This week the Untied States Congress votes on HR 620, also known as the “ADA Education and Reform Act.” It is the newest plan created by short sighted politicians to gut the civil liberties of Americans who are or may become disabled in their lives.
In other words, this piece of legislation, if passed, will very likely impede your rights someday, even if you have been given the temporary privilege of being able bodied at the moment.
Yes, I said ‘temporary privilege.’ Take a moment and get used to it. I’ll wait.
If you live long enough, you will become disabled. Regardless of if it’s a broken leg that will heal or the inevitable onset of creaky joints, a car accident that paralyses you from the neck down or or a small fall off a step stool while changing a lightbulb, disability is not the condition of the “other” but rather the condition of the human.
The truth is your physical capacity has an expiration date and when you reach it, the world that you created either actively or complicity for those of us with disabilities is now the world you get to inherit in your newly vulnerable state.
Karma’s a bitch ain’t it?
If I seem crass and callous in this blog / essay / Facebook post it’s because I have been told since the Americans with Disabilities Act was originally passed in 1990 that I had the same legal rights as every other American regardless of my disability.
When the ADA was signed by George H. W. Bush (a president who has since become disabled himself… there’s that expiration date thing again) I was six years old. Now I am thirty three.
And America still wants to call into question my rights and entitlement to use commercial and educational facilities simply because I am disabled.
If HR 620 passes, it means that it is no longer a business owner’s responsibility to make sure her shop is accessible. It’s now the responsibility of the disabled person to take legal action.
Furthermore once legal action is taken, businesses and educational establishments have sixty days just to come up with a ‘plan of action’ not actually do anything about it. Then they get another 120 days to begin to do something about it.
“Wait and give them the benefit of the doubt.”
Isn’t that usually how we put justice on the back burner in America?
My entire life, I have been expected to wait for my rights. ‘Just wait a few more years and we will educate her with the normal kids.’ ‘Yes, in about five years we are going to have building works done at Davidson College and then there will be accessible senior dorms.’ ‘Athena, please be patient. When I’m rich and famous I’ll only put shows on in wheelchair friendly venues. But right now our company just can’t afford it.’ ’Sewanee isn’t like Davidson. We just don’t have the money to make the School of Letters be up speed with disability rights. Bear with us.’
For twenty seven years I have been fighting what will be your fate when you become a disabled person.
And a good many of you have been complicit in that very injustice by telling me to be ‘patient.’
Basically HR 620 gives businesses a six month extension of a homework assignment that is already twenty seven years overdue. And that six months only begins after someone with a disability works up the courage, cash, and physical capacity to take legal action.
There is someone who is reading this right now, who will be disabled in six months. These issues aren’t even on your radar yet, and you might now go off and sign an online petition to stop the ‘big orange toddler’ and think with that you’ve done your moral duty in getting involved in these ‘disability issues.’ Maybe you’ll even call your representative if you’re feeling extra bold.
You’re sweet. You have no idea how you’ve been complicit in creating an America that is about to make you a second class citizen simply because you have the frailty of a human being.
I feel a great deal of pity for you.
I am sorry that you are about to discover that the body you have taken for granted your entire life has failed you. I am sorry that your loss of independence forces you to see a level of complexity and difficulty in everyday life you always assumed would just take care of itself. I am sorry for the emotional heartache and carnage you are about to discover. As a society we refuse to see the daily trauma that is living with a disability: the constant acquaintance with grief, the people who refuse to understand, the loss of relationships, the daily battle to maintain dignity.
The relization that you were complict in creating the obstacles which now seem insurmountable.
If HR 620 passes this week, that will be the reality of your situation. You will, no doubt learn that justice deferred is quite simply justice denied.
I have worked most of my life to minimize the impact of disability on your life when your time came. Every opportunity I could, I spent my time, my money and my energy making sure I tried to lessen the catastrpophic impact you are now experiencing .
I wanted to do more. It hurts my heart that I couldn’t.
You told me to wait.
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