“I think if we don’t embrace our identities as persons with disabilities, then we forfeit some of that power, if not all of that power that was passed down to us by past disability rights leaders and those that provided us with an identity group to say that we are persons with disabilities and that voice is one that is united whether you have some disability, a lot of disability, or anywhere in-between… We have to embrace that word ‘disability’ and make it ours again, and make sure that they [legislators] understand that they are talking about us, and so it’s foundational, it’s critical that we embrace this word now more than ever.”

-Joseph Berry, Scholar, Activist, Advocate, and Member of Disability Organizing Group for Initiating Total Equality (DOGFITE)

“In September, it will be 52 years since Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act was signed into law and 35 years since we celebrated the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. I wish I could tell you they have been fully implemented and we have realized equity, inclusion, and full access for people with disabilities. Sadly, not only has this not happened, but significant federal and state budget cuts and policy changes now threaten the progress we have made… I want California and the United States to go far. We can only do that through empowering all of our people. We must go forward together, realizing that leaving people behind hurts our whole society.”

-Regina Brink, California Council of the Blind

“I want to acknowledge the predecessors that have brought us here to this day who brought about the Rehabilitation Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA.) Some of the elders here in our community lived without these things—we didn’t have the ADA, we didn’t have the Rehab Act, and it’s still that kind of energy we have now. We’ve got to fight for our rights, we’ve got to stand up and say that we can—regardless of what happens to us—fight for our rights. I’m hoping that all of us here today can mobilize, speak up, do your thing, do our part.”

-Roque Alas Bucton, Counsel Chair of the Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness Advisory Council, Member of the Disability Rights California Board of Directors

“We cannot afford to tolerate any cuts of IHSS, Medi-Cal, Medicaid. California, our Governor knows better, and to plan the same kind of cuts here in the state, what is wrong with this picture? We are California, we’ve always protected everyone. We will not accept that ever. That behavior from our California Governor, that is not acceptable. There are no cuts. Remember your voice matters, your vote matters, you matter. And that is what we tell the Governor.”

-Sheri Farinha, CEO of NorCal Services for Deaf and Hard of Hearing and Chair of the Disability Rights California Board of Directors

“Anti-racist education and activism cannot be separated from disability advocacy. Additionally, discrimination on individual and institutional levels has a potential to cause disability. This includes the violent deportation and the racist targeting of the immigrant community. Advocating for disability rights includes advocating for the families being ripped apart and the children who are left to defend themselves. Activism is inherently intersectional, so we should stand for individuals with disabilities, the immigrant community, and other marginalized groups.”

-Lucille Tompkins-Garoutte, Self-Advocate and student at the University of San Francisco

“California should be a leader for people with disabilities, and we’ve fallen behind. It is our time, right now, to lift up and advocate for our communities and make sure that we are all a part of this process at the very beginning. Not in the middle, not at the very end when stuff goes wrong, but at the very beginning when these ideas are being put together.”

-Eric Harris, Associate Executive Director of External Affairs at Disability Rights California

“I have the experience of getting one of those nasty letters in December saying I need to quit my job because I was making too much, or I would lose my Medi-Cal. I shouldn’t have to quit my job because I was just working two days a week and giving back. So they tell me I would lose my Medi-Cal, and I was set to have surgery in February. So I had about five weeks to come up with a plan. The good part about it was I had a lot of people behind me saying you won’t lose it. And today, I’m still on Medicare and Medi-Cal because of the fight of my friends and of myself. So we have to keep fighting for what’s right for everybody. We want a job. We want to do things like anybody else in the community.”

-Joe Meadours, Self-Advocacy Leader and former Executive Director for People First of California

“If California isn’t safe, then nowhere is safe, we stand here today in the midst of the achievements of the independent living movement, a movement that started not far from here in Berkeley, California. So many foundational movements got their start here. What we do right now in this moment has power. California has power. We have the power. The power to not just change ourselves, not just our community, country, or even the world, but the power to change history.”

-Spoken word by Jem Moore, Statewide Youth Organizer for California Foundation of Independent Living Centers (CFILC)

“Having a disability is also what connects us all as a society; all countries have folks with disabilities, so we want to make sure that we know we’re connected to everyone in this world. As a person with a lived experience with a disability and the daughter of immigrants from Mexico and the mother of an adult with a disability, this is a subject that is near and dear to my heart…please know that we’re all in this together, let’s look out for our Californians with disabilities, especially immigrants with disabilities. We’re with you, we stand with you, and we are you. We are a family.”

-Vanessa Ochoa, Special Advisor to Strategic Partnerships and Community Engagement Unit at Disability Rights California

“As a paralympic gold medalist, I learned the power of adaptive sports…. Right now is a challenging time, but that’s what the power of adaptive sports taught me: it taught me how to rise above those challenges…but recently I’ve learned the power of advocating for us all, for our entire community. I recently launched an organization, it’s called “Fly Without Limits,” and it’s a disability empowerment organization.”

-Matt Scott, Five-time Paralympian and two-time wheelchair basketball gold medalist

“Every year since I’ve been doing this, legislators have introduced a new flood of bills every year that erode the rights of disabled people, without consulting disabled people…imagine writing a bill about women without women, a bill about queer people without queer people, yet we keep getting these bills about disabled people, specifically, people with mental health disabilities without disabled people…We disabled people know that ‘nothing about us without us’ is the floor, but right now in California, on mental health legislation, legislators are below the floor, they’re in the underworld.”

-Katherine Wolf, MPH, MESc, disabled queer doctoral student and activist

“The Caucus is in its infancy, but we’re growing every day, and I can’t wait to continue this work with you.”

-Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, District 55 in the Los Angeles area and Chair of the Legislative Disability Caucus

“I want you to know that I recognize you not for your disability, but what you do bring, and your ability, because it’s far greater, but it’s not as visible. We need to make sure, though, that the services and the challenges that you [the disability community] face are addressed appropriately and not dismissed.”

-Assemblymember Tom Lackey, District 34 in Kern, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino Counties, and Vice Chair of the Legislative Disability Caucus

“I don’t want to be one of those legislators that looks back in time where our democracy is at a crossroads and it’s literally in crisis and ask myself what did I do, did I do enough? And right now, I can tell you that it’s not enough, we have to do more, whether it’s fighting back against these budget cuts, to our communities, to legislation that’s actually going to make a difference on the ground, to future generations that it matters now more than ever.”

-Assemblymember Liz Ortega, District 20 in Alameda County and member of the Legislative Disability Caucus