(image: New Disabled South)

This week on CounterSpin: “We’ve come a long way but there’s a long way to go” is a familiar, facile framing that robs urgency from fights for justice. It’s the frame that tends to dominate annual journalistic acknowledgement of the Americans with Disabilities Act, passed 33 years ago in late July.

Like Black history month, the ADA anniversary is a peg—an opportunity for journalists to offer information and insight on issues they might not have felt there was space for throughout the year. As depressing as that is, media coverage of the date often doesn’t even rise to the occasion. You wouldn’t guess from elite media’s afterthought approach that some 1 in 4 people in this country have some type of disability, or that it’s one group that any of us could join at any moment.

Likewise, you might not understand that the ADA didn’t call for curb cuts at every corner, but for an end to “persistent discrimination in such critical areas as: employment, housing, public accommodations, education, transportation, communication, recreation, institutionalization, health services, voting and access to public services.” Nothing less than the maximal integration of disabled people into community and political life—you know, like people.

And if that’s the story, it’s clear that it demands all kinds of attention, every day—not a once a year pat on the back about “how far we’ve come.”

We talk about some of all of that with Kehsi Iman Wilson, co-founder and chief operating officer of New Disabled South.

Transcript: ‘Disabled People Are Whole People; We Need to See Media Address That Reality’

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent press coverage of the Maui fires and the climate crisis.