Down by the Cypress Trees

This Saturday, I am giving a speech to the neighboring county’s Democratic Executive Committee about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies and how they helped me achieve success as a disabled student in the public school systems of Florida.

It is an important topic to me. The disabled experience is important to talk about, and yet many of our leaders are silent on the issues affecting our community — or worse, they are trying to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in the schools, in the workplace, in society in general.

I’ve been struggling to come up with the words to properly say what needs to be said. I want them to understand my own experience, but at the same time, I don’t want to take away from the experience of so many disability rights advocates before me who have fought to get where we are today.

About a year before I was born, the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. Months prior, amid deadlock in Congress over the issue of disability rights, nearly 1,000 disabled people converged upon the U.S. Capitol to protest for their rights as human beings. About 60 of them climbed out of their wheelchairs and mobility devices and crawled up the 83 steps of the Capitol to symbolize the barriers our community faces.

That was nearly 30 years ago. We have come a long way since then, but we still have so far to go. Still, I find myself going to public places where I have to go in the back door where they keep the garbage cans. Year after year, I find the funding cut to important state benefits I receive as a disabled person. And it just gets worse. It has got to stop. It takes all of us — I certainly cannot do it on my own, though I will certainly always do my part. Because it is just the right thing to do.