up.

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AT: CARS GOOD FOR ECON

Against the Neg’s cars good for the econ argument, we provide the following responses:

1. Extend our Langan 2001 card that states that this continued focus on automobility is not only bad for disability rights, it reinforces this idea that the mobility is defined by the accessibility to transportation.

2. The negative brings up all these economic based arguments. But they clearly don’t care about disability rights because they care about the economic benefits of cars. This is horrible because not only thinking about this in the medical model, they completely disregard the social benefits this would have everyone.

3. Not only do we take an active in disability rights, we also benefit the economy because of Universal Design. To make this new infrastructure we would use the same factories that make automobiles.

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AT: ECON DA

1. Turn – The current narrative of economic growth proceeds in a fashion that leaves out those most vulnerable and excluded – the celebration of protecting profit and wholesale growth condones the genocidal sacrifice of those unable to make it on their own.

Abu-Jamal, 1998(Mumia, Peace Activist, September 19, http://www.flashpoints.net/mQuietDeadlyViolence.html)

We live, equally immersed, and to a deeper degree, in a nation that condones and ignores wide-ranging "structural' violence, of a kind that destroys human life with a breathtaking ruthlessness. Former Massachusetts prison official and writer, Dr. James Gilligan observes; By "structural violence" I mean the increased rates of death and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted by those who

are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of the class structure; and that structure is itself a product of society's collective human choices, concerning how to distribute

the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting "structural" with "behavioral violence" by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on. --(Gilligan, J., MD, Violence: Reflections On a National

Epidemic (New York: Vintage, 1996), 192.) This form of violence, not covered by any of the majoritarian, corporate,

ruling-class protected media, is invisible to us and because of its invisibility, all the more insidious. How dangerous is it--really? Gilligan notes: [E]very fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths; and every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world. [Gilligan, p. 196] Worse still, in a thoroughly capitalist society, much of that violence became

internalized, turned back on the Self, because, in a society based on the priority of wealth, those who own nothing are taught to loathe themselves, as if something is inherently wrong with themselves, instead of the social order that promotes this self-loathing. This intense self-hatred was often manifested in familial violence as when the husband beats the wife, the wife smacks the son, and the kids fight each other. This vicious, circular, and invisible violence, unacknowledged by the corporate media, uncriticized in substandard educational systems, and un-understood by the very folks who suffer in its grips, feeds on the spectacular and more common forms of violence that the system makes damn sure -that we can recognize and must react to it. This fatal and systematic violence may be called The War on the Poor.

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2. Case Outweighs – This is crucial to give value to your ballot – the affirmation of economic growth is a joyless and dead move – relying on the market as the baseline for your decision deprives your decision itself of what makes us human

Jhally, 2000 (Sut, Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, http://www.sutjhally.com/onlinepubs/apocalypse.html)

The social upheavals of eastern Europe were pushed by this vision. As Gloria Steinhem described the East German transformation: "First we have a revolution then we go shopping." (in Ehrenreich 1990 p.46) The attractions of this vision in the Third World are not difficult to discern. When your reality is empty stomachs and empty shelves, no wonder the marketplace appears as the panacea for your problems.

When your reality is hunger and despair it should not be surprising that the seductive images of desire and abundance emanating from the advertising system should be so influential in thinking about social and economic policy. Indeed not only happiness but political freedom

itself is made possible by access to the immense collection of commodities. These are very powerful stories that equate happiness and freedom with consumption - and advertising is the main propaganda arm

of this view. The question that we need to pose at this stage (that is almost never asked) is, "Is it true?." Does happiness come from material things? Do we get happier as a society as we get richer, as our standard of living increases, as we have more access to the immense collection of objects? Obviously these are complex issues, but the general answer to these questions is "no." (see Leiss et al 1990 Chapter 10 for a fuller discussion of these issues.) In a series of surveys conducted in the United States starting in 1945 (labeled "the happiness surveys") researchers sought to examine the link between material wealth and subjective happiness, and concluded that, when examined both cross-culturally as well as historically in one society, there is a very weak correlation. Why should this be so? When we examine this process more closely the conclusions appear to be less surprising than our intuitive perspective might suggest. In another series of surveys (the "quality of life surveys") people were asked about the kinds of things that are important to them - about what would constitute a good quality of life. The findings of this line of research indicate that if the elements of satisfaction were divided to be up into social values (love, family, friends) and material values (economic security and success) the former outranks the latter in terms of importance. What people say they really want out of life is: autonomy and control of life; good self-esteem; warm family relationships; tension-free leisure time; close and intimate friends; as well as romance and love. This is not to say that material values are not important. They form a necessary component of a good quality of life. But above a certain level of poverty and comfort, material things stop giving us the kind of satisfaction that the magical world of advertising insists they can deliver. These conclusion point to one of the great ironies of the market system. The

market is good at providing those things that can be bought and sold and it pushed us - via advertising - in that direction. But the real sources of happiness - social relationships - are outside the capability of the marketplace to provide. The marketplace cannot provide love, it cannot provide real friendships, it cannot provide sociability. It can provide other material things and services - but they are not what makes us happy. The

advertising industry has known this since at least the 1920s and in fact have stopped trying to sell us things based on their material qualities alone. If we examine the advertising of the end of the 19th and first years of the 20th century, we would see that advertising talked a lot about the properties of commodities - what they did, how well they did it, etc.. But starting in the 1920s advertising shifts to talking about the relationship of objects to the social life of people. It starts to connect commodities (the things they have to sell) with the powerful images of a deeply desired social life that people say they want. No wonder then that advertising is so attractive to us, so powerful, so seductive. What it offers us are images of the real sources of human happiness - family life, romance and love, sexuality and pleasure, friendship and sociability, leisure and relaxation, independence and control of life. That is why advertising is so powerful, that is what is real about it. The cruel illusion of advertising however is in the way that it links those qualities to a place that by definition cannot provide it - the market and the immense collection of commodities. The falsity of advertising is not in the appeals it makes (which are very real) but in the answers it provides. We want love and friendship and sexuality - and advertising points the way to it through objects. To reject or criticize advertising as false and manipulative misses the point. Ad executive Jerry Goodis puts it this way: "Advertising doesn't mirror how people are acting but how they are dreaming." (in Nelson 1983) It taps into our real emotions and repackages them back to us connected to the world of things. What advertising really reflects in that sense is the dreamlife of the culture. Even saying this however simplifies a deeper process because advertisers do more than mirror our dreamlife – they help to create it. They translate our desires (for love, for family, for friendship, for adventure, for sex) into our dreams. Advertising is like a fantasy factory, taking our desire for human social contact and reconceiving it, reconceptualizing it, connecting it with the world of commodities and then translating into a form that can be communicated. The great irony is that as advertising does this it draws us further away from what really has the capacity to satisfy us (meaningful human contact and relationships) to what does not (material things). In that sense advertising reduces our capacity to become happy by pushing us, cajoling us, to carry on in the direction of things. If we really wanted to create a world that reflected our desires then the consumer culture would not be it. It would look very different – a society that stressed and built the institutions that would foster social relationships, rather than endless material accumulation. Advertising’s role in channeling us in these fruitless directions is profound. In one sense, its

function is nalogous to the drug pusher on the street corner. As we try and break our addiction to things it is there, constantly offering us another “hit.” By persistently pushing the idea of the good life being connected to products, and by colonizing every nook and cranny of the culture where alternative ideas could be raised, advertising is an important part of the creation of what

Tibor Scitovsky (1976) calls “the joyless economy.” The great political challenge that emerges from this analysis is how to

connect our real desires to a truly human world, rather than the dead world of the “immense collection of commodities.”

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3. This is your decision calculus right here – Economics is a ruse; it is a constant excuse for maintaining the boundaries that exclude the disabled – voting for their disad only reinforces the societal view of the disabled that we are criticizing

Johnson, 2007 (Mary, Editor of Ragged Edge Magazine, “Before Its Time: Public Perception of Disability Rights, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Future of Access and Accommodation”, Washington University Journal of Law and Policy, 23 Wash. U. J.L. & Pol'y 121, April 12)

In 1990 the ADA passed both houses of Congress by huge majorities.8 Although

news coverage in the days surrounding its passage called it a “civil rights law,” the ADA had certainly not been preceded by the kind of national uproar and soul searching that had led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Indeed, most Americans were unaware of the

ADA, before and after its passage.9 The law came with an exception: rights would be extended, but not if providing the access (or “accommodation” as the law called it) would overly inconvenience others.10 The ADA is a civil rights act with an economic loophole built in: it says if assuring rights of access cost too much they do not have to be granted. The terms in the bill that

Congress passed were “undue hardship” and “reasonable accommodation.” If it was too hard for a business, it did not have to be done; if

the accommodation was not “reasonable,” it did not have to be provided.11 The product of an era in which the public discourse centered on economics and not the moral imperatives of

the civil rights era, the bill offered nondiscrimination protections to persons with disabilities and included a three-part definition to

explain just who those persons were.12 The economic loophole was considered reasonable because people believed disability rights were different than other civil rights. The argument went like this: with women and minorities, removing the discrimination was a relatively painless act of simply no longer telling people they could not come in your store, could not hold that job, and so on. With disabled people, something else had to be done, generally something physical: a ramp had to be

installed; a sign language interpreter had to be hired for a meeting; a meeting agenda had to be printed in a large-print format; seats had to

be removed. In order to correct the discrimination against disabled individuals, businesses had to do physical things, which they generally viewed as costly things.

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AT: POLITICS DA

1. Link Turn – No politician, Democrat or Republican, will be caught dead voting against such a plan. The plan is supported from both sides of the isle

Heasley 12(Founder and Writer for DisabilityScoop.com – a leading news source for disability issues,( Shaun “Disability Rights Treaty Gains Support”, May 29, http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2012/05/29/disability-treaty-support/15735/)

In a rare show of bipartisan support, a group of senators said they want the United States to ratify an international convention on the rights of people with disabilities. The U.S. already signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2009, but

approval from the U.S. Senate is needed to make the move official. President Barack Obama transmitted the treaty to the Senate earlier this month and asked the body to ratify it. Now, a group of seven

senators representing both political parties is voicing support for the treaty as well. “All people deserve to be granted full and equal basic human rights, regardless of their physical or mental capabilities. I strongly support ratification of this critical treaty, and urge my colleagues to do the same,” said

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del. The treaty calls for greater community access and a better standard of living for the estimated 650 million people around the world with disabilities. In addition to Coons, other lawmakers coming out in support of the convention include Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa; Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.; Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan.; Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.; and Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M. Currently, 153 countries have signed the disability treaty and 112 have ratified it, according to the U.N.

2. The political process is rigged to exclude the disabled – to make your decision based upon political capital and bargaining is to render your decision complicit in the systematic exclusion of the disabled – the impact is our case

Orentlicher, 1996 (David, Professor of Law at Indiana University, 31 Harv. C.R.-C.L.L. Rev. 49, Winter)

A more expansive interpretation of the ADA and Rehabilitation Act would better realize the purposes of the principle of reasonable accommodations. The principle of reasonable accommodations recognizes two important truths. First, it recognizes that disability is not simply an intrinsic characteristic of a person but is the result of the interaction between a person's intrinsic qualities and the environment. 87

Second, the principle recognizes that the environment is shaped not simply by natural, inevitable forces but also has been shaped to serve the interests of some segments of society at the expense of others. The socio-political environment cannot [*67] always be

justified by the operation of neutral or objective principles or by principles that are otherwise morally valid. 88 Indeed, there is nothing "natural" or ineluctable about the fact that most aspects of socio-political organization respond primarily to the needs of persons without disabilities ,

89 just as there is nothing inevitable about the fact that the post office and many businesses cease operations on Sunday, the Christian

Sabbath, rather than on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, or Friday, the Moslem Sabbath. Social norms develop not because they are pre-ordained, but because they serve the needs of social groups that are dominant either in numbers or power. Often, social arrangements develop around a social norm of a

person without disabilities because of inattention to the needs of persons with disabilities. In addition, in some cases, society purposefully creates its institutions for the convenience of persons without disabilities while aware of the hardship imposed on persons with disabilities. For example, it is commonly the case that mentally retarded persons are perceived to be physically unattractive. Yet, with a little assistance

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in grooming, many of these individuals can take on an "attractive" appearance. 90 Some institutions for the mentally retarded have intentionally neglected the grooming of their wards to discourage them from entering into romantic or sexual relationships. 91 The operators find that such relationships complicate their work; in addition, non-retarded persons are often unwilling to permit sexual or romantic activity by retarded persons. 92 In short, persons without disabilities may compromise the interests of persons with disabilities for their own

convenience and psychological comfort. How a social norm develops, then, may depend much more on considerations of popularity or political power than upon alternative visions of distributive justice that often have greater moral weight. Because socio-political forces frequently exacerbate the impact of a disability without sufficient moral justification, anti-

discrimination law requires [*68] modifications of social policies to ameliorate the deleterious effects of socio-political forces on disability.

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AT: FEDERALISM DA

1. No Link – Plan not perceived as threat to federalism.

Cameron and Valentine, 2001 (David, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party, Fraser, Professor at Ryerson University, “Disability and Federalism: Comparing Different Approaches to Full Participation”, http://books.google.com/book s?hl=en&lr=&id=q5F8Oqks7oUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA 1&dq=Disability+and+Federalism:+Comparing+Different+Approaches+to+Full+Participation&ots=vhr2r60Sh2&sig=yknyDwNkcNyX66RQv7Zyl-ahnNQ#v=onepage&q&f=true)

Third. as for policy outputs in the disability field, we found striking variations among the live federations in program design, in the choice of de- livery vehicles, and in administrative organization. While we would not argue that federal differentiation offers the only explanatory factor

in understanding these differences, it is clear that the distinctive character of the federal regime makes a significant difference . This will become clear as we examine and com- pare each of the

five federations. What of our second question, which asks about the impact of disable- ment on the five federations under review? We have found that the existence of disablement and the public response to it has had very little impact on the nature and functioning of the five federations under study. Examining the disability policy field in comparative terms has uncovered a partial explanation for this pattern. While most individuals will experience some form of disablement during their lifetime (especially as one ages). there is a common perception that disability does not affect everyone in society. Disability is often understood as a phenomenon which affects only a minority of a nation's population. Matters of health and illness by contrast, are perceived as universal phenomena; they are viewed as affecting everyone in a society. We have found that these perceived and structural realities shape the two policy fields. lt seems clear that health care, being of central and universal public concern. has a palpable impact on federalism, certainly in the Canadian case. and vice versa.

Disability. on the other hand, being viewed to some extent as a “niche concern,“ yields a much more limited. lower profile policy discourse which drastically reduces its capacity to affect the federal system in the countries we examined. Thus. the story of our country studies

is primarily an account of the impact of the federal regime on the disabled policy field. We will return to this point later on in our discussion.

2. No Link – Plan spun as a civil rights bill – ADA proves.

Percy, 2001 (Stephen, Ph.D., Indiana University A.B., Hamilton College, Political Science Professor at the University of Milwaukee, “Disability and Federalism: Comparing Different Approaches to Full Participation”, http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=q5F8Oqks7oUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=Disability+and+Federalism:+Comparing+Different+Approaches+to+Full+Participation&ots=vhr2r60Sh2&sig=yknyDwNkcNyX66RQv7Zyl-ahnNQ#v=onepage&q&f=true,256-257)

There is no question but that the Americans with Disabilities Act represents application of significant governing authority by the national government ,

power activated by constitutional authority in place of a condition-of-aid mandate. Americans as citizens, and the state governments that represent them. gener- ally accepted this assertion of power aimed at protecting the rights and opportunities of people with disabilities.

While such national assertions of power have generated controversy, even rebellion, in the past, the ADA did not raise the hackles of the states; instead the states accepted the ADA with the primary worries focusing on the costs of compliance rather than

the need to challenge national government authority. The overall acquiescence of the states to nationally defined and implemented

protections for people with disabilities can be explained by multiple factors. First, the national government’s assertion of policy-making authority in the area of civil rights dates back to the l950s as the United States contemplated laws to protect the rights first of people of color and then rights of women. By the late l98Os as the ADA was drafted and debated, civil rights controversies pitting the state governments

against the national government had abated with overall acceptance of national government prominence in civil rights policy. From this perspective, the ADA became one of a long

developing set of civil rights policies with the national government operating at the helm. Another explanation of state government acceptance of national government authority as articulated in the ADA is that states had themselves already moved by the 1980s to create disability rights policies.

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AT: TAXES BAD DA

1. Non-Unique – The DA is incredibly non-unique. There have been so many tax increases since their uniqueness card was written. Either the impacts are not true or will already happen in the status quo.

2. Impact Turn - Tax increase would benefit the economy – Clinton era proves

Reich, 2102Robert Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton

administration, 2012, (The Truth About Obama's Tax Proposal (and the Lies the Regressives Are Telling About It), 7/10, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/obama-tax-proposal_b_1661908.html)

A third lie is Obama's proposal will "increase uncertainly and further retard investment and job creation," as the Journal puts it. Don't

believe it. The real reason businesses aren't creating more jobs is American consumers -- whose purchases constitute 70 percent of U.S. economic activity -- don't have the money to buy more, and they can no longer borrow as before. Businesses won't invest and hire without consumers. Even as executive pay keeps rising, the median wage keeps dropping -- largely because businesses keep whacking payrolls. The only people who'd have to pay substantially more taxes under Obama's proposal are those earning far in excess of $250,000 -- and they aren't small businesses. They're the fattest of corpulent felines. Their spending will not be affected if their official tax rate rises from the Bush 35 percent to the Bill Clinton 39.6 percent. In fact, most of these people's income is unearned -- capital gains and dividends that are now taxed at only 15 percent. If

the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule, the capital gains rate would return to the same 20 percent it was under Bill Clinton (the Affordable

Care Act would add a 3.8 percent surcharge). Funny, I don't remember the economy suffering under Bill Clinton's taxes. I was in Clinton's cabinet, so perhaps my memory is self-serving. But I seem to recall that the economy generated 22 million net new jobs during those years, unemployment fell dramatically, almost everyone's income grew, poverty dropped, and the economy soared. In fact, it was the strongest and best economy we've had in anyone's memory. In sum: Don't fall for these

big lies -- Obama wants to extend the Bush tax cut "only for some people," small businesses will be badly hit, businesses won't hire

because of uncertainty this proposal would create, or the Clinton-era tax levels crippled the economy, A ton of corporate and billionaire money is behind these lies and others like them, as well as formidable mouthpieces of

the regressive right such as Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal editorial page.

3. Case Outweighs on Probability – Their argument is based off economic theory and model, which isn’t guaranteed. Our argument is based on the history, which already happened, and will HAPPEN AGAIN, so it’s the most reliable.

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4. Case outweighs on magnitude. Our plan will not destroy the economy, even if it increases taxes. By passing our plan, you will create more universal transportation, helping people get to their work and get more money. This is helping the economy.

AT: GENERIC CP

1. Perm – (Fill in yourself)

2. Perm Solves – (Fill in yourself)

3. Proves No Competition – (Fill in yourself)

4. No Net Benefits – (Fill in yourself)

5. Their counterplan is based on an overly rational bureaucracy that enables mass violence against disabled populations

Hughes, 2002(Bill, Glasgow Caledonian University, School of Social Science, Bauman's Strangers, Disability & Society, Vol. 17 No. 5, p. 571-584, EBSCO)

Bureaucracy is ultra-rational, driven to embrace the abnormally normal. It makes cruelty and barbarism possible because it has no sense of suffering and should it be asked to provide a moral justification for its actions then it can always appeal to a banal utilitarian ethic like social Darwinism. The bureaucratic machine thrives on

social distance and makes no direct or emotional contact with the flushed face of the doomed stranger. The totalitarian state violence that sponsored the genocide of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled people and other ‘undesirables’ was produced by unique cultural and historical conditions, but nonetheless, the holocaust must be understood as ‘an extraordinary example of the irrationality of modern rationality’ (Beilharz, 2000, p. 98). Modern culture—in Bauman’s view—is both heterophobic and morally indifferent, and as such will be well disposed to any means that proposes the extirpation of difference. Given this position, it is little wonder that in the 1990s, Bauman tries to

inject moral sensibilities into cultural critique by drawing on Levinas’ (1981) argument that ethics is ‘first philosophy’ and that responsibility for the other is paramount to the extent that moral action precedes rational calculation. Modern history suggests that when the reverse is the case, disabled people will suffer at the hands of power. Mitchell & Snyder (2001, p.

213) argue that the ‘desired eradication’ of disability ‘is countered only with the ferocity of an ultimate recalcitrance to … violent “utopian” solutions.’

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AT: CONSULT/PROCESS CP

1. Perm – (Fill in yourself)

2. Perm Solves – (Fill in yourself)

3. Proves No Competition – (Fill in yourself)

4. No Net Benefits – (Fill in yourself)

5. Their approach objectifies the disabled – subjecting plan to outside decision is the ultimate gaze – functions as oversight

Hughes, 1999 (Bill, Department of Social Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University, “The Constitution of Impairment: Modernity and the Aesthetic of Oppression”, Disability & Society, Vol. 14 No. 2, p. 155-172, EBSCO)

To look at, is to command a visual field, to oversee a `kingdom of ends’ , but to be looked at, is to become an object in the visual field of another to become `an object for another’ to be constituted as a `means’ within a panorama commanded by another. `I’ am no longer at the centre, but thrown to the periphery: `I am in a world which the Other has made alien for me ¼ I am ¼ in the midst of a world which ¯ ows toward the other’ (Sartre, 1958, p. 261). The absolute freedom of the solipsistic self is displaced by the spatialisation and temporalisation imposed by the gaze of the other. One is reminded of Wordsworth’ s view that sight `is the most despotic of the senses’ ; a despotism which embodies the ultimate sanction: `I read in the other’ s watchful look ¼ the gun pointed at me’ (Sartre, 1958, p. 245). Sartre is concerned with the dialectical play of power as it is manifest in looking at and being looked at. The child, for example, is subdued by the adult gaze and, in being looked at, is transformed into the object of the gaze. In the act of perception, the adults’ status as subject is substantiated

while the child’ s status as subject is threatened, demeaned, exposed. The child is infantilised. This process of objectification coincides with the tyranny of supervision and loss of freedom. The parallel with the panopticon as a system of social control based on surveillance through visibility (Foucault, 1977a,b) is obvious: `The Sartrian gaze is epitomised by such functions as supervision and oversight that refer to the control of human beings by placing them into an embracing perspective of another individual or group’ (Weinstein & Weinstein, 1984, p. 358). For Foucault, the

`eyes are instruments of power’ and `sight is not only vision, it is knowledge and power’ (Synnott, 1993, p. 215) which, in modernity, is spacialised into a complex system of surveillance and self-surveillance. The latter refers to the process by which the ubiquity and pervasiveness of ocular techniques produce `subjects’ who watch themselves. For Foucault, the gaze (of the disciplines) is more manifest in institutional forms of domination and regulation (Turner, 1996, p. 160) than in the oppressiveness of intercorporeal relationships [4]. For

Sartre, the gaze is profoundly socially constitutive and part of what he calls Ð in the `Critique

of Dialectical Reason’ Ð `the praxis of oppression’ (1982, p. 721). While it confers power on who so ever commands

the visual field, it is the font of shame and humiliation for who so ever is objectified. Indeed, `when the body is on display to the gaze of the other, it becomes a fallen object, which is the original meaning of our sense of shame at being caught naked’ (Jay, 1994, p. 289). To be looked at is to experience a loss of power and the feeling of the play of power on the surface of the body. Ones eyes are cast down as they flee from the eye of power; be it, for example, in the form of the male gaze (Paglia, 1990; Wolf, 1990), the colonial gaze (Fanon, 1963; Sartre, 1982) or the medical gaze (Foucault, 1973). Yet, in the same moment, the possibility of resistance is evident.

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AT: MEXICO BUILD CP

1. Perm – The USFG will implement funding for plan, but Mexico will build the infrastructure.

2. Perm proves non-exclusivity – The resolution only shows we have a burden to increase investment, not physically implement. This means we don’t sever out of any 1AC plan text.

3. No Solvency – Cross-apply our 1AC Springs evidence, which indicates that other nations exclusively model their policy on USFG policy. This means CP alone does not gain any benefit of spillover. They don’t provide evidence that says other countries model Mexico, therefore they can’t solve all of Harms.

4. Perm Solves Better – This means our perm captures 100% of the solvency of the CP without severing out of 1AC plan text.

5. Err Affirmative – Remember that once the negative runs a CP, presumption lies with the affirmative. This means we win if we prove one of two things: (1) plan or perm can happen at the same time as counterplan, OR (2) perm is better than CP. This means you have two options RIGHT NOW to vote affirmative.

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AT: STATES CP

1. Perm – States can implement with funding provided by the federal government.

2. Perm proves non-exclusivity – The resolution only shows we have a burden to increase investment, not physically implement. This means we don’t sever out of any 1AC plan text.

3. No Solvency – Cross-apply our 1AC Springs evidence, which indicates that other nations exclusively model their policy on fed policy. This means CP alone does not gain any benefit of spillover. They don’t provide evidence that says other countries model the states, therefore they can’t solve all of Harms.

4. Fed solves better – The social signals sent by federal law matter: Congressional treatment of persons with disabilities has reinforced the medical model that writes them off as less than human.

Drimmer, 93 (Editor, UCLA Law Review. J.D., UCLA (Jonathan, “CRIPPLES, OVERCOMERS, AND CIVIL RIGHTS: TRACING THE EVOLUTION OF FEDERAL LEGISLATION AND SOCIAL POLICY FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES” 40 UCLA L. Rev. 1341, June, lexis)

Both the medical and social pathology interpretations (and a majority of federal legislation)

function under the assumption that something within the individual with a disability is wrong and must be fixed. This locates the "problem" within the individual with a disability, stigmatizing and

labeling that person with a status of physiological inferiority. According to many sociologists, the major problem faced by people with disabilities is learning to conquer [*1350] not their own physical handicaps, but social stigma. Most commentators think that "[s]tigmatizing actions harm the individual in two ways:

They inflict psychological injury by assaulting a person's self-respect and human dignity, and they brand the individual with a sign that signals her inferior status to others and designates her as an outcast." With regard to

the latter effect of stigma, the "dominant group has systematically used stigmatizing labels against" people with disabilities and has developed a social system of laws, practices, and cultural mores that devalues people with disabilities, treating them as different from, and inferior to, the norm. The [*1351] laws and practices effectively define people with disabilities as inferior, exclude people with disabilities from society, and rationalize such treatment as justified and natural. As to the psychological damage of stigma, the true harm comes when

a person with a disability accepts the values developed by a society that labels disability as a sign of inferiority. With society continually reinforcing these beliefs through the law, cultural practice, and a denial of

participation for people with disabilities, it is difficult for a person with a disability not "to accept at least part of the version of their identities imposed by the stigma." For these people the "injurious effects of

stigmatizing inequalities are both psychological and tangible. It hurts to confront, day after day, the denial of your individual humanity."

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5. Perm Solves Better – Federal signaling means our perm captures 100% of the solvency of the CP without severing out of 1AC plan text.

6. Err Affirmative – Remember that once the negative runs a CP, presumption lies with the affirmative. This means we win if we prove one of two things: (1) plan or perm can happen at the same time as counterplan, OR (2) perm is better than CP. This means you have two options RIGHT NOW to vote affirmative.

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AT: GENERIC K

1. Perm – Combine theoretical framework of the K with political engagement of plan.

2. Perm Solves Best – We need to combine theoretical approaches to disabilities, not close down possibilities for engaging politics

Goggin and Newell 2006[Gerard Goggin, professor of Digital Communication at the University of New South Wales and Christopher Newell, Senior lecturer in medical ethics at the University of Tasmania Medical School. 2006 “Disability’s Affect Or, Refugees Communications and Community” Southern Review 38.2]

It could be convenient to say that emotion refers to the social expression of affect, and affect in turn is the biological and physiological

experience of it to an extent, this is an apt description. But it also seems that disciplinary pride keeps the camps separate when what is needed is a radical cross-fertilization of ideas (Probyn 2005, pp. 25-6). To explain how affect works, Massumi offers the example of an episode in the life of Ronald Reagan. For Massumi, Reagan is able to mobilize power based on image, and to achieve ideological effects in ways not traditionally marshalled to explain ideology. So, for instance, Massumi offers the parable of the day that Ronald Reagan gained his confidence as an actor —to explain precisely how a subject is constituted via the affective, in the movie King's Row, Reagan plays a young handsome character. Who has an accident, and wakes up to find that his legs have been amputated. Reagan found it very difficult to imagine how he would portray the character in this event, remembering it as the 'most challenging acting problem in my career' (Massumi 2002, p. 52), To help him out, the prop men arranged an illusion: Reagan was lying in the bed unable to see his legs, and in this way he found he was able to enter into

the character. Massumi takes this story about the acquiring-of-a-disability to be exemplary of the relationship between the body and an image—the 'coupling of a unit of quasi corporeality

with a unit of passion' he dubs an 'affect' (2002, p. 61). Such a gaining of impairment provides Massumi with a metaphorics for his theory of identity: 'Rethink body, subjectivity, and social change in terms of movement, affect, force, and violence— before, code, text, and signification...What is left of us, after "our" unity has completed "his" amputation?' (2002, p. 67). Our brief detour through Massumi's rich, suggestive discussion of affect highlights that disability is a central but unnoticed part of his conception of subjectivity. This is not the place

to elaborate our critique of Massumi, Instead, we wish to revise this parable about affect so its hinging upon disability is explicitly theorized. Our very theories of subjectivity need to be reworked here, so that disability is not just used to 'prop' up our arguments (Mitchell & Snyder 2001), but rather is incorporated in a decentering and questioning of the normalcy inherent even in post-structuralist theories of the body (Davis 1995), • For their part, disability studies scholars appear to be only in

the early stages of considering the implications of affect for what light it might cast on their concerns with bodies, power, and desire (for important work see Hickey-Moody 2005; Hickey-Moody & Iocco 2004; Holmes 2004; O'Brien 2005). One difficulty here may be the often troubled place of cultural studies and cultural theory in the new, critical disability studies, still dominated by the 'social model' of disability, especially in Britain, but also to a lesser extent, Australian academies and disability movernents,1From various standpoints, including post-structuralist and feminist theory, the critique of the social model has explored its limits in both social constructionist and historical materialist variants (among many discussions see Corker & Thomas 2000). Lived embodiment of impairment, and the stubborn and painful

ways in which it reasserts its challenges to its symbolization in language and society, is a leitmotif in much theory. Our own position seeks to acknowledge the socio-political nature of disability, but also to incorporate accounts of cultural, ethical and spiritual dimensions. We

draw upon new social and cultural theories of disability, such as those pro- posed by North. American theorists, especially those influenced by literary and cultural studies (see, for example, contributions to Snyder et al: 2002) as well as Australian theorists (Meekosha 2004 Affect has much potential to move the theorizing of disability beyond the impasse of the dualistic social model; and its tendency to foreclose upon and disavow the body and the biological. Such a rethinking may have much to say to the humanities which, as Anna Gibbs notes, with an often-used metaphor that resonates aptly in this context, have 'been handicapped by a refusal to consider affect as anything more than culturally constructed "feelings" and "emotions" substantially divorced from the materiality of the body' (2002b, p. 337),

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3. The permutation solves best – a relationship to the state is a pre-requisite to successful political strategies concerning disability, and even other forms of oppression.

Oliver and Zarb 1989(Mike and Gerry, professor of disability studies at the university of Greenwich, policy analyst at the disability rights commission in the UK, “The Politics of Disability: a new approach.”)

But in order to challenge what might be called attitudes (Finkelstein, Cornes), mentality (Davis) or more properly,

in the context of this analysis, ideology, then clearly the disability movement must work out an appropriate political strategy. As has already been indicated, this cannot be done through traditional political participation in parties or pressure groups, but has to be addressed in terms of the relationship between the disability movement and the State, the second element within Gramsci's (1971) framework. The relationships of these new social movements in

general to the State have been considered in some detail and raise crucial issues of political strategy. If social movements carry forward a revolt of civil society against the state-and thus remain largely outside the bourgeois public sphere-they typically have failed to engage the state system as part of a larger democratizing project. In the absence of

a coherent approach to the state, political strategy is rendered abstract and impotent. (Boggs, 1986, pp. 56-7) On the other hand, to engage in an uncritical relationship to the State, is to risk at best, incorporation and absorption, and at worst, isolation and marginalisation and perhaps, ultimately, oblivion. Leaving aside the question of whether the State represents specific interests or is relatively autonomous, the disability movement has to decide how it wishes such a relationship to develop. Should it settle for incorporation into State activities with the prospect of piecemeal gains in social policy and legislation with the risks that representations to political institutions will be ignored or manipulated? Or, should it remain separate from the State and concentrate on consciousness-raising activities leading to long-term changes in policy and practice and the empowerment of disabled people, with the attendant risks that the movement may be marginalised

or isolated? In practice it cannot be a matter of choosing one or the other of these positions, for the disability movement must develop a relationship with the State so that it can secure proper resources and play a role in changing social policy and professional practice. On the other hand, it must

remain independent of the State to ensure that the changes that take place do not ultimately reflect the establishment view and reproduce paternalistic and dependency-creating services, but are based upon changing and dynamic conceptions of disability as articulated by disabled people themselves. Such is the nature of a crucial issue facing the disability movement over the next few years and the complexities of the task should not be underestimated. In order, however, to develop an appropriate relationship with the State, all new social movements, including the disability movement, must establish a firm basis within civil society. The important point is that these movements, as emergent, broad-based agencies of social change, are situated primarily within civil society rather than the conventional realm of pluralist democracy. Further, the tendency toward convergence of some movements (for example, feminism and the peace movement) gives them a radical potential far greater than the sum of particular groups. Even though their capacity to overthrow any power structure is still minimal, they have begun to introduce a new language of critical discourse that departs profoundly from the theory and practice of conventional politics. (Boggs, 1986, p. 22) Thus, because these movements are developing within the separate sphere of civil society, they do not risk incorporation into the State, nor indeed do they need to follow a political agenda or strategy set by the State. Hence, they can engage in consciousness raising activities, demonstrations, sit-ins and other forms of political activity within civil society. Further, they can develop links with each other so that their potential as a whole is greater than that of their constituent parts. Finally, the relationship to organised labour needs to be renegotiated, which means that labour will have "to confront its own legacy of racism, sexism and national chauvinism" because The complex relationship between labour and social movements, class and politics-not to mention the recomposition of the workforce itself-invalidates any scheme that assigns to labour a hegemonic or privileged role in social transformation. (Boggs, 1986, p. 233) As far as the disability movement is concerned, its growth and development have been within the realm of civil society. It has used consciousness and self-affirmation as a political tactic and has begun to be involved in political activities such as demonstrations and sit-ins outside the realm of State political

activities. By reconceptualising disability as social restriction or oppression, it has opened up the possibilities of collaborating or co-operating with other socially restricted or oppressed groups. But it has also crossed the borderline between the State and civil

society by developing its own service provision, sometimes in conflict and sometimes in co-operation with State professionals, and has, on occasions, engaged in interest representation within the State political apparatus. The issue of crossing the borderline to the economy and establishing links with organised labour, however, has yet to be properly addressed. It could be said that as well as overcoming its racism, sexism and chauvinism, organised labour has to overcome its disablism too. While the labour movement has been broadly supportive in wishing to retain the Quota, established by the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act 1944, it has been disablist in its resistance to changing work practices to facilitate the employment of disabled people and to re-writing job specifications to enable disabled people to get the kind of personal support they need to live better lives in both the community and residential care.

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4. Discursive focus is insufficient – only the permutation results in real change

Harpur 2012 (Paul, TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, Brisbane, “From disability to ability: changing the phrasing of the debate,” Disability & Society Vol. 21, No. 2, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.654985.)

While altering the language used to describe disability discrimination can assist in

culture change, this is just one strategy. Oliver (1996) has observed that it is not sufficient to simply abolishing the use of offensive words to describe persons with disabilities. Rovner has observed that ‘[f]or

over forty years, the disability rights movement has sought to reframe the way people with disabilities are understood by American law,

social policy, and society’ (2004, 1043). Rovner explains that to achieve this outcome it will be necessary for the image of disability to be remade in the eyes of those who make laws and apply them (2004, 1090). If policy-makers and the judiciary do not embrace the culture change, then reforms will have minimal impact (for a discussion of the impact disability

models have upon members of the judiciary consciously or subconsciously, see Cantor 2009, 401). Altering the way in which language and culture constructs disability should be regarded as one useful weapon in the battle to achieve equality. Coupled with other interventions, language can contribute to the struggle for social equality. This paper has argued that using the term ableism to describe disability discrimination is one step that can be used to assist in the wider struggle against oppression.

5. We can simultaneously engage in actions that risk cooption and more tactical responses to hegemonic forces.

Quinlan and Bates 2012 (Margaret M. Assistant Professor of Communication and a Core Faculty Member of the Health Psychology Ph.D. Program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.; Benjamin R, Associate Professor Associate Director for Graduate Studies School of Communication Studies Ohio University "Walking In The City": Performance Of Strategies And Tactics In The 1985 Bus Accessibility Protests Disability Studies Quarterly Vol 32, No 1 (2012))

The first implication of this essay is that we cannot assume that a social actor must choose between employing strategies or employing tactics. There is a significant body of literature that

examines the ability to employ either strategy as a member of the dominant group or tactics as a member of a subordinate group (e.g.,

Cooks, 2009; Fassett & Morella, 2008; Pauwels & Hellriegel, 2008). If we require activists to choose between strategic action, taken as using "proper" legal channels of redress, and tactical action, taken as civil disobedience, then we engage in a form of analysis that limits the symbolic possibilities available to individuals and groups who seek social change. Our examination of Verdi-Fletcher's story, however, reveals that activists can (and do)

navigate between strategic actions and tactical actions for social change. Strategy and tactics are not the possession of the dominant and the subordinate, respectively; rather, they are approaches to symbolic interventions. Strategic choices — such as Verdi-Fletcher's "proper" protests, obedience of consumerist-capitalist logics, and desire to follow the civil rights movement's acceptable path toward social change — flow not from the activist's embodied position. If they did, Verdi-Fletcher would have been unable to employ strategies as a woman living with a disability. Instead, Verdi-Fletcher's ability to employ tactics reveals that access to "the stronghold of its own 'proper' place or institution" makes a strategic rhetoric a viable choice for any speaker, writer, or activist who can make sense of these seemingly formal rules for practicing a language of intervention (de Certeau, 1984, p. xx). On the other hand, tactical choices — such as blocking a bus in a particular space or calling the media to ask them to show a momentary disruption of the system — also are not tied to the embodied position of the activist. Tactics favoring disability rights are not forbidden to able-bodied individuals, as demonstrated by the fact that able-bodied individuals helped in the protest. Instead of "belonging" to the weak, tactics are manipulations "related to the ways of changing (seducing, persuading, making use of) the will of another (the audience)" by

seizing on moments and opportunities in space, time and language (de Certeau, 1984, p. xx). Rather than a binary, our analysis shows that an activist can master rhetorical strategies by learning the formal rules of the system and still employ tactical interventions as moments of serious play when interventions are possible. Or, as de Certeau (1984) put it,

the "two logics of action (the one tactical, the other strategic) arise from these two facets of language" (p. xx), and the person who can think

through both logics will have the broadest array of choices. Instead of a strict either/or choice posed to the activist, then, we have a flexible model where strategies and tactics can operate in concordance.

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AT: PREDICTION K

1. Perm – Do plan and consult complexity theorists.

2. Perm Solves – Their alternative has no advocacy for what to do. This means our perm captures 100% of the benefits to their K since it actually does something.

3. No Alternative –Their alternative card NEEDS to explain why complexity theory solves the problems that linear predictions do not. However, if you read the warrants of their card, all they say is that complexity theories are good because they are not linear. There’s no analysis that complexity theory actually solves anything.

4. Performative Contradiction – Their alternative is also a prediction. Their card says [Insert prediction]. The negative knows that prediction is bad but they’re still participating in it. This is much worse than what we have done. This is an independent voter.

5. Turn – Accurate predictions can be made using logic and evidence. Game theory is right 90% of the time.

de Mesquita  11 [Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is Silver Professor of Politics at New York University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution B.A. from Queens, M.A. from Michigan, PhD from Michigan, "FOX-HEDGING OR KNOWING: ONE BIG WAY TO KNOW MANY THINGS" July 18 www.cato-unbound.org/2011/07/18/bruce-bueno-de-mesquita/fox-hedging-or-knowing-one-big-way-to-know-many-things/ LO]

Good prediction—and this is my belief—comes from dependence on logic and evidence to draw inferences about the causal path from facts to outcomes. Unfortunately, government, business, and the media

assume that expertise—knowing the history, culture, mores, and language of a place, for instance—is sufficient to anticipate the unfolding of events. Indeed, too often many of us dismiss approaches to prediction that require knowledge of statistical methods, mathematics, and

systematic research design. We seem to prefer “wisdom” over science, even though the evidence shows that the application of the scientific method, with all of its demands, outperforms experts (remember Johan de Witt). The belief that area expertise, for instance, is sufficient to anticipate the future is, as Tetlock convincingly demonstrated,

just plain false. If we hope to build Reliable predictions about human behavior, whether in China, Cameroon,

or Connecticut, then probably we must first harness facts to the systematic, repeated, transparent application of the same logic across

connected families of problems. By doing so we can test alternative ways of thinking to uncover

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what works and what doesn’t in different circumstances. Here Gardner, Tetlock, and I could

not agree more. Prediction tournaments are an essential ingredient to work out what the current limits are to improved knowledge and predictive accuracy. Of course, improvements in knowledge and accuracy will always be a moving target because technology, ideas, and subject adaptation will be ongoing. Given what we know today and given the problems inherent in dealing with human interaction, what is a leading contender for making accurate, discriminating, useful predictions of complex human decisions? In good hedgehog mode I believe one top contender is applied game theory. Of course there are others but I am betting on game theory as the right place to invest effort. Why? Because game theory is the only method of which I am aware that explicitly compels us to address human adaptability. Gardner and Tetlock rightly note that people are “self-aware beings who see, think, talk, and attempt to predict each other's behavior—and who are continually adapting to each other’s efforts to predict each other’s behavior, adding layer after layer of new calculations and new complexity.” This adaptation is what game theory jargon succinctly calls “endogenous choice.” Predicting human behavior means solving for endogenous choices while assessing uncertainty. It certainly isn’t easy but, as the example of bandwidth auctions helps clarify, game theorists are solving for human adaptability and uncertainty with some success. Indeed, I used game theoretic reasoning on May 5, 2010 to predict to a large investment group’s portfolio committee that Mubarak’s regime faced replacement, especially by the Muslim Brotherhood, in the coming year. That prediction did not rely on in-depth knowledge of Egyptian history and culture or on expert judgment but rather on a game theory model called selectorate theory and its implications for the concurrent occurrence of logically derived revolutionary triggers. Thus, while the desire for revolution had been present in Egypt (and elsewhere) for many years, logic suggested that the odds of success and the expected rewards for revolution were rising swiftly in 2010 in Egypt while the expected costs were not. This is but one example that highlights what Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, who was quoted by Gardner and Tetlock, has said about game theory and prediction (referring, as it happens, to a specific model I developed for predicting policy decisions): “Bueno de Mesquita has demonstrated the power of using game theory and related assumptions of rational and self-seeking behavior in predicting the outcome of important political and legal processes.” Nice as his statement is for me personally, the broader point is that game theory in the hands of much better game theorists than I am has the potential to transform our ability to anticipate the consequences of alternative choices in many aspects of human interaction. How can game theory be harnessed to achieve reliable prediction? Acting like a fox, I gather information from a wide variety of experts. They are asked only for specific current information (Who wants to influence a decision? What outcome do they currently advocate? How focused are they on the issue compared to other questions on their plate? How flexible are they about getting the outcome they advocate? And how much clout could they exert?). They are not asked to make judgments about what will happen. Then, acting as a hedgehog, I use that information as data with which to seed a dynamic applied game theory model. The model’s logic then produces not

only specific predictions about the issues in question, but also a probability distribution around the predictions. The Predictions are detailed and nuanced. They address not only what outcome is likely to arise, but also how each “player” will act, how they are likely to

relate to other players over time, what they believe about each other, and much more. Methods like this are credited by the CIA, academic specialists and others, as being accurate about 90 percent of the time based on large-sample assessments. These methods have been subjected to peer review with predictions published

well ahead of the outcome being known and with the issues forecast being important questions of their time with much controversy over how they were expected to be resolved. This is not so much a testament to any insight I may have had but rather to the virtue of combining

the focus of the hedgehog with the breadth of the fox. When facts are harnessed by logic and evaluated through replicable tests of evidence, we progress toward better prediction. We can all hope that government, academia, and the media will rally behind Gardner and Tetlock’s pursuit of

systematic tests of alternative methods for predicting the future. Methodical tournaments of alternative methods surely will go a long way to advancing our understanding of how logic and evidence can convert mysteries into the known and knowable.

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AT: CAPITALISM K

1. Perm – Implement plan as a fight against the capitalism structures of domination that segregate disabled people as “non-productive” members of society.

2. Perm Solves – Currently, disabled people are classified as “non-productive”, and therefore can be excluded. Our plan is designed to include the excluded in society, regardless of their productivity.

3. The oppression of the disabled is not reducible to the structural determinations of capitalism – their Kritik does not turn or solve our Aff and we outweigh.

Hughes, 1999 (Bill, Department of Social Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University, “The Constitution of Impairment: Modernity and the Aesthetic of Oppression”, Disability & Society, Vol. 14 No. 2, p. 155-172, EBSCO)

Impairment has been set aside in debates about disability dominated by the social model. This paper seeks to go beyond the Cartesianism which produces this neglect. It suggests that radical disability studies can prosper from a critique of modernity which entails a shift from its singular epistemological origins in the critique of capitalism.

The argument challenges the contention that the oppression of disabled people is reducible to social restrictions which are the outcome of a set of structural determinations. It suggests that the oppression of disabled people is also umbilically linked to the visual constitution of impairment in the scopic regime of modernity. The vision of modernity is impaired by the assumption that to see is to know, that is, by its ocular-centrism. In deconstructing the visual culture of modernity, it is possible to demonstrate that the non-disabled gaze is a product of this specific way of seeing which actually constructs the world that it claims to discover. Using the

work of Sartre and, to a lesser extent, Foucault, this paper argues that impairment is constructed not discovered in the non-disabled gaze. The invalidation and disfigurement of impaired bodies is, therefore, not simply an economic and cultural response to them, but also arises in the mode of perception which visualizes and articulates them as strangers.

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AT: STATES BAD K

1. Perm – Do affirmative plan as means to use the state to break down state oppression.

2. Perm Solves – State policy is necessary in the context of transportation – their Alt has no hope

Zola, 1989 (Irving Kenneth, Activist and Writer in the fields of medical sociology and disability rights, founding member of the Society of Disability Studies, and the first editor of Disability Studies Quarterly, “Toward the Necessary Universalizing of a Disability Policy,” Milbank Quarterly Vol. 67, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/3350151)

The nature of mass transport demands a public policy commitment since it involves such matters as the creation and maintenance of byways and highways, the standardization and regulation of features to

assure safety, the increasing recognition of its ecological implications (i.e., various pollutants), and its truly "mass" aspects, not only in terms of numbers of users but in the fact that transport involves the crossing of local, state, and national borders. The specifics of this

implementation, however, may be less clear cut than in other areas, experience in the United States, however, alas shown that its solution (at least on the mass level) cannot be left solely in the hands of private enterprise and initiative (i.e., the argument that it costs too much to develop, produce, and maintain certain services),

nor its implementation to "local" control, design, or option. Mass transportation by definition is a "fixed route" phenomenon. As such, there is always the issue of getting from one's "home" to "the mass" aspect of the system. It is here that privatized solutions (though not necessarily without governmental or public policy input), such as para-transit van system:; or subsidized taxis, have traditionally filled the gap. To date, such private modes have had great constraints on their availability: they cover very limited geographic areas, have very limited time usage (often closing down at 6 p.m.), set priorities on the nature of usage (medical vs. recreational), restrict its frequency (number of rimes per day or week), and require considerable preplanning (in some, a week's advance notice). In no instance of which I am aware do they have the almost universal availability and immediacy of a taxi, nor are they cost-efficient per usage. On a social level, systems like this, no matter even if operated more efficiently on all these dimensions, will always have a negative consequence; for, by their very nature, they promote and sustain segregation, not integration. Mass transit may also involve deeper and less "admissible" psychological issues. In the short run, involving as it does great physical proximity, mass transport may evoke the deeply held fears of many in the general population about

contact with and contagion from people with disabilities (Livnch 1982). In the long run such forced proximity may in itself deflate some of these same myths, particularly when the myths are based more on lack of knowledge and contact. A few years ago, as part of a

protest against the inaccessibility of a local train station, 1 and many others rode the rails and handed our leaflets. To a child's question of what such people as we in wheelchairs were doing on the train, the mother patiently explained, "They need to get to work and go shopping, just like we do."

3. Can’t Solve Advantage 1 – Cross apply our 1AC Elden evidence, which indicates if current social attitudes biologizes life, then it is the state itself that must signal a movement away from that. This means two things: 1) Alternative can’t solve the problems, and 2) our plan captures 100% of the solvency for both our case harms and the kritik.

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4. Can’t Solve Advantage 2 – Cross apply our 1AC Springs evidence, which indicates only state action is modeled globally. This means that we will always outweigh the impacts of the kritik.

AT: TI ≠ DISABILITIES

1. We meet – Our plan increases funding to infrastructure helping people.

2. Counter definition – Transportation infrastructure includes investment in accommodations that increase accessibility for the disabled

Cambridge Systematics, 2002 (Community and Social Benefits of Transportation Investment, NCHRP Project 8-36, Task 22 Demonstrating Positive Benefits of Transportation Investment, http://www.transportation.org/sites/planning/docs/nchrp22_3.pdf January 2002)

Investments in our nation’s transportation infrastructure can yield important community and social benefits.

They can increase mobility and access, provide a greater choice of travel modes, improve safety, enhance the visual appearance of our communities, cities, and natu- ral landscapes, and increase community cohesion. In short, transportation investments can improve the quality of life. While social benefits are more difficult to quantify than eco- nomic and environmental benefits, they are nonetheless every bit as important. Making a neighborhood, city, or region more livable can spur economic development by making it more attractive for businesses and residents to relocate there.

3. Counter Standards:

A. Over-Limits – There are no topical cases under the neg’s definition. Prefer our definition.

B. Literature Checks Ground – There is more than sufficient literature on our case. It’s not our fault they are not prepared. Don’t reward laziness.

C. Specificity – Our definition is specific. Prefer our evidence over their non-specific definition.

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D. Exclusionary Definitions – Their definition discursively erases people with disabilities from our conversation. Vote affirmative to reject this mindset that our plan indicates is the cause of structural violence.

4. Topicality isn’t a voter

A. Don’t vote on potential abuse – Make the negative prove abuse in-round.

B. Reasonability checks education and fairness – They have the ground and are getting education through this round.

AT: INCREASE ≠ CREATE

1. We meet, procedures already in place for the use of people with disabilities at major stations.

2. Counter Definition: “Increase” doesn’t require preexistence

Words and Phrases 8 (Words and Phrases Permanent Edition, “Increase,” Volume 20B, p. 263-267 March 2008, Thomson West)

Wahs. 1942. The granting of compensation to any officer after he has commenced to serve the term

for which he has been chosen, when no compensation was provided by law before he assumed

the duties of his office, is an “increase” in salary or compensation within the constitutional provision prohibiting

an increase of the compensation of a public officer during his term of office. Const. art, 2, 25; art. 11, 8. – State ex rel. Jaspers v. West 125 P.2d 694, 13 Wash.2d 514. Offic 100(1).

3. Counter Standards:

A. Over limits: There are no topical cases under the neg’s interpretation.

B. Reasonability: the plan is pretty reasonable and it preserves enough negative ground for a good debate... Good is good enough.

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4. Topicality isn’t a voter

A. Don’t Vote on potential abuse. If possible, then vote down negative for possibly discriminating against the handicapped in the future.

B. Reasonability checks abuse.

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