Disabled doesn't mean unable
...to stand up for your rights
But first, some housekeeping
For regular readers, I will be off next week in observance of the Memorial Day weekend. I will return to regular writing duties on my main Substack in two weeks time; as for my work here on the GSUS Substack, it's TBD but it'll be some time next month, that much I can guarantee.
Now, to business
Last month, I personally lamented my non-participation in the April 5th round of demonstrations/protests that took place nationwide, just as here in my neck of the woods. As a member of the disability community, I was heartened to find out that a small number of us have gotten the tumerity to stand up for both ourselves and our rights — and why not? We’re part of the community as well, or at least we want to have a greater part in it.
Back in less fraught times, I hosted a podcast — well, more like hosted, edited, and produced a podcast — and for the end segment, I memorialized Judith Heumann (1947-2023), a disability rights advocate who had recently passed away. Wheelchair-bound due to contracting polio at 18 months old, Heumann frequently told of her difficulties in getting a fair shake in education as a child in New York City, and the struggle of her parents to help get her there. But sure as night follows day, adulthood follows childhood and her struggles with the New York City Department of Education continued as she was denied a teaching license because of the aforementioned wheelchair (see “polio, contracting”). Only a successful legal battle gave her the distinction of being the first of her kind to teach in the New York City school system.
The most recent example of the disability community both speaking truth to power and taking it there came this past week, when members of this community disrupted a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on proposed Medicaid cuts. Capitol Police arrested 26 activists as a result, but there's a faint glimmer of hope that those in power will get the message that Medicaid is not to be done away with. Even with this latest chapter, you will be glad -- and perhaps surprised — to know that this was far from the first time that the disability space has stood up for itself.
The late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States was a time of massive upheaval, what with the rise of the civil rights that gave rise to African-Americans getting the right to vote and being on par with their white counterparts (or so was the intent), as well as the rise of women’s liberation, LGBT rights, etc. The disability space saw this as seizing the moment and decided they wanted to be part of the community as well. With the specter of Watergate making itself visible, then-President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) signed the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 into law, thus replacing the Vocational Rehabilitation Act and extending civil rights to the disability community by way of Section 504, including education. For the uninitiated, Section 504 reads as follows:
No otherwise qualified individual with a disability in the United States, as defined in section 705(20) of this title, shall, solely by reason of her or his disability, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance or under any program or activity conducted by any Executive agency or by the United States Postal Service.1
However, not everyone was celebrating as that section was not being enforced as written. In April 1977, over a hundred disabled protesters took part in a “sit-in” at the San Francisco office of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (the forerunner to today’s Department of Health and Human Services) with the demand of greater accommodations and accessibility. After 25 days and with allyship from groups such as the Black Panther Party, !Section 504 was signed into law. The San Francisco protests were part of a larger wave of protests across the country.
Okay, we’ve gotten better accommodations as far as education and what not, but a good many of us have to get around, and public transit is the only real option in most places. However, transit agencies weren’t hip to the message, at least in Denver. A year after the HEW sit-ins, a group of activists known as the “Gang of 19” protested the Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD)’s lack of access to busses. On July 5 and 6, 1978, nineteen wheelchair-bound men as part of ADAPT (Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transit) stopped traffic chanting, “We will ride”. The RTD ultimately relented, but it wouldn’t be until 1985 that lifts were installed on busses.2
May 13, 2025 wasn’t the first time that the disabled took to the United States Capitol to protest 700 protesters took part in the “Wheels for Justice” and "Capitol Crawl” calling for the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). After speeches were given, sixty of the protesters crawled their way up the Capitol Steps ,some with crutches and other implements of mobility. The next day, this group occupied the Rotunda, but were soon arrested by Capitol Police; at least there were handicap-accessible police vans to haul them away. On March 14, those who managed to evade arrest occupied the offices of New York state Congressman Hamilton Fish IV (1926-1996) and Bud Shuster (1932-2023), his counterpart from Central Pennsylvania. The protesters who participated were eventually arrested. A few months later, on July 26, 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law by then-President George H.W. Bush (1924-2018), with his son George W. Bush signing the ADA Amendments Act eighteen years later.3
The first iteration of the current regime — dare I say, a comically sad attempt at a dictatorship — also saw, like now, a threat to funding for Medicaid and Medicare. In the early months of tRump 1.0, a bill was introduced in Congress to strip funding for those two programs vital to many members of the disability community. On June 22, 2017, disability advocates staged a “die-in” at the office of then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. ADAPT, which staged both the Denver protest four decades earlier and the aforementioned “Wheels of Justice” action, also organized this non-violent protest with protesters chanting, “Don’t touch Medicaid, save our liberty!” Just as in 1990, Capitol Police dragged away the demonstrators and placed them under arrest. Unlike in 1990, a piece of legislation did not make its way through Congress to become the law of the land; the bill to cut Medicaid never made it out of the Senate.4
Summing up
Like African-Americans, women and the LGBT community, disabled people are never ones to stand by and watch their rights be denied or outright taken away. Whether our disability demands wheelchairs, crutches, or it’s a so-called “invisible” disability like autism, those of us in this space have shown great courage and determination in standing up for ourselves.
https://disabilityrightsflorida.org/blog/entry/504-sit-in-history
https://www.rtd-denver.com/community/news/we-will-ride-historic-events-of-45-years-ago-recognized
https://disabilityrightsflorida.org/blog/entry/wheels_of_justice_march_capitol_crawl
https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/22/politics/protests-mitch-mcconnell-office-health-care-bill
Amen👏🏼👏🏼