Disability Pride Month
Disability Pride Month is celebrated each year in July. Disability Pride initially started as a day of celebration in 1990—the year that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law. That same year, Boston held the first Disability Pride Day. The first official celebration of Disability Pride Month occurred in July 2015, which also marked the 25th anniversary of the ADA. Since then, cities across the country have celebrated disability pride month with parades and other festivities.
Disability Pride Month celebrates disabled persons embracing their disabilities as integral parts of who they are, reclaiming visibility in public and interacting fully with their disabilities out in the open, and rejecting shame and internalized ableism.
It is a time for the disability community to come together, uplift, and amplify one another’s voices and be heard.
Disability justice movements continue to advocate for intersectional approaches to meeting the needs of people with disabilities, which are connected to race, class, gender, etc.
“Disability is just one facet of oppression.” Sabrina Sarro, LMSW, says, "Folx with disabilities are ignored, erased; their needs are invalidated. The world was not designed for disabled folx and thus, it is extraordinarily hard for disabled folx to receive access to secure housing situations, job environments, etc."
Sarro explains, "Disabled folx continue to be seen as unworthy/unwanted, especially dark-skinned Black disabled folx. We cannot talk about equality or uprooting the ways in which ableism is intimately connected to white supremacy without talking about how disabled folx are affected."
Disability Pride continues to evolve, thanks to the hard work of disabled activists who have fought for representation and equity. Whether familiar with the disability justice movement or new to thinking about what it means, a great deal of work remains to ensure that the needs of the disability community are met equitably.
All of the information for this newsletter was pulled from this article and this article.