DESCRIBER: Minnesota Council on Disability logo. Montage of black and white photographs depicting the disability rights movement.
NARRATOR: We’ve been here before. We must stick together.
DESCRIBER: Members of the disability community and allies. Many people are using wheelchairs and holding signs and flags.
NARRATOR: When disability rights are threatened, what gives you hope?
DESCRIBER: Large title with the word “HOPE” appears.
MYRNA: There’s going to be generations of people with different abilities.
DESCRIBER: A series of testimonials in the Council on Disability’s State Fair booth. Photographs of people with disabilities displayed in the background. Myrna, MCD Council Member from Grand Rapids, Minnesota. A person wearing a purple hoodie using a power wheelchair.
MYRNA: If I don’t keep working and if we don’t see a change in the way our community treats people with different abilities, that means that my grandkids and their grandkids are going to have a life that’s not fair. We need to keep pushing on because those rights have got to be equal. There’s got to be equity for people with different abilities.
DESCRIBER: Michelle from Maplewood, Minnesota. A person using a wheelchair wearing a dress.
MICHELLE: What gives me hope to carry on is my ability to work with young people because in their life experience they have noticed that people with disabilities are all around them, and so they have an accepting posture and they are really the future of rights and of advocacy for us.
DESCRIBER: Jaye from Minneapolis, Minnesota. A person standing wearing a shirt and vest. An ASL interpreter is signing.
JAYE: I get hope through the knowledge that, even when things are tough right now, there is still going to be a tomorrow and humanity as well as like, disability activists, we’ve been working for, you know, years and decades and even more decades and– Yeah. There will still be a tomorrow, and we have lived through the worst of the worst, and we will keep living. We will keep moving forward.
DESCRIBER: Graphic sequence.
NARRATOR: We’ve been here before. We must stick together. Stay in touch via social media, Facebook. On our website at www.disability.state.mn.us. By phone at (651) 361-7800 or email council.disability@state.mn.us. Subscribe to our monthly newsletter.
DESCRIBER: Black and white photo credit. Used by permission. Copyright Tom Olin Collection MSS-294. Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections, The University of Toledo Libraries.
Video: What Gives You Hope – Episode 2 [Audio Described] (YouTube)