The always awesome Ms. Crip Chick

A story about a disabled child in the Chicago Tribune launches a rain of ignorant comments and Ms. Crip Chick's response strikes a huge chord with me.

Confronted with such massive ignorance, it may seem as if all that hard work activists have done for disability rights has had no effect whatsoever. The truth is not that people aren't doing some kick ass organizing. The truth is a bit more disturbing:

"If it isn’t apparent to you yet with 2007 cases like Christe Reimer, Ruben Navarro, Katie Thorpe, Ashley X, (I’m too tired to link but go over to FRIDA’s website, Not Dead Yet’s, or Cilla’s), the truth is there are people that actually hate disabled people. Sorry to break the news but they literally want us gone. Dead. Locked in basements. Starved. Suffocated. Drowned. Overly medicated."

Sounds kinda depressing, eh? And it would be if she stopped there. Which she doesn't, of course:

"Prettying it up by saying we just need them to understand us better, quoting Dr. King over and over, and settling for what table scraps we’re given is not going to cut it. Awareness without systemic change never will never work and our people our suffering because of it.

"We have to RISE up. We have to take control of our movement and the direction it’s headed (let’s start by putting the focus on COMMUNITY and not promotion of the individual.) We have to make it our responsibility to tell our OWN people that to be a part of this community is a blessing, not a curse. We have to take power. There aren’t any options left."

Speak it!