Liberating Women with Disabilities

Today 300 ADAPT activists called on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to liberate women with disabilities from institutions by supporting the Community Choice Act. We covered all the entrances at 1st and Constitution NW in DC where Pelosi was receiving the Alice Paul award at a luncheon. Alice Paul was a first wave feminist leader and the annual award is sponsored by the Sewell Belmont House.

68.4 % of all nursing home residents are women. You can bet they would rather be in their own homes with services and supports. Most are seniors and women with disabilities and definitely not rich. These women are not exactly on Speaker Pelosi's high priority list.

Sadly these women are also not high on the priority list of most feminists. All the women in ADAPT and many women with disabilities around the country were stoked about today's action. Most of us are feminists and would love to build links to a women's movement that, for the most part, ignores us.

What's the story here? Women with disabilities are among the most excluded and oppressed in the country. One would think the women's movement would be all over us. Not.

Instead it is often conservatives who attempt to build political alliances with us. The ADA was signed by President Bush 1 and President Bush 2 implemented and funded Money Follows the Person to get people with disabilities out of institutions, receiving services and supports in our own homes.

We still cannot get Speaker Pelosi to support the Community Choice Act and mainstream women's groups keep us off their agendas.

When will the women's and progressive movements welcome all excluded groups?

In the meantime...the women of ADAPT will continue to come out and rock and roll...until we Free Our People from nursing homes and other institutions.

If Alice Paul were still alive, she would have been in the streets with ADAPT.