Disabled people represent one of the largest, yet most underrepresented marginalized groups. Around 10% of the world’s population, or 650 million people, live with a disability.
Many disabled people continue to fight for equal rights and access to vital medications, despite facing barriers like immense physical pain, very limited energy, constant illness, and other obstacles. However, the disabled community struggles to be seen and heard due to accessibility issues that persist in many activist and political spaces.
Because many abled people have so little experience with real disabled people, sometimes abled people misunderstand their needs and the core issues they face. This can result in abled people unintentionally perpetuating misunderstandings and misinformation when they attempt to advocate for the disabled community.
People with disabilities experience a whole side of the War on Drugs that abled people do not see, and that information is crucially important to crafting good drug policies.
This issue of The SSDP Mosaic will introduce you to the issues disabled people face in activist spaces and discuss some of the ways in which the War on Drugs deeply impacts disabled people’s day-to-day lives.