Dis-inevit-ability
2025 04 25
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This is a comment from my text message archives I left elsenet that I thought I'd make more widely seeable.
It's not a matter of economics alone. It's everything. Disability is not a matter of just work alone. Almost every human being will be disabled at some point, however permanently or impermanently, whether through birth defect, congenital conditions, accident, illness, injury, or age. We need to change our thinking from the outset to build all infrastructure - social and physical - with a disability focus. Because even if it doesn't impact you personally/directly, it'll impact the people who need to help you.
Society is what makes us disabled in a lot of ways, by its limitations and lack of inclusion, (added 2025 06 17) and by the ways it limits people's abilities to participate. Disability, in some perspectives, isn't just a matter of a physical or cognitive impairment, it is what a society does to other you and keep you out. It won't change work even a little to make work more accessible or doable for those who need flexibility. It punishes people who do work and earn a little. People on assistance are effectively barred from equal marital rights and such, because their assistance is docked if they're partnered with someone who works. Assistance is docked if your child lives with you and they're over 18 and work. Lack of infrastructure or planning when it comes to emergency services in regards to the disabled who are never really included in situations like disaster planning. "Wait in the closet if there's a fire and someone might get to you."
Imani Barbarin (known online as Crutches and Spice) made a good point in one of her recent videos (which is well worth the watch, as they all are) in fact, about how some disabled people are treated and how the thinking you should consider having when it comes to that treatment: "If it's good enough for disabled people, it's good enough for me." And this relates to issues like, in the US, the autism registries, the potential reemergence of ugly laws, etc. In Canada, it's similar things, and continued lack of inclusion, continued legislated poverty, the indifference, etc.
I have tried to impress on people why I don't buy into strategic voting, giving disability issues as reasons, and it has not gone well. The Liberal party has already failed the disabled, the NDP helped them do it, and I refuse to take a hit for the team on other scores. The team will not take a hit for me. It never has.
Disability is not a side quest, not an afterthought, and pretending it isn't there isn't going to prevent it from happening to you. Eradicating people with congenital conditions won't eradicate disability either. We need to get off these trains of thinking. This is partly why I wanted to vote Green federally, because while current plans might not be as inclusive as I think are necessary, I think the Greens are a party that can expand their platforms to be more inclusive.
And, to be flip for a moment, while people will tell me that the Greens will never win, they would if people would stop riding the Lib/Con train and break out of the strategic voting bullshit. If the aim is to keep the Cons out, voting Green achieves the same aim as voting Liberal does. And at least the Green party gives a shit about the CDB. There isn't a breath of that in the Liberal plan, and disability only exists for the Conservatives insofar as veterans are concerned. Watching people stan for the Conservatives regarding disability just because the party leader has a disabled child is wild to me. He doesn't care. His kid will get taken care of, but no one else's children will.
2025 06 17: I did not end up voting Green federally, because the rep for my riding neither got back to me so I could speak to him directly, nor had he signed the Vote Palestine pledge. That was a deal breaker for me.