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Executive Summary
Civic engagement must be an essential element of democratic practice if government is ever to be “of the people, by the people, for the people.” But for people with disabilities, this foundational practice is replete with systemic barriers and challenges. People of color with disabilities, compared to their white disabled counterparts, experience even more limited access to existing pathways of participation and meaningful infuence over government and civic life. This is not surprising information, if we note that research in education, health, and employment, has long shown that people of color have limited access to opportunities and services. This social exclusion of people with disabilities and people of color is directly tied to underrepresentation in civic engagement.[1] Consequently, even the public discourse and civic engagement eforts that most directly afect the lives of people with disabilities tend to center and privilege voices of white, nondisabled people. This directly contributes to a systemic imbalance of power and representation across all levels of US government and civic life.
Twenty-six percent of the American adult population has some type of disability.[2] However, even efforts designed to engage people with disabilities in civic participation and leadership are not typically informed by the lived experiences of disabled people. As a result, members of the disability community experience civic engagement as fragmented, refective of ableist social attitudes, and full of barriers to participation. This marginalization of disability community voices in civic life has led generations of the disability community to be excluded from participation in our shared democracy. The lack of a stable foundation for disabled people to access meaningful civic engagement has meant disabled people themselves hold disproportionately little power with respect to their social, economic and political progress.
Both historic and recent social movements teach us that civic engagement practices must center people closest to the challenges those movements are trying to address. But even the most progressive of eforts, including contemporary civic engagement work, still do not include people with disabilities as active members and leaders. To disrupt the cycle of social, health, and economic disparities that people with disabilities experience, sustained representation and participation of people with disabilities is necessary. This must include and be led by disabled people inside and outside of traditional democratic processes. A truly democratic system that provides equitable opportunities for civic participation for people with disabilities, including the marginalized disabled communities requires relationship building and allyship across movements, and across the public sector (civic, philanthropic, government, etc.). Philanthropy holds the potential to catalyze conversations around these necessary changes and support eforts led by people with disabilities to challenge ableist norms around power, representation, and participation and increase the infuence people with disabilities have over systems, structures, policies and issues.
This report presents a national overview of the barriers to civic engagement that disabled people experience. Drawing on our findings from surveys, a Twitter chat, and interviews, we ofer recommendations for the philanthropic sector and for civic engagement organizations aspiring to create a more inclusive and responsive democracy to build civic power among people with disabilities. Civic power in this report is conceptualized as opportunities for people with disabilities to amplify, mobilize, and elevate their voices and infuence within democracy.
This report centers the expertise, insights and lived experiences of people with disabilities, including leaders from various disability communities. Our fndings reafrm that no disability rights issue exists outside the sphere of civic engagement and no meaningful civic engagement strategy can emerge without attention to disability rights.
Supported by the Ford Foundation’s Civic Engagement and Government (CEG) program, this report is a collaboration between the Lurie Institute for Disability Policy and the Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy, both based at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy. The disability rights mantra “nothing about us, without us” informs the questions, methods and content in this report. We hope the fndings and recommendations will inspire new thinking and action within philanthropy and civic engagement spaces, and spark courageous conversations and inform practices within the vital organizations working to strengthen democracy in the United States.
[1] Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, “Culture of Health Sentinel Community Insights: Health Equity”
[2] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Disability Impacts All of Us
Access the full report, Civic Engagement and People with Disabilities