Excerpt: What It Means to Be Included

“This is what it means to be included.”

The mother’s words jumped out at me from the radio. Included.

Two year old Tatum Bakker had never been able to swing on a playground swing set until they visited Brooklyn’s Playground on their way through Pocatello, Idaho. It’s a playground designed for children who are physically able and for those who are less able to play on together, named for the little girl who started it all, Brooklyn Fisher.

Kids with conditions like spina bifida usually can’t take part in playground games and activities, kids like seven year old Brooklyn and two year old Tatum, but in Pocatello they can. As Tatum’s mother explained:

And I put Tatum in a swing and kind of sat back and absorbed it all, and looked up and saw an older child, maybe 10 or 12 – a little girl – in a motorized wheelchair up on the pirate ship, surrounded by three or four friends her age who were able-bodied children, playing and laughing.

It’s a place where everyone can come together and play to their heart’s content.

It sounds like heaven to me. 

All Rise and Come to Order

Courtroom shows on TV start every trial with the same phrase: “All rise and come to order.”

In the early days of being a judge my court used to start with the same ceremony, my bailiff calling everyone to order as I walked through the door behind the bench and took my seat. Then he’d announce, “You may be seated.”

This works well. People who may be chatting while they wait for court to start can’t help but see that things are starting when everyone around them is standing up and quieting down. And for those who kept their seats and carried on their conversations, my bailiff would walk over right beside them and – using a voice loud enough to be heard in the next county – would say, “I said ALL RISE AND COME TO ORDER!” Several people have jumped nearly to the ceiling from their seated positions. I had a very effective bailiff.

Then one day I saw someone who didn’t rise and no matter how loudly my bailiff shouted in their ear they were not going to. The man was in a wheelchair.

He was sitting toward the front and as everyone rose around him in response to my bailiff’s call, he of course stayed seated. Then it struck me.

He was being excluded.

My bailiff, as an officer of the court, ordered everyone to stand and this man not only did not but he could not comply. A ceremony designed to preserve the dignity of the court actually placed this man in a position where he was unable to participate along with everyone else.

I decided I would never put someone in that position again and instructed my bailiff that court would now being with the phrase “Remain seated and come to order.”

The dignity of the court – and of those who appear before it – is preserved.

- Amy Julia Becker -