To the 50th Anniversary of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and 33rd Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act—to the advocates and disabled people from the past, present and the future—we are worthy of access to basic human rights.
It’s important to know where you’ve been to know where you’re going, so in honor of the milestones of how far we’ve come, but also how far we still need to go, I’m resharing this video I made to commemorate Judy Heumann and the disability movement history after she died in March.
Much of the access disabled people have today is because of Judy’s work that began in the 70s. Judy, fondly known as the Mother of the Disability Rights Movement, helped lead the disability movement, from the historic 1977 Section 504 occupation of a federal building by disabled people, to the signing of the ADA.
Judy and I talked about meeting one day so I was sad to have missed such an opportunity, but I’m grateful for beautiful humans like Judy who, in her own words, says she wasn’t doing anything special, she just recognized that the lack of equity for disabled people was inhumane, and was willing to call it out. But Judy was special because, as we see by the centuries of inhumanity against disabled people, not everyone is willing to roll up and say, “No more”.
There are still minds to change and educate, and policies to implement, so as we view October as National Disability Employment Awareness Month, let us not forget all that still needs to be done to uphold and expand rights against discrimination. Together, we can create change through storytelling and the shared understanding that disability is a signature of the human spirit, and we are humans deserving of equal access. #KamsWheelsTravel
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Class Act.40 yrs.UnJustice Documentation.Civil Rights Discrim.,NJ And Fed.
3wOver the last 24 years every time I called disability rights in New Jersey they had lost my file and they continued to condone that I did not deserve to have a prosecutor defend my medical rights when my parents violated a restraining order and committed Medicaid fraud and fixed me (had me maimed)so I could not remain in the work first program. I WAS denied permission to see an ER doctor and wheeled into the basement of a local hospital for a procedure the horrifies me to this day. To the present they continue to allow Medicaid and Blue Cross Blue Shield to withhold whatever they find inconvenient in my medical records and refuse to enforce my HIPAA rights