Disability Pride Month is celebrated in July in the United States.
Why Disability Pride? Because having a disability is nothing to be ashamed of, and disabled people deserve civil rights and freedom from social stigma. Disability is a natural part of the human experience. The disability pride movement wants to present people with disabilities as people living their lives in plain view proud of their identity as being disabled.
Why July? To commemorate the passing of the Americans With Disabilities Act. On March 12, 1990, over 1,000 people marched from the White House to the U.S. Capitol to demand that Congress pass the Americans with Disabilities Act. Upon arrival, about 60 activists, including eight-year-old Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins, physically demonstrated the inaccessibility of public spaces by getting out of their wheelchairs or setting aside their mobility aids and crawling up the Capitol steps in an act of civil disobedience that later became known as the Capitol Crawl. 104 activists were arrested for unlawful demonstration, many of whom were in their wheelchairs. On July 26, 1990 President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law.
Recommended reading:
Disability pride : dispatches from a post-ADA world (in print)
The future is disabled : prophecies, love notes and mourning songs (in print) (audio on Hoopla) (ebook on Hoopla)
Demystifying disability : what to know, what to say, and how to be an ally (in print) (audio on OverDrive)
Disability visibility : first-person stories from the twenty-first century (in print) (audio on OverDrive) (ebook on OverDrive)
About us : essays from the disability series of the New York times (in print) (ebook on OverDrive)
Being Heumann : an unrepentant memoir of a disability rights activist (in print) (audio on OverDrive) (ebook on OverDrive)
