[Access] notes from the Co-ordinating council meeting

[jeannemarie moore]

I agree with Cindy... I have resistance to being ministerial... disability
is political political political.
j-m.
 
 


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From: access-bounces at uueugene.org [mailto:access-bounces at uueugene.org] On
Behalf Of Lucinda Pitcairn
Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2008 5:28 PM
To: Accessibility group
Subject: Re: [Access] notes from the Co-ordinating council meeting


David Gilmartin wrote: 

CLUSTER DISCUSSION: In our work planning, at our last meeting, for  

this year and next, it seemed to me that our goals had to do with  

accessibility and welcomingness within the church building and  

congregational life. 

This may be true for the coming months, but our goals, as outlined in our
committee proposal, go beyond that, to some degree. Secondly, I did not come
away with the impression from our last meeting that we had done all the work
planning for this year or next.


As far as the cluster descriptions go (from  

January 12 agenda), I think this may be a better fit with  

"Ministerial" than "Social Justice."

I think we need better definitions of these two terms, something that will
no doubt be deliberated upon by the clusters task force.


 Social Justice, to me, carries the implication of doing something in and
for the wider world. 

It does to me, too, but one could argue that making our church more
accessible in both the literal and figurative sense is also practicing
social justice. 

Cindy




On Jan 12, 2008, at 12:39 PM, Mary Otten wrote:i attended that meeting this
morning, as did Mariah.   There is definite interest in our check-list,
including some specific numbers

that will ensure that power wheel-chairs can be accommodated. It was

mentioned that having somebody who uses a wheel-chair go on site  

visits

is a good idea, but there are ADA numbers as well, so I think it would

be good to get specific on the check list and include such numbers,

e.g. as pertains to bath-room access and meeting set up, aisles, row

spacing etc.  Sue Craig mentioned her concern specificaly with regard

to the upcoming service auction. she wants to make sure that they set

things up so that folks who use power chairs will be able to move

around. Since I doubt the check list will be finalized by the time of

the auction, it might be a nice idea if Cindy and Sue could get

together via e-mail or telephone or whatever to discuss that aspect of

things specifically as they relate to this event.  There is also

interest in having our check-list put together with Candee-s list  

about

how to get child care, since lack of child care is also an

accessibility barrier, albeit of a different sort than what we deal

with directly.



At the meeting, there was discussion about the committee clusters  

idea,

and there was talk of putting us into the social justice cluster.

further work is going to be done on this whole topic; a

subcommittee./task force has been formed to do that work.  I can't

recall who volunteered for it, but I know Ken and Mariah are on this

list, and I'm sure one or both of them will be able to fill in. So if

anyone has definite ideas about this topic, contact one of the members

of that subcommittee and make your wishes known. I know one of the

folks is Sarah Hendrickson.



We also talked about the issue of when its preferable to hold a  

meeting

at church and when off site is ok, and I made the points that we

discussed at our last meeting, emphasizing that we were not trying to

dump guilt trips on people, but that we did expect that meetings where

anybody might be expected to come should be held at church, and that

off site locations of such meetings should be chosen with  

accessibility

in mind. and there was some discussion as to just what that meant. I

hope I got the idea across that the bottom line is that, a: we

recognize that its not always going to be possible to hold all open

meetings at church; b: its not always going to be possible to have off

site locations be 100% comfortably accessible; but c: it is essential

that we try to make that happen, and that people know that the best

effort was made to make it so. Its a lot easier to take "no" for an

answer if you really feel like best efforts were expended.



If Ken or Mariah want to add anythingh to my summary of acces-related

CC topics, please feel free to speak up.



mary

  

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