A Response to Peter Singer: Dear Members….

Dear Members,

As many of you are aware, the controversial Australian Professor of Bioethics is coming to New Zealand to present his views on ethics in everyday life. Professor Singer has a history of incendiary and insensitive comments about people living with disabilities. Recently (Feb 2020), the CP Society wrote a statement in protest of both his views and the fact that he is coming to New Zealand without his views being widely challenged or critiqued.

As a Society, we want to know what our next step should be. The position statement was written as a direct response to our families’ feelings and beliefs on the issues. Therefore, it only makes logical sense that any future directions are shaped by the desires and needs of the people we serve. There has been some talk in the disability community about protesting outside the venue and distributing counter-narrative information. We invite members to offer their opinion on our next course of action leading up to the professor’s visit in June.

Some of the suggestions that have already been made include:

– Physical protest outside distributing leaflets at the actual event.
– Inviting people to attend the event to ask questions in the formal questioning time.
– Engage with Think Inc. (event promoter) to promote alternate perspectives and why they are important.

If you could please come back to us with any other suggestions and/or general sense of what kind of action you would like us to take from here that would be most valuable. Please feel free to contact either Amy (amy@cpsociety.org.nz) or Aden (aden@cpsociety.org.nz).

Yours sincerely,

Gilli Sinclair
(Pictured)