Happy Disability Pride & Inclusion Month

Nearly all of us will experience disability at some point in our lives

Hello, dear friends,

Did you know? July is Disability Pride Month, the month when the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, became law in 1990. It’s an opportunity to spotlight people with disabilities and draw attention to the obstacles and bias that disabled people face — which are so thoroughly embedded into our culture and environment that most nondisabled people don’t see them at all.

“Disability is a part of the rich tapestry of human diversity, and something that nearly all of us will experience at some point in our lives.” — The Arc website

Lucy Webster, a journalist and disabled woman in London who writes the newsletter The View From Down Here (and has a book coming out Sept. 7 by the same name!!!), spotlighted the month in her post: An unhappy Disability Month:

“We’re three days in and, just like in years past, I have yet to see a single nondisabled person or brand mention DPM,” she noted.

“I wrote about this last year but it bears repeating because it’s so depressing. There are tweets and Instagram posts about, I don’t know, international hugging day and absolutely zilch about a month with huge importance to a very large, very marginalised community. Frankly, it pisses me off.”

She was right.

Once she pointed it out, I couldn’t unsee it.

Where were the celebrations of Disability Pride Month?

In Lucy’s post “Disability pride is a radical act,” she shares why pride in disability is important:

“It took me so long to accept and embrace my disabled identity because the world taught me that disability is something to be ashamed of. I tried to distance myself from the label and the community. I hid my body and ignored my needs. And like so many others, that denialism was the source of a huge amount of misery.

“Learning to love who I am and finding a space where I belong was a process of liberation. Celebrating my body and asking for help was an act of liberation. Claiming this identity was an act of liberation. And true liberation is always radical.”

I love this.

I was now on the lookout for Disability Pride Month celebrations, or really any public acknowledgment — more than that, seeing and embracing — of people who are disabled.

Then I witnessed one ceremony in an unexpected place: Yankee Stadium!

HOPE Week: Honoring people with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease

I spent the Fourth of July watching that all-American sport at Yankees Stadium, cheering on my beloved Orioles (who lost the baseball game but continue to have a stellar season). It was the annual “HOPE Week,” which stands for Helping Others Persevere and Excel. HOPE Week recognizes and supports people with all sorts of challenges, which has over the years recognized many people with disabilities.

In the pre-game ceremony on July 4th, the Yankees honored 7 women who have been diagnosed with myotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a fatal neurodegenerative disease. All of them are much younger than 55, the average age of a person diagnosed with ALS.

ALS is also called Lou Gehrig’s Disease, after the famous Yankees star who left baseball at age 36 after his diagnosis of ALS. He died two years later. ALS affects a person’s ability to breath and move, but not their thinking or sensing. Its cause is unknown and there is no cure.

One of the young women on the field was Sarah Langs, a reporter and producer at Major League Baseball Advanced Media who is a beloved member of the baseball community. She is 30 years old, and shared her diagnosis of ALS on Twitter last fall.

At a pre-game news conference, she said, “This is so, so important to put a spotlight on young women with ALS, to show not everyone looks like Lou Gehrig.”

Sarah has also talked about how Lou Gehrig’ famous “I’m the Luckiest Man Alive” speech means to her — this is his speech, after he retired due to ALS, on July 4, 1939, given to more 60,000 fans at Yankee Stadium. It begins:

Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got.

Today, I consider the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.

I’ve been in ballparks for 17 years, and I’ve never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

When you look around, wouldn’t you consider it a privilege to associate yourself with such fine-looking men as are standing in uniform in this ballpark today…

Sure, I’m lucky.

In the July 4th pre-game ceremony this year, the Yankees played a video on the giant screen that begins with footage of Lou giving his unforgettable speech in 1939, and then the speech moves to Yankees players, Sarah, and other members of the ALS community, speaking it, line by line.

If you’ve never heard this historic speech, it’s moving and unforgettable.

You can watch it here, beginning with Sarah talking about how much this speech means to her:

Disability Inclusion

Disability Pride Month, to be clear, is not connected to Pride Month or specific to LGBTQ+ community. Erin Ryan Heyneman, who writes the newsletter Rising and Gliding, suggests the month should actually be called Disability Inclusion Month. She acquired a motor and cognitive disability at age 35, when she became disabled by a Multiple Sclerosis Flare.

In her post July is For Disability Inclusion, she writes:

“What’s so special about inclusion? The disability inclusion movement is a slowly growing campaign to raise awareness within the not currently disabled general public. While the ADA has been incredibly useful for codifying structural elements like elevators and educational supports, its scope is limited. People with disabilities face barriers to access that most people who are not disabled don’t even notice because the world is designed for them. Inclusion is the work of removing a wide array of barriers to access that the ADA doesn’t cover, and education is the first step to inclusion. Adding alternative text to online images, providing chairs or benches at local businesses, and eliminating words like “energetic,” from job and volunteer postings are all low stakes, high impact ways that people can practice what I call everyday inclusion. The Disability Community needs as many people as possible to understand the basics of inclusion, and naming July Disability Inclusion month would help raise awareness.”

I appreciate Erin and Lucy’s insights and newsletters a lot. (You can check them out and subscribe here: Rising and Gliding and The View From Down Here.)

Happy Disability Pride & Inclusion Month!

To our journeys,
Brianne

p.s. One more useful resource that has great tips for parents and truly all of us: How to teach children about disability, at every age ⭐