From Forbes:
“2022 New Years Resolutions
For The Disability Community”
As 2021 draws to a rather messy
close, especially for people with disabilities, it’s time for another round of
disability-themed New Year’s Resolutions. Last year’s resolutions here were
focused on disabled people’ s individual habits. This year, let’s look at
resolutions for the disability community as a whole. There are scores of
worthwhile goals. Here are a few that have the potential to make the most
impact:
1. Covid-19 Make sure any
normalization of Covid doesn’t leave disabled and chronically ill people
unacceptably vulnerable. The disability community started 2021 fighting
for access to vaccination — a fairly straightforward battle. We enter 2022
fighting just as hard, but against more complex and diffuse problems There
may be no way now to completely eradicate Covid-19, or to fully protect the
most medically and practically vulnerable among us from its effects. But it’s
not out of the question that in 2022, we could do a better job not just with
Covid itself, but how it affects the disability community. We can do this by
squarely confronting the now familiar matrix of pandemic problems specifically
affecting disabled and chronically ill people, including substantial overlap
with the elderly. These familiar problems for us. But they are much too often
forgotten or misunderstood by our nondisabled neighbors, government leaders,
and even scientific experts. Higher risk and vulnerability Many of us
have medical conditions that make it more likely we will catch Covid, and that
if we do, our risk of serious illness or death is higher — even if we are fully
vaccinated. Many of us also live in practical situations — like living in
congregate care facilities or having retail jobs that can’t be done from home —
that limit our ability to protect ourselves. Inadequate access to
preventative measures Even now, there are people with disabilities who face
accessibility barriers to vaccination. This includes “homebound” people, those
who lack adequate transportation, and people who have extra difficulty
navigating web-based registration systems. For some disabled people, like
people with lung diseases or autism, even wearing a mask really can be too
difficult. As the already shaky commitment to society-wide pandemic
prevention erodes even further, a consensus could develop that those of us at
highest risk should be solely responsible for protecting ourselves. We will
need to fight hard to maintain some semblance of social responsibility with
Covid, so disabled and chronically ill people aren’t left completely on our
own, and forced to essentially hide from our fellow citizens who decide they
are “done with Covid.” We need to resolve now that by the end of 2022, we
will substantially reduce risk, illness, and death rates from Covid-19,
specifically for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. And we need to
ensure that disabled and chronically ill people aren’t the only people forced
to isolate ourselves because everyone else has forgotten or minimized the
danger.
2. Voting Maintain or
increase disabled voter participation. Earlier this year, disability
voting researchers at Rutgers University found that 2020 voting rates for
people with disabilities in the U.S. rose substantially, thanks in part to more
methods of casting a vote being made easily available as a pandemic measure.
Can we maintain this progress? Can we finally close the persistent voting
participation gap between people with and without disabilities? There are a few
things we can at least try to do as we approach the November 2022 Midterm
Elections. First, we can make easier access to mail-in voting and a variety
of other methods more permanent. Mail-in ballots alone don’t solve all
disabled people’s voting accessibility problems. But along with more accessible
polling sites and machines, and early voting opportunities, voting by mail
makes voting easier for everyone, especially people with disabilities for whom
voting in the traditional manner is often inherently more difficult. Second,
we must resist efforts across the U.S. to restrict voting laws and procedures.
Whatever makes voting more difficult for anyone — with more steps, more
bureaucracy, and fewer ways to do it — makes voting less accessible to people
with disabilities. Third, disabled people need something to vote for.
The voting gap for disabled people isn’t only about accessibility. Many still
feel disengaged from politics, partly because candidates don’t address
real-life disability issues in any sort of detail. In 2022, state and local
candidates in particular need to offer meaningful, well-researched disability
policy platforms. Fortunately, they can follow the lead of the many 2020
Presidential candidates who did put out detailed and ambitious platforms on
disability policy.
3. Home care Expand home
care and increase home care worker pay. Millions of people, young and old
alike, have disabilities that among other things, require us to get help from
other people to do everyday tasks — like bathing, toileting, dressing, taking
medications, grooming, cooking, shopping, housekeeping, and daily planning.
Home care, or “Home and Community Based Services” enables us to get this help
in our own homes so we don’t have to live in instructional settings like
nursing homes. Right now, the disability community is looking at a
contradiction with home care. On the one hand, we have never been closer to winning
a meaningful federal effort to provide these services to all who need them and
are eligible. At the same time though, existing home care is in crisis. Low and
stagnant wages and the chaos of the pandemic have decimated the home care
workforce. Until just a few weeks ago, it looked like Congress would actually
pass $150 billion in additional spending over 10 years specifically on Home and
Community Based Services, as part of the Build Back Better package. Hopes for
this have dimmed considerably. But this effort doesn’t have to be over. The
twin goals of eliminating home care waiting lists, and stabilizing the home
care workforce by raising worker pay should be rolled over into disability
community resolutions for 2022. And if it can’t all be done in one package,
then Congress and the states still might be able to get something done so at
least current home care users can continue to live independently in the
community, with the help of stable, high-quality staff.
4. Disability policy Finish
other unfinished business. The disability community has made impressive
progress on a number of other specific disability policy goals over the last
few years. 2022 could be the year to push some of them over the finish line. For
example: Benefits reforms It’s long past time to substantially increase
Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income benefits,
and to reform eligibility rules and thresholds so it’s easier for disabled
people to work, save, and marry without losing benefits. Phasing out
sub-minimum wage A Depression-era law allows certain employers ot pay some
disabled people far under minimum wage. It was once intended to open up job
opportunities for disabled people where none supposedly existed. But this
program has long since become unnecessary, exploitative, and a dead end poverty
trap. Ending electric shock There is only one facility left in the U.S.
where electric shocks are used to “treat” autistic people, the Judge Rotenburg
Center in Massachusetts. Advocates have been trying for years to get the FDA to
stop the practice, and it finally did in 2020. But a court injunction this
summer has allowed the practice to continue. It needs to be stopped once and
for all. Airlines and wheelchairs In 2021, a disability activist named
Engracia Figueroa died from injuries caused by a loaner wheelchair she was
using because United Airlines mishandled and wrecked her own specialized
wheelchair. It’s just one example of how poorly airlines serve passengers with
disabilities. It’s an individual tragedy and outrage, but an industry-wide
problem that is just beginning to be addressed by Congress. Sen. Tammy
Duckworth, who uses a wheelchair herself, is spearheading this effort. These
are just a handful of the smaller-scale, specific policy fixes that could be
completed in 2022, if we make the necessary efforts to do so.
5. Disability culture More
books, publications, journalism, movies, and TV shows by people with
disabilities. Disability culture is more varied, exciting, and authentic
now than it has ever been. Here are just few recent highlights: Books on
disability, by disabled others like Demystifying Disability, by Emily Ladau and
We’re Not Broken, by Eric Garcia. Web-based disability publications like
The Disability Visibility Project and newsletters like Crip News. Disabled
journalists like Sara Luterman, Amanda Morris, and Zack Burdyck, who cover
disability issues in a variety of publications in a detailed and sophisticated
but accessible style. Films like “A Quiet Place” and TV shows like
“Ordinary Joe” that not only depict realistic disability stories, but finally
cast disabled actors to portray disabled characters. YouTubers like
“Squirmy and Grubs,” who share everyday life with disabilities, and Judy
Heumann, who profiles disability issues and interviews leaders in the
disability community.
Hopefully, 2022 will be an even
richer year for disability culture produced by people with disabilities,
speaking eloquently to both disabled and non-disabled audiences. Fulfilling
these resolutions will require a combination of individual efforts by people
with disabilities, and collective action by the disability community and our
disability organizations. One key to doing better than we have in the past may
be to expand disability community thinking and activity beyond the fairly small
and still too homogenous group of traditional disability leaders, to include
all kinds of disabled people, such as: disabled people of color; LGBTQ+
disabled people; people with all types and combinations of disabilities —
physical, intellectual, sensory, and mental; people with disabilities who
aren’t active in activism or disability culture; disabled people with diverse
political, philosophical, religious, and cultural perspectives
We will also in some cases need
the cooperation of non-disabled allies and other mainstream social
institutions. But we also have to believe that all of these resolutions are
within the power of disabled people ourselves to achieve.
^ This is really well-written and
hopefully something we can all make happen in 2022. ^
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