let me take you back to 1989 a woman
walks in for a meeting that will decide
her future she’s a single mom who after
her husband left her worked full-time
and went back to school full-time to
make a better life for her and her
daughter across from her sits the tenure
committee at the college she works at
none of them look like her she’s up
consent for consideration for tenure
which for her would mean lifetime job
security for working her dream job which
was running a Center for students with
disabilities it’s an actual very center
that 20 years earlier she earned it into
as a student when she was restarting her
academic career she’s a little person so
this is particularly personal to her the
chair of the committee leans back in his
chair and says thank you but we have
decided to deny you tenure because well
you can’t reach more than the bottom six
inches of a chalkboard and what kind of
teacher would you be if you can’t use
the top technology in our classroom
meaning a chalkboard thank you and
goodbye that woman was my mother Joan
herre a year later the Americans with
Disabilities Act passes and that very
action would have been illegal because
people fought for it
the 88 passed because people died
fighting for it died of disabilities
that when combined with structural
barriers kept them from leaving their
homes died from having been sent to
institutions and nursing homes as
children and growing up where the smell
of oxygen was always tainted with the
smell of death I walk in the room and
you can tell I’m a person with a
disability in my case dwarfism I’m one
of the 20% of people with dwarfism who
grew up in a family where my parents
also had it as do two of my three kids
this isn’t the case for most families
that include people with disabilities
most of us grew up in households with no
one like us and when I say yes I mean
the roughly one in five Americans that
have a disability in this country one in
five so that’s 20 percent of your
graduating class that’s 20 percent of
your coworkers it’s 20 percent of your
family twenty percent of your friend
group we are here in society today
because our elders worked on legislation
like the Americans with Disabilities Act
the individuals with
abilities Education Act and section 504
of the Rehabilitation Act where people
like them those of us sitting in this
very room today could experience full
participation equality of opportunity
economic self-sufficiency to be able to
live independently in other words the
American Dream if you will because
before the ad a disabled people couldn’t
leave their homes to go to the grocery
store to go to the bank to go to a happy
hour before the ad a you didn’t see sign
language interpreters here on this stage
at concerts who our comedy shows before
the ad a the community didn’t have
access to society parents were pressured
to give up their children that at the
point of birth so they would be
warehouse in massive institutions never
seen never held never played with by
their families to be disabled mitt you
could literally be arrested off the
street under ugly laws until as late as
the 1970s let’s go back to that pivotal
day July 26 1990 it was hot sticky and
damp one of those days that remind you
that our founding fathers had the genius
if you will to build the nation’s
capital on a swamp back when the ATA was
being actively fought for the image of
disability was one of white men in
wheelchairs for most people the concept
of disability and accessibility itself
meant curb cuts and Braille not sign
language interpreters when the
governor’s on TV talking about an
incoming hurricane or the speech to text
functions I know that all of you use on
a regular basis and never think about
the fact that it wouldn’t exist if it
weren’t for disabled people the world
has changed but the need to provide
access to ensure opportunity has not
they gathered on that South Lawn of the
White House the lobbyists who literally
did the wheeling and dealing pun
intended
alongside the activists who had thrown
themselves out of their wheelchairs and
dragged themselves up the steps of the
United States Capitol to protest the
lack of equal treatment under the law
people with intellectual disabilities
who had only recently been released
after spending the first half of their
lives in an institution the deaf
community who had fought and rebelled to
have Gallaudet University for the first
time led by a deaf president the 80
as a law affected over a fifth of our
population it was the largest expansion
of civil rights since the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 and the diversity of the
lawn on that day clearly showed it and
it was signed under a Republican
administration so why did George HW Bush
not only signed the bill into law but he
made it part of his campaign pledge this
was historic it’s because President Bush
knew a secret
the ATA was more than a law the ABA was
freedom in his case it was freedom for
his three-year-old daughter who had
passed away after battling leukemia but
had she lived he knew that she would
have been fighting her entire life for
access to society he saw his daughter
when he got a dear mr. president letter
from Lisa Carl a girl from Washington
State who wrote him a letter about
wanting to go to the movies with her
friends that’s all she wanted to go to
the movies and she couldn’t it’s your
cousin with a learning disability your
mom who’s a cancer survivor
your best friend who started therapy in
college when they started dealing with
anxiety and your neighbor who served in
the military and stepped on an IE D
Lisa’s story that of the girl that
wanted to go to the movies with her
friends helped cause a cultural shift in
how we think about disability that has
repercussions even today for those of us
who grew up with the ABA its impact is
both subtle and powerful you may not
even think about it we’re on the tail
end of what we like to call the 88
generation the first generation of
Americans who have grown up with the
connection between the individuals with
Disabilities Education Act and the
Americans with Disabilities Act people
at this intersection have what we like
to say the benefit of the connection
between preparation access and
opportunity not only have you always
gone to school with your disabled peers
which is the preparation piece but those
same peers have the right to be able to
access and move about society just like
you can this is the access part and with
the addition of access it should open
the door to opportunity and shared by
the non-discrimination protections in
place when you move into work the idea
is if you’ve done the work you should be
able to access the spaces and be
provided the opportunity to succeed back
in 1990 when the 88 was passed only 2%
of people with this
abilities went to college today roughly
eleven percent do that is because for
one of the first times in history
policies are somewhat working together
the individuals with Disabilities
Education Act which governs your rights
from K through 12 public education means
that when you’re 16 you get to be asked
what you want to be when you grow up
16 that might not sound like a big deal
but for young people with disabilities
this very question this process of what
they call transition planning was
revolutionary but can’t we all take a
moment to agree that waiting to ask
somebody what they want to be till
they’re 16 years old is a bit late
children are drawing pictures in
preschool about wanting to be scientists
we have take your child to work days and
job shadowing but for people with
disabilities we’re still fighting the
basic expectation that we can’t achieve
that we can’t succeed and that we’re
unable to contribute what good is it to
graduate if you can’t enter the place
you want to work imagine if you grew up
wanting to go work for like Facebook or
Twitter and you show up for your
interview after you with your degree in
hand and you literally cannot walk in
the door or you walk in and you
literally cannot understand a word
coming out of their mouth because you
don’t have a sign language interpreter
preparation falls short without access
the ATA takes that expectation and runs
with it
it says not only do we believe that you
can’t achieve we know that you still
need access to do so it is said this for
almost 29 years now and we’ve seen
disabled people achieving great things
in that time that would have seemed
impossible before but there still are so
many people facing ableism audism and
structural barriers ableism being the
oppression and discrimination faced by
disabled people and audism being the
oppression and discrimination faced by
the deaf community so what does
disability mean in the 21st century
reflecting back on preparation access
and opportunity it looks different it’s
taking it from the shadows and push it
into the mainstream in new and exciting
ways innovation and technology means new
access to spaces in new and innovative
ways via telecommuting and
videoconferencing but at the same time
technology should never be used as a
band-aid for an organization or a
company deciding that they don’t want to
accessible you grew up watching Dick
Clark on television on New Year’s Eve
that in itself is revolutionary that was
his show
that was his night after his stroke if
you looked on the internet people
continued to talk about how he should
just retire from the spotlight he should
stop working no one wants to see that on
television to me it symbolized the
opportunity to see something that made
others uncomfortable it was power but
Dick Clark did the preparation the
access was a given no one would have
told him that he didn’t have a right to
be king of New Year’s he’d always been
king of New Year’s did he have to change
up how he ran the show in a way that
would work for him given his disability
yeah he did and it provided an
opportunity to see disability front and
center on one of the busiest nights of
the year contributing to American
culture and exercising tangible media
power and presence in a way like never
before
senator Tammy Duckworth a military
veteran a state’s woman and for me a mom
snuck her iPhone in a prosthetic leg to
film a sit-in on the floor of the House
of Representatives fights for the rights
of the constituents of Illinois and
daily fights to protect the Americans
with Disabilities Act for the numerous
attacks that’s facing Kendrick Lamar
recent Pulitzer Prize winning hip-hop
artist who has talked about and lived
with depression and trauma in his art
and in his work every day drama and
discussions around trauma and its
connection with racism sexism ableism
and homophobia really are the next
directions that the disability community
needs to be thinking about the last
example I will give while I’m a little
person I have to talk about it miss
Tyrion Lannister
the most badass character to grace a
television screen in at least 10 years
so beloved and adored that all of you
the average height public will even
dress up as him for Halloween
you wear shirts with a little person on
them you share memes that never mock his
height but always celebrate his
intellect last year I opened the front
door on Halloween and there in front of
me stood a six foot two teenager dressed
as Tyrion Lannister mind you I didn’t
know what to think you
more so I don’t think he knew what to
think when I was standing on the other
side of the door but think about how
important that is culturally we have a
non-disabled person wanting to be a
disabled person he could have been Jamie
he could have been John Snow he could
have been the hound but no he chose
Tyrion those are just a few examples but
whereas back on that day in July in 1990
the public saw a disability and thought
men in wheelchairs the community looks
much different today so what does the
community look like 37 million people
who deal with migraines on a regular
basis 30 million people with eating
disorders a million people who live with
chronic fatigue 15 million women with
endometriosis 25 million with IBS 43
million people who live every day with a
mental health disability all of you have
the same protections that were won by
that same generation who chained
themselves to buses and crawled up the
steps of the Capitol the progress of the
ATA is demonstrated not only by the fact
of all of those examples but that the
daughter of the woman denied tenure for
only reaching the bottom six inches of
the chalkboard 21 years later walked
into the White House where she served as
the director of diversity outreach for
President Barack Obama and she wasn’t
the only one there were five disabled
women who served in the White House in
the Obama administration a building
decades ahead of the curve on
accessibility because of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt’s who also understood the
connection between preparation access
and opportunity the cornerstones of the
American Dream but today there’s
repeated threats to roll it back today
the ATA is under attack there are people
who say that providing access to people
like me it’s too expensive but there are
tax credits to help there are people who
claim that disabled people file too many
lawsuits to get rich and access to many
places the law has been the law for 28
years you’ve had 28 years to become
accessible and disabled plaintiffs are
not able to collect monetary damages if
we win a lawsuit all we can win is
access that we don’t need to go to
shopping malls or hotels but why should
your money be looked at any differently
than my money
haven’t I labor to earn it they say we
should be happy going back to the way
things were 29 years ago because hello
it’s been eradicated didn’t you get the
memo telling people you have rights
automatically lifts you out of the last
almost 40 years of poverty oppression
and institutionalization non-disabled
people think that the world has changed
so much that the a da is great you say
people have access you say things like
the only disability is a bad attitude
frankly there are a few phrases that I
find more insulting when you claim that
disability doesn’t exist or is it real
or you don’t see it it completely
diminishes the threats that I face when
I walk down the street and have people
come up to me and tell me that they can
literally pick me up and walk off with
me leaving my children abandoned because
they think it’s funny to mock disabled
people it diminishes the fights to get
laws like the a da passed the oppression
that still exists over 70% of polling
places are still unaccessible women with
disabilities make 73 cents on the dollar
compared to men without disabilities our
unemployment rate hovers around 70% our
young people are three times more likely
to end up in foster care
six times more likely to end up in jail
the work of the a DA is not done while
50% of the individuals killed by law
enforcement are disabled people and 32
states if you’re a parent with a
disability the state can come in and
take your children with no more cause
than solely the fact that you have some
type of disability because of this myth
that equality and the inclusion have
arrived for the disabled public people
think about disability rights not as
rights but as special privileges
non-disabled people hire disabled people
to get through the lines quicker at
amusement parks who gets punished for
that disabled people non-disabled people
print off fake documentation to give
Fifi a vest and there and get her on the
plane who gets punished for that
disabled people non-disabled people
steal a dead relatives parking placard
to not have to pay a meter who gets
punished for that disabled people when
in reality if you had to live our lives
if you had to deal with the oppression
fatigue that we live with the pseudo
voyeurism spending weeks navigating
bureaucracies to get to the one damn
person who can approve something like a
piece of software to allow you to read
or a key to a restroom you’d be as fired
up and as frustrated as we are the
latest attack on the community in the ad
a is part of a much broader strategy to
get those of us that are deemed unfit
out of the public eye whether it be the
Muslim ban HB 2 the masterpiece cake
shop case or a tax on the a DA all of us
from marginalized communities are seeing
that even with the work done to prepare
and the promise of opportunity denial of
access can still pull the rug out from
under us instead of the world we live in
getting bigger and bigger as access
improves we’re seeing a shrink we talk
about always wanting better futures for
our children futures where they can be
more prosperous face less discrimination
less inequality future of less steps and
more ramps the power of the community is
in its diversity it’s evolution over
time from kids with polio in the 30s to
autistic outfielders in 2018 we continue
to fight it for a seat at the table
while you continue to put our rights on
your menu but we must speak out we must
use our voices to remind people of the
importance of the fact that we are here
to move from preparation to opportunity
and that access is still important and
sadly lacking preserving disability
rights and the legacy of the ADEA is the
work of your generation to continue your
voices are central to the fight of head
while there are folks working to turn
back progress you could be a voice
promoting inclusion you can bend the arc
of justice into a ramp so I guess what
I’m saying is what I’m doing is inviting
not just the one in five of you who is
out as one of us but the additional four
out of five of you to join us and
preserve these rights because the world
is a more just place when your sister
your friend your neighbor and your mom
are at the table so it’s on you to help
ensure that their rights continue to be protected I welcome you to the fight
walks in for a meeting that will decide
her future she’s a single mom who after
her husband left her worked full-time
and went back to school full-time to
make a better life for her and her
daughter across from her sits the tenure
committee at the college she works at
none of them look like her she’s up
consent for consideration for tenure
which for her would mean lifetime job
security for working her dream job which
was running a Center for students with
disabilities it’s an actual very center
that 20 years earlier she earned it into
as a student when she was restarting her
academic career she’s a little person so
this is particularly personal to her the
chair of the committee leans back in his
chair and says thank you but we have
decided to deny you tenure because well
you can’t reach more than the bottom six
inches of a chalkboard and what kind of
teacher would you be if you can’t use
the top technology in our classroom
meaning a chalkboard thank you and
goodbye that woman was my mother Joan
herre a year later the Americans with
Disabilities Act passes and that very
action would have been illegal because
people fought for it
the 88 passed because people died
fighting for it died of disabilities
that when combined with structural
barriers kept them from leaving their
homes died from having been sent to
institutions and nursing homes as
children and growing up where the smell
of oxygen was always tainted with the
smell of death I walk in the room and
you can tell I’m a person with a
disability in my case dwarfism I’m one
of the 20% of people with dwarfism who
grew up in a family where my parents
also had it as do two of my three kids
this isn’t the case for most families
that include people with disabilities
most of us grew up in households with no
one like us and when I say yes I mean
the roughly one in five Americans that
have a disability in this country one in
five so that’s 20 percent of your
graduating class that’s 20 percent of
your coworkers it’s 20 percent of your
family twenty percent of your friend
group we are here in society today
because our elders worked on legislation
like the Americans with Disabilities Act
the individuals with
abilities Education Act and section 504
of the Rehabilitation Act where people
like them those of us sitting in this
very room today could experience full
participation equality of opportunity
economic self-sufficiency to be able to
live independently in other words the
American Dream if you will because
before the ad a disabled people couldn’t
leave their homes to go to the grocery
store to go to the bank to go to a happy
hour before the ad a you didn’t see sign
language interpreters here on this stage
at concerts who our comedy shows before
the ad a the community didn’t have
access to society parents were pressured
to give up their children that at the
point of birth so they would be
warehouse in massive institutions never
seen never held never played with by
their families to be disabled mitt you
could literally be arrested off the
street under ugly laws until as late as
the 1970s let’s go back to that pivotal
day July 26 1990 it was hot sticky and
damp one of those days that remind you
that our founding fathers had the genius
if you will to build the nation’s
capital on a swamp back when the ATA was
being actively fought for the image of
disability was one of white men in
wheelchairs for most people the concept
of disability and accessibility itself
meant curb cuts and Braille not sign
language interpreters when the
governor’s on TV talking about an
incoming hurricane or the speech to text
functions I know that all of you use on
a regular basis and never think about
the fact that it wouldn’t exist if it
weren’t for disabled people the world
has changed but the need to provide
access to ensure opportunity has not
they gathered on that South Lawn of the
White House the lobbyists who literally
did the wheeling and dealing pun
intended
alongside the activists who had thrown
themselves out of their wheelchairs and
dragged themselves up the steps of the
United States Capitol to protest the
lack of equal treatment under the law
people with intellectual disabilities
who had only recently been released
after spending the first half of their
lives in an institution the deaf
community who had fought and rebelled to
have Gallaudet University for the first
time led by a deaf president the 80
as a law affected over a fifth of our
population it was the largest expansion
of civil rights since the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 and the diversity of the
lawn on that day clearly showed it and
it was signed under a Republican
administration so why did George HW Bush
not only signed the bill into law but he
made it part of his campaign pledge this
was historic it’s because President Bush
knew a secret
the ATA was more than a law the ABA was
freedom in his case it was freedom for
his three-year-old daughter who had
passed away after battling leukemia but
had she lived he knew that she would
have been fighting her entire life for
access to society he saw his daughter
when he got a dear mr. president letter
from Lisa Carl a girl from Washington
State who wrote him a letter about
wanting to go to the movies with her
friends that’s all she wanted to go to
the movies and she couldn’t it’s your
cousin with a learning disability your
mom who’s a cancer survivor
your best friend who started therapy in
college when they started dealing with
anxiety and your neighbor who served in
the military and stepped on an IE D
Lisa’s story that of the girl that
wanted to go to the movies with her
friends helped cause a cultural shift in
how we think about disability that has
repercussions even today for those of us
who grew up with the ABA its impact is
both subtle and powerful you may not
even think about it we’re on the tail
end of what we like to call the 88
generation the first generation of
Americans who have grown up with the
connection between the individuals with
Disabilities Education Act and the
Americans with Disabilities Act people
at this intersection have what we like
to say the benefit of the connection
between preparation access and
opportunity not only have you always
gone to school with your disabled peers
which is the preparation piece but those
same peers have the right to be able to
access and move about society just like
you can this is the access part and with
the addition of access it should open
the door to opportunity and shared by
the non-discrimination protections in
place when you move into work the idea
is if you’ve done the work you should be
able to access the spaces and be
provided the opportunity to succeed back
in 1990 when the 88 was passed only 2%
of people with this
abilities went to college today roughly
eleven percent do that is because for
one of the first times in history
policies are somewhat working together
the individuals with Disabilities
Education Act which governs your rights
from K through 12 public education means
that when you’re 16 you get to be asked
what you want to be when you grow up
16 that might not sound like a big deal
but for young people with disabilities
this very question this process of what
they call transition planning was
revolutionary but can’t we all take a
moment to agree that waiting to ask
somebody what they want to be till
they’re 16 years old is a bit late
children are drawing pictures in
preschool about wanting to be scientists
we have take your child to work days and
job shadowing but for people with
disabilities we’re still fighting the
basic expectation that we can’t achieve
that we can’t succeed and that we’re
unable to contribute what good is it to
graduate if you can’t enter the place
you want to work imagine if you grew up
wanting to go work for like Facebook or
Twitter and you show up for your
interview after you with your degree in
hand and you literally cannot walk in
the door or you walk in and you
literally cannot understand a word
coming out of their mouth because you
don’t have a sign language interpreter
preparation falls short without access
the ATA takes that expectation and runs
with it
it says not only do we believe that you
can’t achieve we know that you still
need access to do so it is said this for
almost 29 years now and we’ve seen
disabled people achieving great things
in that time that would have seemed
impossible before but there still are so
many people facing ableism audism and
structural barriers ableism being the
oppression and discrimination faced by
disabled people and audism being the
oppression and discrimination faced by
the deaf community so what does
disability mean in the 21st century
reflecting back on preparation access
and opportunity it looks different it’s
taking it from the shadows and push it
into the mainstream in new and exciting
ways innovation and technology means new
access to spaces in new and innovative
ways via telecommuting and
videoconferencing but at the same time
technology should never be used as a
band-aid for an organization or a
company deciding that they don’t want to
accessible you grew up watching Dick
Clark on television on New Year’s Eve
that in itself is revolutionary that was
his show
that was his night after his stroke if
you looked on the internet people
continued to talk about how he should
just retire from the spotlight he should
stop working no one wants to see that on
television to me it symbolized the
opportunity to see something that made
others uncomfortable it was power but
Dick Clark did the preparation the
access was a given no one would have
told him that he didn’t have a right to
be king of New Year’s he’d always been
king of New Year’s did he have to change
up how he ran the show in a way that
would work for him given his disability
yeah he did and it provided an
opportunity to see disability front and
center on one of the busiest nights of
the year contributing to American
culture and exercising tangible media
power and presence in a way like never
before
senator Tammy Duckworth a military
veteran a state’s woman and for me a mom
snuck her iPhone in a prosthetic leg to
film a sit-in on the floor of the House
of Representatives fights for the rights
of the constituents of Illinois and
daily fights to protect the Americans
with Disabilities Act for the numerous
attacks that’s facing Kendrick Lamar
recent Pulitzer Prize winning hip-hop
artist who has talked about and lived
with depression and trauma in his art
and in his work every day drama and
discussions around trauma and its
connection with racism sexism ableism
and homophobia really are the next
directions that the disability community
needs to be thinking about the last
example I will give while I’m a little
person I have to talk about it miss
Tyrion Lannister
the most badass character to grace a
television screen in at least 10 years
so beloved and adored that all of you
the average height public will even
dress up as him for Halloween
you wear shirts with a little person on
them you share memes that never mock his
height but always celebrate his
intellect last year I opened the front
door on Halloween and there in front of
me stood a six foot two teenager dressed
as Tyrion Lannister mind you I didn’t
know what to think you
more so I don’t think he knew what to
think when I was standing on the other
side of the door but think about how
important that is culturally we have a
non-disabled person wanting to be a
disabled person he could have been Jamie
he could have been John Snow he could
have been the hound but no he chose
Tyrion those are just a few examples but
whereas back on that day in July in 1990
the public saw a disability and thought
men in wheelchairs the community looks
much different today so what does the
community look like 37 million people
who deal with migraines on a regular
basis 30 million people with eating
disorders a million people who live with
chronic fatigue 15 million women with
endometriosis 25 million with IBS 43
million people who live every day with a
mental health disability all of you have
the same protections that were won by
that same generation who chained
themselves to buses and crawled up the
steps of the Capitol the progress of the
ATA is demonstrated not only by the fact
of all of those examples but that the
daughter of the woman denied tenure for
only reaching the bottom six inches of
the chalkboard 21 years later walked
into the White House where she served as
the director of diversity outreach for
President Barack Obama and she wasn’t
the only one there were five disabled
women who served in the White House in
the Obama administration a building
decades ahead of the curve on
accessibility because of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt’s who also understood the
connection between preparation access
and opportunity the cornerstones of the
American Dream but today there’s
repeated threats to roll it back today
the ATA is under attack there are people
who say that providing access to people
like me it’s too expensive but there are
tax credits to help there are people who
claim that disabled people file too many
lawsuits to get rich and access to many
places the law has been the law for 28
years you’ve had 28 years to become
accessible and disabled plaintiffs are
not able to collect monetary damages if
we win a lawsuit all we can win is
access that we don’t need to go to
shopping malls or hotels but why should
your money be looked at any differently
than my money
haven’t I labor to earn it they say we
should be happy going back to the way
things were 29 years ago because hello
it’s been eradicated didn’t you get the
memo telling people you have rights
automatically lifts you out of the last
almost 40 years of poverty oppression
and institutionalization non-disabled
people think that the world has changed
so much that the a da is great you say
people have access you say things like
the only disability is a bad attitude
frankly there are a few phrases that I
find more insulting when you claim that
disability doesn’t exist or is it real
or you don’t see it it completely
diminishes the threats that I face when
I walk down the street and have people
come up to me and tell me that they can
literally pick me up and walk off with
me leaving my children abandoned because
they think it’s funny to mock disabled
people it diminishes the fights to get
laws like the a da passed the oppression
that still exists over 70% of polling
places are still unaccessible women with
disabilities make 73 cents on the dollar
compared to men without disabilities our
unemployment rate hovers around 70% our
young people are three times more likely
to end up in foster care
six times more likely to end up in jail
the work of the a DA is not done while
50% of the individuals killed by law
enforcement are disabled people and 32
states if you’re a parent with a
disability the state can come in and
take your children with no more cause
than solely the fact that you have some
type of disability because of this myth
that equality and the inclusion have
arrived for the disabled public people
think about disability rights not as
rights but as special privileges
non-disabled people hire disabled people
to get through the lines quicker at
amusement parks who gets punished for
that disabled people non-disabled people
print off fake documentation to give
Fifi a vest and there and get her on the
plane who gets punished for that
disabled people non-disabled people
steal a dead relatives parking placard
to not have to pay a meter who gets
punished for that disabled people when
in reality if you had to live our lives
if you had to deal with the oppression
fatigue that we live with the pseudo
voyeurism spending weeks navigating
bureaucracies to get to the one damn
person who can approve something like a
piece of software to allow you to read
or a key to a restroom you’d be as fired
up and as frustrated as we are the
latest attack on the community in the ad
a is part of a much broader strategy to
get those of us that are deemed unfit
out of the public eye whether it be the
Muslim ban HB 2 the masterpiece cake
shop case or a tax on the a DA all of us
from marginalized communities are seeing
that even with the work done to prepare
and the promise of opportunity denial of
access can still pull the rug out from
under us instead of the world we live in
getting bigger and bigger as access
improves we’re seeing a shrink we talk
about always wanting better futures for
our children futures where they can be
more prosperous face less discrimination
less inequality future of less steps and
more ramps the power of the community is
in its diversity it’s evolution over
time from kids with polio in the 30s to
autistic outfielders in 2018 we continue
to fight it for a seat at the table
while you continue to put our rights on
your menu but we must speak out we must
use our voices to remind people of the
importance of the fact that we are here
to move from preparation to opportunity
and that access is still important and
sadly lacking preserving disability
rights and the legacy of the ADEA is the
work of your generation to continue your
voices are central to the fight of head
while there are folks working to turn
back progress you could be a voice
promoting inclusion you can bend the arc
of justice into a ramp so I guess what
I’m saying is what I’m doing is inviting
not just the one in five of you who is
out as one of us but the additional four
out of five of you to join us and
preserve these rights because the world
is a more just place when your sister
your friend your neighbor and your mom
are at the table so it’s on you to help
ensure that their rights continue to be protected I welcome you to the fight
Please follow and like us: