Delivered by Olivia Babis, Senior Public Policy Analyst, Disability Rights Florida
I have worked with many of you for three sessions now. To get to committee meetings and one-on-one meetings with you I have had to navigate around sidewalks destroyed by multi-year construction, over uneven and cracked sidewalks that cause damage to my $28,000 power chair, and up a ramp literally held together by duct tape. This session, however, I face an obstacle to participation that I cannot work around, a global pandemic I am particularly susceptible to and a Florida legislature that does not value my life enough to grant me the reasonable accommodation of providing virtual testimony, an accommodation we have seen extended to agency directors, FL Bar members, doctors, and numerous agency staff throughout the entirety of this session.
It is claimed that this bill is about valuing the lives of people with disabilities. Then I would pose the question, where is the rest of the bill? This bill is based on the premise that disability is static, it is not. It is also based on the misconception that disability is strictly defined by pathology; that is also incorrect. More often than not it is our environments that are far more disabling than our disabilities. When people with disabilities have the supports and resources we need many people with disabilities are more than capable of being fully functional members of society. Where is the part of the bill that fixes the patchwork of systems we spend literally years of our lives waiting on? Where is the part of the bill that addresses the Medicaid institutional bias? What is being done to ensure these kids and their families have the supports they need to thrive and opportunities when they grow up instead of joining the rest of us in the log jams that are the waitlists for services? This bill isn’t about disability. It uses disability to push forward an agenda having nothing to do with disability. If you want to show you care about the lives of disabled people, then begin by addressing these issues.
I urge you to vote down on the bill and instead show the disability community you value them by providing a ramp not held together by duct tape. That would be a good place to start.