| | Disability Awareness Month
by Jerry E. Kulhavy
here are some of you out there who say we don’t need another Disability Awareness Month, because we already have one, and it’s October. I believe this results from a misunderstanding. As late as the year 2000, there existed one within our government through the President’s Committee of Employment of People with Disabilities. The committee’s name has been changed, and it has been taken over by the US Labor Department. The committee had created Disability Employment Awareness Week to encourage employers to hire people with disabilities. It was eventually stretched out into a month. Some people sometimes forgot about the word "Employment" and sometimes left it out- thus creating the misunderstanding.
We in the disability community do not have a month totally devoted to us. There currently is no single month when we can take to celebrate our uniqueness, our common culture, our history and our just place in this society nationwide. It is about time we created one. It’s needed not just for instructing the non-disabled community to our worth and achievements, but for ourselves as well. We must continue the effort to define ourselves by our own terms and not the terms non-disabled society binds us to.
If we can create legislation like the Americans with Disabilities Act and push it through Congress into law, why can’t we carve out a single month of a whole year. Why can’t we devote one month to ourselves and to the issues we face?
My choice for Disability Awareness Month would be July. It’s the month in which our nation celebrates the act of declaring ourselves free and independent from the oppressive rule of the British Monarchy. It’s the month when the ADA was signed into law, an act which has in many way provided freedom and independence for a community of people. July would be a great time for us to gather as a community and to celebrate who we are and where we’re going. A month long celebration would give everyone time enough to be heard.
We need Disability Awareness Month to move forward, lest they forget us and we forget ourselves. It would be a time to look back and to remember those who laid the groundwork for our current achievements, and to honor those who keep the struggle alive today. It would help us gage how far we have yet to go, and how we plan to get there. I feel that Disability Awareness Month is as important to members of the disability community as Black History Month is to African-Americans, and I feel we should work to establish it. | |
