“Listening to the perspectives of those with lived experience is key to understanding that disability is not a problem to solve but part of the total human experience to embrace.” —Keith Jones
So how can we improve disability inclusion in social justice and overcome ableism? Jones explains, “As our movement seeks anti-racist legal reform, access to economic sustainability and employment, quality education, reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, we must include people with disabilities—who cut across all intersecting demographics. And we must be intentional in that inclusion.”
In the continuing fight for justice and the expansion of democracy, understanding intersecting movements to end oppression is imperative and inspiring. Those at the intersections of geography, gender, poverty and race, as LFJ Director Jalaya Lyles Dunn explains, “will determine the fate of our democracy,” and have often been the agents of change, as witnessed by the connections between the past and the present highlighted in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Civil Rights Memorial Center.
