Marianne williamson for president.

Issues

Disability Justice

A Williamson administration will be dedicated to providing rights, dignity, and opportunity to every segment of society.  That is how we unleash the true potential of this great nation.

All people deserve the support they may need to live independently, move around, care for themselves, get an education, vote, and work safely and productively.  But people with disabilities are often denied these basic rights. They are often denied vital healthcare and home-based care and assistance they need to live independently. They are too often forced into institutions where they have little freedom and abuse is rampant, and they are impoverished by policies that penalize them for working and earning money.

Disabled children are often cruelly restrained, isolated, suspended and expelled for disability-related behaviors, and deprived of the attention and support they need to learn and thrive.  Disabled people face high rates of sexual assault, are much more likely than non-disabled people to be killed by police officers, and are frequently disenfranchised by discriminatory laws and polling place inaccessibility.  They face rampant inaccessibility and discrimination in everything from employment to transportation.

Disabled people and their families and allies have been fighting for their rights with courage and dedication for decades, but our government has often failed to listen to them. It is my strongly held belief that by addressing the needs of those with disabilities, we help not only them, but we help the rest of society as well. People with disabilities have profound lessons to teach to those who haven’t dealt with their challenges. The more we integrate them into society, the better lives we all lead, and the richer we all become.

Moreover, all of us who do not have a disability at this stage, are one illness or accident away from the potential of being disabled as well.
Consequently, it’s long past time for our government to fully commit itself to guarantee people of all abilities full civil rights and all the support they need to thrive.

Williamson Policies to Promote Disability Justice
Disability Representation

My administration will:
  • Focus on the fact that about 1/4 of Americans have a disability, but due to rampant exclusion and prejudice Americans with disabilities have always been underrepresented in politics and governance.
  • Address this by making sure that people with disabilities are fairly represented in all appointed positions.
  • Support people with disabilities in their efforts to secure better representation in Congress, in the Judiciary, and in state and local governments.
  • Make sure that all my appointees are equally committed to defending the rights and serving Americans of all abilities.

Disability Integration Act

My administration will:
  • Acknowledge the fact that people with physical disabilities who need help with daily activities — like getting out of bed, dressing, eating, and showering — are often pushed into nursing homes or other institutions where they can be deprived of independence and end up at high risk of being abused.
  • Pass – during my first 100 days — the existing, bipartisan Disability Integration Act that would remedy this injustice by preventing discrimination by the health insurance industry, and requiring all healthcare insurers to cover home healthcare.

Long Term Care & Home and Community Based Services

My administration will:
  • Establish a Federal Community-Care Agency to ensure community-based care, long-term in-home and in-community support, and visitation rights to the disabled community and seniors.
  • Update the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
  • Ensure all public housing is accessible as required by the ADA.
  • Pass Universal healthcare and extend health coverage — including coverage for home care — to currently uninsured Americans, and make sure that all health insurance covers at-home care.
  • Work to transition currently institutionalized people with disabilities to supported independent living, as appropriate.
  • Expand funding for the Aging and Disability Resource Centers.
  • Combat gentrification by prioritizing public housing for people with disabilities and historic area residents.
  • Pass a permanent Money Follows the Person (MFP) program to counter institutionalization and guarantee a Right to Return to homes and community.
  • Terminate small business exemptions to the ADA and ensure federal funds are available for compliance oversight in smaller businesses.
  • Eliminate Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) and other onerous compliance requirements and enact protections against healthcare surveillance.
  • Make it illegal for individual’s possessions’ or property to be kept by an assisted living facility after death.

Let Disabled People Work and Earn Wealth

My administration will:
  • Address the terrible disincentive that people with disabilities face when they have the opportunity to work.  Currently people with disabilities need Social Security Insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid to cover their healthcare and living expenses. However, if they work and are paid more than $1,470 monthly (or $2,460 monthly for blind persons), their access to these programs is cut off.  This forces many disabled people to stay poor and prevents them from taking on full-time work.
  • Guarantee healthcare as a right to all people and work with Congress to reform Social Security Insurance so that disabled people are not penalized for earning wages.
  • Raise the cap on earnings and create a smooth transition from financial dependence to true financial independence.
  • Expand Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Social Income (SSI) to at least a living wage (Cost of Living + 10%).
  • Expand access to Social Security/SSDI/SSI, including the provision of public lawyers to assist in SSDI application process, and eliminate the SSI waiting period.
  • End all exceptions in wage laws and workplace protections for individuals with disabilities, such as the sub-minimum wage.
  • Address the fact that many workplaces are insensitive to or even hostile to people with disabilities. My administration will work to ensure that basic things like access to buildings are provided, as well as training of employers to be aware of what disabled people CAN do, and training of staff to be respectful toward those who may be different than themselves.

Protecting Caregivers

My administration will:
  • Pay Family Caregivers and Expand Caregiver Hours.
  • Federalize Workers Compensation. (See my labor policy)

Make Disability Justice a Tenet of U.S Foreign Policy

My administration will:
  • Use America’s influence to strengthen international protections for the rights and freedoms of disabled people around the world, and to increase enforcement of those protections.
  • Ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
  • Make certain that healthy disability policy is part and parcel of all U.S. trade deals with foreign nations and corporations.
  • Ensure that disabled immigrants are afforded the same immigration rights as non-disabled immigrants.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

My administration will:
  • Fully fund IDEA so that students and their families and communities are well served, and so that states and localities don’t have to shoulder the full burden of these investments.  Few pieces of federal legislation have had as dramatically positive an impact as IDEA.  Society now has the ability to take better care of people with disabilities than ever before, and our sensitivity to their needs, as well as our response to the challenges that they face, should reflect the full force of our capacity to help.  We are capable of helping people with disabilities better than ever before in our history.
  • Create a Federal Disability Education Services Agency to ensure all public schools have the resources and staff training needed to support students with disabilities.
  • Federal investment to upgrade public schools to be accessible, as required by the ADA, plus any additional accessibility needs to be requested by students and faculty.

Marriage Equality

My administration will:
  • Fight to ensure that disabled people are guaranteed healthcare and the financial support they need, regardless of whether they’re married. Many disabled people are unable to marry the people they love and who love them — especially if those people are non-disabled — because if they do, they lose vital supports like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Opponents of this policy claim that this is because married disabled people don’t need benefits because their spouses support them financially. This is foolish on its face. Far too many disabled people need expensive care which their partners can’t afford to pay.
  • Establish Federal Marriage Equality for individuals with disabilities.

Prevention of Abuse of People with Disabilities and Support for Disabled Abuse Survivors

My administration will:
  • Guarantee that people with disabilities receive appropriate sex education. We need to teach some people with serious disabilities, and those who care for them, the meaning and importance of consent.
  • Provide people with disabilities with ways to safely report abuse from family members and caregivers.
  • Make all support services for abuse survivors accessible to people with disabilities, and teach people who have the job of preventing abuse and supporting survivors how to work with people with disabilities.

Police Training

My administration will:
  • Abolish police violence against people with disabilities by requiring all police officers to be trained on how to interact with disabled people, including people with mental illnesses.
  • Involve people with disabilities, people with mental illnesses, and their families and caregivers in drafting and providing this training curriculum. (Nothing about us, without us)
  • Require federal funding for social workers on local police forces.

Eliminating Disability-Based Disenfranchisement and Polling Place Accessibility

My administration will:
  • Make it mandatory for every state to offer mail in voting.
  • Remove the laws that are on the books in too many states that prevent people with disabilities who need guardians to assist them with household and healthcare management from voting, even if they are fully competent to do so.
  • Require polling sites to be accessible, require accessible voting machines be available and kept in good condition, and require poll workers to be trained to support voters with disabilities.
  • Provide proper, accessible transportation to and from the polls when necessary, or alternatively, assistance in voting by mail.

Mental Health Crisis Among Our Youth

My administration will:
  • Ensure federally funded mental healthcare is available for youth and teenagers experiencing mental health crisis.
  • Ensure every state has access to telehealth so that visiting a mental health provider is accessible for our youth and college students who travel away from their healthcare providers.

Intellectual Disability

My administration will:
  • Reflect the fact that society now has the ability to take better care of those with intellectual disabilities than ever before. At every stage of their lives, our sensitivity to their needs and our response to the challenges that they face, should reflect the full force of our capacity to help.
  • Put in place best practices, around the nation.  Treatment principles have evolved over the years. We now have communication intervention techniques, improved social interaction methods, specially trained therapists, behavioral intervention skills, improved approaches to environmental arrangement (techniques that involve arranging ones environment to encourage healthy interactions), incidental teaching (with uses behavioral procedures to teach elaborated language and foster interpersonal skills), milieu therapy, and many, many others.  We must rise to the challenge of caring for some of the most historically neglected and abused Americans, by providing them with cutting edge treatments that can enable them to contribute to society and to live productive and satisfying lives.

In Conclusion

Everyone deserves full human and civil rights protections, and all the accessibility and support they need to live and thrive. A Williamson Administration will work with disabled people and their families and caregivers to ensure that our country provides those with disabilities the respect they deserve as infinitely valuable and precious human beings.