A lone wheelchair in Union Hall
photo: Wayne L. Benner
Memory is the critical language and terrain of human rights. Through preserving past evidence of neglect, we make it real, we make it present, and we make it public. The place that bears the mark of the painful past becomes a powerful catalyst for awareness, action, relevance, inspiration, and investment in multiple senses. A National Disability Museum and Community of Conscience at Pennhurst will engage ordinary citizens in an ongoing national dialogue on social issues to build lasting cultures of human rights. Unlike the typical museum, it will not be place of passive learning but a place of active citizen engagement.Its mission will be one of truth seeking, of building a culture of "never again," of reconciliation, and of outreach though opportunities for public involvement, curriculum development and the like. This dialogue must be both about the meaning of the past and the shape of the future— with the full temporal spectrum of past, present, and future palpable in the Pennhurst visitor experience. What happened at Pennhurst and how did caring families and employees finally rise up to end it? How did that change create reform across the globe? What does it mean to be classed as "the other" and how and where is it still happening today? No other museum attacks these questions as they relate to disabilities head on---a dangerous absence of dialogue where indifference.
At some point many of us will become disabled in some manner, whether from injury or old age. But the events played out at Pennhurst affect all of us in ways that are even more profound. The struggle for acceptance, understanding, and, ultimately, freedom, is central to what it means to be an American. Moreover, it is the dream of oppressed people the world over. Here, at Pennhurst, cradled in a Commonwealth founded on ideals of tolerance and second chances, we have a complex but positive and inspiring story to tell. We hope you will join us to seize this opportunity to create a site of hope, a resource for all people somehow treated as "the other"—a place where they will be recognized and accepted without condition. This place of pain can become place of healing, reconciliation, and insight. It will be a center of national conscience with a message that knows no political, racial, or socio-economic bounds.
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