In Honour of Jimmy Mac: Disability Rights Activist
In Honour of Jimmy Mac: Disability Rights Activist
My name is Peter and I am undertaking a 100 Bench Challenge in memory of disability rights activist, Jimmy McIntosh.
I have been inspired to do this because he was such a brilliant guy and such a wonderful person to work with and get along with. I feel sad as I am writing this because he meant a lot to me.
Jimmy lived in Edinburgh but was born in Inverness. He was born in 11 Nov 1939 and died in 30 May 2014. He spent many years of his life living in an institution. He fought hard to get out of there and he also fought and won the right for people with disabilities living in institutions to vote. Until 36 years ago, people were denied this right. He dedicated his whole adult life to activism and fought tirelessly to promote inclusion, equality and human rights.
I would say he was one of the best people that I’ve known for a long time. He, for me, was ‘the governor’ when it came to standing up for people’s rights and promoting equality awareness. Jimmy was very special. He was the Jose Mourinho of standing up for peoples rights in everything that he did.
I worked alongside Jimmy doing work on Person Centred Planning and Self-Directed Support when these were new ideas and felt very inspired by him. He was such a lovely man, he made time to speak to people. He was kind and generous. He had a wicked sense of humour and was very nice with it. He was also a big rangers fan, but I won’t hold that against him!
Jimmy was so inspiring that a film has been made about his life. You can hear the director talking about it here; https://vimeo.com/29045079
To continue the good work, I want to spread positive messages about inclusion and equality as I raise money. People who donate are leaving their messages and I’m sharing them from the benches. You can see some of these and find out more about Jimmy here: https://www.facebook.com/EDGEdinburgh
If you believe fighting for equality is important and you think it is worth celebrating a man who achieved so much for the disability rights movement, please give what you can! Every little helps.
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/celebrating-jimmy or email gillian@edg-sco.org
To support Jimmy, click here to visit the crowdfunding page.