Progressives have failed disabled people
This article is our latest in our series on disability inclusion in progressive organizations. Check out the first article in this series here, and stay tuned for more articles.
Voters, like volunteers, tend to be a certain kind of person. Despite popular opinion, nonvoters belong to more marginalized sectors of society. Studies show that nonvoters are younger, poorer, less educated, more racially diverse, and critically, more likely to be disabled, especially visually and cognitively disabled.
Disabled people are also far more likely to live in poverty and less likely to be housed or employed. Given these demographics, you’d be forgiven for thinking disabled people would be a higher priority for progressive organizations than we actually are.
To be fair, this isn’t exclusively an issue with progressives. Disabled people are always the object of the sentence, never the subject. We exist by our relationships: as people’s children, as burdens on our caregivers. Because of our perceived helplessness and voicelessness, decisions are made by others on our behalf. Unlike most demographics, nearly every nonprofit dedicated to disability advocacy or services is run by people without disabilities, often our own family members.
“Disabled people shouldn’t have to get a degree in order to have our humanity recognized by people who should be our political allies”
In reality, there are quite a lot of us. Depending on how disability is defined, we’re anywhere from 8.6% of people under 65 to 20% of the US population (a problematic figure since the majority of those do not identify as disabled). Either way, we’re a demographic of significant size. So why don’t politicians and political organizations seem to know we exist?
“People with disabilities have political views. We’re voters,” says Brooke Hohfeld, Co-Executive Director of Texas Advocates, an organization run by people with developmental disabilities (DD). Even when they align with progressive positions, mainstream progressives remain unresponsive to most of these priorities, evidenced by a marriage equality campaign that left out disabled people (who often cannot marry and retain benefits), campaigns against conversion therapy that leave out applied behavioral analysis, and a Fight for Fifteen campaign that has ignored the fight to end subminimum wage over the last decade. When the priorities of disabled people are at odds with typical liberal positions, such as anti-euthanasia advocacy, non-disabled progressives often react derisively rather than learn about the ways euthanasia has historically (and currently) been used as a weapon of eugenics against our communities.
“What do progressives do when the interests of two marginalized communities collide?” asks Washington State Representative Noel Frame (D-Seattle). She mentions high-profile examples, like disabled people and unions at odds over closing institutions. Frame believes progressives need to be much more proactive in building relationships with disabled people, not simply our caregivers. “Elected [official]s must go into communities to learn from people without time to advocate.” Frame’s own relationship-building has given her an outstanding reputation as an ally in the state’s disability communities.
Progressives don’t have to scour their districts to find disabled people, though. There are many of us making the effort to show up despite barriers, only to be ignored, or worse. “I basically find [non-disabled] progressives exhausting because they throw entire tantrums when their bigotry is shown to them. Have you ever asked a ‘progressive’ not to use ableist slurs?” Kassiane Asasumasu asks me flatly. The Portland Autistic activist, who famously coined the word neurodivergent, is one of many respected disabled activists I spoke to across the country who have given up on being included in progressive politics, despite their own political orientations.
When Jessi Murray ran for office in Seattle, she used her platform to talk about her experience of forced institutionalization and speak out against a bill by Senate Deputy Majority Leader Manka Dhingra (D-Redmond). It didn’t work: Democrats overwhelmingly supported expanding the ability of hospitals to hold disabled people without cause. Dhingra’s proximity to disability as a family member made her more of an expert than the many actually disabled people or opposing organizations. Meanwhile, Chelsea Reinschmidt, a Deaf Autistic person, cited an imposing list of progressive organizations—across the West, Midwest, and Northeast--that had refused them interpretation or captions.
Cal Montgomery, a disabled elder in Chicago, was so excited about Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy that he wanted to be a part of making it happen. After months of inaccessible or even dangerous offers from the campaign (such as being offered a one-way ride to Indiana to canvas, where he would have to find his own way home), and being ignored even by the campaign’s disability outreach, Cal came to a conclusion: “If Elizabeth Warren can’t imagine a place for me in her campaign… then I don’t believe she can imagine a place for me in the nation.” Montgomery never got to vote for Warren, as he was never given the aid he requested to bypass barriers at the polls.
To be fair, I could have used an example from any Democratic candidate’s campaign. “Democrats listen to experts,” A director of a progressive organization in Washington state told me on condition of anonymity. “And we perceive professionals as the experts on disability. Disabled people without degrees just aren’t respected.” This thinking alludes to the medical model of disability, where disabled people are seen as patients, or a collection of symptoms, thereby justifying a perspective where non-disabled doctors have more credibility on our lives than we ourselves do. But progressives would never view a male gynecologist as a more legitimate expert on women’s lives than women themselves. Even viewing disability through a medical lens is outdated and frankly inaccurate.
Disabled people shouldn’t have to get a degree in order to have our humanity recognized by people who should be our political allies (never mind only 65% of special education students even graduate high school—like most special ed students in my state, I didn’t). Nor do I think educating others is the answer: disabled people have spent the past three years educating on how dangerous and harmful straw bans are, only to have progressives blow us off.
But sometimes, there are political actors ready to meet these stories with indignation and support: conservatives. The anti-choice movement, which often opposes euthanasia, is all too happy to be the only ally willing to protect disabled people from the predations of liberals. In Texas, the state with the most DD institutions and institutionalised people, Democrats, owing to their alliances with unions, have proven to be the partisan barrier in freeing people from incarceration. Into this void stepped the Tea Party, relishing the opportunity to advocate for cuts to government spending and services while simultaneously looking like the virtuous champions of the disabled.
Frame sees a problem with letting the Tea Party and Religious Right solve issues of disability justice. She invokes the deinstitutionalization mandates of the Reagan Administration, efforts which were supported by many disabled people of the time. Without putting funding into the community to replace the role filled by (obviously dehumanizing) institutions, disabled people were left without supports to transition into the community. “If we don’t effectively tell the story, we lose the narrative. Cutting government is the wrong answer. We need to proactively fund services and systems to support people with disabilities.” Building that kind of political will, though, will require progressives to prioritize the lives of disabled people.
Shaun Bickley
Shaun Bickley is an Autistic advocate and activist. They have spoken on disability issues around the world, and organized campaigns around disability issues such as health care, reproductive rights, deinstitutionalization, guardianship reform, housing, and especially labor. They led the first-ever successful city-level campaign to eliminate subminimum wage, for which they won the prestigious Advocate of the Year award from Disability Rights Washington, are a nationally-recognized subject-matter expert in disability employment policy, and their writing is used by the University of Washington to instruct MSW students on disability and labor.