Disability Rights

My mother works in special education, and I learned so much from her about what it means to truly care and have compassion for the disabled community. Every disabled person deserves the ability to thrive, yet we so often fail to integrate them into our society. 

I continue to learn from many great activists and educators about disability, but one important lesson that I want to take with me to Carson City is the social model of disability. This is the concept that the disabled community is most often disabled by acts of society rather than their own medical diagnoses. For example, when we don’t have robust, accessible public transportation, the elderly and disabled struggle to move freely if they can’t drive a vehicle themselves. Another example is when a company would rather lay off an employee than let them complete tasks remotely, which is especially disabling because American health insurance coverage is often tied to one’s employment. We have built a system that does not properly acknowledge the humanity of the disabled and does not properly pay and support care workers & caretakers who enable so many people to lead lives with dignity. This has to change.