1/2/25 - The ABLE Act, quarters, and an ally remembered
A Little-Known Law to Fight Disabled Poverty Just Turned 10
Max H., as told to Julia Métreaux, Mother Jones - December 19, 2024
"In the decade since, ABLE accounts have meaningfully improved the lives of over 160,000 people by giving them more financial independence. It’s an underappreciated example of just how much impact a seemingly small reform can have. Still, the number of ABLE accounts is small, considering around 8 million people qualify."
The ABLE Act is one of the most significant attempts to fix some of the "work disincentives" built into the U.S. Social Security Disability and Supplemental Security Income programs. It's nowhere near a complete reform, which would probably need to include substantially raising earning and saving thresholds for everyone on those benefits. But in a secondary way the ABLE Act does at least provide one mechanism for saving money for emergencies and longer-term expenses without losing income or health benefits. Figuring out why more disabled Americans aren't using ABLE accounts is important. And this article, structured around an interview with an ABLE account user, suggests one possible drawback. There are others. But the ABLE Act still seems like a program that should be refined, improved, and more aggressively promoted – not forgotten.
These Five Trailblazing American Women Are Being Honored on Quarters in 2025
Sarah Cascone, artnet - December 18, 2024
"The most contemporary of the honorees is Milbern, a disabilities activist born with congenital muscular dystrophy, who died in 2020 at the age of just 33."
A U.S. Mint program honoring "trailblazing American women" will include a quarter depicting the late disabled activist Stacey Park Milbern. I didn't know her. But many other disabled activists I do know and respect, knew and loved her – as a colleague, comrade, and friend. The article here doesn't say much at all about Stacey, which annoys me a bit. But then I realized that the piece is in a design journal, and mainly focused on the aesthetics of the quarters themselves. But even considering that, there's less information provided on Stacey's actual work and personality than for any of the other honorees. So I hope to share a more substantial piece about her some other time, maybe when her quarter actually comes out later this year.
Remembering Steve Silberman: TPGA Editor Shannon Rosa on the Noncompliant Podcast
Shannon Des Roches Rosa, Thinking Person's Guide to Autism - December 4, 2024
"I understand the mindset that the parent of an autistic child can have, someone who comes from outside of the autistic community and only has a fearful attitude. But Steve was telling people, “This is what autistic experiences are like,” including a family like mine, in which my son needs a lot of support, but our life is a joyful one, and we love each other so much, and we’re trying to do the best we can. I think NeuroTribes helped people understand that autism doesn’t just have to be something where a parent should go in a corner and cry because their child has an autism diagnosis."
Steve is another influential person in disability culture I never met, but admired and appreciated for his role in changing perceptions of autism, and by extension other disabilities too. And it's important that he was a truly committed and selfless non-disabled ally. He became interested in autism, and after extensive research with autistic people, then wrote one of the recent crop of books explaining autism and autistic people from a more progressive, non-medical, not tragicm "neurodiversity" perspective. Autistic people have written plenty about autism themselves. And Steve would probably want to center them instead of himself. But there's a unique benefit when good writing about disability comes from a non-disabled person who really "gets it."