Disabled people’s attitudes towards politics and activism are complicated.
Distrust in politics is almost standard among Americans today. Some of that distrust extends to various forms of activism as well –– or to anyone trying to change public policy, or people’s beliefs and behaviors. But what about people with disabilities, who have historically benefitted from the fruits of politics and activism, but also felt let down by them more than once?
Despite the urgency of problems and issues disabled people face, a great many of us remain alienated and suspicious of social and political action. Exploring the reasons why is important if we are to fully understand ourselves, and if others –– especially politicians and policy makers –– are ever to understand us.
It helps to start by recognizing some of the reasons for disabled people to be optimistic about politics and activism today:
There was more detailed focus on disability issues by the 2020 Presidential campaigns than ever before. At least ten candidates for President issued specific, multi-point disability plans, nearly all of which included at least some of disabled people’s most cherished priorities.
Voter participation by people with disabilities significantly increased in the 2020 Elections. Rutgers University researchers Lisa Schur and Douglas Kruse report that although there is still a participation gap between disabled and non-disabled voters, it shrunk in 2020. Disabled voter turnout was 5.9 points higher than in 2016, and 17.7 million disabled people voted in the 2020 Election overall, a potentially powerful contingent of voters.
There is a rare chance right now for passage of major investments in home care through the Better Care Better Jobs Act, and for significant reform and updating of SSI in the SSI Restoration Act. Both are high priority issues for the disability community that are finally being at least taken seriously by a Presidential administration and Congress.
All of these developments suggest that disabled people’s involvement in activism and politics really can work. And they didn’t come out of nowhere, or because politicians are suddenly more compassionate or interested in disability issues for their own sake.
These gains and opportunities exist today because of decades of organized protest, policy activism, and political engagement starting in the early 1970s by movements of disabled people, fighting for ourselves. This movement has won specific victories, like passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, as well as more gradual shifts, like inclusion in schools, deinstitutionalization, and the gradual expansion of home care.
These are impressive gains, won by disabled people’s involvement in activism and politics. But yesterday’s victories can only do so much to persuade most disabled people that fighting for change is time well spent. Many if not most of us remain wary and skeptical about organized activism and electoral politics. Some disabled people are distinctly hostile to them.
Precise reasons are hard to pin down. But there are broad factors worth considering:
1. Politics and activism aren’t accessible.
Despite clear and longstanding mandates, voting accessibility is inconsistent from region to region. Would-be disabled voters still regularly contend with inaccessible polling places, antiquated voting systems, and poorly trained poll workers.
Now, some measures that made voting a good deal more accessible in 2020 are under direct attack in many states. This includes efforts to restrict or eliminate voting by mail and early voting. Meanwhile, countless other petty measures are being passed that make the act of voting more physically restrictive and demanding rather than less. Whether intentionally or not, these measures turn voting into a test of endurance, instead of a civil right.
Political events are often inaccessible too. This includes party and campaign meetings, public forums, campaign rallies, and voter outreach activities. Disabled people who want to participate in politics constantly run into problems with:
Wheelchair accessibility
Sign Language interpreting
Captioning for video content
Transcripts for audio content
Website accessibility
Plan language versions of key documents
Even disability organizations can fail at some of these basic components of accessibility. And there are other, more subtle problems with inclusion in disability culture as well.
Disability activists sometimes put unreasonable physical and emotional demands on each other. Sometimes this happens because of sincere enthusiasm and momentum for a vital cause. Other times it’s part of a vain effort to demonstrate disabled people’s ability to achieve in mainstream social action, without compromise to our impairments. Either way, it’s ironic and wasteful that so many disabled people are allowed to conclude that their own disabilities make it impossible for them to do disability activism.
These practical deterrents don’t just keep disabled people out of politics and activism physically, but discourage us from even trying.
2. Mainstream politics tends to either ignore or misunderstand disability issues and culture.
Until fairly recently, disability issues and disabled voters were virtually invisible in political campaigns. When they were addressed, it was only in the most vague and inconsequential ways. There has always been lots of “support” for our rights, but little in the way of policy that was politically challenging, or likely to make a real difference in our lives. This is beginning to change, but the progress so far is lopsided.
It’s progress that ten Presidential candidates offered substantial disability plans last year, but unfortunate that they were all from one party. Republican Presidential candidates offered no plans or positions on disability policy. And few “lower ballot” candidates of any party bothered to put out disability plans, even though Congress and state legislatures have far more practical impact on disability issues than presidents do.
So despite some recent encouraging signs, “addressing disability issues” still too often means candidates running sentimental ads and photo ops with unnamed kids in wheelchairs –– or addressing the needs of disabled people indirectly and mistaking the concerns and priorities of parents, teachers, and “caregivers” as being the same as those of disabled people themselves. This condescension has done a lot to sour disabled people’s feelings about politics, despite other undeniable gains.
3. The goals are good, but it’s too hard to see or recognize results.
Disability activists and policy developers are often on the right track, and are being honest when they describe the better lives disabled people can have if we all join the push for needed reforms. But in disability activism and politics, satisfaction is usually not just denied or delayed, but also disguised.
Even when change does come, we usually have to wait far too long before seeing the direct, personal results we were promised. And it’s not always obvious that a modest improvement we are experiencing now is a result of intense and committed disability activism that happened five or more years before.
There is also often a strong status quo bias. Some disabled people don’t like their living, working, or financial circumstances, but come to believe that any sort of “change” is more likely to make their lives worse than better, no matter what activists say. This may partly explain some of the backlash, even among some disabled people, against changes like increasing funding of home and community based services, and ending sub-minimum wage.
A lot of disabled people feel burned, not just by those who oppose change, but by the disabled activists who promise it, but rarely seem to deliver. This breeds a very specific and corrosive kind of mistrust –– a mistrust of optimism itself.
4. It’s hard to keep track of what’s happening.
There is usually just too much going in disability activism and politics for most disabled people to keep track or up to date.
The disability community is fragmented. There is no one source of reliable information, no single recognized leader to rally support at key moments. This diversity is a strength. And it can be bad in a different way when a very few disabled people or disability organizations have a monopoly on attention and power. But being this decentralized is also a weakness, especially in situations where coordination and mass dissemination of information is vital.
Internet communications have more recently helped sew some of the various disability communities together. But social media is also making the task harder, because it speeds everything up even more. We have the tools to let millions of disabled people know instantly when calls are needed to pass a bill. But we can rarely count on anyone to put those tools to use in time. And most disabled people have barely even begun to explore disability networks online, much less in their own towns and local organizations.
Disability politics and activism may actually have been easier when there were fewer realistic possibilities for us. More opportunities mean more work. The disability community’s goals may be outpacing its capacity to achieve them. That’s a positive sign for the future. But it’s a real and difficult practical problem for the present.
5. Nearly every victory the disability community wins brings risks.
The Americans with Disabilities Act was a massive moral and legal victory for disabled Americans. It remains one of our proudest accomplishments and the basis for most of our current claims for access, equality and fairness. But almost as soon as it was passed in 1990, efforts were underway not so much to overturn the law, but to make it manageable and blunt its more demanding and significant mandates.
Large companies especially were quick to develop effective strategies to “comply” with the ADA, while avoiding more meaningful improvements for actual disabled people. People complain about disability activists and lawyers using the ADA to make money off seemingly small accessibility violations. But far more consultants and lawyers have been making a living for decades by teaching businesses and employers more how to avoid compliance, or accomplish it superficially and on the cheap.
This isn’t unique to the ADA. Disability policy changes are almost always so complicated that it makes them less effective. Reforms like the ABLE Act have done genuine good for disabled people. But like so many other disability policy bills, in order to pass it was limited, trimmed, and loaded with conditions in ways that leave significant numbers of disabled people out and make even approaching it intimidating. The combination of narrowed eligibility and hard to understand rules make even some of the best disability reforms and programs all but invisible to the people they are meant to help.
Advocacy success breeds other problems, too. Now that we are seeing more disabled people elected and appointed to key government positions, it’s fair to ask how much a numerical increase in high profile “disability representation” really improves things. There’s a danger that truly effective activists can win well-deserved positions in government and politics, only to be constrained by the shackles of government itself, and held back by the politics that helped win them power.
This isn’t even about corruption or “selling out.” The dilemmas disabled leaders and representatives face are real. It takes more than most people can manage to balance a true commitment to disability activism, the obligations of responsible office, and the need for political unity and mutual support within any administration. We want to see disabled people in government where they can do some good. But is that even possible?
Distrust in politics and doubts about the usefulness of disability activism are natural, even healthy feelings for disabled people to have. At best they prompt us to ask uncomfortable but necessary questions. The problem comes when healthy skepticism becomes toxic cynicism. For the disability community to keep moving forward, we have to be wary and aware, but without giving in to pessimism and apathy. If we can manage that, it could even be a lesson to all Americans, with or without disabilities.
FREDERICTON – New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs has called an election for Oct. 21, signalling the beginning of a 33-day campaign expected to focus on pocketbook issues and the government’s provocative approach to gender identity policies.
The 70-year-old Progressive Conservative leader, who is seeking a third term in office, has attracted national attention by requiring teachers to get parental consent before they can use the preferred names and pronouns of young students.
More recently, however, the former Irving Oil executive has tried to win over inflation-weary voters by promising to lower the provincial harmonized sales tax by two percentage points to 13 per cent if re-elected.
At dissolution, the Conservatives held 25 seats in the 49-seat legislature. The Liberals held 16 seats, the Greens had three and there was one Independent and four vacancies.
J.P. Lewis, a political science professor at the University of New Brunswick, said the top three issues facing New Brunswickers are affordability, health care and education.
“Across many jurisdictions, affordability is the top concern — cost of living, housing prices, things like that,” he said.
Richard Saillant, an economist and former vice-president of Université de Moncton, said the Tories’ pledge to lower the HST represents a costly promise.
“I don’t think there’s that much room for that,” he said. “I’m not entirely clear that they can do so without producing a greater deficit.” Saillant also pointed to mounting pressures to invest more in health care, education and housing, all of which are facing increasing demands from a growing population.
Higgs’s main rivals are Liberal Leader Susan Holt and Green Party Leader David Coon. Both are focusing on economic and social issues.
Holt has promised to impose a rent cap and roll out a subsidized school food program. The Liberals also want to open at least 30 community health clinics over the next four years.
Coon has said a Green government would create an “electricity support program,” which would give families earning less than $70,000 annually about $25 per month to offset “unprecedented” rate increases.
Higgs first came to power in 2018, when the Tories formed the province’s first minority government in 100 years. In 2020, he called a snap election — the first province to go to the polls after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and won a majority.
Since then, several well-known cabinet ministers and caucus members have stepped down after clashing with Higgs, some of them citing what they described as an authoritarian leadership style and a focus on policies that represent a hard shift to the right side of the political spectrum.
Lewis said the Progressive Conservatives are in the “midst of reinvention.”
“It appears he’s shaping the party now, really in the mould of his world views,” Lewis said. “Even though (Progressive Conservatives) have been down in the polls, I still think that they’re very competitive.”
Meanwhile, the legislature remained divided along linguistic lines. The Tories dominate in English-speaking ridings in central and southern parts of the province, while the Liberals held most French-speaking ridings in the north.
The drama within the party began in October 2022 when the province’s outspoken education minister, Dominic Cardy, resigned from cabinet, saying he could no longer tolerate the premier’s leadership style. In his resignation letter, Cardy cited controversial plans to reform French-language education. The government eventually stepped back those plans.
A series of resignations followed last year when the Higgs government announced changes to Policy 713, which now requires students under 16 who are exploring their gender identity to get their parents’ consent before teachers can use their preferred first names or pronouns — a reversal of the previous practice.
When several Tory lawmakers voted with the opposition to call for an external review of the change, Higgs dropped dissenters from his cabinet. And a bid by some party members to trigger a leadership review went nowhere.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
FREDERICTON – A 33-day provincial election campaign is expected to officially get started today in New Brunswick.
Progressive Conservative Premier Blaine Higgs has said he plans to visit Lt.-Gov. Brenda Murphy this morning to have the legislature dissolved.
Higgs, a 70-year-old former oil executive, is seeking a third term in office, having led the province since 2018.
The campaign ahead of the Oct. 21 vote is expected to focus on pocketbook issues, but the government’s provocative approach to gender identity issues could also be in the spotlight.
The Tory premier has already announced he will try to win over inflation-weary voters by promising to lower the harmonized sales tax by two percentage points to 13 per cent if re-elected.
Higgs’s main rivals are Liberal Leader Susan Holt and Green Party Leader David Coon, both of whom are focusing on economic and social issues.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
VICTORIA – If the lead up to British Columbia‘s provincial election campaign is any indication of what’s to come, voters should expect the unexpected.
It could be a wild ride to voting day on Oct. 19.
The Conservative Party of B.C. that didn’t elect a single member in the last election and gained less than two per cent of the popular vote is now leading the charge for centre-right, anti-NDP voters.
The official Opposition BC United, who as the former B.C. Liberals won four consecutive majorities from 2001 to 2013, raised a white flag and suspended its campaign last month, asking its members, incumbents and voters to support the B.C. Conservatives to prevent a vote split on the political right.
New Democrat Leader David Eby delivered a few political surprises of his own in the days leading up to Saturday’s official campaign start, signalling major shifts on the carbon tax and the issue of involuntary care in an attempt to curb the deadly opioid overdose crisis.
He said the NDP would drop the province’s long-standing carbon tax for consumers if the federal government eliminates its requirement to keep the levy in place, and pledged to introduce involuntary care of people battling mental health and addiction issues.
The B.C. Coroners Service reports more than 15,000 overdose deaths since the province declared an opioid overdose public health emergency in 2016.
Drug policy in B.C., especially decriminalization of possession of small amounts of hard drugs and drug use in public areas, could become key election issues this fall.
Eby, a former executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said Wednesday that criticism of the NDP’s involuntary care plan by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association is “misinformed” and “misleading.”
“This isn’t about forcing people into a particular treatment,” he said at an unrelated news conference. “This is about making sure that their safety, as well as the safety of the broader community, is looked after.”
Eby said “simplistic arguments,” where one side says lock people up and the other says don’t lock anybody up don’t make sense.
“There are some people who should be in jail, who belong in jail to ensure community safety,” said Eby. “There are some people who need to be in intensive, secure mental health treatment facilities because that’s what they need in order to be safe, in order not to be exploited, in order not to be dead.”
The CCLA said in a statement Eby’s plan is not acceptable.
“There is no doubt that substance use is an alarming and pressing epidemic,” said Anais Bussières McNicoll, the association’s fundamental freedoms program director. “This scourge is causing significant suffering, particularly, among vulnerable and marginalized groups. That being said, detaining people without even assessing their capacity to make treatment decisions, and forcing them to undergo treatment against their will, is unconstitutional.”
While Eby, a noted human rights lawyer, could face political pressure from civil rights opponents to his involuntary care plans, his opponents on the right also face difficulties.
The BC United Party suspended its campaign last month in a pre-election move to prevent a vote split on the right, but that support may splinter as former jilted United members run as Independents.
Five incumbent BC United MLAs, Mike Bernier, Dan Davies, Tom Shypitka, Karin Kirkpatrick and Coralee Oakes are running as Independents and could become power brokers in the event of a minority government situation, while former BC United incumbents Ian Paton, Peter Milobar and Trevor Halford are running under the B.C. Conservative banner.
Davies, who represents the Fort St. John area riding of Peace River North, said he’s always been a Conservative-leaning politician but he has deep community roots and was urged by his supporters to run as an Independent after the Conservatives nominated their own candidate.
Davies said he may be open to talking with B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad after the election, if he wins or loses.
Green Leader Sonia Furstenau has suggested her party is an option for alienated BC United voters.
Rustad — who faced criticism from BC United Leader Kevin Falcon and Eby about the far-right and extremist views of some of his current and former candidates and advisers — said the party’s rise over the past months has been meteoric.
“It’s been almost 100 years since the Conservative Party in B.C. has won a government,” he said. “The last time was 1927. I look at this now and I think I have never seen this happen anywhere in the country before. This has been happening in just over a year. It just speaks volumes that people are just that eager and interested in change.”
Rustad, ejected from the former B.C. Liberals in August 2022 for publicly supporting a climate change skeptic, sat briefly as an Independent before being acclaimed the B.C. Conservative leader in March 2023.
Rustad, who said if elected he will fire B.C.’s provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry over her vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic, has removed the nominations of some of his candidates who were vaccine opponents.
“I am not interested in going after votes and trying to do things that I think might be popular,” he said.
Prof. David Black, a political communications specialist at Greater Victoria’s Royal Roads University, said the rise of Rustad’s Conservatives and the collapse of BC United is the political story of the year in B.C.
But it’s still too early to gauge the strength of the Conservative wave, he said.
“Many questions remain,” said Black. “Has the free enterprise coalition shifted sufficiently far enough to the right to find the social conservatism and culture-war populism of some parts of the B.C. Conservative platform agreeable? Is a party that had no infrastructure and minimal presence in what are now 93 ridings this election able to scale up and run a professional campaign across the province?”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
