1:52pm April 10, 2014

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It’s not that I have any major disagreement with Bill’s assessment of what we’re up against. Call it colonialism or just corporate American business as usual, the outcome is the same: “helping the handicapped” is a multi-billion dollar industry in which we are another product to be marketed. But at the same time that Bill condemns our nondisabled oppressors for their authoritarian control, their “in our name without us” tactics, their colonialism of us, his solution is do the same thing. What real difference does it make whether all the decisions about us are made by able-bodied people in the name of “for your own good” or by a self-appointed Elite Corps of the Righteously Disabled in the name of “for our own good”? The outcome is the same: power in the hands of the few with disempowerment for the many. This is change? This is progress?

Unlike Bill, I believe one of our primary strengths is our diversity, and that our best hope is to be as inclusive a people as possible, no matter how unwieldy that may be. From Jerry’s Kids to Jerry’s Orphans and all points in between. If we start by dismissing people as unenlightened, too unsophisticated to warrant having a voice in the discussion, we stifle their possibilities and ours. There’s such arrogance in assuming “I am the true revolution.” That arrogance is as dangerous to a progressive movement as is indifference or lack of education about our history of struggle.

That doesn’t mean I think we ought to be soft and make nice with folks who are clearly usurping our power or that I believe all points of view about disability are created equal. I see no reason to be patient when change is slow in coming or to listen politely to the excuses able-bodied people (or their disabled apologists) offer for excluding us. Even with all our thorny, extravagant differences, I think it’s safe to say that it’s time to adopt a hard-line policy about owning our own culture: “Absolutely nothing about us, without us.”

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