Crip News v.231
What is Disability Pride Month?
Disability Pride, Always a Protest
Today’s issue may press on some tender points. Back with the usual new works, calls, and events next week.
1990
July is Disability Pride Month in the US, marking the month when the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law (July 26, 1990). This year’s theme, chosen by The Arc’s National Council of Self-Advocates, is “The World Works Better With Us.”
The first Disability Pride Day took place on October 6, 1990 in Boston when, according to an article by Laura Briggs in Gay Community News, “More than 400 people marched, drove, wheeled, and moved from City Hall to Boston Common.”
A broad coalition of disability and AIDS direct action groups, Centers for Independent Living, and nonprofits joined together to demonstrate the fight that led to the passage of the ADA less than 3 months before. “When I drove down Boylston Street with a friend of mine who also uses a chair,” said one disabled lesbian, “people got the fuck out of our way.”
One of the speeches that day came from Karen Thompson. Her disabled partner, Sharon Kowalski, was barred from the event by a Minnesota judge who decided “It was not in Sharon’s best interest to leave the state.”
Despite Kowalski’s wishes to be with Thompson when she became disabled in 1983, her father moved her to a nursing home five hours away. Finally in 1991, Thompson prevailed and the couple was reunited. This was part of why the first Disability Pride Day drew a strong presence of gay and lesbian solidarity.
2026
Today, one of the most serious threats to disabled people’s freedom emerges from an attack on trans health care.
As the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund explains, 17 states filed a court case in 2024, originally called Texas v. Becerra, asking the court to get rid of one of the most important disability anti-discrimination laws in the US: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
Section 504 protects disabled people from discrimination in health care. When the Biden administration updated the 504 rules (the same kind of rules that were missing for years until the legendary 1977 504 sit-in), it clarified that gender dysphoria is a disability in order to help protect access to trans health care.
At the start of this year, 9 states renewed their complaint in Texas v. Kennedy, using anti-trans rhetoric as a pretext for a simultaneous attack on the “integration mandate,” or the right of disabled people to live in communities instead of institutions. Since January, disabled organizers have successfully pressured 3 states to drop out of the lawsuit.
However, the Department of Justice recently released a memo articulating its view of the integration mandate: states do not have to provide in-home or community-based services for disabled people. Coming just days before the anniversary of the Supreme Court Olmstead decision that said just the opposite, the memo lays the groundwork for a profound attack on disabled people’s self-determination and freedom.
Pride and Rage
Over the years, disabled organizers have often looked at Disability Pride as an opportunity for the joyful rebuke of the shame that ableism taught our younger selves. This expression of disability in public life is never neutral.
At the start of Disability Pride Month last year, the US Senate stayed up all night to pass the so-called Big Beautiful Bill and its $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid. These cuts are now being felt: in New York, for example, nearly 450,000 people lost access to their health insurance on July 1.
It seems the question for Disability Pride in 2026 is what do we do with our rage to fuel Disability Pride as an ongoing legacy of protest? Here are a few ideas:
Fume at the Department of Health and Human Services for delaying an already-overdue deadline about web and digitial accessibility. Today is the last day you can submit public comment through the Federal Register.
If you or people you know are in Alaska, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, or Texas, you can keep the pressure on your Attorney General to drop out of Texas v. Kennedy. (July 15 will be a big day. That’s when the federal government - now clearly in agreement with the plaintiffs’ attacks on 504 - will submit its next filing. The states will respond on August 6.)
You can get caught up on the scummiest people on earth: the private equity investors in healthcare who stand to benefit from a weakened Section 504.
See what’s up when you search “[your city/town/region] disability mutual aid.”
Help build the case to demand your state account for its mass institutionalization of disabled people, as Massachussets recently did.
Check out the Disability Rights Toolkit for Advocacy Against Legalization of Assisted Suicide by Not Dead Yet as a new federal lawsuit seeks to block New York’s “Medical Aid in Dying” law that’s supposed to go into effect on August 5.
And if you’ve got calls to action to share, please drop them in a comment.
In my memory, there was a large contingent of disability activists who condemned Karen Thompson. They felt the true legal battle should not be about her right to care for her lover (LGBTQ rights) but the right of Sharon Kowalski to make that decision for herself.(Disability rights) Of course, they were absolutely correct. But I also thought whatever legal strategy had the best chance of fulfilling Sharon's wish to be with her lover was the way to go. I cried when the news came of their reunion.