To My Colleagues in the Disability Community:

As I reflect on last week’s election results in California and nationally, I see our movement is entering a new era, one with serious threats and big changes on the horizon. I am determined to work with my colleagues across our community to build power and assert ourselves in order to protect and advance our rights.

Let me explain —

During this election cycle, disabled voters and our families have been disrespected, scapegoated, overlooked, and ignored by candidates for President and other offices. The rhetoric used by these politicians raises questions about what might occur when they take office. These challenges are not, however, new to those of us who live in California. 

For the last few years, in California, we have seen systemic erosion of disabled people’s civil and human rights under a Democratic Governor and a Democratic supermajority in the Legislature. Through the adaptation of measures such as Proposition 36 (which will turn misdemeanors into felonies), Care Court (which is designed to make people with certain mental health diagnoses subject to the jurisdiction of a civil court even when they have not been accused of a crime), and California Senate Bill 43 (SB 43) (which makes it easier to put disabled people on involuntary holds), the most marginalized people in our community will experience further entanglement with the coercive and carceral legal system, not less. Measures such as Proposition 1, which Governor Newsom championed, deliberately extract funding from programs and services that disabled people want and have built up over time. 

As someone who grew up in California and someone who lives with bipolar disorder, I am ashamed that my State government has gotten so Draconian in our approach to people living with mental health disabilities. For the last three years, we engaged with policymakers and pushed for solutions that work for our community. Bipartisan California lawmakers nevertheless advanced harmful policies over the objections of our community and our allies in the unhoused community, simply as a desperate desire to do “something” about the visible problems affecting our unhoused, unsheltered residents and the communities where they live.

It stops now. 

California now has a united—and growing--cross-disability movement and we are ready to work together in ways that we have not done before. Just last month, DRC joined with the newly-formed California Disability Leadership Alliance (The Alliance) to release a State of the State report that calls for the California government to work with disabled people and organizations led by disabled people to design and implement policies and programs that will make our State a national and global leader on these issues.  The report recommends policies and programs in areas ranging from education to transportation to housing to workforce development to immigration to public safety.  As a unified disability community, we will demand that lawmakers follow our plan, not the other way around.  

In the wake of this election cycle, DRC and The Alliance will also raise the visibility of the disability community as voters. Over nine million children and adults in California report having a disability and, when you include our families, you are talking about over half the State. As Patty Berne, the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Sins Invalid, states, “In this time, people need strength models. Strength isn’t just about momentary power to jump building to building; it is also the endurance to handle what is less than ideal. It’s the gritty persistence that disabled people embody every day.” We will use our strength in numbers to reach out and engage directly with the candidates for Governor and others who will be on the ballot in 2026 and beyond.

With Republicans controlling the White House and at least one branch of Congress, it is also time for our community to activate our longstanding relationships with Republican champions for the rights and dignity of disabled people. Having spent 26 years working in Washington with lots of bipartisan successes, I know how to do this. 

The history of the disability rights movement in the United States has involved grassroots leaders working with bipartisan champions like Tom Harkin, Bob Dole, Ted Kennedy, John McCain, Tony Coelho and President George H. W. Bush to write disability legislation that inspired the world. This combined effort helped our government to view disability as an issue of civil and human rights and not simply an issue of health policy, social welfare policy, or charity. 

We stand ready to work with leaders in all political parties in California and nationally to mitigate the harm of recent developments in California, to protect our hard-fought victories in Washington, D.C., and to build a new bipartisan consensus that will modernize our approach to disability policy.  We look forward to working with a new generation of bipartisan leaders in California’s Congressional delegation and the members of the new bipartisan Disability Caucus in the California Legislature to craft legislation and budgets that respond to the needs of our community across the State.  

As I look to the strength and the unity of the disability movement, I also need to recognize that specific and targeted members of our community fear for their lives as a result of this election. Their fears are real and justified. Hateful rhetoric, racism, transphobia, sexism, and white supremacy clearly showed their cards during this campaign. To folks who feel scared, please know that Disability Rights California will not waiver from our commitment to pushing back against hatred, xenophobia, and bias of all forms. We recognize that effective advocacy for disabled people in California requires us to address any discrimination, including the unique challenges faced by people who experience the intersection of multiple systems of oppression.  

Moving forward, we will work with the members of the Disability Caucus in the California Legislature – led by Assemblymembers Isaac Bryan and Tom Lackey – to shape a comprehensive legislative agenda building off the Alliance’s State of the State document. We will work with the State and local governments to help shape implementation of Proposition 1, CARE Court, SB 43 and Proposition 36 in a manner that avoids harm and maximizes autonomy and self-determination for people living with mental health and substance use-related disabilities. We will work with bipartisan champions during the lame duck session of Congress to end subminimum wage employment at the Federal level. And we will work to find allies in the Trump Administration and the new Congress to protect the things that need protecting like the Affordable Care Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act and to help rethink the policies and programs that need to be modernized in order for our community to experience real freedom, real dignity, real opportunity, and a truly level playing field.  

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us:

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Even a superficial look at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. Without persistent effort, time itself becomes the ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of irrational emotionalism and social destruction. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.

Friends in the disability movement, we are the dedicated individuals that will make human progress happen in California and across the country. Let’s get to work.

Andy Imparato, Executive Director
Disability Rights California