1 00:00:00,573 --> 00:00:03,392 My name is Lydia X. Z. Brown, 2 00:00:03,392 --> 00:00:07,861 and I'm an attorney, advocate, community organizer, educator, strategist, 3 00:00:07,861 --> 00:00:12,215 and thinker and writer on disability rights and disability justice. 4 00:00:12,215 --> 00:00:17,405 For over 10 years, my work has focused on interpersonal and state violence 5 00:00:17,405 --> 00:00:20,509 targeting disabled people at the margins of the margins, 6 00:00:20,509 --> 00:00:25,179 especially disabled people living at the intersections of disability, race, 7 00:00:25,179 --> 00:00:29,499 class, gender, sexuality, language, and nation. 8 00:00:29,499 --> 00:00:34,051 Like all disabled people, it's impossible to say that there was one instance 9 00:00:34,051 --> 00:00:36,380 in which I suddenly became aware of 10 00:00:36,380 --> 00:00:40,104 inaccessibility or exclusionary practices in social life, 11 00:00:40,104 --> 00:00:43,903 because my entire life has been shaped by the forces of ableism. 12 00:00:43,903 --> 00:00:47,392 Like most other autistic people, I experienced bullying 13 00:00:47,392 --> 00:00:49,874 throughout my childhood and in schools, 14 00:00:49,874 --> 00:00:53,873 and I experienced a disconnect between the ways that I moved through the world, 15 00:00:53,873 --> 00:00:55,672 and the ways that people around me, 16 00:00:55,672 --> 00:00:59,130 who were largely not autistic, moved through the world. 17 00:00:59,130 --> 00:01:03,573 But I will say that one of the times that I became most aware 18 00:01:03,573 --> 00:01:07,574 of grave injustices targeting other disabled people 19 00:01:07,574 --> 00:01:10,564 were a series of incidents that were widely publicized 20 00:01:10,564 --> 00:01:12,158 when I was in high school. 21 00:01:12,158 --> 00:01:16,320 And, in all of those instances, young autistic people were criminalized, 22 00:01:16,320 --> 00:01:20,607 taken out of their schools, often charged in adult criminal court 23 00:01:20,607 --> 00:01:23,593 for simply existing while autistic. 24 00:01:23,593 --> 00:01:26,785 In many of those cases, the autistic students in question 25 00:01:26,785 --> 00:01:31,943 had been subjected to prolonged restraint and seclusion, sometimes for hours, 26 00:01:31,943 --> 00:01:34,011 before they were the ones who were charged 27 00:01:34,011 --> 00:01:37,129 with assaulting the teachers in the schools in the first place. 28 00:01:37,129 --> 00:01:38,928 Some of those students were white. 29 00:01:38,928 --> 00:01:42,072 Others were Black, brown, or other people of color. 30 00:01:42,072 --> 00:01:47,353 And, in all of those cases, the sentiment that came most strongly 31 00:01:47,353 --> 00:01:50,435 and clearly through public reporting on the incidents, 32 00:01:50,435 --> 00:01:54,069 was that these were kids who had to be managed or controlled, 33 00:01:54,069 --> 00:01:57,835 instead of, here are kids who have been targeted on the basis 34 00:01:57,835 --> 00:02:01,149 of disability discrimination. 35 00:02:01,149 --> 00:02:07,930 That, to me, was a very clear indicator of just the beginning 36 00:02:07,930 --> 00:02:13,338 of how pervasive and how awful violence against disabled people is, 37 00:02:13,338 --> 00:02:16,301 especially those who are multiply marginalized. 38 00:02:16,301 --> 00:02:20,861 In the cases of many of the white students, if they were unlucky, 39 00:02:20,861 --> 00:02:23,451 they might have been forced out of their school. 40 00:02:23,451 --> 00:02:26,566 But in the cases of the Black and brown disabled students, 41 00:02:26,566 --> 00:02:30,553 some of them were sentenced to prison terms of years. 42 00:02:30,553 --> 00:02:32,804 Others were killed outright. 43 00:02:32,804 --> 00:02:37,364 Although the ADA was passed and signed into law three decades ago, 44 00:02:37,364 --> 00:02:42,150 government agencies, individual organizations, and even and especially 45 00:02:42,150 --> 00:02:47,551 disability advocacy organizations, flagrantly and violate- 46 00:02:47,551 --> 00:02:53,301 flagrantly and blatantly violate the ADA's most basic provisions. 47 00:02:53,301 --> 00:02:57,319 Government agencies that are required to support disabled people 48 00:02:57,319 --> 00:03:00,508 and provide and enable access for disabled people 49 00:03:00,508 --> 00:03:02,957 routinely disregard those obligations. 50 00:03:02,957 --> 00:03:06,825 Private corporations and nonprofit organizations do much the same. 51 00:03:06,825 --> 00:03:10,573 Colleges and universities do not respect their disabled students. 52 00:03:10,573 --> 00:03:13,526 Corporations do not respect their disabled employees. 53 00:03:13,526 --> 00:03:17,463 Writ large, in society, although the law has changed, 54 00:03:17,463 --> 00:03:20,722 the values that we hold and the beliefs that we have 55 00:03:20,722 --> 00:03:23,705 as an entire society have not changed at all, 56 00:03:23,705 --> 00:03:25,889 because you can't legislate morality. 57 00:03:25,889 --> 00:03:28,183 You could pass the best laws on the books, 58 00:03:28,183 --> 00:03:31,802 and even if you somehow monitor and enforce them, 59 00:03:31,802 --> 00:03:35,961 it doesn't mean that you've actually changed the ways that people think 60 00:03:35,961 --> 00:03:39,351 and talk about and understand and react toward and act 61 00:03:39,351 --> 00:03:43,020 about disabled people and disability in society. 62 00:03:43,020 --> 00:03:46,799 So, when I think about ways that the ADA has fallen short, 63 00:03:46,799 --> 00:03:49,957 it's not necessarily just what is the language of the ADA, 64 00:03:49,957 --> 00:03:52,580 but it is how individual advocates, it is how courts, 65 00:03:52,580 --> 00:03:56,199 and it is how those with positions of power and access to privilege 66 00:03:56,199 --> 00:04:00,227 and resources choose to act or not act upon the ADA. 67 00:04:00,227 --> 00:04:02,848 And you see that everywhere. 68 00:04:02,848 --> 00:04:05,514 The disability organizations that have the most access 69 00:04:05,514 --> 00:04:07,567 to power, privilege, and resources 70 00:04:07,567 --> 00:04:11,518 generally advocate only for the interests and the issues that affect those 71 00:04:11,518 --> 00:04:14,833 who already hold the most privilege in disabled communities. 72 00:04:14,833 --> 00:04:18,668 That is, they care deeply about issues that primarily, or only, 73 00:04:18,668 --> 00:04:22,864 affect disabled people who are white, who are monied, who are degreed, 74 00:04:22,864 --> 00:04:27,027 who are otherwise considered palatable. But for disabled people who are 75 00:04:27,027 --> 00:04:30,004 at the margins of the margins, for disabled people of color, 76 00:04:30,004 --> 00:04:32,623 for disabled people that are generationally low income, 77 00:04:32,623 --> 00:04:34,780 for disabled people who are undocumented 78 00:04:34,780 --> 00:04:37,869 or have other immigration status other than citizenship, 79 00:04:37,869 --> 00:04:40,927 for disabled people who belong to minority religions, 80 00:04:40,927 --> 00:04:44,120 for disabled people who are queer or trans, 81 00:04:44,120 --> 00:04:46,063 for disabled people who cannot work 82 00:04:46,063 --> 00:04:48,329 in the ways that are expected under capitalism, 83 00:04:48,329 --> 00:04:53,191 those issue areas of inclusion in the corporate workplace 84 00:04:53,191 --> 00:04:57,266 or the ability to access swimming pools in a hotel 85 00:04:57,266 --> 00:05:01,600 or the ability to bring your service animal on a plane 86 00:05:01,600 --> 00:05:04,987 can be important, but are often not affecting our lives 87 00:05:04,987 --> 00:05:09,354 in the same daily ways as they do those who have infinitely more privilege. 88 00:05:09,354 --> 00:05:13,621 And so, where I see the gaps are where are the folks 89 00:05:13,621 --> 00:05:17,072 who have power, privilege, and resources in talking about the right 90 00:05:17,072 --> 00:05:20,313 to Black and brown disabled students to AAC? 91 00:05:20,313 --> 00:05:24,880 Where are those folks in thinking about the horrific violence inflicted 92 00:05:24,880 --> 00:05:28,864 on largely Black and Native disabled people in carceral systems? 93 00:05:28,864 --> 00:05:32,089 Where are those same people in looking at the ways in which police 94 00:05:32,089 --> 00:05:36,574 destroy the lives of sex workers and people who are using criminalized drugs 95 00:05:36,574 --> 00:05:39,532 who are not white, who do not come from upper middle class 96 00:05:39,532 --> 00:05:43,229 or upper class families and neighborhoods and communities? 97 00:05:43,229 --> 00:05:47,038 Where are those folks when thinking about the ways in which universities 98 00:05:47,038 --> 00:05:51,344 not only prevent disabled students in general from accessing supports 99 00:05:51,344 --> 00:05:54,882 and accommodations, but put the brunt of that violence 100 00:05:54,882 --> 00:05:58,913 most predominantly on queer and trans disabled people of color and even 101 00:05:58,913 --> 00:06:02,797 force disabled students, especially those that are multiply marginalized, 102 00:06:02,797 --> 00:06:04,658 out of the university altogether, 103 00:06:04,658 --> 00:06:08,773 or prevent them from ever getting to ask the university in the first place? 104 00:06:08,773 --> 00:06:12,647 Where are those same advocates when thinking about not just, 105 00:06:12,647 --> 00:06:17,678 how are disabled people in the U.S. represented or not represented in media 106 00:06:17,678 --> 00:06:20,566 or in electoral politics, but what about the ways in which 107 00:06:20,566 --> 00:06:23,873 the United States inflicts and causes disability globally 108 00:06:23,873 --> 00:06:29,159 through our wars, through our imperialism, through our colonization? 109 00:06:29,159 --> 00:06:34,241 We need to be pushing as hard as we possibly can for money to go 110 00:06:34,241 --> 00:06:38,565 directly back into the hands of directly impacted community members 111 00:06:38,565 --> 00:06:42,757 and out of harmful systems like the foster system, police, prisons, 112 00:06:42,757 --> 00:06:44,966 coercive mental health care. 113 00:06:44,966 --> 00:06:49,049 We need to be demanding a return of resources 114 00:06:49,049 --> 00:06:52,348 and a return of power, and that is a ceding of power 115 00:06:52,348 --> 00:06:58,596 by nondisabled people, by white people, by those who have hoarded and controlled 116 00:06:58,596 --> 00:07:01,235 the most amount of power and privilege and resources, 117 00:07:01,235 --> 00:07:04,297 and done so at the direct expense of disabled people 118 00:07:04,297 --> 00:07:06,085 at the margins of the margins, 119 00:07:06,085 --> 00:07:08,790 and that has to start within our own organizations. 120 00:07:08,790 --> 00:07:14,040 Disability nonprofits are notorious for being so often white-led 121 00:07:14,040 --> 00:07:17,054 or predominantly white-led, and sometimes only white-led, 122 00:07:17,054 --> 00:07:19,935 for being male-led, for being led by people who are either 123 00:07:19,935 --> 00:07:24,402 not disabled at all or have what are considered palatable disabilities, 124 00:07:24,402 --> 00:07:25,649 and that needs to change. 125 00:07:25,649 --> 00:07:28,197 And the only way that will change is if those people 126 00:07:28,197 --> 00:07:32,518 who occupy those positions of power agree to give up that power. 127 00:07:32,518 --> 00:07:36,680 Not to be told, "You don't have a voice," to be very clear. 128 00:07:36,680 --> 00:07:39,974 To be told, "Your voice doesn't have to be the one that's in charge 129 00:07:39,974 --> 00:07:41,739 and holds all the power."