“Nothing about us without us”
Image description: A black-and-white political action image outside.
A Brief History of Disability Rights & Disability Justice
In the US, the earliest documentation of disability law dates from pensions guaranteed for veterans wounded in the Revolutionary War and later extended to individuals suffering from the effects of rubella and polio in the 1940s. In the 1960s and ’70s, friendships were cultivated among a generation of people who would go on to become some of the foremost activists of the modern civil rights movement.
The Disability Civil Rights Movement mobilized on the local level demanding national initiatives to begin to address the physical and social barriers facing the disability community. Similar to the Civil Rights Movement, in the 1960s the disability movement began to take shape, and advocates saw the opportunity to join forces alongside other minority groups to demand equal treatment, equal access, and equal opportunity for people with disabilities, which included the passing of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). However, the Disability Rights Movement and Disability Studies do not inherently centralize the needs and experiences of folks experiencing intersectional oppression, such as disabled people of color, immigrants with disabilities, queers with disabilities, trans and gender non-conforming people with disabilities, people with disabilities who are houseless, people with disabilities who are incarcerated, people with disabilities who have had their ancestral lands stolen, amongst others.
In 2005, the term Disability Justice was coined out of conversations between disabled queer women of color activists who sought to challenge the radical and progressive movements to more fully address ableism. Disability Justice recognizes the intersecting legacies of white supremacy, colonial capitalism, gendered oppression, and ableism in understanding how people’s bodies and minds are labeled ‘deviant’, ‘unproductive’, ‘disposable’, and/or ‘invalid’.
Image description: A political action image. Some people are wheelchair-bound.
Our Vision & Pathway Forward
One billion people, or 15 % of the world’s population, have a significantly visible disability. This a relatively low estimate due to the millions of individuals with invisible or hidden disabilities—defined as disabilities that are not immediately apparent—that are unaccounted for due to prejudices and biases faced by individuals who have visible disabilities. In reality, anyone can become disabled at any time, and one’s disability as a result of illness spurs job loss, a reduction in earnings, substantial additional disability-related costs (approximately $17,000.00 per year), obstacles to education and training, or possibly some combination of these and other drivers of deprivation and hardship. Due to long-term discriminatory policies and practices that impact access to education, employment, health care, housing, and other resources help reinforce barriers to financial stability for people with disabilities. Disabled people with intersectional identities face a parallel series of repetitive structural barriers that their white counterparts do not have to address.
The framework of disability justice has challenged the status quo within the mainstream narrative. Unfortunately, disability advocates have noted that outdated data collection methods and evaluation have left an absence of hard data on the status of disabled women at the intersection of racial equity, gender justice, and economic mobility.
As agents of change, our firm understands that persons with disabilities carry a multitude of identities that need to be addressed in our strategies and priorities for advancing transformative change in communities. To move this work forward in the least harmful way to the disability community, our firm has outlined our core values as we continue to support DEI initiatives, community organizing/advocacy, policy, research, education, media, and popular culture through a disability inclusion and/or disability justice lens.
Our Values:
Disability Inclusion and Disability Justice: While disability inclusion is a very broad term used to describe approaches to advance access and inclusion for disabled people, we believe that the best way forward is to address folks wherever they are in their individual journeys as long as injustice/exclusion is not involved in the strategies to advance the disability justice movement.
Intersectionality: “Racial justice, economic justice, and gender justice cannot exist without disability justice.” We work with our clients to center on the needs of the Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (QTBIPOC) in the disabled community whose shared insights on successes and challenges allow us to meet the needs of the community in an authentic way.
Accountability and Transparency: We shy away from performative projects and strive to partner with deeply committed individuals, organizations, and institutions. All of whom are passionate about removing barriers and ensuring access so that those most affected by intersecting identities can participate, valuing lived experience.
Investing in Leadership: We prioritize movement leaders and organizations that are led by disabled people of color, queer, gender nonconforming, and women with disabilities.
Cross-movement solidarity: Whether we’re supporting an internal or external initiative, our firm intentionally focuses on co-collaboration from intent to action with a multitude of stakeholders across movements.
Image description: Three disabled activist with raised fist. One is standing with a cane, one is wheel-chair bound, one is sitting.
“I cannot separate my non-binary genderqueer identity from my Black identity. I cannot separate my Black identity and my genderqueer identity from my disabled identity”
Our Client Work
Harnessing the Power of Disability and Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI): We believe that disability representation in DEI is essential to creating a truly diverse and inclusive workplace. The lack there off has continued to contribute to the inaccessibility of workplaces, discrimination against people with disabilities, and an absence of understanding of disabilities. Our partners have included corporate entities, nonprofits, and philanthropic institutions that are committed to moving disability inclusion forward. Our team facilitates peer-to-peer training and webinars; 1:1 coaching for staff, executives, and board members, including grantees, to institute a robust disability learning agenda.
Research and Case Studies: We design and implement impact case studies to lay the groundwork for setting disability grantmaking targets and accountability measurements within the US and Global context.
Evaluation and Learning: To ensure that those most vulnerable are being included in the evaluation process, our team provides our partners with guidance for integrating disability-inclusive approaches to evaluations of their portfolios, strategic goals, and initiatives. Our framework allows stakeholders to pause and reflect on the progress and approaches used prior to our engagement. Ultimately, we provide internal and external findings that identify areas where the client’s expectations and assumptions about impact have not been met.
Capacity Building: To make lasting progress in addressing disability inclusion/justice, our firm works with disabled led-organizations to secure investments for their essential programming and operations—with the trust, flexibility, and support they need to do their best work. Our technical assistance services are designed to support social justice organizations—grantmaking institutions, nonprofits, movement leaders, and collaboratives—who are working at the frontlines of accelerating and sustaining social change and building more just and equitable systems for the disabled community.