Activist?

I had the pleasure of speaking at a forum about disability issues on campus at Smith College last spring. The event was born out of some discontent I was feeling about the scarcity of disability related discourse on campus. It seemed that when disability was discussed it was always in an academic context, and often it was without regard for the difficulties that affected everyday life for disabled students. In any case, at this forum I was asked a particularly salient question that has stuck with me ever since. I wish I could remember what the exact wording was, but it was something to the effect of is it your intention to be an activist? How do you feel about constantly having to be the one to bring up these (disability related) issues? Isn't there ever a time when you just don't want to talk about it? The answer to that last part is yes. I realized something about sitting at this forum, surrounded by this proud disabled students with there references to disability history and justifiable indignation about the inaccessible dining hall or the busyness that sometimes mutated into apathy about important issues. I am not a hell raiser. I am all to happy to facilitate dialogue, but I am without the fire in my belly, nails for breakfast attitude that must compel people to go to protests, or pick up that phone. The thing to understand, though, is that it's not like I don't care. I care deeply. I am just fundamentally more reserved and more skeptical of extreme views than I feel like I should be sometimes. It is fundamentally difficult for me to conceive of disability as a civil rights issue, because I am much more likely to assume that the reason a given place is not accessible because perhaps the small business lacked the funds or the support structure to implement needed changes. I am not endorsing this point of view, I am merely saying that it is the one that I default to. I have never been particularly inclined to sue anyone. Before two weeks ago, I'd never heard of Ed Roberts.

There is another component to this, though. Maybe I am hesitant to advocate on my own behalf because I have rarely had to. Maybe I disagree with assertions that abled-bodied people don't care about disability related issues because so many such people have been so good to me. All of this often makes me feel like something of a bad disabled person. I still haven't quite decided if this post is intended to be self-depricating or self-congratulatory, but once again it's complicated.