Quote by Aimee Mullins

In the excellent documentary, Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, Aimee Mullins says, “If we want to discover the full potential in our humanity, we need to celebrate those heartbreaking strengths and those glorious disabilities we all have. It is our humanity and all the potential within it that makes us beautiful.”

Disability is not a bad word, and one of the things that this pandemic has brought home to me is the need to fight for disability rights. There are so many ways in which those with visible and invisible disabilities are dismissed, diminished, not included, or actively harmed in our society.

The pandemic brought into sharp relief how much less our society values the lives of the disabled. That was true before the pandemic and is true now. I am not disability expert, but I can clearly see how the capitalist value system skews our view of those who are disabled based on values of productivity and ease of employment.

But as disability advocates will remind us, we are all only temporarily able. Age, if nothing else will bring disability to us all.

And as the pandemic has also taught us, there are actually a great many accommodations and modifications that can be made to make the lives of the disabled easier, and less burdensome.

We do not have to go back to the way things were, we can do better.