2024
It's always risky offering disabled people unsolicited advice on how to live a better life. Most of us who have disabilities already hear more pious, positive cliches than we can stand about overcoming hardships and focusing on our abilities.
We hear these things every day from non-disabled people who want us to fit their ideal of what a brave, resilient, and low-maintenance disabled looks like. We also find ourselves judged and molded by other disabled people who have their own ideas about the right way to be disabled, and who aren’t shy about telling us exactly how we are doing disability wrong.
But now that we have begun another new year, it may actually be a good or at least convenient time to think about a certain kind of disability-related New Year's Resolution. This kind of exercise can certainly be annoying and redundant. But it’s not necessarily a waste of time to use the new year to do a bit of a review and maybe set some new directions. It’s as good a time as any for us to discover – or remind ourselves – that disabled life doesn’t have to be narrow, dull, insignificant, or depressing. We can make it broad, deep, rich, challenging, exciting, and important.
Disabled people know better than most the limitations of mere “positive thinking” or “manifesting” to make our lives what we want them to be. Practical barriers in our lives are too solid to buy completely into the optimistic promises of self-help. But we aren’t powerless either. There are things we as disabled people can do to make our lives richer. And perhaps this year more than ever, it’s important to remember that making our own lives better may involve reaching out, rather than just reaching in.
So here are four ideas for engaging with disability life and culture in 2024.
1. Follow disabled activists and creatives on social media
Absorb a variety of ideas about disability, including some that you may not have thought about before, or that you have been skeptical about previously. Learn about, or revisit, the Social Model and Medical Model views of disability, and the logic and historical importance of disability rights and advocacy. One way to start is to find and follow disabled people on social media. This can include disabled journalists, authors, independent advocates and activists with disability organizations, disabled politicians and elected officials, and disabled bloggers, vologgers, and influencers.
Finding them isn’t difficult. Highlighting interesting people and ideas is one thing social media still does well, despite all of its annoyances and dangers. Twitter / X, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and independent blogs are all reasonable places to begin. Identify a few writers and content creators you instinctively like. Then see who else they read and write about, and expand your search outward as you see fit. And experiment with hashtags and search terms like: #Disability, #Disabled, #DisabilityTwitter, #DisabilityRights, #DisabilityInclusion, #CripTheVote, #Accessibility, and #DisabilityCulture.
Look for people and publications that speak to you, engage you, hold your attention and entertain you, and maybe start to change how you view your disability and what it means. And take the time to read and think before you dive in to comment. You can get a lot out of just being a passive observer, and taking the time to build your own views and voice gradually.
2. Read books by disabled authors
Reading books by disabled authors is an important next step to learn about disability issues, history, and culture in-depth. Most disabled authors have a presence on social media, so it’s a good place to find out when new books are coming out, and which books are most influential and valued by other disabled people. One recommendation leads to another, and from there to yet another.
Once you connect with a few disabled authors on social media, pay attention to their book announcements. Three or four books that you see people talking about most, and that seem appealing to you. Look for books by disabled authors on disability history, different interpretations of the disability experience, and personal stories and reflections.
This reading is valuable for its own sake. But it’s also good for disability culture. One of the most important ways to engage with disability communities is to support disabled authors by buying their books, subscribing to their publications, and sharing their work with others you know. Helping grow the market for disability content creates more opportunities for disabled creators, and both strengthens and diversifies disability culture for all of us.
3. Research some disability issues
There has never been a better, more critical time for disabled people to engage with disability issues. Especially if you have avoided it in the past, resolve to learn more about some of the main policy issues that matter to disabled people. Despite decades of impressive progress, there remains a lot of unfinished business and areas of needed reform that have the potential to make life better for people with disabilities. For example:
- Benefits like Social Security Disability Insurance, (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income, (SSI).
- Home care, also known as Home and Community Based Services.
- Education of disabled students.
- Enforcement of accessibility and disability rights laws
- Accessibility at specific locations you encounter personally
- Pandemic strategies that recognize the continuing threat of COVID, especially for people with chronic illnesses and disabilities.
And since disability issues do not exist in a vacuum, it’s important to note the intersections and overlaps between disability and other social and political issues, including:
- Race, gender, social class, education, and income.
- Safety net income support programs.
- Health care.
- Transportation.
- Criminal justice and policing.
Disability policy and activism can be intimidating to some, deadly boring to others, and discouraging to all of us at one time or another. And no one person’s engagement with disability issues is going to change the world by itself. But none of these issues can ever be resolved the way we would want them to be without advocacy and activism by disabled people themselves. Disability activism is a very long term investment. But it’s an investment worth making, and an election year is a good time to get started, or to start again if necessary.
4. Be a disabled voter
2024 is a General Election year in the U.S. And elections with similar stakes are coming up in a number of other countries too. So adding something about voting your 2024 resolutions makes obvious sense for people with disabilities, for whom voting is often a more difficult and deliberate process than it is for others. Disabled people face many barriers to voting, some practical, some legal. That fact alone should prompt us to value voting even more.
On the other hand, it’s not unreasonable to feel especially discouraged, disappointed, and disengaged from politics this year. And condescending lectures on the virtues and duties of voting aren’t always as encouraging as they are usually meant to be. Shaming disabled people into voting is not the way to go.
Still, it’s worth reminding ourselves that in a General Election year like this one, there are dozens of offices on our ballots. Even if we despise all the candidates running for one office, there are hundreds of others running for House, Senate, state governorships and legislatures, county offices, mayor’s offices and city and town councils. They all make important decisions and set far-reaching policy directions, including those that directly affect people with disabilities.
So start 2024 by making sure you are registered and have an accessible means to vote. How will you get there and back, reliably? What will you do if you run into unexpected barriers? Decide now whether or not to apply for an absentee ballot.
Next, ask local, state, congressional, and presidential candidates disability policy questions. Do this through social media or letters to the editor. Explore and interact with campaign websites. If you can, go to local campaign events — you may find an opportunity to ask in person, in public.
And don’t be shy about mentioning disability issues to others when talking about elections this year. Talk about what matters to you most, as a disabled person. And don’t think there's something wrong with focusing on a very specific issue. Don't worry about being perceived as an activist or "special interest." Don't hesitate to ask uncomfortable questions about candidates and parties you otherwise support. And don’t be afraid to flex your political power and demand that politicians seek your vote rather than taking it for granted.
The reason we can think of these goals as resolutions is that many of us who have disabilities are not engaged with broader disability life and culture. This may be because of internal unease about it, or due to external pressure to "overcome" and brush off our disabilities rather than engage with them. Both are understandable. But disability culture has a lot to offer each of us. And at this critical time, there is so much each of us can offer to our fellow disabled people. Resolve to reach out this year.
