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When you mentioned development disabilities and the way people have been treated, they
get the idea that people don't have the capacity, or they don't have, you know, they look at
it as, “They don't understand it.” They look at it as, “Well, they don't have the
mental capacity, or they don't have the capacity, people make decisions for them, you know?”
And we do, we make our decisions. You know, a lot of the times people won't say it to
you, but you get that, that feeling in their actions. They know where I'm coming from.
I know where they're coming from. We can relate. We don't have to, you know, you don't have
to make up something. You know, when someone says, you know, they don't like the workshop,
or they don't like their group home, you understand that. Or someone's telling them what to do,
or the situation and they want to be in the community, and they want to have their own
house, their own place, I can connect with that. 'Cause either we've been there, or it's
happened to us, or we might be going through the situation now. I mean a lot of the things
that people tell me, you know, it hasn't been stuff that I haven't, you know, experienced.
And for a lot of times, you have to be a part of that and have that happen to you, to really
understand it. In other disability groups and things, you see it up front. People will
tell you, “I don’t want to be involved with or bothered by those people. Who do they
think they are?” I mean, most of the time, when we find out that people are self advocates,
whether they belong or not, the first thing that we’re telling them about is what is
important: how they can stand up for themselves and what their rights are –before we look
at anything. Before someone tells us, we’re there to figure out how to help, what we need
to do. And I think that goes back to looking at a person as a person. I mean, if the world
could pattern themselves after self advocates, and governments like self advocacy, we wouldn’t
have wars, we wouldn’t have the stuff that we have. Because when someone is down on someone
else, or when we see people in our movement start this, we stop it. We are not afraid
to say, “Wait. Look at what you’re doing to people. You want fair, but are you fair?”
I don't think we have some young people that have pride in themselves in who they are,
and they go through some of the fights, and they fight for the stuff, like some of the
things that we have, but we have a lot more that's hiding, to be accepted by the community.
To be accepted by people out there, they're willing to give up who they are, their rights
and their heritage of people having a disability, to say that they don't have a disability to
try to fit in. I think that that's more dangerous to us than even we are, or a provider agency
or a family or the government or Medicaid. We can do more damage to ourselves, when we
deny who we are, and deny fighting for what we want. When we do that, it's almost like
giving up, and saying, "Yes, cuff our hands, tie our feet, drag us back, throw us in the
institutions, because we don't believe that the lives that we have, that the freedoms
that we've gained are worth fighting for."