there's been a couple posts on other platforms lately trying to compare the disability rights movement to the disability justice movement, and they're all really ahistorical, revisionist, and for some reason seem to think that disability justice can only look good if it's fixing giant flaws of the disability rights movement.
TL:DR: the disability justice movement doesn't need to diminish disability rights movement. Disability rights activists built the world where we can fight for justice. We aren't more radical than them just because our photos are in colour. Main struggle disability justice faces that disability rights didn't is not having the same ways people communicate and organise, we're all physically and practically distant from each other and can’t form practical activist leadership structures as well. But we also communicate more widely and can use that to elevate marginalised members of the community much more. Most struggles we otherwise share across time and it's important to recognise that.
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! in case you see one of those posts, some corrections:
- disability rights movement addressing law and policy was/is fighting institutionalised ableism and social ableism. disability justice currently focusing more on social ableism with a more modern understanding but a less applied approach/less direct actionable goals right now
- disability rights movement focuses on disability as an equalising master status across intersections, disability justice focuses on intersectionality and overlapping experiences. merits and gaps to both, just different approaches, honestly a bit of both is good
- disability rights movement famously built strong partnerships across intersections with African-American, veterans, some lgbtqia+, etc. organisations. disability justice focuses on these intersections from within. Benefits to disability rights partnerships approach meant existing experienced activist allies could help build across capacity gaps of other organisations, benefits to disability justice from-within approach elevates lived experience within communities. Both good, and frankly should be combined rather than replaced for full spectrum of practical activism benefit and uplifting multiply marginalised disabled people.
- disability rights movement did not "centre physically disabled people only". wash your mouth out. that claim is ahistorical and pretty rude to disability rights activists. People with sensory disability were very much present and frankly I see more ASL interpreters in archival protest footage than I see Auslan interpreters at protests today in Australia, so they were doing better than we are now. Famously, ASL was used to outwit authorities during the 504 sit-ins - which could only happen with Deaf people and their interpreters present at the action. Activism included fighting on behalf of people institutionalised with cognitive and developmental disabilities; there's a conversation to be had about how to co-design and collaborate with a group who you may be physically stopped from communicating with/being in the same room as, and whether advocating on their behalf then is equal to or worse than how we would try to do it today. The psychosocial disability movement was not fully integrated but it wasn't ignored either. If proponents of disability justice want to talk about cross-disability inclusion it doesn't need to pretend that nobody had that radical idea before. That's actually what was so radical about disability rights - bringing together people with disabilities that historically were not associating with each other. We're supposed to build on the hard work of our forebears, not insult their work and achievement.
- saw one argument that disability rights focused on people with acquired disabilities and aimed to restore their privileged access to society while disability justice focuses on people with congenital disabilities. One moment of emotional response: what the hell? Untrue, rude, treats any privilege like a stain on the soul that makes someone unworthy of the glorious rapture revolution, and cruelly divisive. The disabled community has done a decent job of allyship between people with congenital and acquired disabilities because pretty much everyone recognises that both experiences are pretty shit in different ways but there are far more similarities than differences. No movement should prioritise one over the other if only for diversity of lived experience in leadership, and disability rights movement did not. Even if someone's only exposure to the actual activists of the disability rights movement was watching Crip Camp, did they ignore the activists with cerebral palsy, spina bifida, and frankly I'd argue people who had polio in infancy like Judy Heumann would share the same experiences too. This is not a line to divide along even if it was true, but it isn't. Truthfulness is very important if you're going to criticise the past.
- disability rights movement did platform largely white faces front and centre, but very famously included Black activists like Brad Lomax and allied with the Panthers. I'm not American so I won't speak to racial history and attitudes through disability movements then and now in detail, but it's not exactly polite to pretend Black disabled activists didn't exist in the 70s or were not part of the movement solely to support an argument 50 years later. Call out the disproportionate number of white activists platformed, but don't erase the non-white activists in the same breath. They earned respect then and now. Disability justice does do a better job putting POC at the forefront, but with how decentralised everything is, their voices still often go unheard or heard only through social media posts, so we need to do better.
- disability justice is more modern-day critical-radical in principles and focuses a lot on construction of the body and intra-community equity. Disability rights was more organised and had concrete goals and the ability to collectively plan to achieve them. This made civil disobedience and outright protest actions a lot more feasible, but communications infrastructure did mean contact between branches was hard and culture was less centralised - so some branches were more radical than others. disability justice has plenty of time to become organised, but right now is pretty decentralised. The revolution may be from bed, but we do have to find a way to make motion happen and communicate back and forth, not just unidirectional from authoritative voices to consumers of information. And movements without achievable goals struggle. We won't "end ableism" in our lifetime, and activists burn out reaching for distant stars all the time. Part of that is also the decentralised nature of disability justice, which has spread more online than via direct person-to-person contact.
It's also so, so important to recognise that disability justice would not exist without disability rights movement. Not in a "it's building on prior works" way, but a "many of the founding thinkers and ongoing activists of disability justice have accessed education that the activists of the disability rights era fought tooth and nail to access and make accessible". I have, too. Many of us have - still not all, and in many places separated education still exists - but many of us have learned in places we once wouldn't physically or policy-wise make it through the door of. That includes primary school, not just higher education.
They were literally out smashing curbs with hammers because curb cuts weren't being made. Something as small as crossing the street was not a given. We are in a position to fight for disability justice only because that position was set up by those before us. Disability justice does not replace disability rights. Disability justice is not so much more progressive than disability rights, and disability rights movement was extremely radical activism. We don't necessarily owe anyone hero-worship, but we do owe the whole community truthfulness and understanding of where we are in our fight for equitable society and how we got to where we are.
These movements dove-tail, and are not at odds with each other. We can make new goals with the disability justice movement to build on what was fought and what was won in the disability rights movement. Every time we cross a road, go to school, enter a building, we are living their victories and pushing the activism even further than they had the chance to reach. And notice how the living members of the disability rights movement often have blended seamlessly into the disability justice movement even if they are not dropping the principles by name.
It's the same fight across more than 50 years, and it's objectively wrong to think people of the past were inherently less radical and progressive than we are today just because we think the most progressive times are always our own. If we can't respect and protect what we've already won, we'll keep losing it and start from scratch every time some government or organisation worms its way out of access obligations. Respecting and protecting our history is how we make sure we can fight for more. And more, and more. Activism is constantly building grounds for those who follow us, and I hope that in 50 years those who come after us can respect what we've achieved too. We owe it to them to make disability justice count, and we owe it to our forebears to recognise that what they did counted, too.
