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just wanted to share the National Down Syndrome Society’s message for this year’s World Down Syndrome Day (21st March) 💛💙
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okay i need to have a conversation with yall. Being disabled does NOT and i repeat does NOT negate your whiteness. You can be disabled and still be privileged in other areas, privilege doesn't negate your disability however it is absolutely something that affects how others and the world perceives it and treats you. I am a privileged disabled person, I am white, I can typically walk, and I have insurance and people i can live with since i cannot live on my own, that doesn't make my struggles less valid, but it does mean that i have always navigated those struggles as a WHITE person, and the WHITENESS comes before everything else. I am visibly disabled, i am completely tube dependent, use mobility aids, and have a service dog HOWEVER i am still white above literally everything. Disabled people of color especially black disabled people face disproportionate discrimination, medical racism and malpractice, violence, and so many other complex issues that come with the intersection of being a person of color and disabled that white disabled people will never have to face. We have to understand our privilege and fight for those less privileged than us, really check our own racism and own ableism every single chance we get. this doesn't mean you aren't suffering, or that you aren't disabled "enough" it means that you have walked the world as a white person and have a lot of privilege navigating the world as one.
Reblogged wheelie-sick
A sketched out rant about doors and wheelchairs
This is a thing of beauty and I couldn't have said it better myself.
Reblogged disabled-dyke
finding apartments as a wheelchair user is the most frustrating thing
"can I fit in the door?" "no" "can I fit in the door?" "no" "can I fit in the door?" "no" "can I fit in the door?" "no" "can I fit in the door?" "no"
....and on and on and on for forever
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If you've ever told a person who's had to be bedbound for a period of time that you wish you could "just stay in bed", DO IT.
Stay in bed. For days. But don't get up if someone needs you to, or you get bored, or you get antsy. Don't do anything other than rest. Just lie in your bed, whether you need to get stuff done around the house or socialize or anything else "productive". You'll have to cancel on people, you'll disappoint them, they won't understand.
And if you're thinking, "well, i CAN'T just be in bed. There's stuff that has to be done - I have plans", maybe ask yourself why you assumed a disabled person doesn't have plans or things to do or desires.
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Newest Social Security change: they will now be taking 100% of a beneficiaries payment if they have been overpaid. The current rate is 10%.
Fewer than 1% of the Social Security Administration's payments are what the agency terms as "improper," which can include both over- and underpayments, according to a 2024 report from its inspector general.
The agency says that they are usually due to two issues:
- Beneficiaries don't update their earnings data or alert the agency to other changes.
- Social Security employees don't update beneficiaries' records in a timely way.
Moving to reinstate the 100% recovery rate over the current 10% rate will kill people.
Many people don’t even know they have been overpaid, and often times you aren’t informed for years.
As a personal anecdote: when I was working, I was required to send my paystubs every time I got paid. I sent them twice a month, every month, for the entirety of my time working. I never received a change in the SSI payments I get every month due to my disability.
In 2024, an entire YEAR after I had left my job, I recieved a letter saying that I had been overpaid between 2021-2023 (which is the duration of my time working), and they would be taking $200 from my check every month until 2035 to repay the amount I was overpaid.
$200 is already a significant decrease, and I struggle every month.
Taking the full amount of benefits away from people who receive them is downright inhumane.
Reblogged disabled-dyke
hey so it’s march now aka the beginning of endometriosis awareness month and i feel obligated to remind you that debilitatingly painful periods are not normal. if you or someone you know is ending up sick or bedridden every month, you are not crazy and deserve medical attention from someone who will take you seriously
hey it’s march again let’s get this post circulating again
and since i legally have to put it on every endo post - heavy bleeding/fainting from blood loss/extremely painful periods are for sure a symptom of endometriosis in some people
but it can also go the other way! my periods were so light i got them maybe twice a year, and i didn’t think anything of it until the endo got really bad because it’s harder to notice the absence of something bad than the presence of it
(and for people who don’t know what endometriosis is - so you know how the reason periods exist is because once a month your uterus starts lining itself with all the stuff it needs to build a baby, and then sheds it when it realises there isn’t a baby? what happens with endo is you’re still making that lining, but your body isn’t sure where it’s actually supposed to go, so instead of building it inside your womb, it just starts attaching it to random organs. which is a) not great for your health on multiple fronts, and b) why sometimes you don’t get your period at all, because it doesn’t have a way out of your body from wherever it ended up)
so to reiterate - if it has been more than maybe 4 years since you got your first period and they haven’t regulated into something consistent and predictable yet? that might be a sign that your uterus is getting confused as to what its job actually is
(and also extremely painful periods might be a symptom of other reproductive disorders that aren’t endo, PCOS comes to mind but i think there’s more - so as op said! you don’t have to suffer through this and if you have been it might be an indication of a problem you can then work to address)
(from what i understand the average period pain shouldn’t feel much worse than say the pain you get the day after strenuous exercise)
Reblogged wheelie-sick
hey so it’s march now aka the beginning of endometriosis awareness month and i feel obligated to remind you that debilitatingly painful periods are not normal. if you or someone you know is ending up sick or bedridden every month, you are not crazy and deserve medical attention from someone who will take you seriously
hey it’s march again let’s get this post circulating again
Reblogged emily-a13
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Some people don’t want to hear this but sometimes accessibility is not sustainable or eco-friendly. Disabled people sometimes need straws, or pre-made meals in plastic containers, or single-use items. Just because you can work with your foods in their least processed and packaged form doesn’t mean everyone else can.
Reblogged disabled-dyke
not enough people understand that disability benefits are basically what it would look like if you turned "if you're too sick for school you're too sick for video games" into an official public policy
Reblogged dark-side-of-the-pillow
Hey um what if y'all didn't overload the luigi mangione tag with thirst about his looks when people are trying to follow the news about what's happening? Because American or otherwise it is very fucking important to realize the government picked a guy to blame for a murder and is prosecuting him and painting him as guilty. This is against his right to innocent until proven guilty. If they can do it to him, they will do it to you. Do not let them ignore your rights!! A right is irrefutable and Luigi deserves to be represented fairly under the laws we founded the country on. Make up your own ship tags if you're sick in the head and want to ship a real life person with..idk whoever. Yourself. But don't do it on the tag where people can keep up with the court case. Thanks 🤙🏻
Reblogged emily-a13
There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.
I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.
As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.
The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.
The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.
As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.
I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.
The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.
I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.
I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.
All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.
I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.
My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.
If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:
It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.
Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.
Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.
Sources:
• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text
• Betches News on Instagram (screencaps)
Reblogged disabled-dyke
people's worth aren't determined by "contributing to society". like many jobs are useful, sure. but someone's job doesn't determine their inherent worth. we don't need everyone on earth uselessly breaking their backs on some shitty job just to justify their existence