Gary Gray

MANIFESTO FOR PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

We are not diagnoses in need of a cure or a case to be closed.

We are human beings, with human dreams and ambitions. 

We deny that images of disability are appropriate metaphors for incompetence, stupidity, ugliness, or weakness.   

We proclaim that we are born free and equal human beings: That our disabilities are limitations only. And our identities do not derive from being disabled. 

We proclaim that we have the same value as people who are not disabled.

And we reject any scheme of labeling or classifying us that encourages people to think of us as having diminished value. 

We reject the idea that institutions must be created to care for us.

And proclaim that these institutions have been used to manage us in ways that non – disabled people are not expected to accept. 

We particularly denounce institutions whose purpose is to punish us for being disabled or to confine us for the convenience of others. 

We reject the notion that we need  experts to tell us how to live, Especially experts from the non-disabled world.

We are not diagnoses in need of a cure or cases to be closed.

We are human beings, with human dreams and ambitions. 

We deny that images of disability are appropriate metaphors for incompetence, stupidity, ugliness, or weakness. 

We are aware that as people with disabilities, we have been considered objects of charity, and we have been considered commodities. We are neither. 

We reject charitable enterprises that exploit our lifestyle to titillate others, and which propose to establish the rules by which we must live without participation. 

We also reject businesses that use us as warm bodies to provide a passive market for their services, again laying down rules by which we must live for their profit.  

We recognize that the lines between charities and business are blurred in the disability industry, and we do not accept services from either if their essential function is to exploit us.  

We assert our rights of self-determination in the face of rules, eligibility criteria, regulations, customs, laws, or other barriers, and we pledge not to allow any authority or institution to deprive us of our freedom of choice. 

Finally, we assert that any service we need, from specialized teaching to personal care, can be provided to us in the community among our non-disabled peers. 

Segregated institutions are not necessary to serve us, and they have been the greatest of our oppressions, especially when they have been run by able-bodied people without our participation. 

All human beings are more alike then we are different. We recognize that when we assert that belief, we will find ourselves in conflict with regressive institutions and their supporters, some of whom are disabled themselves. 

We do not expect thousands of years of stereotyping to dissipate quickly.

We commit ourselves and those who come after us to challenge our oppression on every level, until we are allowed to be fully human and assert our individuality ahead of our disability.

(I got this from a friend in Florida Center for Independent Living.)

This Disabled Manifesto comes on the heels of the Liberated Woman’s Manifesto and will not be the last. I expect to hear from the lesbian and gay Americans soon. I cannot wait to see their manifesto and what they are striving to achieve politically, socially and economically. 

This statement will enrage some conservative disabled people because they fear that able-bodied persons will not help them in their time of need. This statement has been long overdue to break the chains of dependency on the government, the state, the family, friends, attendants, and other non-disabled persons.  

Just as African Americans have written a manifesto in the late sixties that stressed Black independence from economic and social slavery, something America is still working on even today, we have written this manifesto.

American women have written one in the mid-seventies demanding equal rights and equal pay, wanting to be seen as human beings, not  sex objects, women are still fighting this battle today. Women, like other Americans, just want a piece of this great big red, white, and blue pie. 

Last, but not least, the Right Wing Americans put pen to paper in the eighties wanting the federal government to get off their backs, wanting tax reforms and more states rights.  

This manifesto is very different; this manifesto encompasses all disabled groups, all disabled races, and all disabled genders. It includes all disabled individuals socially, economically, and politically, unlike the other papers.
Gary Norris Gray