Comments on: Get to know a queer crip http://www.washingtonblade.com/2010/07/22/get-to-know-a-queer-crip/ the gay community's news source Mon, 20 May 2013 23:40:55 +0000 hourly 1 By: Stephen Gorman http://www.washingtonblade.com/2010/07/22/get-to-know-a-queer-crip/#comment-2176 Stephen Gorman Sun, 25 Jul 2010 11:49:56 +0000 http://www.washingtonblade.com/?p=10137#comment-2176 As an open queer disabled crip, I am always glad to see the Blade highlight another part of our diverse LGBT community. That said, it would be helpful to make it clear that disabilities include a wider community than what many people think. There is a disabled community that actually took the bull by the horn and created change without waiting as victims for others to address their special needs. They are Persons With AIDS (PWAs) and their well known group was ACT UP. If it had not been for ACT UP, many of the very slow research protocals would still be in place. Further, my guess is that many readers of the Blade know someone with HIV. ACT UP stands a model not just to other people with disabilities but to any community desire of necessary change but its success was based on people cooperating with one another regardless of background.

As former chair of the Mayor’s Committee on Persons with Disabilities, it was regretful to me that the biggest problem that occurred within the disability community was a general lack of interest in disabilities than other then their own. If the blind cared about the deaf and if the deaf cared about the spina bifidas, and if the spina bifidas cared about the PWAs, etc, the disability community would be more visible and more politically powerful than it actually is. Perhaps if the Blade published other crip voices – Washington has a relatively large queer deaf community for example, more readers may acknowledge disabilities more personally, then perhaps Kathi Wolfe will get her wish.

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