Stella Young And Laura Hershey Analysis

Synthesis Essay
Stella Young and Laura Hershey, two disability rights activist, with one goal in mind. That goal is to simply be treated like any normal person would, with respect. Stella Young was born with a disability called osteogenesis imperfecta. This impacted her bones, causing them to easily break overtime. This caused Young to be in a wheelchair, which was an impact on how people saw her. Laura Hershey on the other hand was born with spinal muscular atrophy. This disease affects your spinal cord, basically taking away any aspects of physical strength. Both these women despite their disabilities, went on to spread attention to the world about disability. Young told her story through a TED talk, called “I’m not your inspiration, thank

In the article “From Poster Child to Protester”, Hershey is trying to give her readers an inside view of fundraising telethons. Her inside view is even more poignant because she has walked the walk she is speaking about. The Jerry Lewis Labor Day Muscular Dystrophy Telethon, which focused on raising money for Muscular Dystrophy, in 1999 raised over $53 million, and over $600 million in 26 years. Laura Hershey is asking her readers to think beyond the typical issues with keeping people with disabilities sidelined, like transportation, building and public access. She then seems to ask the readers to consider the patronizing views and attitudes she feels that the telethon represents. Hershey feels that there is evidence in society that the majority feel that people with disabilities need to be “fixed” or “cured”. Hershey also feels that the majority feel that the problem should just “go away”. The passage that best supports this, she goes on to say “one of my major objections to the telethon is the way it reinforces that attitude.” Hershey goes on to explain that some people with disabilities keep quiet instead of demanding their basic human needs to be met. I was struck by Hershey stating “we’ll never recognize them if we stay focused on curing individuals of disability, rather than making changes to accommodate disability into our culture.” This quote interested me because for the first time I felt what she was possibly feeling, how incredibly tough it must be to have a disability and to have people want to “cure” you instead of listen to you, I mean really hear you. This article has me looking at disabilities very differently. The text limitation for me was, where exactly did the $600 million dollars go? I felt the article talked very generally about what the money did not go to, but I didn’t get a sense of specifics on how many people got helped and what kind of help they