Disabled campaigner joins Occupy London protest

Bankers are the biggest fraudsters in gambling away the public's money they are being given, says Claire Glasman of WinVisible, the independent campaign group for disabled women. “They gambled our money away and they are being given more money, our money, they are gambling with,” Glasman said after joining hundreds of activists in the Occupy London campaign against the global financial system.  “The government criticises welfare fraud yet the bankers are the biggest fraudsters. They have gambled our money and have been given billions in bonuses, while people on benefits are having to scrape along on £67 a week,” she said.  The wheel-chaired campaigner joined anti-capitalist activists outside St Paul's Cathedral after attending a rally against government cuts to disability benefits at London's City Hall  “As a disabled women I join everyone else for the right to survive and for a decent level of income and for an accessible world where we don't have to struggle so hard to get around,” she told IRNA.  Glasman said she did not want to be stuck indoors because of inaccessible housing, transport and facilities and attended the Hardest Hit campaign to stop the government cuts to disability benefits.  “People have fought and died for the welfare we have here but the coalition government wants to go back to (19th century) Victorian times with people begging in the street,” she said.  Glasman said that the government was imposing impossible conditions on disabled people so that “no one can live the way they want to and need to.”  “The only form of existence is going out to work and there aren't any jobs anyway and employers don't want us,” she said in her interview with IRNA.  “They want to make us job-seekers then take away our money because we can’t find jobs,” the wheel-chaired campaigner said but was optimistic that protests will succeed.  “If people do this direct action it has an impact. In the UK, we won the Disability Discrimination Act by people basically blocking the roads, sitting down in front of buses and that is what made buses accessible today for wheelchairs,” she said.