There is still time for disabled voters to ask candidates about their most pressing disability concerns. But time is running out, and it can be hard to know just what to ask.
It’s getting closer to the thick of the Midterm Election season. Many disabled voters and activists’ first instinct at times like this is look to Congressional races, and focus attention on major threats, opportunities and issues facing people with disabilities nationwide. But it’s also important to challenge people running for state and local office. An article here in June suggested five disability issues especially relevant to state and local election candidates, including:
- pedestrian access and safety
- accessibility in local businesses
- home care and other community-based services
- ending sub-minimum wage
- voting accessibility
Of course, this isn’t all. Here are five more questions disabled voters might want to ask the state and local candidates who are looking for their votes:
1. How would you address the way police practices affect people with disabilities?
Precise official data is hard to find, and studies vary somewhat. But there is fairly broad agreement that “between one-third and one-half of total police killings” are people who have some kind of disability. The statistics are especially high for Black people with disabilities. Put another way, having a disability of some kind seems to make encounters with police riskier for disabled people than they are for non-disabled people. Put yet another way, contrary to what some people might naturally think, police do not seem to be extra careful, understanding, or gentle in their dealings with disabled people.
The most frequent offered solution is better training for police. Disability awareness training usually attempts to teach officers to recognize some behaviors as products of disabilities, rather than disobedience or threats. It also focuses on communication practices that take into account people who are deaf or hard of hearing, blind or visually impaired, autistic, intellectually disabled, or mentally ill. This all has a certain surface-level logic to it. Surely training like this can help prevent tragic misunderstandings. And maybe they do. But while disability awareness training for police is probably necessary, it’s not sufficient.
It’s easy for candidates to endorse “more training” for police. But disabled voters may want to press for something deeper that includes more fundamental changes in police use of coercion and force, and real challenges to the implicit biases of racism and ableism that put disabled people’s lives at risk in the first place.
This is even more important now, with the new 988 mental health emergency line coming into service. That’s because the first response to a reported mental health crisis is often dispatching of police. And unfortunately, that still can set the wrong tone and escalate danger rather than prevent it. Candidates should at the very least have an understanding of this issue that goes beyond simplistic assumptions about police and disabled people, and beyond simplistic solutions.
2. Will you commit to making local government buildings and facilities fully accessible?
This isn’t a new issue, but it’s still relevant in thousands of cities, towns, and villages all over the U.S. Accessibility in at least some government buildings has been required since well before the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed in 1990. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act was prompting government building access improvements as early as the late 1970s. And the Architectural Barriers Act first laid out mandated accessibility standards for federal buildings in 1968.
Despite impressive progress over the decades, many if not most municipalities still have barriers to remove in city halls, town offices, civic centers, schools, libraries, and parks and recreation facilities. And while funding for these improvements may come from a variety of sources, they are almost always the direct responsibility of local elected officials.
Accessibility improvements need to be a higher priority, which includes committing funds to them. It also requires vigilance, to make sure everyday maintenance and infrastructure work includes accessibility as an essential goal, not an afterthought. On the plus side for politicians, accessibility of local public facilities is one of the few tangible improvements for disabled people that local officials have the power to really deliver on. It’s the kind of promise they can actually keep.
3. What is your vision for public education of students with disabilities?
Both the ADA and older educational equity laws like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act mandate a “free and appropriate public education” in “the most integrated setting.”
School board candidates especially must be asked about their perspective on education of students with disabilities. Do they tend to support inclusion, or defend continuation of separate programs, classrooms, and facilities for disabled students? Do they support funding of truly effective accommodations? Or, do they frequently question the value and necessity of helping individual disabled students — maybe while at the same time approving generous funds for football teams and athletic facilities?
Unfortunately, it can be fairly easy for candidates to hide or disguise more regressive or skeptical attitudes about the value of investing in disabled students, or the “appropriateness” of truly integrating them into school communities. That’s why it may actually help to ask less specific questions about candidates’ general philosophy of education and disability. Ask, “Will you support disabled students?” and nearly every candidate will answer “Yes,” Asking candidates to explain their overall philosophy of educating disabled students can produce far more interesting and informative answers.
4. How would you include accessibility in major local development projects?
Town, city, county, and regional governments do a lot of everyday maintenance and service work. But they also usually engage in more long-term “economic development” planning. These grand plans do more than renovate one street or building. They aim to transform entire communities. That makes them a unique opportunity to include disabled disabled voters and better accessibility in every facet of a community’s future ambitions.
Accessibility and disability justice needs to be core aspects of economic development plans from the beginning. And it needs to be about far more than mere compliance with disability rights laws. Economic development and infrastructure plans should strive to make communities truly usable, friendly, and fair to people with all types of disabilities. That means maximum access, freedom of movement, equal benefit, and affordability. It includes buildings, streets and sidewalks, transit services and facilities, and proximity to both essential services and to an area’s unique historical, leasure, and cultural institutions.
None of this is “special attention” to a tiny minority. This becomes obvious when considering both “the disabled” and the aging population, which experiences high rates of disability and a greater need for well-thought-out accessibility. Candidates who run on grand visions for the future should be asked, and asked again, how exactly they would ensure that the future of their communities is accessible.
5. What measures would you support to protect high risk people from Covid-19?
While state and local governments have done much to help get their citizens through the Covid-19 pandemic — and gotten a lot of flack for their efforts too — they were also often the sectors of government most anxious and quick to drop safety measures. By and large, people with disabilities and chronic illnesses are at higher risk from Covid, and remain so even today. Each individual faces their own unique risk, and has their own take on what it means and what their governments should do about it. But disabled voters may still want to know whether local officials are aware of their ongoing higher risk, and what they would be willing to do to alleviate it.
What will aspiring city council members or county legislators do if Covid settles into a recurring but relatively minor problem, like seasonal flu? And what would they be willing to do if, (and probably when), there are more dangerous Covid variants and surges.
High risk disabled and chronically ill voters should not hesitate or feel too isolated to ask candidates if and when they would support mandates or voluntary recommendations — such as for masks or vaccines — to make communities safer for high risk residents, especially during surges. And candidates who prioritize petty freedoms or economic activity over certain citizens’ health should be required to explain themselves further, beyond the usual politically appealing slogans we have all come to recognize around Covid.
Finally, candidates for local office should not just be able to answer disability policy questions. They should also develop their own specific disability policy positions and proposals, relevant to the offices they seek. Above all, candidates should be able to answer the core question on disabled voters’ minds: “Why should disabled voters vote for you?”
5 More Disability Issue Questions State And Local Midterm Election Candidates Should Answer - Forbes
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