It is vital that disability is central to all activism. If our activism isn’t accommodating to disabled people, how can we expect our universities; our politicians; our society as a whole to take our demands seriously when we ourselves exclude a whole portion of society?
The societal changes that disability activists have achieved benefit not just themselves, but all of us, such as the drastic improvements in public transport which wheelchair users fought for in the 1970s. Without disability liberation politics, all activism and radical reform is doomed to failure, as we allow society and the state to suppress disabled people’s ability to fight back, protest, and even exist.
In Cambridge, disabled students are still massively disadvantaged by systematic inequality in the university which means they cannot achieve their full potential. Disabled students are amongst some of the most passionate activists fighting for change in our university, but they cannot do this when they are continually excluded from activism by disablism and ignorance.
Get involved with the Disabled Students’ Campaign for radical and empowering disability politics.