January 10, 2007 This Month's Historical Figure
Inside ■ Dogs and Cabs—p. 4 ■ Telework—p. 5 ■ Directory of Organizations—p. 12
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“It is a good thing to feel you have
useful work to do. And better to be overwhelmed than to feel nobody wants you for anything.” – Fr. Tom Lumpkin Page 2 Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Mpls. MN Permit No. 4766
Volume 19, Number 1
Minnesota’s Disability
Community Newspaper
January 10, 2007
Ritchie Targets Voting Barriers New Secretary of State Pledges to Continue His Work on Eliminating Election Day Obstacles for People with Disabilities by Mai Thor and Beth Fraser
E
ver since the November elections, Mark Ritchie, the newly elected Secretary of State of Minnesota, has been anxious for his term to start on January 2nd. “I can’t wait to begin working to further improve our state’s election system,” stated Ritchie.
Secretary of State Mark Ritchie digs in during his first week in office. Even before the election, Ritchie contacted over 1500 residential facilities to inform them of new laws that affect their voting rights.
Access Press’
2006 In Review H
istory happens in small steps. Sometimes we need to take stock of these changes so that we appreciate how far we’ve come—and how far we still need to go. Inside (pp. 10 and 11) we revisit some of the top stories of 2006, as printed in Access Press. ■
Ritchie noted that although Minnesota has led the country in voter turnout for some time, there is still room for improvement. He pointed out that Minnesotans with disabilities are 20% less likely to vote than other eligible citizens. “The staff of the Secretary of State’s office will work closely with advocates within the disability community to change this,” pledged Ritchie.
“I will see to it that election judges and other poll workers understand this [new law] fully, so that people under guardianship will no longer have to worry about their right to vote needlessly being challenged.” created by a lack of information. In October, four weeks before he was even elected, Ritchie instructed his staff to contact over 1,500 residential facilities, including group homes, battered women’s
shelters, homeless shelters and nursing homes, to inform them about new laws that affected their residents’ voting rights. “We realized that a deadline for taking action was approaching, and no one had told the residential facilities about the steps they needed to take,” Ritchie explained. “Even though it meant diverting resources away from winning the campaign, we did it because it was the right thing to do. Now that I’m the Secretary of State, I can make sure that my office educates residential facilities about their options, so this won’t be an issue again.” Ritchie has spent the last 20 years working for charitable organizations and is known Ritchie - cont. on p. 15
Student Waxes Poetic St. Paul Woman Wins Metro State Award by Harvey Meyer
A
childhood photo of Mary Bailey Bustos shows a happy-golucky kid with a sunny smile. But she garners no warm fuzzies when examining the picture. Fact is, as far as she is concerned, she might as well be gazing at a stranger. That’s because, for all intents and purposes, she is. Memory loss has effectively erased her childhood. Indeed, she has difficulty recollecting anything that happened to her even two weeks ago.
More on p. 10 and 11
Ritchie’s campaign focused on removing remaining barriers that keep people from voting, including obstacles
Bailey Bustos, 44, who now lives in Saint Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood, was thrown head-first through a car windshield in a 1983 accident in Yakima, Wash. When she awoke in a hospital room 18 hours later, her memory
had vanished. And her ability to remember anything from then on virtually disappeared. “I’m lucky if I remember last week,” she said. “I would not remember anything that happened last year unless I read about it right beforehand.” Despite that obstacle, Bailey Bustos has survived and even thrived. She has won two national poetry awards. And she was recently selected Fall 2006 Outstanding Student in the Metropolitan State University College of Professional Studies. “It is a humongous honor,” said Bailey Bustos, a human services major with a dual focus in chemical dependency counseling and corrections. “My daughter was in tears telling me how proud she was of me.”
Pauline Danforth, a Metropolitan State academic advisor, commends Bailey Bustos for confronting challenges and serving as a role model for other disabled, low-income and first-generation college students. Specifically, Danforth praised her thirst for knowledge and organizational and leadership skills. As evidence of that, Bailey Bustos recently spearheaded the launch of a new Metropolitan State student group. That organization aims to help students with resource referrals and through peer mentoring and tutoring. She has had to make several accommodations for her disability. She regularly jots Award - cont. on p. 15