By Ramona Schindelheim for WorkingNation.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Wyoming News Service reporting for the WorkingNation-Public News Service Collaboration

The number of people with disabilities who are working rose last year to 21.3%, up from 19.1% in 2021. Still, those statistics lag far behind the 65% workforce participation rate in 2022 for people with no disabilities.

However, some key factors are helping open doors into the workforce for people with disabilities. For one, employers are recognizing there is a pool of untapped talent in a tight labor market as they look to fill millions of jobs.

At the same time, companies are also trying to diversify their workforces.

Some advocates see enthusiasm among companies to hire people with disabilities, but stress employers need direction as to how to go about it.

"I think it's come a long way. A lot more people are interested in doing it. But they don't do it for lots of different reasons. Mostly, it's because they come at it the wrong way," says Randy Lewis, who calls himself an accidental disability advocate.

He founded the NogWog (No Greatness Without Goodness) Disability Initiative and advises employers on how to hire people with disabilities.

How One Initiative Changed a Work Culture for the Better

Lewis gained firsthand experience while serving as senior vice president at Walgreens in charge of the supply chain until his retirement in 2013.

There, Lewis created thousands of full-time jobs for people with disabilities when he launched a disability employment initiative in 2007 at a distribution center in Anderson, South Carolina that included workers with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The mandate - same jobs and same pay as everyone else. It became so successful, it expanded to other locations, and set a national standard. To date, Walgreens says it's shared the model with 400 businesses.

Lewis uses that experience when other companies are looking to hire people with disabilities. His emphasis? Hiring people with disabilities can change everyone around them for the better.

"If somebody calls me up and they say they're interested in hiring people with disabilities, I tell them to go to one of our two buildings that has 30% of people with disabilities, a large number of people. The reason to go there is somebody can tell you the facts and cite numbers. But until you see it for real, you won't do it," explains Lewis.

He stresses visiting those centers makes it clear that the workers with disabilities are getting the job done. Besides higher retention rates among workers with disabilities and the bottom line being boosted, the culture makes an impression. "What really gets people to say 'I want to do this' is talking to the managers about what it's like to work there," says Lewis.

Part of the culture, he explains, is a shared goal of success for everyone and an environment where people talk to one another and pay attention to each other.

When Lewis advises companies, he says rethinking their hiring process for workers with disabilities is key. "They'll ask what kind of jobs are good for people with disabilities? But that's not the question you should ask. The first question asked, 'Where do you have hiring opportunities? And what does that job require?' Because there are people with disabilities that can do it," says Lewis.

The idea, he explains, is to match people to skills and advocates the use of a working interview where a potential employee can do an internship and demonstrate their skills. Using peer coaches also adds to success.

Lewis also credits having an executive champion to provide the "fire in the engine" to define an end goal of success and roadmaps to get there. He proved to be that fire in the engine for Walgreens, inspired by his son who has autism. Lewis speaks about his experiences publicly, including a TEDx Talk.

"If you have a sufficient number of people with disabilities, you will change the culture, the entire building. But for sure, the people that work with a person with a disability will be changed for the better," says Lewis.

Smaller Retailers Reflecting Communities They Serve

For smaller retailers without the resources of corporations to develop initiatives to hire people with disabilities, some are finding success without an official human resources policy. One example is Murdoch's Ranch and Home Supply - located in six western states.

"We have 2,300 team members. We have 40 store managers. They have families. They have life experience. They have personal connections in their communities," says Tory Atkins, chief human resources officer for Murdoch's Ranch and Home Supply.

"We have managers whose children or siblings have autism or Down syndrome. They've developed an advocacy for people in those situations. And so, they're in a position to have a positive influence in their community."

Atkins says part of that community includes a longstanding relationship with the Special Olympics.

"I think there's a natural connection that ends up happening when organizations are advocating for people with disabilities - that we're a logical place for them to look because we can hire someone," notes Atkins. "For many people, retail is their first career exposure to a job, their first career opportunity. They're learning lots of life, leadership and professional skills by coming to work for us."

Atkins says workers with disabilities bring a strong sense of positivity and ownership of their work and he adds, it's contagious. "I think it builds a greater sense of team, a greater sense of respect in our work environment when we do have people of different abilities."

To accommodate people with disabilities, Atkins says some employees have job coaches through organizations providing disability services. On the company's end, he says, the only adjustment that is made is pairing an employee with disabilities with a mentor or coach already on the team.

Mentoring Employees with Disabilities

One of those mentors is Marny Huffaker, the store manager at Murdoch's Ranch and Home Supply in Evanston, Wyoming. She was awarded Mentor of the Year in 2022 by Disability:IN in Uinta County, Wyoming and the organization named Murdoch's Employer of the Year in 2020 in Uinta County.

In her eight years as manager, Huffaker says she has hired 10 people with disabilities, mostly intellectual or developmental disabilities.

"I enjoy seeing the accomplishments from others learning a new skill. It actually helps me to work on my skills too, because I learn just as much as they are. I'm teaching them something and they are teaching me," says Huffaker.

She says the store participates in mentoring programs with the county and with high school students who come in each week and learn basic skills. Employees also answer questions about the workforce.

Having people with disabilities on the team, Huffaker says, has a positive effect on workers. "I think it teaches every one of us patience. We're always in a hurry to the next thing and I personally learned patience. It doesn't have to be the fastest job when the job gets done right."

Huffaker says customers seek out specific employees with disabilities, including Tanesha Chandler. "'Hey, where's Tanesha? She can help us,'" says Huffaker.

Chandler is a 33-year-old woman with Down syndrome who works part-time and was dubbed Murdoch's queen of customer service by a local newspaper in 2018. Now in her sixth year at Murdoch's, she says she looks forward to going to work which plays an important role in her life.

"Outside of work, other than her companion service worker, there's not a lot outside of work. So work is her community hub," explains Elaine Chandler, Tanesha's mother.

She says, as someone with a child who has a disability, she's witnessing changes in attitudes and expectations about hiring people with disabilities.

"It depends on the group you are in," explains the elder Chandler. In her community, she credits a disability advocate who had a child with Down syndrome who fought for change. "Just an amazing attitude and so much strength and wanting to build all of these humans up and help them and just have them succeed."

Huffaker summarizes, "I think everybody deserves a chance to be able to work. I think you shouldn't ever hold back on hiring someone with a disability. Ever. I think most of the time, they're going to prove you wrong like, 'I can do this job and I can do it better.' I would never hesitate to hire somebody with a disability."


Ramona Schindelheim wrote this article for WorkingNation.


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By Marianne Dhenin for Yes! Magazine.
Broadcast version by Shanteya Hudson for Georgia News Connection reporting for the YES! Media/Public News Service Collaboration

When then-Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced in April 2021 that a new law enforcement training complex would be built in the Weelaunee Forest, or South River Forest, in Dekalb County, near Atlanta, Georgia, a diverse coalition of organizers, activists, and other community members formed to oppose the project under the "Stop Cop City" banner. For Atlanta-based disability justice activists who are part of the coalition, the movement to stop Cop City is a disability justice issue.

"It is critical for us to bring a disability perspective when we talk about Cop City," says Atlanta-based Dom Kelly, co-founder of the nonprofit New Disabled South (NDS), "because the construction of this facility will disproportionately harm disabled people."

Almost three years after Bottoms' announcement, Cop City, officially titled the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, is under construction on an 85-acre plot of forested land owned by the City of Atlanta in DeKalb County. If completed, the campus will be the nation's largest police training complex, equipped with military-grade facilities and a mock city for urban police training.

Many who have mobilized against the project have highlighted the adverse environmental effects of clearing dozens of acres of the South River Forest to make way for the development. Indigenous-led groups also oppose the destruction of the Weelaunee Forest and its wildlife habitat.

Meanwhile, racial justice groups foreground the fact that police violence disproportionately harms communities of color, and abolitionist organizations reject any expansion of policing and incarceration. They argue that Cop City would further militarize the police force. "Police here have already responded to protests with militarized tactics, chemical weapons, and domestic terrorism charges," Atlanta organizer Micah Herskind told The New York Times last year. "Cop City would only further provide police with training and equipment to suppress dissent and terrorize Black and working-class communities."

According to disabled organizers, each of these issues affects their community in unique ways. The framework of disability justice helps reveal these intersections.

"Destroying any portion of that forest is going to have an impact on our ability to fight climate change, and then that will disproportionately impact the disabled community," says Kelly. Disabled folks are at greater risk of being negatively affected by climate change, including experiencing worsening health conditions due to changing weather or being left behind during climate-change-related disasters.

Many disabled people also live on fixed incomes, making it nearly impossible for them to afford equipment to help navigate the effects of climate change, like air conditioners to survive a heatwave or backup generators to get through a blackout.

Disabled people are also especially vulnerable to police violence and are overrepresented in the nation's incarcerated population. "Disabled people, especially disabled people of color, are disproportionately harmed by police and the carceral system," says Kelly.

NDS, which works across the southern United States, partnered with Data for Progress on a recent voter survey in six Southern states including Georgia, examining sentiments on law enforcement encounters for disabled people in the region. The survey respondents agreed that disabled people experience discrimination during law enforcement encounters due to their disabilities.

Among Black and disabled respondents, rates of agreement were higher than among White and non-disabled respondents, pointing to the important difference between lived experience and outside perception of law enforcement encounters. Over 50 percent of Black survey respondents said they believe disabled people experience discrimination when interacting with law enforcement. About 34 percent of White respondents agreed that disabled people face discrimination in these encounters. More than 46 percent of all disabled respondents and about 37 percent of all non-disabled respondents agreed that disabled people experience discrimination when interacting with law enforcement.

Further, according to data from the Survey of Prison Inmates, 66% of people incarcerated in the U.S. report having a disability. Studies have also found that as many as half of those killed by police nationwide are disabled.

Black people are already three times more likely than white people to be killed during a police encounter-disabled or not. Additionally, they are more likely to be disabled and less likely to have access to needed health care.

Often, police encounters with disabled people become violent because officers make assumptions about so-called normal behavior. If an individual does not speak, move, or behave as an officer expects or demands, rather than considering that they might be disabled, the officer may assume noncompliance and react with force.

"A lot of the Black men that Atlanta police or [those from] other police departments in the metro area have killed were disabled," says Susi Durán, chair of the Atlanta chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, another group actively organizing against Cop City.

In 2015, police in Chamblee, Georgia, just northeast of Atlanta, shot and killed Anthony Hill, a Black man with bipolar disorder who was experiencing a mental health crisis. In 2021, in a similar incident, a DeKalb County officer killed Matthew Zadok Williams. His family later told reporters he was having a mental health crisis, and they wished the police would have gotten him help.

Experts suggest that a training facility such as Cop City would worsen the criminalization of disabled people rather than lessen the issue. Studies show that training programs, even those intended to reduce implicit biases against marginalized groups, do not improve police interactions with those communities. Research also shows that the increasing militarization of the police disproportionately threatens minority groups.

Kiana Jackson, Research and Coalition Organizing Manager at NDS and a co-author of the recent NDS and Data for Progress survey, says people have been connecting the dots between the discrimination they've seen in their communities and police militarization. "It is important for disabled people to get out on the forefront of these issues and say, 'Hey, we are victims of this. We are the ones being killed,'" she says.

Many disabled folks in Atlanta and DeKalb County have been doing just that as an outspoken contingent of the Stop Cop City movement. When the Atlanta City Council scheduled a vote on an ordinance for funding Cop City at a council meeting in June 2023, hundreds of community members showed up to make their voices heard at a public comment session that lasted 14 hours.

"Disabled people are a part of the Atlanta community," said Barry Lee, an Atlanta-based disabled artist who spoke at the meeting. Lee then urged the council to "allocate the proposed funds toward creating better accessibility for the city of Atlanta."

The city consistently ranks low for quality of life for its disabled residents, partly because of its crumbling sidewalks, inaccessible transportation, and lack of health care facilities. "There are parts of the city where it is difficult to walk on some sidewalks," says Durán. "Plus, we lost our Level I trauma center when Atlanta Medical Center closed down [in 2022]."

When Georgia-based respondents to the recent NDS and Data for Progress survey were asked whether their state had adequate resources, such as medical or mental health resources for disabled people when interacting with law enforcement, only 31 percent said they thought so.

People are frustrated, Durán says, because rather than the Atlanta City Council allocating funding for repairing infrastructure or shoring up the city's health care, "They're spending it on policing." Slogans like "Defund the Police" and "Care, Not Cops," heard at Stop Copy City protests capture this sentiment. Like Lee, many others who spoke at the public comment session also called on the City of Atlanta to allocate funding to infrastructure, housing, or youth programs rather than policing.

Despite the mass opposition at its meeting last June, the Atlanta City Council voted to approve $31 million in funding for the construction of Cop City.

When the Stop Cop City movement launched its next front, disabled organizers were again at the fore. The "Vote to Stop Cop City" referendum campaign began soon after that council meeting, aiming to get a vote on Cop City's construction on an upcoming ballot. One of its two fiscal sponsors was New Disabled South Rising (NDRS), NDS's political arm.

Kelly says backing the referendum campaign "aligned with the work [NDS was] already doing" as part of the organization's mission to support efforts decriminalizing disability and ensuring disabled people have access to the democratic process.

As fiscal sponsor on the campaign, NDS worked behind the scenes processing and disbursing contributions. Kelly says the organization also helped ensure that communications and canvassing were inclusive of disabled Atlantans.

Between its launch in June and September 11, 2023, the referendum campaign collected and submitted 116,000 signatures from Atlanta residents. That number is well over the threshold needed to get Cop City on the ballot. But the City of Atlanta has questioned it and made a series of attempts to disrupt the validation process, which Stop Cop City organizers claim are stalling tactics undermining Atlantans' right to vote on the issue.

As the referendum petitions move through a contested verification process and direct action to stop Cop City's construction continues, disabled organizers say they're committed to continuing their work. "If we want to see collective liberation in our lifetimes, we have to fight back against the further militarization of police and destruction of our already precious forest environment to ensure that future generations have a planet to live on and won't be murdered by police," says Kelly. "Cop City is one piece of that struggle."


Marianne Dhenin wrote this article for YES! Magazine.


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As the country observes Autism Acceptance Month, Nebraska families raising a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder are among those learning they will be receiving financial assistance.

The Family Support Waiver is based on passage of a 2022 bill and will provide up to $10,000 annually for 850 Nebraska families with a child with a developmental or intellectual disability, and the child will also receive Medicaid coverage.

Leslie Bishop Hartung, president and CEO of the Autism Center of Nebraska, said many Nebraska families raising children with a variety of developmental disabilities struggle to afford their child's care needs.

"It's not a lot of money but it might be just enough for families to bridge those gaps when they really need support, especially over the summer break when there's no school for children," Bishop Hartung pointed out. "And also, specific services that might be a real financial burden."

Families can use the waiver funds for services such as respite care, family caregiver training, home modifications and assistive technologies. Depending on the child's limitations and level of support needed, families can face considerable costs meeting the needs of a child with a developmental or intellectual disability.

Jennifer Clark, deputy director of the Developmental Disability Division for the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, said they are notifying around 150 families per month between now and August they will be receiving the Family Support Waiver. The notices are prioritized according to the family's need. Clark says this was determined by their responses to a survey DHHS sent to families with a child on the developmental disabilities waiting list.

Receiving first priority are families in crisis.

"Where the child tends to self-harm or harm others, so whether they're harming their siblings or their family members," Clark outlined. "The second priority is children with disabilities who are at risk for placement in juvenile detention centers or other out-of-home placements."

Clark added families in which the grandparent is the primary caregiver are given third priority, followed by families with more than one child with a disability living at home. Remaining families are prioritized based on the date they applied to the developmental disabilities waiting list.

Jordan Squiers, board president of The Arc of Buffalo County, said they are hopeful the waiver will help fill gaps in services, especially for older youths who do not become eligible for more inclusive services until they turn 21.

"They might be able to get additional help in their home; they might be able to hire somebody to take somebody out into the community more often," Squiers explained. "Kids that age do get the benefit of the schools but obviously we know there's lots of hours in the day outside of that; weekends, summers."

The Family Support Waiver is one of three Home and Community-Based Services Medicaid Waivers available in Nebraska.

April is Autism Acceptance Month and as rates grow, support organizations in South Dakota hope more children on the spectrum get the tools they need to succeed in school.

Researchers with the Annie E Casey Foundation say nearly 9% of South Dakota students receive special education services due to an autism diagnosis, which is four percentage points higher than a decade ago.

Carla Miller, executive director of South Dakota Parent Connection, which works with families of children with disabilities, encouraged parents of children with autism to be proactive with school officials and follow up as needed. For school districts, she stressed clear communication is vital.

"We need to be careful we're not using a lot of jargon that's our related to our field, and really make sure that we ask parents, are they understanding the information we're giving?" Miller urged.

Miller also advised classroom leaders should allow students with autism to participate in as many general class activities as possible while acknowledging their needs. With staffing shortages still a concern, she called on districts to provide more training, especially for general educators.

Miller emphasized special educators cannot foster a welcoming environment on their own and in an era of more awareness, Miller hopes school districts look at students on the spectrum as individuals who bring unique qualities to their class.

"How is autism showing up in the life of that child, and how is it impacting that child?" Miller asked. "Trying to stay away from stereotypical descriptions of autism that can put kids in a box. "

Autism presents a broad range of conditions highlighted by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, and communication. Advocates stressed symptoms can vary widely and the disorder looks different for everyone on the spectrum.


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