Natalie: Our Future Now is produced by Goal17 Media, Storytellers for the Common Good.
Sophie:… that’s like one of those smaller things that you aren’t really gonna consider compared to things like accessibility at the actual polling places, something especially interesting this year is that many people are probably going to have disabling experiences due to COVID-19 and…that’s why voting by mail is such a huge issue right now.
Natalie: Hi, I’m Natalie Mebane.
Jonah: And I’m Jonah Gottlieb. We’re co-founders of the National Children’s Campaign. Welcome to this episode of Our Future Now.
Natalie: Jonah, today, we’re going to discuss disability justice. And I have to be honest, you know, for real with you, I pride myself on knowing policy. I pride myself on knowing how our government works, but I have to be real in that this is actually an issue area and a topic that I do not know much about to be real about why it’s part of being privileged.
When something does not directly affect your life, it is easy to ignore it and is easy to just go about your day and not even think about how it affects other people.
Jonah: Absolutely. And I think that it’s really so important for us to be talking about disability justice today because it’s just not discussed and not made a priority by anyone, whether that’s elected officials or even most progressive activists.
And it’s really something that needs to change because it’s such an, or an issue that impacts so many people in the US and around the world. And so I’m so excited today that we have a guest who can really break down this issue and help us mobilize our listeners to take action.
Natalie: And that guests that we are so excited to have is Sophie Levitt. Sophie Levitt is the outreach director for Access The Polls. It is a youth-led organization fighting to make voting accessible for every eligible American. And Sophie, we want to welcome you and thank you so much for joining us.
Sophie: I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Natalie: We are very happy to have you here today. I know you are the outreach director for Access The Polls. Tell us a bit about what access the polls does and why you started working on these issues.
Sophie: So Access The Polls at our core is trying to increase civic engagement among the disabled people of America. And I originally got involved in disabled advocacy because of my own background, easy.
I was born with a stroke and at age three, the doctors told my parents that I would likely never be able to talk or walk yet. Here I am today, quite loud, speaking on this podcast. However, there are so many people, but didn’t get to have that same opportunity as me. I was privileged in the way that I was able to get the support that I needed. And I was eventually able to find my voice, but not all people are same. And I want to help provide voices to those people who do not have them. And that’s why I am so dedicated to disabled advocacy.
Jonah: I really think it’s admirable how you’ve been able to. As he said, provide [00:03:30] a voice and amplify the voices of those who aren’t always able to have the same opportunities that you do.
And so just really quick for our audience. I’m wondering if you could just give a baseline definition, what is a disability?
Sophie: Of course. So I generally define disability as things like chronic illnesses, pain, neurodivergence cognitive conditions, chronic mental health issues. Jackness, you know, learning disabilities, physical disabilities. And so it’s due to the search social model, which I happened to abide by, um, in which I believe that these impairments that I’m speaking of are kind of, um, due to the structure of society. So it’s not the individual’s fault for having the disability, but it’s rather there because of how society functions.
Jonah: I really think it’s so important. As you said, to kind of reflect on our view of disability in our modern society and how. Disability has always existed in the human race. And yet it’s because of how our society has been set up in a really ablest fashion that has made it so that people with disabilities often face so many different barriers in our society. So what is ableism?
Sophie: So ableism is how society manages to kind of. um, pre and accessibility for disabled people. And it manifests itself physically, mentally, and culturally through things like segregating education. So people aren’t receiving the same education because the impairments that they may have, um, disability jokes are so normalized in our society as well.
Um, gatekeeping, disability status. So we regard some disabilities as. More disabled than others. For example, when you see someone in a wheelchair it’s associated with disability, however, you have invisible disabilities as well. And those aren’t regarded in the same way. [00:05:30] And then of course, in accessibility in general, which means like things not having ramps, um, in public locations, stuff like that.
And altogether, it just makes society so hard for disabled people to function in. You
Natalie: Now something you just said, Sophie, that struck me was you said, that a symbolism, right? The wheelchair, that is the symbol, right. Something that is very obvious. Something that is very front and center. In terms of highlighting that this person is disabled.
And I understand that that is, you know, focus obviously on physical disabilities and there’s both physical and cognitive disabilities, but that is something that really stands out to me in that you mentioned with, with what happened with your disability, that your prediction from doctors was because of the stroke that you had when you were born and sort of how that presented itself self when you were little and where you are now. What would you say that in terms of disabilities presenting themselves, like what is the key for people to understand and how they might actually show themselves and that sometimes they may not show themselves? What would you say to somebody listening to understand that they’re both equal?
Sophie: Yeah. So. I’m going to be real with you. I actually do not like the wheelchair symbol for the disabled movement, because I think it kind of contributes to that idea that so many people hold that [00:07:00] disability has to be presented in a physical form. So like my little brother, for example, he has autism. Most people wouldn’t know this unless they interacted with him.
Yeah. Um, he still has just as valid of a disability as someone else. He’s still had to go through the same trauma his other disabled people have. And so I think when discussing disability, Especially among able to folks it’s really important to acknowledge that, um, disability is going to present itself in so many different ways. And it’s not necessarily going to be what you associate with it.
Jonah: One in four American adults has some form of disability. That’s like 61 million people live with the disability. And so the fact that still disability issues are just so shoved under the rug and just [00:08:00] not discussed and not made a priority is so rampant and so ridiculous. When you think about how many people are impacted by them.
Sophie: So we have quite a few different initiatives going on. They’re mostly focused around education for not only just disabled people to provide them with different resources, but also for able-bodied people. So then. They can become more aware of the circumstances in which disabled people are going through.
We’re specifically working with quite a few, um, things regarding voting right now. And so this includes things like election guides, which are both on the state and the federal level. And so it’s a guide that has issue comparisons as well as information about how to. Get resources for voting. And, um, it also has like a mental health section in order to make sure everyone [00:09:00] rejuvenates themselves after reading through the entire thing.
Jonah: I think that’s really cool how you’re not only mobilizing disabled voters and making voting accessible for them, but also empowering non-disabled people to be voting on behalf of people with disabilities and making sure that. They’re educated about disability issues in relation to the elections. So tell me a little bit about what’s on these election guides.
Sophie: Sure. So I’m the federal ones, the main things that we have included are issue comparisons. And so we compare the two main candidates against each other on various issues, specifically pertaining to the disabled community. And then we have rubrics provided. So then people can choose to rate each candidate on.
Specific factors and such. And then at the end, we also have information about how to register to vote, um, the different guidelines and absentee voting. And then [00:10:00] we also have local election guides, which are more catered to smaller communities and their local elections rather than just the federal one.
And so there’s about 16 of these for, um, various communities across the country.
Jonah: What’s an example of an issue that I might find on an election guide?
Sophie: Um, we talked specific quickly about in one of them people I think don’t realize is the intersection between disability and various other identities that different people hold. And so that’s why I think disabled people are considered, you know, the largest minority group because. You can be Jewish and have a disability. You can be black and have a disability. It’s not just one layer of identity. And so when we talk about, um, disabled issues, they aren’t specifically disabled, if that makes sense, but they pertain to the disabled community, all the same.
Specifically talking about the intersections in disabled, right. Danny, I want to talk a bit more about disability justice and what that really is. So to me, I think it’s kind of realizing the intersection of disability and ableism to other forms of oppression and their identities and acknowledging how ableism happens to manifest itself in places that also happen to be racist, sexist, et cetera, because all of those systems of oppression.
Are really intertwined with each other. And once we realize this, we’re able to really dissect Ables them, I think, from an intersectional framework. And that’s what disability justice is. And I think that that’s the true way to really conquer ableism is by looking at it through that intersectional perspective.
Natalie: And, you know, Sophie, you mentioned that. Of course, your organization works with helping people who are disabled access, the polls, accessing voting. What are the barriers that you would say exist that exists for people who have disabilities when they’re trying to vote?
Sophie: There’s really so many. I can talk to one specifically, um, as someone with ADHD, even which some people might not consider that a formal disability.
And this is like the gatekeeping of, um, disabled identities that I talked about earlier. But so I can’t drive because of that because I get too distracted on the road. So I can’t get to a polling place necessarily. And that’s like one of those smaller things that you aren’t really gonna consider compared to things like, um, Accessibility at the actual polling place.
And I think something especially interesting this year is that many people are probably going to have disabling experiences due to COVID-19 and in accessibility. And that’s why voting by mail is such a huge issue right now. And I encourage. All of the able-bodied people listening to look into their own privilege and how they’re only now looking at things like voting by mail, because that hasn’t been something that has personally affected them before.
Jonah: Sophie, I’m wondering if you can define disabling experience.
Sophie: There’s so many different ways to really look at it and you don’t necessarily have to look at it as something permanent or temporary. For example, if you broke your leg, You might not consider it a disability, but that’s a disabling experience.
So something like that, like perhaps if you get, um, the virus, then that might be a disabling experience because you’re not having the same access to, um, different areas in society.
Natalie: And so that just really shows the need for vote by mail. And the fact that if we do not expand what by mail, if we do not protect our vote through the post office, many more people will be impacted than we even feel.
We’re talking about what my mail because of the pandemic. But we should be talking about vote by mail because of everyday human beings who are not able to access the polls and the way that they would like, and the fact that we should not have to make people. Kind of, um, essentially overcome this false barrier. It does not need to exist. So Sophie, other than expanding and guaranteeing vote by mail, what are other things that we can do to ensure that everyone can access the poll?
Sophie: Yeah. So voting by mail is obviously the most, um, clear solution, I think, especially at the current moment, but. There’s so many more potential remedies.
I think that we should really be looking into, um, some of them may [00:14:30] include having more poll worker training and staffing to reduce lines and difficulties such as problems with accessible voting machines and limited staff to answer questions at the polls. I’m expanding access to early voting and same-day voter registration is super important.
Um, because this ensures that people who do not drive or have state IDs can still benefit from automatic voter registration, accessibility mandate should be paired with clear mechanisms of enforcement, um, mandating that all voting machines and equipment include universal design modifications that normalize accessibility and ensure that everyone can vote on any piece of available equipment.
Not just those covered by existing state and local laws should be educated in how to respectfully interact with disabled voters, all voters and state protection advocacy groups could assist with this expanding. Upon their existing training services to increase Access The Polls. We’re going to have more States offer curbside voting for voters who can’t get into polling places and do something for disabled voter registration, days and weeks.
Jonah: What are some ways that ableism manifests itself in our society?
Sophie: Oh, I see able wisdom in virtually every space that I go into. And I say that as someone who. Doesn’t have as much of a disabling experience as most other people that I know. So in really every situation, because we prioritize, um, curing disability instead of making structures more accessible, I think in our society.
And that’s why ableism is able to manifest itself so easily. Let’s see if we’re in a wheelchair, they want us to try to get to walk instead of just building a ramp so we can get up the stairs. And so I think the prioritization of the medical model, I talked about how I used the social model earlier, but the medical model emphasizes.
That it’s, um, the disabled person’s fault that they have this impairment, not societies and that they have to be fixed in order to participate in society. And so I think the overemphasis of that model is kind of how ableism manages to manifest itself so easily because we constantly have this idea of fixing the person rather than society.
Jonah: So instead of just trying to. May make things accessible so that people [00:17:00] with disabilities can be fully included in everything that makes up society. Instead, it’s just about blaming people with disabilities, so that it’s their fault for not being able to participate in something that was clearly designed to keep them out
Sophie: pretty much.
Yeah. And, uh, that’s why I liked the social model.
Jonah: So what are some things right now? Access The Polls is really prioritizing to solve these issues.
Sophie: So our main initiatives right now consists of voting education, voting accessibility, and then voting engagements. So for education, we’re kind of targeting people who are already registered to vote and people on the fence.
So we’re doing this through educating people on key issues and candidates. And this includes the voting guides that I was talking about earlier on both the local and national levels. Then with accessibility, we are trying to make the ballot more accessible to disabled people across intersections. This is where vote by mail lobbying and voting coalitions come into play.
And then lastly, the engagement aspect is targeting people to vote by addressing the barriers, to voting and confirms about casting a ballot. And this is where our digital day of action and voter registration drive comes in, which is, um, something that we’ll be doing in the future.
Jonah: Sophie, how can people get involved in these awesome campaigns?
Sophie: The first thing is to support access to polls by [00:18:30] going to our website, www.accesstopolls.org. Our Instagram is quite active. We’ve got some quite cute graphics. If I can say so myself, all accessible, um, with all texts on everything we are at access the polls on Instagram, you can donate to us. And then lastly, it’s very important to register, to vote and check your status.
Jonah: Absolutely. If you want to get involved with the work that Access The Polls is doing, you can go to their website. As Sophie said, access the polls.org, and please be sure to support the amazing work that Sophie and her team are doing. You can donate using the link in the description of this episode.
Also in the show notes of this episode is the link to register to vote. So you can make sure that you are taking action this November to create a better country for every single person in it.
Natalie: Sophie, we are so happy that you were able to join us today. You have helped us learn so much about the Horton’s of accessing the polls and why disability rights matter to all of us. Are there any final thoughts or anything else you’d like to leave with our listeners today? Um,
Sophie: not too much. I just want to remind everyone to just really check themselves and how they happen to benefit from ableism.
Because I think that once you acknowledge that, it’s how you’re able to start working towards accessibility.
Natalie: Thank you again, Sophie, for joining Our Future Now, and we are really happy to have you.
Sophie: Thank you so much for having me. I had a wonderful time talking to you guys, and I think that this will really be beneficial for people everywhere on educating themselves.
Natalie: Thank you for listening to this episode of Our Future Now.
Jonah: Our spotlight this week is Jackie fielder, an educator, organizer, and candidate for state Senate in San Francisco, California. She recently released a plan to create an indigenous wildfire task force to align tribal, Cal fire, local state level and federal fire management practices.
You can check her out and learn more@jackieforsenate.com.
Natalie: Our Future Now is produced by Goal17 Media, Storytellers for the Common Good. Thank you to our media partner, Parentology.
Jonah: Be sure to subscribe on your favorite streaming platform and share this episode with your family and friends on social media. I’m Jonah Gottlieb
Natalie: And I’m Natalie Mebane.
Jonah: And this is Our Future Now.
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