Our Very Existence Could Be at Stake Come November | Democracy and Disability

By John Robinson

As another Disability Pride month comes to a close, I must admit that I’m more discouraged than encouraged about the future of individuals with disabilities and our role in American society.

Election Day is about 90 days away, and very few people are talking about disability inclusion. While some Republican members in Congress have referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as a ‘DEI hire,’ there’s been little discussion about diversity, equity or inclusion with regards to individuals with disabilities, except when they want to loop us into the conversation about mental health.

And then there’s Project 2025, an extreme conservative blueprint for what a second Donald Trump administration may look like. Project 2025 is real, and it’s an extreme threat to individuals with disabilities, too. The very tenants of Project 2025 are eliminating the public workforce, limiting government and cutting Medicaid, all of which have serious life and death consequences for people with disabilities. On top of all the other problems we’re facing, we also don’t have enough direct care employees available to support individuals with disabilities’ daily needs.

If that doesn’t frighten you, then consider Trump’s nephew’s recent claim that the former president suggested to him, while still in the Oval Office, that individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities like his son’s “should just die.” In an excerpt from his book, All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got to Be This Way, Fred Trump III, son of Donald Trump’s late brother Fred Trump Jr., said the former president told him, “the shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.”

Am I suggesting that the prospect of a second Trump presidency is a life-or-death matter for individuals with disabilities? Perhaps, but no one can argue that it isn’t a major step backwards. For the American people and, most especially, individuals with disabilities, 2024 may be the most consequential presidential election in American history.

Another four-plus years of Donald Trump (he’s already hinted he won’t leave office after a second term) will bring more corporate profits at the expense of those people most in need. It will mark the end of democracy and the return of authoritarian rule. Trump has already told us he was going to become a dictator for one day, but it won’t stop on day one. Republicans will do away with Medicaid and affordable health care and prescription prices. Health services and social programs for individuals with disabilities will be further cut back or eliminated. We will become a burden on the government that is deemed expendable.

If there are no people to help individuals with disabilities, there are no social or educational programs for individuals with disabilities. How long is it before there are few, if any, employment opportunities for people with disabilities? At that point, is it a stretch to say we’ll be mass institutionalized?

History has a habit of repeating itself. All of this happened before in the nationalist uprising in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. An extremely progressive Germany for individuals with disabilities turned into the sterilization of more than 300,000 people and the eventual hospitalization and extermination of at least 250,000 individuals with disabilities. A lot can happen when our individual freedoms are repressed, and all power is stripped from the people and left in the hands of an increasingly white nationalistic society.

Don’t think it can happen to us? Think again. We have a white nationalistic, cult-like movement on the rise here in the U.S., and at the head is someone who has openly mocked people with disabilities in the past. A more marginal candidate for president, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., may have even more radical ideas. And the two are talking with each other. Not long after Trump’s nephew made his claims about the former president, it was reported that RFK Jr. discussed his vision for sending recovering addicts and individuals with certain mental illnesses to wellness camps for treatment. Trump has taken notice, and is leaving the door open for a possible roll in a second administration.

If this is a three-way election, with Kennedy staying in the race, then the nationalist uprising can be held back to some degree. But if reports are true that Kennedy is talking about supporting Trump, then people with disabilities will literally get hurt.

Our biggest defense against Trump and near extinction in our society is a massive liberal voter turnout in November. We still have the right to vote, and we must! Never have the stakes for individuals with disabilities been higher. Otherwise, I’m afraid there are very dark days ahead for our community.

If we want inclusion as individuals with disabilities, and we want to celebrate our disability pride, we need to be vocal. Right now. ‘Nothing about us without us’ is a wonderful slogan, but now we need action. If we have no power, no voice, no freedom and no life, then we won’t exist. Look at what happened in Europe less than 100 years ago, and you see one possible future for us unless we speak up.

John Robinson is the founder and CEO of Our Ability Inc., the nation’s foremost AI-driven employment platform for individuals with disabilities.