The Disability Pride flag represents the struggles and solidarity of disabled people. Disability Pride Month celebrates the contributions and diversity of the largest minority group in America, but disabled people still face challenges such as discrimination and unemployment. Two disabled comrades in the American Party of Labor share their stories of perseverance and radicalization, highlighting the need for genuine solidarity for disability justice.
The Disability Pride flag. The black flag symbolizes disabled people who have lost their lives to illness, neglect, violence, suicide, and eugenics. The lightning bolt shape represents the way disabled people need to adapt and maneuver to traverse an inaccessible society. The colored lines represent different categories of disabilities: mental illness (blue), cognitive disabilities (yellow), invisible illnesses (white), physical disabilities (red), and sensory perception disabilities (green). The bolts are parallel to signify solidarity among all disabled people.
The month of July is the often uncelebrated Disability Pride Month, which commemorates the month that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed in 1990. It is a celebration of people with disabilities, our struggles, our identities and cultures, and our contributions to society.
Disabled people make up the largest and most diverse minority, of between 12-26% of the American population (depending on how it is counted). Additionally, it is the only minority which any person may join at any time. Despite the advances of the ADA, disabled people face many challenges over able-bodied people. Disabled people are three times less likely to by employed, more than twice as likely to be unemployed searching for work, and twice as likely to only have part time work. In addition, disabled people make up 40% of prison inmates and are imprisoned at 2.5 times the rate of non-disabled people.
Disabled people come from every walk of life and are perhaps the most diverse minority with a wide variety of needs and struggles, but united by common factors of disability. These are the stories of two disabled comrades in the American Party of Labor.
Ahoj, my name is Allison. I have been a member of the APL for around a year and a half. I have schizophrenia, PTSD, and conversion disorder which causes a mobility impairment. I have struggled with schizophrenia for around 5 or 6 years. I was completing my master’s program when I first got sick and struggled very much to complete my program, though at the time I really didn’t know what was wrong. Sometime after completing my master’s program, I ended up going through the mental health system and being put into a mental hospital for some period. It was terrible and affected me quite badly and I still deal with after effects from it each day. The system has itself a very narrow definition of success focusing mostly on making a person able to work and be useful. It also focuses very heavily on outward struggles over internal struggles. When I was sitting being interviewed to go into the mental hospital I myself was mostly concerned over my anxiety and fear, while the doctors and my parents were focused almost entirely on the crutches I use to walk from the conversion disorder.
Despite the system’s intense focus on attempting to make someone able to work, only 10-25% of schizophrenics have jobs and developing countries without access to antipsychotics can have significantly high 5-year positive outcome rates compared to developed countries. The mental health system can for many people be deeply terrible, scarring, and dehumanizing. When I was first diagnosed with schizophrenia, I remember I wasn’t ready to hear it, wasn’t ready to accept that. I believed my life was essentially over, and I spent quite a bit of time in denial of it. Schizophrenia is a heavily stigmatized disease, and schizophrenics can face a lot of discrimination. Even among certain online mental health advocacy movements, schizophrenia and other “scary” disorders are often excluded in favor of more “sanitized” disabilities like anxiety, depression, autism, or bipolar disorder. I had an immense amount of difficulty getting to the point I could work a job, and I faced very much discrimination putting down that I was disabled on job applications. But eventually with a lot of perseverance I did manage to get a job teaching. For a long time I felt that I would not be able to have my own life, or be able to have a future, but now I don’t feel that way and that I can have my own life and a future.
It was ultimately my struggles with disability that made me a communist. Understanding why I was having problems, the struggles of fellow disabled people, and why the system treated me as it did, made it clear that capitalism is a system which does not serve me, nor does it serve the vast majority of people. And I joined the APL in particular because of their addressing of disability in their program, something other parties have failed to address and seem to have forgotten about.
Allison P. (she/her)
My name is June and I am a member of the American Party of Labor. I have several chronic illnesses, physical disabilities, and mental health conditions. Managing my health and my disabilities is my full-time job, one which left me with no income for the duration of my grueling 8-year battle to qualify for SSI (Supplemental Security Income) benefits due to my inability to acquire gainful employment. I choose to celebrate Disability Pride Month instead of Disability Awareness Month (in March) because I feel that we, as a minority group, are far beyond the need for “awareness.” People are clearly aware of us when they mock us, pray for us, and infantilize us just for daring to exist publicly in our bodies. Their willful ignorance of our existence when we are out of sight is their problem, not mine. Non-disabled people need to understand the struggles we face, not only from our disabilities themselves but from living in a society that casts us aside for not being “productive.” The SSI program in particular — which is the only disability income benefit available for people who became disabled before they were able to work enough to qualify for SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance) — is in dire need of an overhaul. The asset limits, the penalties that prevent us from being able to marry or to even “live as if married,” the penalties we receive if we do somehow find a way to earn our own money, and the abysmal dollar amount of the benefit ($914/month as of 2023), are inherently oppressive to those of us who struggle for basic survival in a society where we cannot be employed.
Among my several disabling conditions, I am a type 1 diabetic. This is the insulin-dependent autoimmune disorder which accounts for only 5% of all diabetics, and is impossible to cure, with no alternative treatments to the constant, 24/7, need for insulin. I have seen too many of my fellow T1D’s develop permanent complications like blindness, kidney failure, limb loss, stomach paralysis, and even death, because of the lack of affordable access to this cheaply produced hormone that we cannot live without. How could anyone not be radicalized by this? I also have impaired mobility and need to use leg braces with forearm crutches, or a wheelchair, to get around. I’ve had so many issues accessing the tools I need to be able to leave my home, even with thorough coverage through Medicaid, because of our severely fractured medical insurance system. My doctor will prescribe the equipment, my insurance will approve the authorization, but then none of the in-network vendors will carry what I need, so I have to choose between paying hundreds to thousands of dollars out of pocket (money which I do not have and cannot possibly acquire as an SSI recipient), or to change my insurance plan and start over with all new doctors in hopes that a different network will have a vendor with my needed equipment in their catalog. How could anyone not be radicalized by this?
Although I am proud to be disabled, to continue to live my life with all these challenges and to be part of a vibrant and diverse community (with an often morbid sense of humor), I am tired. I am tired of asking for “awareness.” Disability struggles are class struggles, and what I want is genuine solidarity for disability justice.
June V. (she/her)
Categories: Editorials, Workers Struggle