Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist

by Judith Heumann

People had been internalizing the idea that our barriers were our individual problem for so long it was hard to shift. People had to get out of the habit of thinking “I can’t get up the steps because I can’t walk” and get used to thinking “I can’t get up the steps because they’re not accessible.”

else. This especially happens to women. We’re called “demanding,” and if we refuse to back down, we’re “relentless.” But labeling us “demanding” and “relentless” is just a different way of trying to make us “submit.”

Until fairly recently, different cities had “ugly laws” on the books that prohibited disabled people from begging; it was called “unsightly begging,” that is, it exposed their “diseased, maimed, mutilated, or . . . deformed” body in public for profit.1

What a pervasive influence silence and avoidance have had on my life.

Donald Trump’s actions are good examples of how attacks on civil rights can happen. These kinds of attacks don’t always come through the front door; often they slide stealthily through any crack they can find. Shutting down the ADA pages on the White House website, ordering staff “to alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens,” hiring senior staff who neither know the legislation they are mandated to enforce nor believe in what the law requires, or not hiring staff at all are stealthy, slippery snakes looking for the cracks in the civil rights laws.

Under the management of DeVos, seventy-two policy guidelines that interpreted and explained the rights of students with disabilities under IDEA disappeared from the government website. It is guidelines like these, documents that clarify and explain laws and policies, that can make the difference in people’s ability to know and advocate for their rights.