Looking Ahead: The Future of #CripTheVote
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The 2016 Presidential election is officially over. This was an unprecedented election for many reasons. When #CripTheVote started this past February, our primary goal was “to engage both voters and politicians in a productive discussion about disability issues in the United States, with the hope that Disability takes on greater prominence within the American political landscape.”
As the co-partners of #CripTheVote, we’re here to tell you about our expanded vision thanks to the participation of the disability community.
#CripTheVote is a nonpartisan online movement activating and engaging disabled people on policies and practices important to the disability community. Our movement is grounded in online conversations encouraging individual and collective action in the face of inequality, ableism, and oppression in all forms. Our movement is intersectional, local, global, and focused on the political participation of disabled people.
Specifically, #CripTheVote will …
- Continue to be an intersectional movement by and for the entire disability community.
- Keep our hashtag as it is.
- Remain online, community-based, and as decentralized as possible.
- Expand our focus beyond voting to other forms of political participation.
- Ask questions and demand accountability from our elected and public officials.
- Engage with disability issues at the local, state, national, and international levels.
- Provide a space for conversation as stimulus for collective action.
- Support direct actions and organizers by sharing and amplifying information about them.
- Partner with disabled people and organizations in broadening our movement’s perspectives and expertise.
- Refrain from endorsing or supporting candidates, public officials, or political parties.
- Oppose and critique any policy or practice that potentially harms disabled people.
- Explore and promote promising ideas for better disability policies and practices.
- We do not intend to become a nonprofit organization, raise money, or otherwise “professionalize” #CripTheVote.
Feedback
Please complete this online survey and let us know what you’d like to see in the future from #CripTheVote:
For a Word or Google document of the survey, please contact Andrew Pulrang (see below). If you prefer to email us directly with your comments, please do!
Gratitude
We are so grateful to the disability community for making #CripTheVote the force that it has become. It will take our continued effort as a community to keep things going. Without all of you taking ownership of the hashtag we could not have the impact we have had, and make no mistake we have had an impact. The level of the discussion around disability issues has been raised in all spheres. Politicians, the media and the public know that our community can no longer be placated by a mere mention and that we demand engagement. This is something we can build on as we move into an uncertain future. Thank you all.
In solidarity,
Gregg Beratan, Andrew Pulrang, and Alice Wong
Co-Partners, #CripTheVote
Stay In Touch!
Alice: DisabilityVisibilityProject@gmail.com
Andrew: apulrang@charter.net
Gregg: G.Beratan@yahoo.com
“Like” the #CripTheVote Facebook Page for updates and events.
Subscribe to the Disability Visibility Project and Disability Thinking for related blog posts.
Follow the co-partners on Twitter:
@AndrewPulrang @GreggBeratan @SFdirewolf (also @DisVisibility)
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"A Movement begins when large numbers of people, having reached the point where they feel they can’t take the way things are any more, see some hope of improving their daily lives and begin to move on their own to bring about change.
"A Movement begins to assume momentum when people begin exploring visionary answers to the questions being asked at the grassroots and engage in practical activities which can be replicated without huge bureaucracies. In the early stages of a Movement, the visionary answers being explored usually strike most people as too radical or too impractical. If they don’t, they are probably not profound enough to build a Movement."
–Grace Lee Boggs