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HomeMy WebLinkAbout09-08-26 Correspondence - Disability Rights MT - Summer Summary of our Growth RingsFrom:Disability Rights Montana - Growth Rings To:Bozeman Public Comment Subject:[EXTERNAL]Summer Summary of our Growth Rings Date:Tuesday, September 8, 2026 7:33:58 AM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more Every paid subscription supports Disability Rights Montana’s work across Montana. Federal funding is nowhere near sufficient to meet the advocacy and culture change work that is needed. You can help fund the future you want to see! Summer Summary of our GrowthRings and an invite to join me in doing some transportation advocacy READ IN APP Summer has a way of scattering us. Kids are out of school. Vacations pull us in different directions. Projects pause. New opportunities emerge. Life gets busy. Since yesterday was Labor Day, we should probably blow the whistle on summer, call it done, and enjoy our one month of autumn. Just before we dive into whatever comes next though, I thought it might be helpful to pause and reflect on SEP 8 some of the conversations we’ve been having together in this weekly newsletter, Growth Rings, over the summer. At first glance, we’ve covered a wide range of topics. Community living. Criminal justice. Disability Pride. Autism and epistemic injustice. Crip Camp. Voting. Mental health. The future of disability rights. But really , we’ve been exploring a single question from a variety of angles: What would change if we truly assumed disabled people belong in Montana as much as anyone else? The summer started with a question raised by recent threats to longstanding disability rights protections. Many of us spent years believing certain victories were settled. The right to live in the community. The right to receive services outside institutions. The right to be included in the ordinary life of our neighborhoods and communities. Recent developments at both the state and federal level reminded us that progress is never permanent. But they also pushed us toward a larger question. If our freedom is always one election, lawsuit, budget cut, or policy memo away from being threatened, then perhaps the deeper issue isn’t simply whether a Beyond Defending Rights particular right exists on paper. Perhaps the deeper issue is whether disabled people were ever fully included in the systems that surround us. That led us to explore the idea of an “infrastructure of belonging.” We know how to build roads, schools, water systems, workplaces, and communities. The question is whether we intentionally design those systems with disabled people in mind from the beginning or whether we continue treating disability as an afterthought. The challenge before us is not simply defending yesterday’s victories. It is building systems that expect disabled people to be present. What If Belonging Was Infrastructure? DAVID CARLSON ·JUN 24 What If Belonging Was Infrastructure? Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice released an internal memo rejecting decades of disability civil rights enforcement and the legal principles. Specifically, it attacked the same “integration mandate” that Montana’s AG Austin Knudsen is attacking in the lawsuit he is waging down in Lubbock, Texas. The legal principle We then looked at one of the clearest examples of what happens when systems fail to anticipate disability. Across America, disability-related needs are too often routed into systems built for punishment rather than support. Police become default crisis responders. Jails become waiting rooms for services. Courts become social workers gatekeeping care. When the only infrastructure available is criminal justice infrastructure, people in need of support frequently end up being treated as problems to manage rather than community members to assist. of the integration mandate ha… Read full story When Support Gets Replaced with Control Why is America creating FAKE criminals DAVID CARLSON ·JUN 30 The question isn’t whether law enforcement, judges, or corrections professionals care. In my experience, many do. The question is whether we’ve built appropriate alternatives. Do we have the peer supports, housing, transportation, mental health services, respite options, community spaces, and crisis response systems necessary to keep disability from being criminalized in the first place? If belonging is infrastructure, then decriminalizing disability may be one of the most important infrastructure projects of the next generation. July brought us Disability Pride Month and the 36th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Those milestones offered an opportunity to reflect on something important: Why is America creating FAKE criminals As a follow-up to yesterday’s newsletter, I recorded a short podcast episode to describe the situation a bit more and give people who consume information that way an alternative source of information. Read full story Pride, Progress, and the Work Ahead Every disability rights victory we enjoy today was once considered unrealistic. Accessible transportation. Community living. Inclusive education. Independent voting. Employment protections. None arrived because powerful institutions voluntarily surrendered power. 250 Years of Working to Make FreedomReal DAVID CARLSON ·JUL 6 250 Years of Working to Make Freedom Real Hello friends, Read full story 2 Quiet Shifts with Big Consequences DAVID CARLSON ·JUL 24 2 Quiet Shifts with Big Consequences Did Montana Quietly Exit Texas v. Kennedy? Read full story Progress Is Never Permanent. Neither Isthe Backlash. DAVID CARLSON ·JUL 28 Progress Is Never Permanent. Neither Is the Backlash. They happened because disabled people organized, advocated, collaborated, and persisted. That history matters because it reminds us that setbacks are not new. Neither is progress. One lesson I keep coming back to is that disability rights are not ultimately sustained by laws alone. They are sustained by culture. Laws can prohibit discrimination. Only culture can create belonging. One of the most powerful conversations this summer stemmed from discussions around autism, lived experience, and what scholars call “epistemic injustice.” The phrase sounds academic, but the experience is familiar to many disabled people. It is what happens when professionals, politicians, and bureaucrats consistently treat people as unreliable witnesses to their own lives. A student says a classroom isn’t working. A person says they need support to live independently. A patient says something feels wrong. July is Disability Pride Month. On July 26, the Americans with Disabilities Act turned 36. But July has also been a rough month for disability rights on the national stage. So as July comes to an end, I wanted to share some reflections for the work ahead. Read full story Who Gets to Define Reality? And the system responds by explaining why the disabled person’s understanding of their own life is wrong. Disability culture matters, in part, because it creates spaces where people discover they are not alone. It creates communities where lived experience is treated not as anecdotal, but as valuable knowledge. Because we don’t gaslight our friends. And healthy systems learn to combine professional expertise with the expertise that comes from living a life. We Don't Gaslight Our Friends DAVID CARLSON ·AUG 3 We Don't Gaslight Our Friends Last week, Ludmila N. Praslova published an essay in Psychology Today titled Epistemic Injustice: The Great Gaslighting of Autistic Lives. The article explores a simple but profound question: What happens when society consistently dismisses people’s own understanding of themselves? Read full story Finding One Another That theme surfaced again during our conversations around Crip Camp and the disability culture events we hosted across Montana this summer. Before there was a disability rights movement, there were disabled people finding one another. Before there were protests. Before there were lawsuits. Before there were policy reforms. There were relationships. People discovering that experiences they thought were uniquely theirs were actually shared by others. Before There Was a Movement DAVID CARLSON ·AUG 10 Before There Was a Movement Why We Need Places Like Camp Read full story Movements are built on that realization. Every time disabled people gather, whether online, in community spaces, in advocacy groups, or in movie theaters after a documentary screening, there is an opportunity for someone to realize they are not alone. And once people stop feeling alone, remarkable things become possible. Belonging is cultural. It is personal. But it is also political. This summer we launched Montana’s Disability Voter Guide because disabled people are not a niche constituency. More than 259,000 voting-age Montanans live with disabilities. Disabled people live in every community, belong to every political party, and contribute to every sector of Montana life. Building Power 259,669 Voices DAVID CARLSON ·AUG 19 259,669 Voices Read full story The purpose of the voter guide was not to tell anyone how to vote. It was to remind candidates and voters alike that disability issues are not separate from other public issues. Housing is a disability issue. Transportation is a disability issue. Workforce development is a disability issue. Healthcare is a disability issue. Education is a disability issue. Community life is a disability issue. When disabled people show up, speak up, organize, and vote, public institutions begin responding differently. As August came to a close, I found myself reflecting on twenty-five years in disability advocacy. Over that time, I have participated in countless policy debates, legal disputes, reform efforts, and systems-change initiatives. And I’ve come to believe that many of those debates are really arguments about a single underlying question: Do disabled people belong in the community? Not after treatment. Not after proving their worth. Not after becoming more productive. Not after meeting someone else’s definition of independence. Simply because they are human beings and members of their communities. The Question Beneath Every Debate When we answer that question correctly, many policy debates become surprisingly straightforward. We invest in: Housing instead of segregation. Support instead of coercion. Opportunity instead of exclusion. Relationships instead of isolation. We stop asking people to fit systems and start asking systems to fit people. What If We Assumed Disabled PeopleBelong Here? DAVID CARLSON ·AUG 24 What If We Assumed Disabled People Belong Here? It’s late August, 2026. 25 years ago, a couple weeks before 9/11/2001, I started law school. My goal - become a disability rights lawyer. Had I ever met a lawyer before? No. Did I even know if “disability lawyer” was an actual type of lawyer? Nope. Did I have any idea how a dyslexic kid who barely graduated high school and whose parents didn’t even go t… Read full story Unfortunately as I wrote about on Friday, Montana has submitted a settlement agreement to a federal court in which community inclusion is stripped form federal regulations. Which means we need to keep fighting to protect the right of people with disabilities to live in our communities. If there is one lesson I hope readers take away from this summer’s conversations, it is this: Belonging is not a special accommodation. It is a human need. 504 Lawsuit Update DAVID CARLSON ·SEP 4 504 Lawsuit Update The dozens of systemic disability civil rights lawsuits I have led over the years have rarely been just about the law. At their core, they have been about morality. They have asked questions such as: Who do we think belongs? Who do we believe has dignity? Who do we allow to participate in community life? And what obligations do we have to one another? Read full story Looking Ahead The disability rights movement has spent decades proving disabled people have rights. The next chapter may be about helping our communities understand that disabled people belong. Not as an exception. Not as an accommodation. Not as a burden. Montana belongs to disabled people and we belong to Montana: As neighbors. As workers. As parents. As students. As leaders. As storytellers. As citizens. As people whose presence makes Montana stronger. That’s the thread connecting nearly every conversation we’ve had this summer. And it’s the conversation I hope we’ll continue together this fall. To that end I would like to personally invite you to join a national campaign I have been working on. I am on the national advisory committee for the Week Without Driving. This year, as I have for the past six years, I’m participating in Week Without Driving, a national challenge taking place October 1-8 that asks participants to navigate daily life without driving whenever possible. Throughout the week, I’ll be Join me during the Week WithoutDriving reflecting on what I learn and what transportation challenges become visible when the easiest option disappears. One week can’t replicate the lived experience of people who cannot drive because of disability, age, or other circumstances. But it can help us better understand how transportation shapes access to work, healthcare, community life, and independence. I hope you’ll consider joining me. sign up here! Keep growing, David David Carlson Executive Director Disability Rights Montana You’re currently a free subscriber to Life Beyond Compliance. Upgrading to paid subscriptions supports Disability Rights Montana’s work across Montana. Federal funding is no where near sufficient to meet the advocacy and culture change work that is needed. You can help fund the future you want to see! Upgrade to paid LIKE COMMENT RESTACK © 2026 Disability Rights Montana1022 Chestnut Street, Helena, MT 59601 Unsubscribe