The plaintiffs’ lawsuit is a direct continuation of Texas v. Beccera, a lawsuit by sixteen
U.S. states which failed to argue that Section 504 was unconstitutional. The current
lawsuit targets only HHS’ 2024 Final Rule, but plaintiffs’ commitment to disability-based
segregation is the same. In their new lawsuit plaintiffs argue that the Final Rule’s
requirement that federally funded providers offer services in “the most integrated setting
appropriate” is unconstitutional. Plaintiffs also argue that the rule’s prohibition of actions
that put people with disabilities at “serious risk” of institutionalization is unconstitutional.

Both arguments flagrantly contradict the letter and spirit of the Supreme Court’s
decision in Olmstead v. L.C. ex. rel. Zimring (1999), which mandates offering services in
the community whenever doing so is possible, despite their arguments to the contrary.
The lawsuit repeatedly mentions the “expense” of providing community-based services.
In short: the arguments attempt to defy decades of public debate on disability,
significant changes to federal law and policy and serious efforts to reform the service
system and Medicaid as a primary payer in favor of a bald-faced attempt to save money
at people with disabilities’ expense.

NDY has always focused on assisted suicide and euthanasia laws’ implications for the
broader healthcare delivery system. We believe that these laws are healthcare
discrimination and that they represent a significant threat to health equity. NDY
therefore, cannot and will not accept actions by states that treat paying for their disabled
citizens’ care in the community as a burden. Medicaid began to fully transition away
from an institutional model more than a decade ago. It is past time for the plaintiffs to ensure people with disabilities have the right to full, independent, self-determined lives with access to services.

For more information on Not Dead Yet and our policy positions, please reach out to
Kelly Israel, Not Dead Yet’s Interim Deputy Director, at kisrael@notdeadyet.org.

Please also see DREDF’s blog piece for an in-depth look into the situation as it unfolds: Texas and Eight Other States Renew Attack on Section 504 and the Right of Disabled People to Live in their Communities

In Solidarity,

Kelly Israel

Interim Deputy Director

Not Dead Yet

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Not Dead Yet, we express profound sadness at the news that legendary ADAPT organizer, first ally of Not Dead Yet, and pivotal disability rights advocate, Bob Kafka has passed away at his Austin, Texas home on December 26, 2025.

First, our deepest heartfelt condolences to Stephanie Thomas, Bob’s partner. During this difficult time, we will not forget their important work, instrumental in shaping attitudes and policy in Texas and across the nation, that true inclusion of people with disabilities benefits all of society.

In the coming days, we will provide a longer entry, but for now, please find below from Bob Kafka’s long running podcast, Barrier Free Futures, part of an interview between Not Dead Yet’s late Foundress and President, Diane Coleman, and Bob Kafka. It was Bob who came up with our organization’s name, “Not Dead Yet,” as detailed below:

Bob Kafka:

…But when did you start Not Dead Yet? And it really – that name is sort of grabbing. How did that begin and what is the mission of Not Dead Yet?

Diane Coleman:

Well, I started it on April 27, 1996, so, that’s almost 24 years ago now. And, it was actually, a number of people had been talking to me about starting a group like that. But it was actually, Bob, when I came up to you at a disability policy conference and you said, “Well, I got an idea for a name for your group.” You’d been hearing about it and it was out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “Not Dead Yet.” That kind of made it happen. I actually made a little sign with the words “Not Dead Yet” and I went around and got people to sign on to some testimony. It was my first time testifying in Congress. There were all kinds of people there that signed on that are very well known. Disability advocates like Justin Dart, Judy Heumann, and so forth. But it was actually you giving me the name that got it going.

Bob Kafka:

It’s funny because if people haven’t seen The Life of Brian, it’s actually in a very bizarre way, very relevant in that, in that movie it’s during the plague and it’s throwing bodies on this cart and there’s a guy who is driving the cart and the bodies are supposed to be people who have died but they keep popping up and he hits them with a hammer, and they keep popping up and say, “Not dead yet”…”

*  *  *  *  *  *

In September, Bob had asked me to appear on Barrier Free Futures, but owing to a scheduling conflict where I had been previously scheduled to return to Canada, I was unable to be interviewed by the great man. We had purposed to circle back and reschedule a time to talk when it was mutually convenient. I had hoped for early in the new year.

Another reminder, that in everything we do and say – and think – in this common fight, that everything we can do now…we should.

From the Andrew Weber article linked above, for KUT Radio, NPR’s Austin Station:

“For Armbruster, he can’t help but hear Kafka’s other mantra, one that served as his email signature: “Don’t mourn, organize.”

“It’s kind of ironic in this situation with him passing, but I’m sure that’s what he would want us to do,” Armbruster said, “to lead on and to move on and to continue the fight.”

Onward,

Ian McIntosh

Executive Director

Not Dead Yet.

Eileen Mihich deserved better.

Aging With Dignity has put out a powerful, short film that further dispels the disingenuous claims by ableist proponents of assisted suicide laws that there has never been a single instance in which safeguards have failed. To the assisted suicide proponent question: Where is the evidence of abuse, coercion and error? The Tragedy of Eileen Mihich is an emphatic: Here it is!

For many outside of the disability community, the concept of disability bias and medical futility is difficult to grasp, in the rare instances it’s known of at all. Medical futility and assisted suicide are stems from the same disability bias branch which sees disabled lives as lives not worth living. Assisted suicide legislation, where the state enacts so-called healthcare policy that calls and provides death a cure, is merely the monstrous culmination of disability bias, albeit discharged by a delivery system on a much larger scale, but from the same eugenical engine. Whether it’s denial, delay or direction toward assisted suicide as an equivocal option to a legitimate cure, the tragedy of Eileen Mihich is not unlike that of Michael Hickson where the perception of life with a disability is devalued as a life worth less, a worthless life and better off dead.

Eileen was devalued by her family first, and then the system. Eileen needed protection from her family owing to abuse and neglect and trauma from a young age. Into adulthood, Eileen suffered from severe mental illness and still needed protection, delivered in the most caring, compassionate manner possible.

Instead, Eileen was abandoned by our broken healthcare system, and once she set her foot into the proverbial doorway of the assisted suicide enterprise, she was pulled in, and the very safeguards that proponents assured would save Eileen, disappeared. According to Eileen’s Aunt Veronica, so did assisted suicide proponents when tasked to stand by their assurances. She noted that for Eileen: “It wasn’t that hard for her to exploit [the so-called safeguards] and that’s really dangerous.”

During the film, there is a clear pattern provided by Eileen’s Aunt, in which time after time, whether it was the death doula, the pharmacist or those in professional assisted suicide advocacy organizations, Eileen, an obviously conflicted young woman with severe mental illness, is repeatedly abandoned. She is never seen as a life worth saving, but rather, an opportunity to validate the idea that suicide is rational if you happen to have a disability.

Eileen was sad. But even in her darkest moments, Eileen texted: “I don’t actually want to die.”

Eileen’s Aunt ultimately concluded: “I place more guilt on the Death With Dignity people.”

She added that this organization (who campaigned on promises of assured safeguards), didn’t respond in a way that could be seen as human, didn’t want to take accountability, weren’t shocked and didn’t appear to hold the view that Eileen’s death and the circumstances surrounding it, were unacceptable.

A conclusion that’s hard to argue against when the history of assisted suicide legislation demonstrates that once an incipient bill is passed, so-called safeguards turn into barriers that must be removed in order to provide “meaningful access”.

She added, “The road to hell is paved with the best intentions” at the end of an observation in which she believes that Washington’s Death With Dignity Act was conceived and launched with the best of intentions, and yet despite those intentions, failed Eileen.

What Not Dead Yet, and the other disability rights organizations who have been fighting assisted suicide legislation for decades have been repeating, is that the instance a bill is passed, the bait and switch follows. And at every opportunity, we have countered proponent narratives that there has never been a single instance of abuse, coercion or error. In order for their claims to fail, abuse, coercion or error only has to happen once. And of course, as we know, it has happened multiple times, here in America and in other international jurisdictions.

At the writing of this blog, New York Governor Kathy Hochul has joined fellow Democrat Governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker in allowing assisted suicide to endanger their states’ most vulnerable people. Both mentioned signing bills on the condition of safeguards. As an example, in New York, a few key protections listed that will go into the bill are: Limiting access to New York residents and mandatory mental health evaluations by a psychologist or psychiatrist.

But Eileen Mihich died under Washington’s Death With Dignity Act despite not being a resident of Washington state and despite not having received a mandatory mental health evaluation by a psychologist or psychiatrist (amongst other compromised safeguards) and yet still gained access to lethal drugs which she clearly conveyed she intended to use to kill herself.

The Tragedy of Eileen Mihich is a must-see and reaffirms the fact that assisted suicide laws are not designed to maintain initially advertised safeguards, which have never worked, and will never work.

It is a mistake to believe that the intentions of professional assisted suicide advocacy organizations aren’t to create laws that don’t resemble those run amok in other “jurisdictions” like Canada and the Netherlands, where assisted suicide is either poised to be offered where mental illness is the sole criterion, or is in full systematic flight.

And as such, it is a horrifying but necessary realization to understand, that in this space, for some, Eileen’s death was acceptable, and worse: it was deemed right and rational because she was disabled.

Ian McIntosh

Executive Director

Not Dead Yet

Our lawsuit argues that implementation of Delaware’s assisted suicide law violates the
Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
Delaware health agencies do so by applying EOLOA and steering patients with certain
kinds of disabilities (namely, terminal illnesses) away from suicide prevention services
and towards assisted suicide. For example, health agencies fail to apply stringent
standards for suicide prevention in Delaware to patients with terminal illnesses and
instead – by offering them EOLOA – direct these patients to end their own lives. The
Americans with Disabilities Act and Rehabilitation Act are clear that this impermissibly
treats individuals differently solely on the basis of disability.

As the lawsuit explains, Delaware’s assisted suicide system effectively creates a “two-
track system” of care – one track for people with life-threatening disabilities and one
track for people without these disabilities. This two-track system is further entrenched by
a failure to pay for appropriate long-term care and palliative care services for all citizens
of Delaware. People who have been newly diagnosed with a life-threatening or
significant illness often struggle to make sense of their lives post-diagnosis, at least at
first. They also struggle to pay for the supports and services that will help them live
good lives. Insurance may in fact cover assisted suicide but not support services. In this
context, patients do not have a true “free choice” between living on and assisted
suicide.

We urge Delaware direct its resources to improve the lives of people with disabilities
instead of ending them. Delaware could, instead of advancing early death, advance
comprehensive palliative care coordination and improved access to payment programs
such as Medicare and Medicaid. Without these assurances and an end to assisted
suicide, we have no choice but to fight back in court. We unite today to fight for disabled
lives and disabled futures.

In Solidarity,

Kelly Israel

Interim Deputy Director

Not Dead Yet

Against this harrowing backdrop, some great news: Our co-plaintiff’s sister organization, the Patients Rights Action Fund (PRAF), provided the following encouraging update:

“A federal appeals court has delivered a damaging blow to the Compassion and Choices lawsuit seeking to eliminate New Jersey’s requirement that only residents have ability to request lethal drugs under its assisted suicide law. The denial of this request upholds the decision by a district court judge earlier this year to maintain New Jersey’s residency requirement.

“New Jersey has sound reasons to limit this grave choice to its own residents,” Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote for the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. “Protecting vulnerable patients and their doctors (not to mention avoiding friction with other states) justifies the residency requirement under any applicable test.”

Compassion and Choices has filed suit in Oregon, Vermont, Colorado and New Jersey to eliminate residency requirements. The Vermont and Oregon suits were made moot when their legislatures passed legislation to eliminate the requirements. The Colorado suit is in limbo as the main plaintiff is now deceased. Thus, the New Jersey decision is the clearest indication of judicial opinion on residency requirements, and this is a massive victory for medical professionals, disability advocates, and all vulnerable patients. 

Executive Director of PRAF, Matt Vallière, said “Big win today for vulnerable people in states where they are protected from the dangers and discrimination inherent to assisted suicide laws. The court, in ruling to maintain the New Jersey assisted suicide residency requirement, protects millions who live out of state from deadly harm.”

Absolutely.

In Solidarity,

Ian McIntosh

Executive Director

Not Dead Yet

This year’s focus on disability inclusivity as the predicate for social development (including economics, employment, social service systems, etc.) feels practically defiant in view of (and certainly at odds with) several international developments this year regarding legalization and expansion of assisted suicide and euthanasia which, rather than promoting inclusivity, sanction elimination of disabled people from society.

Among them, and hot off the federal government presses, Health Canada just five days ago released the Sixth Annual Report on Medical Aid in Dying in Canada. In it, continued and increasing disturbing trends for nonterminal disabled Canadians showcase anything but a disability inclusive society that is advancing social progress.

The following are among the most harrowing storytelling statistics about the “Track 2” cohort — those who qualify for state-sanctioned assisted suicide or euthanasia whose death is not reasonably foreseeable, but who have a “serious and incurable illness, disease, or disability that causes intolerable suffering”:

– In 2024, 732 Canadians were given state-sanctioned assisted suicide and euthanasia under Track 2, a 17% increase since last year; a 56% increase to 2022’s figures; a 227% increase to 2021’s figures; and a nearly a net 4,000% increase since Track 2 deaths were reported in 2020 as 18 deaths. This is fast upward trendline.

– Of those Canadians receiving state-sanctioned assisted suicide or euthanasia in 2024, the percentage of those whose need and receipt of disability support services is “unknown” is uncomfortably high across provinces, with one province noting 42% of its recipients under this category. Though likely underreported, 151 people who received assisted deaths are noted as requiring but never receiving disability support services.

–  65 Canadians with nonterminal diseases or disabilities under the age of 55 were among the Track 2 assisted suicide / euthanasia deaths last year.

– 43% of Canadians with nonterminal diseases or disabilities who died under Track 2 in 2024 had had their diagnosis less than five years.

– 78.7% of Track 2 recipients of assisted suicide and euthanasia in Canada reported their nature of suffering which helped qualify them was a loss of independence.

– 85.1% of them reported their nature of suffering included an inability to perform activities of daily living.

– Half of those (50.3%) who died by assisted suicide or euthanasia under Track 2 perceived they were a burden on their family, friends, and caregivers.

– 44.7% said that their nature of suffering included isolation or loneliness.

The aforementioned statistics paint the bleak picture of our neighbor to the north, my country of origin, as running counterpoint to a disability inclusive society given that it has become chillingly normative for the government to report, as completely acceptable, that hundreds and hundreds of Canadians with nonterminal disabilities, who are stating that their lack of ability to perform activities of daily living is motivating their decision to kill themselves, scores of whom may need and not be receiving disability support services from the government, are being assisted in their suicide or actively euthanized each year. And this says nothing of the over 15,000 Track 1 deaths in Canada last year, the combination of which represented nearly 5% of all deaths in Canada last year.

Earlier this year, the UN cried foul on this tragic indifference of the Canadian government when the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities specifically called on Canadian government to repeal its Track 2 program, citing that the program is based on “negative, ableist perceptions of the quality and value of the life of persons with disabilities, including that ‘suffering’ is intrinsic to disability rather than the fact that inequality and discrimination cause and compound ‘suffering’ for persons with disabilities.” The Committee went on to note that the state party was enabling their deaths but not guaranteeing supports for their lives.

Taking it States side as we reflect here on how we in America can work toward a more disability-inclusive society — in contrast to the Canadian march to the opposite —  surely we can agree that we should both support more investments into robust disability support services and reject any state’s effort to rationalize state-sanctioned assisted death of disabled lives.

For the remainder of this year, during the holiday season no less and as a challenging 2026 looms, our attention must turn to New York and Illinois, toward Governor Kathy Hochul and Governor J.B. Pritzker and the eugenical assisted suicide bills that await our best efforts to stop them before they are allowed to endanger those states’ most vulnerable populations.

Part 2 to follow: Disability Rights Organizations Letter Urges Governor Hochul to Veto Assisted Suicide Bill.

In Solidarity,

Ian McIntosh

Executive Director

Not Dead Yet.

Our incomparable disability rights champion, beloved colleague and friend.

It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of NDY’s singularly dear colleague and incomparable disability rights champion, John Bryan Kelly, who passed away peacefully in Boston, this past Friday, November 14, 2025, at the age of 67.  In spite of battling an unrelenting infection in hospital since the latter part of September, John’s legendary spirit remained on display throughout, communicating in winks and smiles until his peaceful passing.

As Communications Director and previously as Regional Director for Not Dead Yet, as Executive Director for Second Thoughts Massachusetts, and as the Chair of Boston Disability Advisory Commission, John’s expert knowledge and unwavering  dedication to his work for disability rights motivated all who worked with or alongside him to do the same, and to keep going when the going got tough, which it often has.

With the Kelly family’s permission, a brief excerpt from the forthcoming obituary sheds more light on John’s life and legacy:

“In January of 1984 John had a sledding accident that left him a high quadriplegic for the rest of his life. In the coming years John became involved in disability rights issues in the Boston area where he lived…In 2012 the city of Boston and Mayor Thomas Menino declared July 26, 2012, John B. Kelly Day in the city of Boston, recognizing John for his ongoing efforts on behalf of the disabled community.”

Please see the following links for a glimpse into John’s brilliant witness:

John Kelly Doctor Prescribed Suicide

Disability Connection – July 2017

John Kelly discusses film “Me Before You” on Neighborhood Network News

Additional announcements will be made in conjunction with the Kelly family’s wishes about contributions to John’s legacy and we will share details about the upcoming memorial service to be held in January 2026 to celebrate the life – the incomparable life – of John Kelly, as we receive further information from the family.

John, you are irreplaceable and we will miss you more than words could ever say. In your honour, as in Diane’s before you, we will continue to lead on and will never, ever, give up this fight.

Our deepest condolences to the Kelly family, to John’s dear friends and cherished colleagues.

Sincerely,

Ian McIntosh

Executive Director

Not Dead Yet

In May, the Illinois House appears to have rewritten the entirety of an unrelated bill into an assisted suicide bill without ceremony. However, At 2:00 AM today, Halloween, the Illinois State Senate took up a so-called “food prep sanitation bill” that was really just a “costumed” assisted suicide bill that had stalled on its own steam earlier this year before being hidden as a House Amendment in a bill moving in the House, again avoiding discussion or debate on such a controversial, deadly bill.

So as 2026 portends cuts to SNAP and Medicaid; and the recent “reveal” of a “streamlined” HHS that many disabled fear will spell cuts to vital disability supports, services, and research, Illinois legislators were convinced it would be in the best interests of vulnerable Illinoisans to sneak an assisted suicide bill through for a vote on a food prep sanitation bill, not during the daylight hours, but in the dead of night.

If it wasn’t clear before, it should be clear by now: Proponents don’t want these bills to see the open, democratic light of day. Again, and over again, since 1997, over 400 assisted suicide bills (and expansion bills) have either been defeated or withdrawn, because the evidence is overwhelming that assisted suicide bills are dangerous and discriminatory. They are opposed by every national disability rights organization with a position on assisted suicide – and not one supports it.

This morning at 5:35AM, Barbara Lyons, Special Projects Coordinator of the Patients Rights Action Fund (PRAF), alerted that SB 1950, an amendment to the Sanitary Food Preparation Act, in the 104^th General Assembly passed by one vote (with two not voting).

A brief rundown of The Sanitary Food Preparation Act amendments – in order – included:

1. Senate Floor Amendment 1: Specifying additional requirements that must be complied with by meal kit and ready-to-eat meal distribution facilities.
2. Senate Floor Amendment 2: Provisions for local health departments to assess fees for inspections it conducts at meal kit and ready-to-eat meal distribution facilities…with certain requirements.
3. HOUSE FLOOR AMENDMENT 1: Adds reference to: NEW ACT:

Replaces everything after the enacting clause. Creates the End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act. Provides that the Act may be referred to as Deb’s Law.

Clearly – if this is how they advocate for bills to be passed – what proponents mean by autonomy and what we mean by autonomy are diametrically opposed. That is, for autonomy to be authentic, all information associated with a choice must be transparent, reliable, and obvious. We go a step further. We believe that matters of healthcare policy should be transparent and verifiable in process and accessible to all without the need for disguise or surprise hearings.

Those are not the markers of good faith healthcare policymaking that sufficiently inform the public. Those are the markers of a bill that needs to hide to creep into passage precisely because overwhelmingly compelling arguments supported by transparent and verifiable evidence, in the light of day and under necessary scrutiny, rightly reject it over and over and over again.

We thank the diligent work of advocates in Illinois’ strong and industrious coalition. Particularly, Access Living, Illinois’ constant disability rights champion, fighting for access to the gold standard of healthcare in inclusive, robust communities for all.

We urge everyone in Illinois to contact Governor JB Pritzker to tell him to veto SB 1950, this dangerous bill which will put vulnerable Illinoisians at grave risk.  We urge non-residents of the state to contact their Illinois partners, affiliates, and friends and to urge them to contact Governor Pritzker.

Governor Pritzker’s office contact information below:

Constituent Affairs Help Line:  217-782-0244

For hearing impaired (TTY): 888-261-3336

Springfield: Office of the Governor
401 S. Spring St.
Springfield, IL 62704

Phone: 217-782-6830 or 217-782-6831

Chicago: Office of the Governor
555 W. Monroe St., 16th Floor
Chicago, IL 60661

Phone: 312-814-2121 or 312-814-2122

In solidarity,

Ian McIntosh

Executive Director

Not Dead Yet

By Matt Vallière | Guest Commentary

PUBLISHED: October 2, 2025 at 5:01 AM MDT

The big selling point of assisted suicide laws is that they are supposedly compassionate and a progressive step toward enlightened autonomy. But assisted suicide is anything but compassionate for vulnerable people, like the tragic story of my friend with anorexia, Jane Allen, which shows how assisted suicide laws threaten the lives of the young and curable.

There is a controversial diagnosis circulating called “terminal anorexia,” which is an arrow to the heart of young people with eating disorders who are already experiencing distorted ideas of their worthiness to live. Now, where assisted suicide is legal, they have the state and part of the medical profession telling them they were better off dead.

After struggling with anorexia for most of her life, in 2018, Jane was living in Colorado Springs and getting help for her mental health disabilities, including her eating disorder. She ended up in the care of an exclusive boutique eating disorder practice. She was in and out of hospitals and residential treatment. Jane’s condition resisted treatment, and she ended up receiving a “terminal anorexia” diagnosis.

Jane wrote that her eating disorder doctor, “would ‘make an exception’ for me and ‘allow’ me to die, if that was my choice. It didn’t feel like my choice – I felt coerced and spent an incredibly agonizing months in an assisted living facility.” Jane did not get the lethal prescription directly from her eating disorder doctor; instead, she was referred to another doctor who promptly checked the boxes required under Colorado’s “safeguards,” and saw to it that Jane got the lethal drugs.

Jane’s life was saved at the last minute when her father received a guardianship order from a Colorado judge and was able to have the lethal drugs destroyed. After that, Jane said, “I ate just enough to not die right away. And then I ate more. I weaned off the morphine and all the other hospice drugs that kept me in such a fog. I was getting better, and then I was told that I was too much of a liability and dropped from the [boutique] clinic.”

“I moved from Colorado to Oregon. I have a job that I love, a new puppy, and a great group of friends. I’m able to fuel my body to hike and do the things I love. I’m repairing my relationship with my family, and I have a great therapist who is helping me process all of this. Things obviously aren’t perfect, and I still have hard days. But I also have balance, and flexibility, and a life that is so much more than I was told would ever be possible for me.”

A week before she planned to go public with her story, however, she died suddenly of complications to her health caused by over two decades of starving herself. To this day, I wonder whether the months of treatment lost during Jane’s detour into “terminal anorexia” care worsened her condition, whether she could still be with us today, doing all the good. We’ll never know…

What we do know is that these laws are not so rosy as the propaganda would have you believe. They are as messy as life itself and there has been and will be more collateral damage in people like Jane or Coloradan, Mary Gossman, who was told by a nationally renowned Denver eating disorder treatment facility, “there’s nothing we can do for you,” which qualified her for lethal drugs under the law. She’s in a better place now and has joined as a plaintiff in a lawsuit to overturn the law. So, I ask: how many collateral deaths are acceptable to you? For whatever purported good they do, these laws just aren’t safe.

Matt Vallière is the executive director of the Patient Rights Action Fund and the Institute for Patient Rights both of which advocate against physician assisted suicide policies.

On September 17, 2025, I was pleased to attend on behalf of Not Dad Yet the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law’s 2025 Annual Awards Reception at the National Press Club. The event was larger than normal. I was surrounded by countless people,  disability rights movement members both well-known and obscure. We had come to celebrate our past and usher in the next chapter of our history.

A recording of the awards ceremony is available at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV9yDclCuK0

The event honored first Congressman Steny Hoyer, one of the pioneers who worked to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act – our very own bill of rights in the United States. Hoyer spoke on the circumstances of the ADA’s passage and his debt of gratitude to his mentor. He also spoke of his gratitude towards the thousands of disabled Americans who advocated tirelessly for the bill in the late 1980s and early 90s.

As we watched a video before Congressman Hoyer took the stage, I marveled at the perseverance these early advocates must have had. They were willing to put their lives and dignity on the line to obtain their future. As Interim Deputy Director and an autistic woman who has never consciously known a world before the ADA, I am only too aware of the debt that I owe them. To honor their legacy, we must fully fund the long term services and supports that keep people with disabilities alive and strenuously fight (as they did) the forces that would treat our lives as worthless.

The event’s other awardees were strong as well. Senator Blunt Rochester spoke of the urgent need to come together. Keris Jän Myrick, a skilled mental health advocate and professional known for her person-centered and transformative work, spoke passionately about the divide between policy, rhetoric, and lived experience – and the need to connect them. Steve Rosenbaum, receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award, spoke in depth about the long history of the DOJ as a positive force for social change and its recent downsizing. He urged civil rights attorneys to continue the DOJ’s past work.

Although the event was hosted by Bazelon, which focuses on mental health, the awardees’ bold statements could apply to my own cause as well. The people who came before us (the late Diane Coleman included) established a strong, principled, disability rights-specific position on assisted suicide and euthanasia laws. She fought successfully to prevent the passage of a legally absurd, oversight-obliterating, dehumanizing regime in almost every state. Even when setbacks arise, the work of the people who come after founders and trailblazers is to carry the torch that they lit forward, and allow it to bring more of the world into the light.

Kelly Israel

Interim Deputy Director, Not Dead Yet