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INSIDE THE NEWSROOM | Why We Did That Story: 'A Matter of Dignity'

“A Matter of Dignity” began as a rather routine inquiry into reports of abuse at state-licensed group homes for people with disabilities.

But as reporter Chris Serres and photographer David Joles dug in, they discovered something different and in its own way more troubling: A huge community of Minnesotans – 19,000 in group homes and 12,000 in sheltered workshops – were being systematically cut off from their families and the rest of society in jobs and housing that leave them isolated, frustrated and often stigmatized.
By David Hage, Assistant Metro Editor at the Star Tribune

“A Matter of Dignity” began as a rather routine inquiry into reports of abuse at state-licensed group homes for people with disabilities.

But as reporter Chris Serres and photographer David Joles dug in, they discovered something different and in its own way more troubling: A huge community of Minnesotans – 19,000 in group homes and 12,000 in sheltered workshops – were being systematically cut off from their families and the rest of society in jobs and housing that leave them isolated, frustrated and often stigmatized.

The focus of our inquiry shifted from abuse to segregation, and we began to see parallels to the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In interviews, people with disabilities repeatedly cautioned us to avoid the common trap of characterizing them as pitiable or helpless “victims,” but as participants in an emancipatory movement animated by the same fundamental goals (dignity, equality and integration) as past struggles of other oppressed groups. 

As they pointed out, disability is a club that anyone can join. We are all just one stroke or car accident away from becoming a member.

“There is a myth that we are voiceless,” said one man with a developmental disability, as he gave us a tour of a segregated workshop. “We have voices. People simply choose not to listen.”

So we made a concerted effort to listen. We immersed ourselves in the everyday life of people with disabilities – accompanying them to work, to church, to family dinners, even on dates – so we could show their lives as they are actually lived and understand the forces that had pushed so many vulnerable people to the margins of society. 

Then, a few months into the reporting, we began to notice a shift in the way we talked about the stories and the people in them. Serres and Joles were coming back with such deeply moving anecdotes – quotidian yet heartbreaking chapters in their subjects' lives – that we realized we were gaining an education, and this was not really a project about abuse or disadvantage, but about people who simply wanted to live their lives with the same opportunity and dignity that we hope for in our own. 

We traveled as far as Vermont to understand how that state had come to be known as the most integrated state in the nation for people with disabilities.

Our experience in Vermont underscored that integration is about more than just access to buses and buildings. It's about self-actualization and the right to pursue a meaningful and dignified life – dignity. As Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her majority opinion in the landmark Olmstead ruling in 1999, the unjustified isolation of people with disabilities “perpetuates unwarranted assumptions that persons so isolated are incapable or unworthy of participating in community life.”

To tell individual stories, we spent hundreds of hours visiting with people with disabilities, an exercise that proved surprisingly difficult.

As we traveled the state, a number of group homes and workshops for adults with disabilities prevented us from meeting with their clients, even when they had consented to interviews. Under the guise of safety and protecting their clients from harm, these segregated institutions repeatedly used guardians and police officers to block face-to-face interviews.

The world may never know their stories.

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