“They were not medical problems to rehabilitate. We were not medical problems. I was never going to undo the damage polio had done to my nerve cells and walk again, nor was this my goal. The disabled veterans coming home from the Vietnam War were never going to grow their limbs back or heal their spinal cords and walk again. My friends with muscular dystrophy were never going to not have been born with muscular dystrophy. Accidents, illnesses, genetic conditions, neurological disorders, and aging are facts of the human condition, just as much as race or sex.”
― Judith Heumann, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist
“Change never happens at the pace we think it should. It happens over years of people joining together, strategizing, sharing, and pulling all the levers they possibly can. Gradually, excruciatingly slowly, things start to happen, and then suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, something will tip.”
― Judith Heumann, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist
“Don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘You go for it. You’re CHINGONA.’
In the end, I took the job.
And, by the way, if you look up CHINGONA at Urbandictionary.com, this is what you’ll find: ‘Chingonas are the most badass girls in the world. Don’t mess with them or they will kick you in the nalgas.”
― Judith Heumann, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist
