CNOs
I looked up Merriam-Webster’s definition of the word nuisance. It said, “one that is annoying, unpleasant, or obnoxious.”
This means a nuisance is clearly in the eye of the beholder. Because in order to determine whether one is annoying, unpleasant, or obnoxious, we must first determine what constitutes annoying, unpleasant, or obnoxious.
And that’s where it gets sticky, because one person’s nuisance is another person’s hero. To the Jim Crow racists, the 1960s civil rights protesters were a nuisance. But the fact that they weren’t afraid to be a nuisance to idiots like the Jim Crow racists is what makes them heroes to others.
Because I am disabled, I am inherently a nuisance. The two go hand-in-hand. Whenever disabled folks show up somewhere where we don’t fit in, which is a whole lot of places, we are being disruptive. Our very presence challenges the limits of inclusion. Those who determined those limits often find this to be annoying, unpleasant, AND obnoxious.
My heroes are those disabled folks who embrace the power of their nuisance status. They come as they are to places where they don’t fit in and insist that everyone make room.
Some disabled folks try to pretend they’re not a nuisance by attempting to assimilate and quietly navigating around the physical and cultural infrastructures that shut them out. They want their disabilities to be seen as incidental and of little consequences to their destinies. Others apologize profusely for the inconvenience they cause by staying out of the way and trying not to bother anybody and graciously accepting the alms of charity.
But my heroes are those disabled folks who embrace the power of their nuisance status. They come as they are to places where they don’t fit in and insist that everyone make room. It’s because of them that it’s not so easy anymore to punish disabled people for being nuisances by locking us up in places with names like The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded.
Lately, I’ve been seeing scary stuff that tells me it’s more important than ever for disabled folks to get out there and be a nuisance.
This summer, two Harvard law school students published a report titled, “When Disability Is a Nuisance: How Chronic Nuisance Ordinances Push Residents with Disabilities Out of Their Homes.” It details how laws known as chronic nuisance ordinances (CNOs) “force people with physical or mental disabilities to make an impossible choice between calling 911 and risking eviction or foregoing medical assistance in a crisis.”
CNOs seek to abate vaguely defined nuisance behaviors often by threatening landlords of these nuisances. The report tells the story of “Jane,” who called 911 in Bedford, Ohio for help twice in three months because her boyfriend was threatening suicide.
Under the local CNO, Jane was deemed a nuisance just for making those calls. Jane’s landlord was consequently fined $250 and told to abate the nuisance. So Jane was evicted. The report says there are about 2,000 CNOs on the books in the U.S. and tells several other stories about how they have been used to evict or punish disabled people who haven’t committed crimes.
The American Civil Liberties Union says CNOs have been found to “disproportionately impact and be disparately enforced against communities of color and persons with mental disabilities.”
The American Civil Liberties Union says CNOs have been found to “disproportionately impact and be disparately enforced against communities of color and persons with mental disabilities.” Thus, it has for years solicited complaints and written extensively about CNOs on its website and has become involved in several cases in defense of people victimized by them.
Some reforms have been instituted. A state law in Illinois, for example, bars municipalities from penalizing tenants or landlords based on contact made to police or other emergency services, if, among other things, “the contact was made by, on behalf of, or otherwise concerns an individual with a disability and the purpose of the contact was related to that individual's disability.”
But “When Disability is a Nuisance” concludes that these CNOs are screwed up beyond reform.“CNOs unjustly punish people with disabilities simply for having a disability . . . and must be repealed entirely.”
It’s time for us nuisances to unite!