Maintain Your Speed Around the Curves

In the early autumn of 1979, my then boyfriend (now husband of more than 35 years) and I took on a cross country journey from Vancouver to Toronto, Canada. I had never driven on the highway before, never mind across the Rocky Mountains, and quickly learned a new refrain which became the mantra of our voyage and still brings a smile to my lips whenever I hear it. It was my husband encouraging, urging, and then warning me as I took my turn driving those steep mountain passes to always “maintain my speed around the curves.”

Less than two years later I was diagnosed with a retinal degenerative disease that would progressively rob me of my vision, introducing me to the disability community and the challenges and barriers that Americans with disabilities faced in the 1980’s.

I stopped driving the day I was diagnosed, and remain ever grateful that we completed that cross-country journey without incident. But I have never forgotten that message, to maintain my speed around the curves. It seems more important than ever with this transition and the attendant policy changes.

Life for Americans with disabilities underwent significant change right about the time that my vision began to fade away. The passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 ushered in a comprehensive legislative program mandating inclusion, accommodations and supports designed to allow Americans with disabilities to reach their full potential alongside everyone else. While the journey towards inclusion has proved sometimes to be difficult, the last 26 years have introduced an era during which an entire generation has grown up enjoying the protections of the ADA.

Under the leadership of President Obama, Americans with disabilities saw innovations at a pace and level never before possible, resulting in the creation of more than 150,000 federal jobs, enabling health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act for people with pre-existing conditions, issuing regulations requiring inclusive communication, the proposed introduction of tactile currency, and more.

The Democratic party embraced the power of inclusion, ensuring that the Democratic National Convention of 2016 was the most inclusive in history, welcoming more than 400 Americans with disabilities as delegates, utilizing futuristic technology to ensure access, and including disability issues in its platform and from the center stage each day of the convention, even creating the first ever braille campaign button. Our gathering momentum places disability rights as the central, and perhaps final frontier in the history of the civil rights movement of this nation.

This progress stands in stark contrast to our new President, who mocked a reporter with a disability during his campaign. The disenfranchisement has continued, even in the first hours of the Trump Administration taking down the disability rights pages of Whitehouse.gov moments after his swearing in, nominating Cabinet members and now, a Supreme Court Justice poised to marginalize the community of Americans with disabilities among many others.

In view of the increased momentum towards full inclusion and participation that we have witnessed during the last quarter century, I am mindful of my husband’s encouragement — to maintain speed around the curves in seeking the path to effective resistance against the undoing of so much progress towards inclusion. We must maintain our speed here, not give way to normalizing standards that despoil our dignity, marginalize our potential, or ignore our capabilities.

We must continue to push for the inclusive policies that have enabled the empowerment of the disability community, and every American, recognizing the potential in us all. That means continuing to question President Trump’s nominees who — as Betsy DeVos revealed in her hearings to lead the Department of Education, do not even understand the merits and value of laws like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This approach would return us to the era of isolationism and degradation, stripping us and all Americans, of hard-earned rights. We must continue to support the Affordable Care Act, and an open and collaborative forum where every American is able to make their own choices, in their bodies, minds and partners, to elect to live fully included in their communities and to make their own unique and often, very significant contributions to this nation that has been defined by creative innovation, freedom of speech, religion, choice.

There are approximately 59 million Americans who live with the challenges of disabilities — one in every two families, one in every four women. Our voice, raised collectively and in concert with so many others who believe in the values of respect for human dignity and freedom of choice under the Constitution, can be mighty. It is time to stand together to vote for inclusion, for Americans with disabilities and for every American. We must maintain our speed around the dangerous curves that we will traverse during the next four years.

Please join me in ensuring that disability issues remain front and center as a nonpartisan issue that every American can support. An inclusion revolution goes far beyond the boundaries of issues that affect people with disabilities. With full speed, and mounting velocity, we can navigate these dangerous curves to produce the America that we may all respect and live in freely, equally and with pride.