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Deaf Peddlers FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH John Van Cleve , 1997 JOHN VAN CLEVE: In addition to providing social environments, deaf organizations were also forums for political ideas and advocacy. They lobbied first of all for state support for schools for the deaf. ... They lobbied against laws that would classify deaf people in the same group as paupers, okay? Laws that exempted deaf people from rules against paupers and mendicants. The Pennsylvania Association for the Deaf said deaf people should not be included in this, in these kinds of exemptions. "We are just as capable of working and supporting ourselves, and not begging, as hearing people, and any law that includes us, with" -- or, I mean, "excludes us from laws against paupers, we're opposed to." And, they fought very hard on those. In the late nineteenth century, as paupers, vagabonds and wandering beggars became seen as a problem by some localities, laws were developed that would prohibit certain kinds of mendicants from, you know, accosting you on the street and asking you for money, and so on. But, the laws were often written by people who thought they were helping "the disabled," and they said, 'Well, people who are blind, people who are deaf, people who are mentally retarded, people who are physically crippled are exempt from these laws. Well, of course, they can go out and beg.' But deaf people said, "No, no, no, we don't want to be exempt. We do not want to be treated any differently than hearing people. We are not begging. Any deaf person who is begging on the street is someone who is taking advantage of their deafness. They are just as capable of earning a job -- of earning an income and having a job as any hearing person. We don't want to be included in those kinds of laws." The important thing is that they struggled against it. And, they did not want to be classed with any group of people who were not self-supporting. And they did not want anyone to believe that as deaf people they required any special consideration, legal consideration. |
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