Disability Advocacy Quotes

Advocacy is not just a task for charismatic individuals or high-profile community organizers. Advocacy is for all of us; advocacy is a way of life. It is a natural response to the injustices and inequality in the world.

I can only imagine how hard it must be for you, the friends and caretakers, to be there for us when you know in your heart that there is nothing you can do to make it better. So I want to tell you right now that you CAN make it better. You do. Just by being there. Just by reaching out, and making time and space for us in your lives and in your hearts. Just by saying, 'I know I can never understand what you’re going through – but I believe you. And I love you. And I’m here.

The people who are trying to be on our side have reduced us to a mere calculation

I can only imagine how hard it must be for you, the friends and caretakers, to be there for us when you know in your heart that there is nothing you can do to make it better. So I want to tell you right now that you CAN make it better. You do. Just by being there. Just by reaching out, and making time and space for us in your lives and in your hearts. Just by saying, “I know I can never understand what you’re going through – but I believe you. And I love you. And I’m here.

I definitely think mothers of children with disabilities have to have extraordinary courage every day...Because we all know our children have value and worth and potential, but the everyday world sometimes doesn’t.' —Linda Strobel in Up: A Love Letter to the Down Syndrome Community

The Chinese language shaped the perceptions of disability that my immigrant parents carried with them to their new homes. It wasn’t until the 1990s, for instance, that the Chinese characters used to refer to people with disabilities changed from canfei (useless) to canji (sickness or illness); the push to understand disability as a social construct has been under way for less than a decade. Media professionals in China are now encouraged by the Chinese disability advocacy organization One Plus One to use the characters cán zhàng (disabled and obstructed) when reporting on disability issues. But such language remains a suggestion rather than an expectation, and its impact has yet to filter out to the public.

After a decade of all-volunteer advocacy, I have come to view every incarceration as a missed opportunity to love and transform; as a loss of time, life, and dreams of our community; and as state violence. Some of our greatest assets and resources in this struggle are exiled from our communities and languishing in this nation’s labyrinth of violent institutions.

Whether the autistic subject is inscribed as 'nearly' developed or 'under' developed, developmental discourses always situate the autistic subject as partially developed and thus not fully human. [...] Developmentalist discourses frame the autistic subject in need of advocacy as a kind of development project, the autistic body becomes understood as 'develop-able.' The autistic is, in other words, framed as one who needs to be taught humanness.

It's not that there are no challenges to becoming a vegetarian or vegan, but in the media, including authors of popular books on food and food politics, contribute to the 'enfreakment' of what is so often patronizingly referred to as the vegan or vegetarian 'lifestyle.' But again, the marginalization of those who care about animals is nothing new. Diane Beers writes in her book For the Prevention of Cruelty: The History and Legacy of Animal Rights Activism in the United States that 'several late nineteenth-century physicians concocted a diagnosable for of mental illness to explain such bizarre behavior. Sadly, they pronounced these misguided souls suffered from "zoophilpsychosis."' As Beers describes, zoophilpsychosis (an excessive concern for animals) was more likely to be diagnosed in women, who were understood to be 'particularly susceptible to the malady.' As the early animal advocacy movement in Britain and the United States was largely made up of women, such charges worked to uphold the subjugation both of women and of nonhuman animals.

As it represents and thus conceives of autism as a threat to the normative individual and social body, contemporary advocacy work issues an effective and powerful 'call to arms' against autism. The orientation of contemporary advocacy is clear: to be a 'good' autism advocate is to be positioned 'against' autism, to 'fight' it, 'combat' it, 'defeat' it, and so on. . . It is this war on autism that I take as my focus for the remainder of this book. I do this so as to interrogate how a militarized autism advocacy is systematically producing and sustaining a social environment that is hostile to autistic difference—an environment that, as we shall see, structures and supports possibilities for violence against those who embody autistic difference.

More recently, autism has been seen by some as a neurological difference and not necessarily a disorder at all. According to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN 2022, About Autism section): Autism is a developmental disability [which is a natural part of human diversity] that affects how we experience the world around us. Autistic people are an important part of the world. Autism is a normal part of life, and makes us who we are… Autistic people are born autistic and we will be autistic our whole lives… There is no one way to be autistic. Some autistic people can speak, and some autistic people need to communicate in other ways. Some autistic people also have intellectual disabilities and some autistic people don’t. Some autistic people need a lot of help in their day-to-day lives, and some autistic people only need a little help. All of these people are autistic, because there is no right or wrong way to be autistic. All of us experience autism differently, but we all contribute to the world in meaningful ways. We all deserve understanding and acceptance.

Advocacy is for all of us; advocacy is a way of life. It is a natural response to the injustice and inequality in the world. While you and I may not have sole responsibility for these inequities, that does not alter its reality. Ki'tay D. Davidson & TL (Talila A. Lewis) Pg. 30

Advocacy is for all of us; advocacy is a way of life. It is a natural response to the injustice and inequality in the world. While you and I may not have sole responsibility for these inequities, that does not alter its reality. Ki'tay D. Davidson & TL (Talila A. Lewis) Pg. 30

He understood that each individual group’s liberation was inextricably linked to the other—that justice and liberation could only be had if we all stand together and fight for the rights and liberties of the next individual or community. - Talila A. Lewis "For Ki'tay D. Davidson, Who LovesUs

Recognizing a disability requires us to become comfortable with vulnerability. Self-advocacy begins with recognizing disability without shame. When we give our children permission to recognize their difficulties, we liberate them to ask for accommodations. We empower them to look beyond the status quo and find the solutions that work for them, instead of trying to use the solutions that work for other people. And we provide a framework for self-understanding and self-acceptance that is the key for neurodivergent people of all ages.

I'm Chris McCray, a proud member of the Nationwide Veteran Attorneys management team. My commitment to veterans' rights is unwavering, and I lead our team with compassion and expertise. Under my guidance, our VA disability lawyers in Florida work tirelessly to navigate the intricate landscape of VA claims, offering steadfast advocacy to every veteran we serve.

Advocacy is a natural process that comes from within. It emerges when someone gets to the point where they are tired of witnessing the injustice imposed upon others and decide to do something about it. It is not something you can buy or pay for. It comes from the heart. That is where the fiercest warriors come from.

Pope says, “Engage your critics, and don’t confront them in an argumentative way.” We’re taught in school to debate. We’re taught to take a stand and use knowledge, skills, and cleverness to win converts and disable the other side. I remember in high school and university classes being asked to take a position out of a hat and then stand up and win the argument. I grew up good at winning, but looking back I see that I wasn’t getting opponents on the same page. I was shutting them up with powerful advocacy. I’ll bet you’ve seen the same thing from the outspoken in meetings and in conversation with your bosses. Getting people on the same page begins with getting rid of the need to always win the debate.

Within dominant discourses of autism advocacy, the autistic subjectivity—located simultaneously in the perpetual past (e.g. developmentally 'too slow' and always late) and the future (e.g. yet-to-be developed)—is discursively foreclosed from being (existing) in the privileged and agentive time of the 'now.' Via a kind of time-sensitive investment logic, autism is understood not as a being but as a happening—a costly body, a disruptive threat, a risky trend, and so on—a happening, moreover, that is happening fast.

How can we believe survivors and hold space for both of these people if they are in our community, in our neighborhood, in our organizing group, in our friends circle and not excuse abuse? What does it mean to do reparations on the individual level? What does it actually mean to hold yourself and others accountable? What does it mean to do accountability when the word accountability and literally every concept created in activism, advocacy, organizing, or social justice has at some point or another been twisted to abuse and harm? Who can’t be here?

Speak up for your child, but do not speak over your child.

Poignantly, much of Zumwalt’s post-Vietnam advocacy was directed at securing public recognition and benefits for US service members harmed by exposure to Agent Orange and other defoliants. Zumwalt became firmly convinced that both his son Elmo III’s cancer and his grandson Elmo IV’s severe learning disabilities were attributable to effects of Agent Orange. Though he never recanted his decision to order the use of defoliants, Zumwalt (and Mouza) never fully forgave himself for his son’s death, either.

Autism didn’t change my love—it deepened it.

Representation matters. Our stories matter. Black families deserve to be seen in every conversation about autism.

He didn’t need to be ‘fixed.’ He needed to be understood.

The hardest part of parenting through autism isn’t the diagnosis—it’s the silence that follows when support doesn’t come.

There is no single spectrum. Every child colors their world in their own way—and every hue is worthy of love.