by Elise
Image: DNSWM Fcebook page
Frances Vicioso, founder of Co-Creating Culture, is a Black-Latina storyteller with mental illness and physical disabilities. She uses all of her identities in her work, including educator and facilitator. Disability Network Southwest Michigan (DNSWM) hired Vicioso to lead their “Black Disability History” webinar, which DNSWM hadn’t held in years since their last Black woman living with disabilities staff member had left. Community Education Manager Miranda Greenwell, a white nonbinary woman, did not think she should present the program. The “Black Disability History” webinar is about the vital role Black Americans living with disabilities played in advancing civil rights for both Black people and people living with disabilities.
* * *
About 300 people protested potential federal budget cuts at New Jersey’s State House in early March. Disability rights advocates Gwen Orlowski, CEO of Disability Rights New Jersey, and Kevin Nunez are among thousands concerned that the next federal budget will cut Medicaid and people with disabilities will be in jeopardy. While Republican lawmakers claim that only fraud in the program will be cut, the Congressional Budget Office, which is nonpartisan, said that in order to meet Trump’s agenda, New Jersey alone will have to endure $2.2 to $10 billion in cuts over the next decade. Cuts to Medicaid will negatively affect many factors in the lives of people living with disabilities, including caregiving, transportation and home modifications (for accessibility).
* * *
At the end of 2024, four years after a Court of Appeals in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia ruled that the basic human rights of people living with disabilities were being violated, 702 people were still living in institutional settings, rather than the accessible housing the government was supposed to offer. That’s too many, and the Disability Rights Coalition is very disappointed, even though hundreds of Nova Scotians living with disabilities have been moved into homes in the community. The Department of Opportunities and Social Development states its five-year plan means all Nova Scotians living with disabilities will be transitioned into the community by March 2028. An apology that now seems hollow was given by the province’s Premier Tim Houston, for the way people living with disabilities were being forced to live in institutions.