ACT Memo

As you requested, this is your ACT Self-Advocacy Resource Network Memo facilitating a national dialogue among self-advocates and supporters and a clearinghouse for materials and training that support self-advocacy.

February 20, 2008

Celebrate Your Interdependence

I can never be truly independent.

I do not grow my own food.
I do not make my own medicine.
I cannot teach myself all the things I need to know.
I cannot build a house.
I do not make my own clothes.

I am truly a failure at being independent.

But I have some powerful company. Even the president of the U.S. depends on other people. Interdependence is the way to be!!!

(adapted from a SARN member’s response, 2006)

1.	Group Activity
2.	Resource


1.	Group Activity Give each person a chance to say one way in which he or she relies on others. Record the responses on poster paper. Then give each person a chance to say one way in which he or she helps others. Record the responses on poster paper. [Return to top]


2.	Resource Declarations of Independence This powerful, four-minute video shows self-advocates telling some of their deepest values—a short and sure-fire way to get your group talking. (Oops! We should have titled this DVD Declarations of Interdependence!) [Return to top]

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Today’s Trivia Question:

What 1981 Supreme Court decision stated that keeping people with developmental disabilities isolated from society in institutions is a violation of their Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection?

a.	Pennsylvania ARC vs. Pennhurst School
b.	Brown vs. Board of Education
c.	Roe vs. Wade
d.	Stevenson vs. Willowbrook

(The answer will be published
in the next Memo.)

Answer to February 13th Trivia Question:
(any three of the following states): Alaska, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia

Question was: Only ten U.S. states have no residential institutions for people with developmental disabilities (2008 data). Can you name three?

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