One of the fundamental mainstays of the New American Movement is to advocate for the allocation of independent funds for self-advocacy organizations. In encouraging the equal treatment and independence for the disability community, we believe that independent funding should be granted to these organizations without the influence of supervising agencies (i.e. AIDD, AUCD, NACDD, NDRN). The disability community needs independent funding to genuinely act upon their interests, wants, and needs.
Independent funding is the most effective way to bolster self-advocacy organizations in the United States because without money, self-advocates will struggle to achieve the resources they need to inflict social change. While the disability community expressed their appreciation of Commissioner Lewis’ announcement at the 2012 SABE conference, scraping up a few dollars here and there for mere technical assistance won’t produce desired results.
Evidently, the lack of independent funding is an unnecessary road block on the path to equal treatment. By allocating sufficient funding to exclusively operate self-advocacy organizations, such as the national SABE, we can assure that the needs of the disability community are met in the best way possible: through their own means.
Although we have made numerous attempts to reach AIDD Commissioner Sharon Lewis and President Barack Obama about this issue, we will not be discouraged by their silence. Our previous letters have asked both officials to redistribute current funding and create a separate account on behalf of advocacy objectives to guarantee the successful articulation of disability needs. That is why it is important for other self-advocacy organizations to join our campaign and to write/email/call the aforementioned figureheads. It would be particularly helpful for self-advocacy organizations to assess their short and long-term goals and articulate how independent funding from the Obama Administration would contribute to its success.