The fact that he is still on the streets is not because our suicides are in fact fundamentally different, more justified than others people's suicides, but because society's prejudice against us is so deep and pervasive that we are seen as better off dead. According to the U.S. census, people with disabilities, seniors, adults and children, are the largest minority group in the country. So people lose their jobs, can't get new jobs, and are forced into poverty. Families and friends often abandon people with disabilities, or treat them like unwanted burdens. It's hard to get the home health and support services that our health care system should provide to make things easier.
Many people find themselves in human warehouses called nursing homes.
Most people don't know very much about the history of the disability rights movement. Our struggles have been fought on the margins of society's awareness. Few are aware of the hundreds of us who were arrested and jailed in the fight for passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. We've rarely been on the media's radar screen, except as tragic but courageous human interest stories, objects of pity in Jerry Lewis' Telethon. The public doesn't know about the war we are now waging to free our brothers and sisters from nursing homes.