Abstract
This chapter draws upon critical gerontology, urban studies, and occupational justice to analyze rhetoric and activism surrounding the closure of a popular senior center in downtown Syracuse, New York. In a context of downtown gentrification and entrepreneurial governance, city administration employed logics of ageism and austerity to justify the closure. Although elder participants could not block the closure, they steadfastly refused to permit pejorative framings of their largely low-income elder community as passive, frail and burdensome. They used street theater and marches to resist their invisibility. They formed an action group and persisted in maintaining community ties and a presence in the city while pursuing their long-term vision of an accessible, centrally located, and senior-controlled community center.
Occupying means refusing to go away.
—Dana Spiotta, 2012
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- 1.
I learned of the Ida Benderson Center in August, 2011, when I read in the Syracuse Post-Standard (Knauss August 19, 2011a) that the center was threatened with closure. I attended a pair of lively hearings at City Hall and then collaborated with Syracuse University Assistant Professor of Religion Vincent Lloyd to assist senior participants in getting their voices heard by decision makers and the media. I have met weekly with the Ida Benderson Seniors Action Group (IBSAG) since the Center closed. Using transcripts I made from Syracuse Common Council Hearings of September 2011, I wrote the original text and music of a musical melodrama, the Ida Benderson Blues, in order to dramatize, preserve, and mobilize discussion around this and similar issues affecting elders. Members of IBSAG reviewed and revised the text. Tim Eatman assisted the group in revising the melody and Susan Schoonmaker arranged the piece. A local political musical theater troupe, D.R.E.A.M. Freedom Revival, worked with the Action Group to arrange this piece for band, choir, and soloists and to stage a free performance and community dialogue featuring Action Group members entitled “Snow on the Rooftop, Fire in the Furnace” in Syracuse in February 16, 2013 (Caceres February 20, 2013).
- 2.
Performance ethnography uses intensive participant observation and other participatory methods to generate artistic representations of lived experience in context. Discourse analysis is a research tradition that seeks to uncover how power functions in a given setting by deconstructing speech and other forms of expression.
- 3.
Gerontological frameworks are often simplified and essentialized in popular discourse and policy. “Successful aging” is ostensibly intended by its creators simply to describe a set of health practices, such as regular exercise, that stave off ill health and impairment in old age (Holstein and Minkler 2003). But the label “successful aging,” and the way in which it is taken up in popular discourse, tends to shame and devalue those of us who do live with disabilities or illnesses. It emphasizes individual effort over societal responsibility to accommodate diverse and aging bodies (Holstein and Minkler 2003). “Productive aging,” which honors and seeks to facilitate a wide array of contributions elders make to their families and communities, including self-care and caring for others, tends to be operationalized for research in terms of measurable economic contributions. And “civic engagement,” which originators of the term define broadly to include voting, neighborhood participation, mutually supportive relationships, and activism, is commonly operationalized in research only as formal volunteerism (Martinson and Minkler 2006).
- 4.
Such a ratio is required under New York State Medicaid policies for Social Day Programs; it is not characteristic of senior centers.
- 5.
Handwritten letter available at: http://solidaritycny.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/ib-invitation.pdf
- 6.
Image of the group that delivered the letter: http://solidaritycny.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/mayor-miner-agrees-to-visit-ida-benderson/
- 7.
Video footage available at: http://videos.syracuse.com/post-standard/2011/09/ida_benderson_protest.html
- 8.
- 9.
The IBM Smarter Cities Challenge helps cities use data to “make smarter, more strategic investments in their communities, maximizing value in the long term.” Syracuse’s participation was concerned with collecting and using data concerning vacant and blighted housing. http://smartercitieschallenge.org/about.html
- 10.
The Mayor was requesting $60,000 per year for two fiscal years to fund the “transition” to the Salvation Army, after which, financial responsibility for the relocated/consolidated program would be entirely on the Salvation Army. The SA, however, would of course be able to fundraise from private donors or foundations for the program, and also bill the federal government’s Medicaid program whenever services to individual participants could be justified as community-based long term care. Presumably over passing years, former Ida Benderson Center participants would develop specific support needs that would justify Medicaid billing.
- 11.
Last name withheld at Dorothy H.’s request.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to express my thanks and appreciation to members of the Ida Benderson Seniors Action Group and its larger community, without whom this work would not be possible. Thanks to Lisa Bogin and Dorothy H. of the Ida Benderson Seniors Action Group and to David Hill for reviewing and offering suggestions on this chapter.
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If you enjoyed reading this chapter, we would like to recommend that you also look at Chap. 11 “Soul searching occupations: Critical reflections on Occupational Therapy’s Commitment to Social Justice, Disability Rights, and Participation” by Mansha Mirza, Susan Magasi and Joy Hammel. These authors are all occupational therapists who describe how they do collaborative research. Chapter 16 “6: Beyond Policy—A Real Life Journey of Engagement and Involvement” by Stephanie de la Haye covers some of this ground as does Chap. 17, also by an occupational therapist, Eva Rodrigues “Self Advocacy and Self Determination for Youth with Disability and their Parents during School Transition Planning.” These chapters really explore community.
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Nepveux, D.M. (2016). Refusing to Go Away: The Ida Benderson Seniors Action Group. In: Block, P., Kasnitz, D., Nishida, A., Pollard, N. (eds) Occupying Disability: Critical Approaches to Community, Justice, and Decolonizing Disability. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9984-3_12
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