*Remembering Hellen Keller on her 141st Birth Anniversary:* *Crusader For Peace, Against War & Social Evils*
*I am going to try to make you feel that no one of us can do anything alone, that we are bound together. I do not like this world as it is. I am trying to make it a little more as I would like to have it.* *It was the hands of others that made me. Without my teacher I should be nothing. Without you I should be nothing. We live by and for each other. We are all blind and deaf until our eyes are open to our fellow men. If we had penetrating vision we would not endure what we see in the world today.* *The lands, the life, and the machinery belong to the few. All the work they do gains for the workers a mere livelihood. It is the labor of the poor and ignorant that makes others refined and comfortable. It is strange that we do not see it and that when we do we accept the conditions. * *But I am no pessimist. The pessimist says that man was born in darkness and for death. I believe that man was intended for the light and shall not die. It is a good world and it will be much better when you help me to make it more as I want it.* *(Rich Criticized by Helen Keller, February 7, 1913)* Helen Adams Keller, an American author, social and political activist, was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. She was the first deafblind person to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree. She was also an important political thinker, who pioneered in pointing the way towards a Marxist understanding of the oppression of the disabled. Helen Keller published 12 books, including her famous autobiography *The Story of My Life, *and several essays and articles. One of her most notable publications was *Out of the Dark: Essays, Letters, and Addresses on Physical and Social Vision*. This work comprised a collection of her writings on socialism, women, and disability, and remains the most explicitly political of all her books. Helen had spent her life advocating about the issues of the disabled, and through her work in this field, she had discovered that a leading cause of disability in the US at that time was industrial and workplace accidents and diseases, frequently caused by an employer’s greed and reluctance to prioritize workers’ safety lest it diminishes profits. She found that other social factors contributed, too, such as the prevalence of poverty, unequal access to medicine, overcrowded and unsanitary slums, and so on. It was with great shock that she had realised that while her social environment had helped her overcome her disabilities, many of her countrymen would become disabled due to their environment. Helen was born to an upper-class family. When she was 19 months old, she contracted an unknown illness, which took away both her eyesight and hearing. At that time, this meant that she could not receive a formal education. However, Helen’s parents never gave up on her education; and eventually, when Helen was seven years old, they found Anne Sullivan, an alumna of the Perkins Institute for the Blind, who would go on to teach Helen language and communication. Helen later referred to the day Sullivan arrived at their house as her ‘soul’s birthday.’ Anne Sullivan did not only teach Helen how to read and write, she opened up her small world to a universe of new things. Sullivan taught Helen words by fingerspelling them on her palm. She eventually became proficient in Braille and learnt how to speak. Helen did not look back after that. She went to attend several schools for the deaf and the blind. She graduated from Radcliffe College of Harvard University in 1904, at the age of 24. Helen joined the Socialist Party in 1908. She gave speeches all over the United States advocating socialism, suffrage, and disability rights, and later co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union. She also advocated for peace during the world wars. The American media, which had hailed her as a hero for overcoming various barriers and ‘serving as an inspiration’ for others like her, was quick to use her disability to discredit and dismiss her political activism. A newspaper wrote in 1914, that Helen Keller ‘preaching socialism and sneering at the US constitution' was pitiful, as her lack of ‘practical understanding of the world’ (owing to her blindness and deafness), made her unqualified for speaking about the problems of the world. Needless to say, Helen paid no heed to these attacks and bravely continued her tireless crusade against the social evils of her time. She devoted much of her later life to raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind. Having lived an outstanding life, Helen Keller died on June 1, 1968 at the age of 87. The National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD) joins all of you in commemorating her 141st birth anniversary. It pledges to carry forward her legacy. *(Prepared by a volunteer for NPRD)* -- National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD) 36, Pt. Ravishankar Shukla Lane New Delhi 110 001 Tel. 11-23387674; 9868768543 -- Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list.. Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "AccessIndia" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to accessindia+unsubscr...@accessindia.org.in. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/accessindia.org.in/d/msgid/accessindia/CAGWwancWBfAT0kvevWkQ0_hxJq%2B70_5mRDr0A3Mx%3D31SH%2BBmuA%40mail.gmail.com.
