The World's First Parastronaut and Handicaps in MUNI's systemic ableism
as above, not below, unfortunately
Well, this is heartening: The European Space Agency set out to hire a physically disabled astronaut, and from the midst of about 260 applicants they found him, badass Olympian amputee with a science background, ready to explode a whole lot of assumptions just by existing, the way badass people do. Here he is in his youth with a gold medal:
His ultimate goal, he says, is to prove that “not only is science for everyone, but potentially, space is for everyone.” And here’s a note from the European Space Agency’s website about what helped him get where he will soon be:
Enhancing inclusiveness and fair representation in space is about as committed to anti-ablism as it’s possible to be. I wish I could call my dad and talk to him about this, because I can only imagine how this news would register to a generation that essentially revered astronauts as lower-tier gods: sure, they didn’t create the world, but they would see it and explore and intimately know it in ways that none of us can. The sands of the moon bend under their boots, etc. And while, okay, I’m not a badass motorcycle-accident-induced amputee who’s won Olympic gold medals, there’s a principle here, and it’s this: someone that normative systems deem “like me” could grow up dedicated to science, dedicated to physical fitness, and at least come close, closer than we’ve ever thought possible, to becoming a fucking astronaut. In Europe, at least.
But I am emphatically nowhere in Europe, I am in San Francisco, and while John McFall is about to break open the limits we probably didn’t even know we assumed for who could explore space, San Francisco is making sure that convenient travel on its transit system is closed off to as many people as possible, all in the name of preventing the possibility that someone, somewhere, is trying to lie about having a disability to receive discount fares. I’ll explain. I’ll explain, with a deep, deep sigh.
If you live in San Francisco and you do not have a disability and you pay for public transit (MUNI, in our case) with a regular Clipper card, said Clipper card will not expire. You can leave the city for years, come back, and if you’ve got money on your card, the system will take it, as it should, because it’s your money. My money, however, is not my money, not if I don’t go through headache-igniting bureaucratic steps to renew my card. I get automatically cut off from the funds I already paid for, because I haven’t undergone a multi-stepped process that the majority of the city never has to concern themselves with.
The “reason” for this, if reason it can be called, is that I MIGHT BE LYING ABOUT MY DISABILITY. See, I could’ve been injured temporarily and been eligible for discount fairs for a period, but WHAT IF I’m all healed up and normal-walking and now I’m still not paying as much as I should: this crime against humanity needs to be prevented at all costs. It’s more important than making sure that a disabled person for whom mobility is an issue has ready access to the transit system that makes mobility possible. I have to say, the volume and unquestioned certitude with which the ticket-taker said to be, “Well people have to renew their cards because they might not have a disability anymore,” was one of the more unnerving interactions I’ve experienced, because I could tell that she, for all of her passionate conviction, was not speaking for herself. Underneath this statement and its frustration with me and my un-renewed card was a compassionate human being, I could tell, but that spirit that was somehow radiant from her eyes had been resolutely shut down by the rules. The rules that say, somewhere, out there, a person might be breaking the rules, and rather than risk that, we have to make harder on all of you the fare system that was put in place to make it easier for you.
The thought that scores of people are lying about having a body like mine is a little bit flattering, but when I remember that disabled Clipper cards also offer a 62% discount on BART I laugh sardonically: is this discount percentage on one of the loudest and most trying transit systems in this country truly so enticing and irresistible that you’d go about continuing a much-larger-fine-worthy disability masquerade just to keep hold of the deal? I want to say, MUNI, these benefits are helpful, but they’re not so astronomically helpful that they’re worth taking risks for.
I go back and forth between imagining these unlikely people and thinking about how the funds I’ve already put on my card are no longer accessible to me because my card is expired and no longer works. Here’s the tedious kicker to the whole thing: I have my renewed card (it just happened to be in my wallet which, yes, I forgot during our San Francisco Tourist travels yesterday: that was my fault, the forgetting the wallet part). But so far, there seems to be no way to remove my old card from my Apple watch and put the renewed card on it, which might not sound like a big deal. However, if I can’t put my transit card on my Apple watch, here’s what I have to do to get on a train:
1.) Take off the little backback I’m wearing.
2.) Dig my wallet out from the backpack.
3.) Take the card out of the wallet, tag it.
4.) Put the card back in my wallet.
5.) Put my wallet back in my backpack.
6. ) Put my backpack back on.
A six-step process that, depending on the time, could cause someone to miss their train. By contrast, if I tag my Clipper card via my Apple watch, that’s one step — waving it in front of the reader, Jedi-style. Taking out my phone would also require the same six-step process, generally, but even if I decided to cut out a few of those by keeping my phone in my pocket (something that not all clothing allows us to do), you’re only permitted to keep Clipper cards on a single device, so that would eliminate the possibility of using my apple watch. Again, all this because we have to renew our cards and wait 3-4 weeks to get new ones because, if we don’t, someone might get a discount they don’t “deserve.”
And that makes me think of Elizabeth Holmes and Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch and the Waltons and Trump and all the other billionaires making major impacts on the rest of us who, morally speaking, are practically drowning in money they don’t deserve. Funny that we suddenly start instituting principles of integrity where disability is concerned, and only, it seems, in situations where the number of people inconvenienced by this determination to cover all bases far exceeds the number of deceptions you’ve supposedly prevented.
I’ve been having trouble with conclusions lately: you might have noticed that. For the longest time I thought I was far too opinionated not to know exactly where I wanted you to end up, what precisely I want you to take away from all of this. Thinking about space never hurt anyone and there’s something poetic about rigorous training and scientific knowledge making the cosmos more accessible to all of us, and I’ve been thinking about the cosmos more than usual. For reasons unknown, I’ve been waking up at the same unproductive late-night-early-morning hour and looking intently at the stars outside my window. They’re not the staggering layers of ancient light practically out-skying the heavens like those of my New Mexico childhood, but they are brighter and more profuse than I ever expect to see in a city. A full-night’s sleep would be welcome, but this alternative, in its way, works too: every night I’m surprised, almost relieved. Wait, we can see stars, from here? I forget that they’re always there, even in daylight. I don’t think they decide anything on our behalf, but I like that we can rely on them, even if the light we’re looking at faded away a long time ago, and it’s taking us this long to catch up.