Report on local community event
By Jonathan Godfrey
Saturday, 6 April 2024 11:13 amJonathan is the National President of Blind Citizens NZ. He has held the positions of Member-at-Large and Vice President and was elected to the position of National President in 2017. Jonathan is employed as a lecturer in statistics at Massey University.
OPINION
Hi all,
A community event was held yesterday here in Palmerston North relating to the recent changes in funding supports. I’m writing this message because it is another example of community action. OK, it doesn’t get TV news time and no politicians got involved, but it did give real people who are affected to be part of a community-led initiative. It also made the Manawatu Standard. The text of that article follows my comments.FWIW, aside from me, there were a handful of people from the blind and low-vision community present. I did not find out how many attendees were present but it was the largest gathering of disabled people and whanau I’ve seen here since the launch of Mana Whaikaha.
The Regional Leadership Group were prominent in the event. This RLG was established as a key component of the Mana Whaikaha initiative when the Mid-Central DHB region was chosen as the area to roll out an EGL-based (Enabling Good Lives) effort in the grand plan for System Transformation. Two RLG members are quoted in the article.
It is clear to me that some people in this community are looking for a larger event to be part of, whether that be a march or a protest. Suggestions to have a public protest here in PN were rather unenthusiastically received. We have a Labour MP, no MPs from the three-headed taniwha Govt and to be frank, the disabled people of this region are better off than numerous others across NZ. People here are feeling cuts that so many others have never had the chance to receive.
I intended to listen more than speak at this event, but I ended up feeling that I was in the best position to respond to some questions and more came my way once people knew I was there. (Hiding down the back with an old mate from Uni didn’t work so well).
I guess the way the article reads is not a great surprise to me. I think the reporter could have picked up on some other quotes instead of the more sob-story oriented ones. While the reported-on sentiment is real and important, I thought there were some better ones that did not link to the individuals but were more about the collective experience. I didn’t take notes, but the sentiment that grabs me is “Why is it still OK to shit on disabled people?” and “we are people not learnings”
A concern that I’ve expressed at this public forum and a few places in private is that if our community anger is all directed at Whaikaha, then the powers that be might decide to eliminate the problem. What we are really needing to emphasise, at least here where we have the benefit of implementation, is that a return to the Health model of service (as per the March 18 cuts) is what we are opposed to. Whaikaha might not be perfect, but it is better than what we had without Whaikaha.
And now for the article. I have tried to trim out the images, sources, links to extraneous bits. If you want the raw content, it came up when I googled “Manawatu news disability”
RESOURCES