If I can't dance is it still my revolution?

 I have had a lot of political opportunities over the past few years but one of my greatest privileges has been to mentor several up and coming advocates in the disability community.  I had a conversation with one of the individuals the other day and the issue was a dance at a recent political function and I sarcastically posed the question “if I can’t dance, is it still my revolution?” the question goes much deeper than accessibility; it goes towards the basic right to self-determination.

One of the more notorious decisions of the US Supreme court is Buck V Bell in which the court upheld forced sterilization of a woman deemed "feeble minded." With the disturbing justification that "3 generation of imbeciles is enough “SCOTUS rejected arguments that it violated her 4th and 8th amendment rights. The decision came at the start of the eugenics movement, the belief that the human race can be improved by cleansing the human race of the “less desirable” Thus, 60,000 disabled people were forcibly held down and sterilized without their consent.

The practice escalated in the 1940s when Hitler systematically exterminated 250,000 people just like me under the label "research" We weren't allowed to refuse the research. Ironically enough many of the practices used by the courts in providing treatment today comes from my people being used as lab rats. Do the ends justify the means?

It did in the late 1900s, when people with disabilities were placed in Institutions; large numbers of patients were required to operate the facilities. It wasn't about providing treatment, It was about providing an unpaid and unlimited labor force that had zero choice in the matter and zero ability to control the conditions.Dozens of attempts were made to prohibit this practice. The efforts came to fruition when the DC circuit ruled in Souder V Brennan that the Fair Labor Standards Act applied to institutional workers.

Disability discrimination still is fairly common but it’s more subtle such as that of the Community Caretaking doctrine, a legal test stemming from Cady v Dombrowski often used to justify Police officers responding to things like mental health crisis calls. The problem is people with disabilities don’t have the right to refuse and  can be stopped, detained and arrested on the sole basis that they are exhibiting signs of a condition. One concerned individual who doesn’t care enough to call themselves eradicates the 4^th amendment rights of a disabled individual. I personally find this to be extremely degrading and indicative of the larger problem that people with disabilities are a minority group structured around the norms of the majority and our rights don't exist outside of their benevolence. The belief that the rights of people with disabilities can be curtailed for the preservation of a "pseudo-common good” is just flat out ableist

Many will simply disregard my opinion becasue the practice is legal but at the end of the day all of these examples listed above were legal. In fact Buck is still precedential as it has never been overturned. Are police officers going to hold me down and rip out my urethra tubes without my consent? Because to be perfectly honest they could probably get away with it but again do the ends justify the means??  If I can't say no is it my choice? and If I can't dance is it my revolution?