At 12:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 15th, people who experience a disability, family members, friends, caregivers, and community members will gather for New Hampshire’s first-ever Disability Justice Parade. The parade will take place at Arms Park (10 Arms Street) in Manchester, NH.
ABLE NH, our state’s only disability justice organization, is hosting the event to celebrate the power of inclusion. The event flyer reads, “Justice for people with disabilities looks like – people not yet impacted by disability unlearning their ableist assumptions about life with a disability. We must all believe members of the disability community are:
- Worthwhile employees who can and do want to work
- Competent, lifelong learners
- Valuable contributors to their community
- A population, not a health outcome, deserving of high quality healthcare”
ABLE NH’s Executive Director Lisa Beaudoin said, “The disability community spends a great deal of time advocating and fighting for the changes we need to have a robust, community-based life. Once in a while, we must simply celebrate that we are a community of people with strengths, unique talents, and and gifts to share with the world.”
“For me, and for ABLE NH too, disability justice is about identifying and eliminating the barriers the disability community faces when trying to simply live the American dream,” Lisa said, “Justice is about equity, dignity, and opportunity. It’s about solidarity, not charity.”
Anyone is welcome to participate in ABLE’s Disability Justice Parade! Participants can join a team that is already signed up to march, or they can gather a few people and create their own group. Lisa said, “I believe the path to real inclusion for the disability community is for people with and without disabilities to work together. This parade is a way for us to grow our movement by claiming visibility in public. I wanted to create a space for everyone to come together, uplift, and amplify one’s disability voices in a very celebratory setting!”
Click here: https://ablenh.wildapricot.org/event-4894328/Registration, to register for this celebratory event!
You can learn more about ABLE NH by visiting their website: https://www.ablenh.org/, and following their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ABLENH.