Teaching Parents Of Kids With Disabilities To Fight Back
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At a graduation ceremony in a hotel ballroom outside Minneapolis, 28 men and women got their certificates — for learning how to raise a bit of hell.
Most graduates of the Partners in Policymaking class are the mothers of young children with developmental disabilities. They've been meeting at this hotel one weekend a month for eight months.
They learned how to fight for their child in school, and how to push for health care their child needs. But also, how to read a state budget, how to talk to a state lawmaker and how to testify before the school board or city council.
The class is free, paid for by the state of Minnesota. And today, in this class, is the program's 1,000th graduate.
"Do you know what that should translate to?" asks the day's graduation speaker, Shelley Madore. "We should have a thousand entries every week of people getting up and talking in businesses, in communities, in their
