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Disability Rights

Housing Policy Should Protect, Not Displace, Disability Communities

For those in the disability community, it has always taken a village. When your life is filled with doctor’s appointments, chronic illness symptoms, and navigating a world that isn’t built for accessibility, being surrounded by reliable family, friends, and peers doesn’t just enrich the day-to-day — it makes the day-to-day possible. Yet, the lack of affordable housing and rent in the U.S. is throwing this critical ecosystem out of balance. As home prices climb and renters contend with skyrocketing leases and utilities, disabled people often have no choice but to leave the communities they’ve built because they’ve been priced out.

The Reproductive Justice Movement Must Be Expansive

After his uncle was first elected president of the United States, Fred C. Trump III wanted to use the access he had to the White House for something positive, he explains in his new memoir, All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way. ​“I was eager to champion something my wife, Lisa, and I were deeply passionate about, something we lived every day: the challenges for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families.” Fred Trump’s son was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder involving infantile spasms that led to developmental and intellectual disabilities.

Disability Rights At Risk: Seven States Back Case Attacking Protections

The right of disabled people to live in community rather than being warehoused in institutions is under attack in a lawsuit currently being pursued by Texas and six other states. But advocacy efforts are persuading states to pull out of the suit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Secretary of HHS Robert F. Kennedy Jr., called Texas v. Kennedy. Two state plaintiffs withdrew from the case in May after hearing concerns from the disability community, bringing the number of remaining state plaintiffs to only seven in an amended case that began with seventeen.

Over A Billion People In The World Live With Disabilities

Disability is not merely a biological condition; it is shaped by the interaction between impairment and the world around it: by the broken road that prevents a wheelchair from moving forward, by the clinic or hospital that charges fees before offering care, by the classroom that excludes the child who learns differently, by the war that shatters bodies, and by the economy that abandons those it deems ‘unproductive’. Disability is not simply a restriction resulting from an impairment, but a collision between impairment, social barriers, and injustice.

Trump Administration Aims To Penalize Disabled Adults Who Live With Their Families

Even a glance at Shy’tyra Burton’s life reveals her need for the sort of federal government assistance that helps disabled Americans stay in their homes. Born two months prematurely into a poor family in Philadelphia, unable to breathe or swallow without tubes and largely confined to medical facilities until age 4, Burton was diagnosed with a litany of developmental and intellectual disabilities that left her with an IQ below 70. She persevered and graduated from a high school special education program, then attempted community college. But she struggled to grasp basic tasks and information.

SNAP Cuts Disproportionately Hurt People With Disabilities

The ongoing shutdown of the US federal government threatens the distribution of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits this November. States, localities, and anti-hunger organizations are scrambling to fill the gap in federal assistance amid a massive wave of food insecurity. While two federal judges have ruled that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) must use contingency funds to keep SNAP flowing, the Trump administration announced on November 3rd that it will only cover a fraction of the usual benefits.

Workers Could Lose Out On Disability Benefits

It’s never been easy to qualify for Social Security disability benefits. Christopher Tincher knows this firsthand. Tincher began his working life in a coal mine in Aflex, Kentucky, as a teenager in the 1980s. As mines across the region shuttered, he turned to scraping grills at a Hardee’s, then cleaning office buildings at night, then stocking shelves and changing tires at a Walmart in Arkansas. Later, he was hired by a nearby town’s wastewater department. Often, he had to wade into sewage to fix equipment and clean out feces, needles and tampons entering the treatment facility. In 2017, some of that liquid got into his work boots, which didn’t fit properly and had caused blisters to form. It soaked into his flesh, infecting his right foot all the way to the bone. Doctors cut his leg off below the knee so the infection wouldn’t spread.

Disability Rights Are Workers’ Rights!

For the last few years, the monthly Second Sunday Dialogue public meetings of the Disability Justice and Rights Caucus of Workers World Party (DJRC) have been discussing the idea of a transitional demand: a “Disability Justice, Full Employment, Health Care and Education Second Bill of Rights” amendment to the U.S. Constitution. San Francisco Bay Area disabled activist Michael Karsh is the main architect of this proposal, which is an idea whose time has come. Karsh has written the following justification for such an amendment at this time: “The Disability Justice, Full Employment, Health Care & Education Second Bill of Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution would transform the U.S. Constitution into a human rights document.

Medicaid Cuts Will Devastate People With Disabilities

Two months ago, Sloan Meek – a disability rights advocate with cerebral palsy – took the stage at a rally protesting the Medicaid cuts in Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill.” Meek warned how $1 trillion dollars in Medicaid cuts would have life-threatening consequences for people with disabilities.  “My whole life – not just my healthcare – is supported by Medicaid. The way I move around in the world. The way I communicate. The people who help me do all the things I want to do in my life,” Meek said. “Without Medicaid support, I will be forced into a nursing home to spend the rest of my life in a hospital bed.”  The Republican budget is a “death threat” to people with disabilities, Meek said. 

Milei’s Chainsaw Economics Met With Working Class Unity

Tens of thousands of Argentines took to the streets of the country’s capital, Buenos Aires, June 4 to demand an immediate change in the ultra-neoliberal policies of President Javier Milei. The mobilization took place outside the National Congress, which was discussing a potential increase in pensions for retirees. Last year, Milei vetoed a pension increase that was approved by the Congress. This time, the legislature approved an increase of nearly 7% in pensions, which now must be approved by the Senate. However, Milei has already warned that the “demagogic and populist” decision, will be vetoed once again because it threatens the government’s much-touted goal of “fiscal balance”, pursued even at the cost of rising poverty, denying people with disabilities access to medicines, and defunding pediatric hospitals.

Trump Guts Support For Disabled Students; Families Are Fighting Back

If the Trump administration and the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) have their way, the basic educational and human rights of students with disabilities will soon be eviscerated. Due to the planned demolition of the Department of Education, the rights of students with disabilities to “a free, appropriate public education” — guaranteed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) — are under fire. For nearly 50 years, the Department of Education (DOE) has been responsible for distributing funds — $14.2 billion in fiscal year 2025 — to state and local school districts to enable them to educate students with a range of disabilities.

Rallying Call For Disability Rights In North Carolina

Just as in Marvel comics, when a superhero summons the team with the  “Avengers assemble!” rallying cry, one member of the national disability rights group ADAPT put out a call — and advocates from across the country responded with collective force. This past week, people with disabilities from Minnesota, Texas, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Kansas and other states loaded up their wheelchairs and assistive devices, recruited personal assistants and made their way to Raleigh to push for better housing and more services for people with disabilities in North Carolina. “Our sister, one of our members, lives in North Carolina, and she called upon us to come to her state,” said Shona Akin, who traveled from Pennsylvania.

Essential Voices For The Turn Away From Car Dependency

In forward-thinking municipalities across North America, elected officials and staff members can learn important lessons by taking on the Week Without Driving Challenge. As Anna Letitia Zivarts describes it, “participants have to try to get around for a week without driving. They can take transit, walk, roll, bike, or ask or pay for rides as they try to keep to their regular schedules ….” In most municipalities, the challenge leads to a difficult but eye-opening week. That’s because in most areas getting around without driving is inconvenient, dangerous, very time-consuming, or next to impossible. As Zivarts writes, Even for participants who might already bike, walk or take transit for some of their weekly trips, we’ve heard that the experience has helped them comprehend the difference between taking the easy trips and taking all trips without driving.

What If Non-Drivers Helped Plan Our Transportation Systems?

In the fall of 2021, I was invited by Roger Millar, the head of the Washington State Department of Transportation, to speak to the board of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials at its annual meeting. Before the meeting, Secretary Millar explained that I’d be presenting to the heads of each state department of transportation, and I started to get nervous. I am not a civil engineer. I don’t have a degree in urban planning. I have never worked for a transit agency or department of transportation. What I had was my lifetime of experience as a disabled nondriver and stories from the hundreds of other nondrivers from every corner of Washington State.

Disabled Southerners Are Building New Paths To Grassroots Power

Alongside some of this moment’s biggest grassroots struggles — mass movements to transform American policing, labor, health care and voting rights — the fight against ableism has been a constant undercurrent. During the late 20th century, the disability rights movement emerged in tandem with the long civil rights movement, leading to major reforms at the federal level. In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, formally banned discrimination against disabled people in employment, public services and commerce — a watershed moment for anti-ableism work.
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