Between 11:59PM on June 30th and 12:00AM on July 1st, LGBTQ+ pride month, or Pride, ends mostly without ceremony and Disability Pride month begins, also without ceremony. June is well-known for the LGBTQ+ pride celebrations that have happened nearly annually since 1970, and which today are referred to as Pride. Disability Inclusion month or Disability Justice month would be more appropriate terms for the month of July. This is not just an argument over semantics or who deserves to use the word pride. First, we should remember that many people with disabilities are also queer, or trans, or black, or women, or people of color, or any combination of these identities. Disability is so intersectional because anyone can become disabled at any time, regardless of their identity. If a person who already belongs to a marginalized community becomes disabled, then that person is twice marginalized.
The naming of months in order to bring awareness to the humanity, successes, history, and struggles of of marginalized communities has been somewhat organic. Black History Month is celebrated in February, Dr. King’s birth month. Pride is in June, in honor of Stonewall’s legacy, and Disability Pride falls in July, the month the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, was signed into law. Both Black History Month and Pride Month serve as necessary reminders to America’s white supremacist, patriarchal society of our very recent history. State sanctioned discrimination and abuse of black people was legal until the civil rights act in 1964. Anti-Gay laws and years of discrimination sparked the Stonewall Uprising that led to the first Pride March in 1970, but Marriage Equality was not passed federally until 2015. Just this week, The US Supreme Court ended landmark programs and protections for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ individuals and families. Trans persons, especially trans children, are currently in grave danger, as more states pass laws to deny individuals’ basic human rights.
The disability community has a similar history that is deserving of an entire month to remind everyone of our right to exist. “Ugly Laws” which prevented people with physical disabilities from going out in public existed in the United States until 1974, when Chicago finally repealed its statute. Chicago’s law specified that a person who was “diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed,” would incur a fine for simply existing in public spaces. Like the leaders of the Civil Rights, Black Lives Matter, and LGBTQ+ Rights movements, leaders of the Disability Justice movement have had to put their bodies on the line in order to get lawmakers to pay attention to institutional discrimination (or ableism). On July 26, 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act was finally passed into law.
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.
Finally, the month of June is incredibly important for those of us who make up the LGBTQ+ community. It’s even more important for young people and anyone wondering if it will ever be safe to openly identify as gay, or trans, or queer. Capitol P Pride celebrations are joyful reminders and important signifiers for the entire country. Pride lasts all year, just as Black Lives Matter in every month. We should remain hopeful that someday there will be no need for specific months and campaigns to highlight marginalized communities - until then, let’s focus on making awareness months as successful as possible - for the disability community, awareness begins with inclusion.