Got Milk?

Last night, I watched "Milk."

The disability rights movement needs a Harvey Milk. If a martyr for the cause, how much the better?

What Milk had going for him was a constituency. From the time he was able to list businesses that were gay-friendly in the Castro until his assassination, he had a physically centered constituency that he could rally, excite, and motivate.

I knew a guy who said he always avoided being with other wheelers or people with a disability. "It looks too much like the bus from the group home just got in," he said. I think that's a fundamental error in thinking. Lucky for him, his parents were wealthy and handed him a business that grosses millions every year. He insulates himself with money.

Try these on for size:

"I don't hang around with other gays. It looks like Christopher Street on Halloween night."

"I don't hang around with other African-Americans."

"I don't hang around with other overweight middle-aged white chicks. It looks like the Red Hat Society just invaded."

Come. On.

How on earth can you create a movement when there's no solidarity? When you don't want to belong to the group you belong to? Despite what Disney and after-school specials try to tell you, the individual matters pretty much squat. If you get a thousand, twenty thousand, a million people to come together, that's a force greater than one. That's a force that can gather and display its power in how it votes, businesses that are frequented, products that are bought.

At this point, you're only disenfranchised if you want to be.

Are people afraid of the angry, bitter cripple stereotype? What's the price of speaking up? Is it really that hard to get angry, disenfranchised people to speak up?

I admit I am not hooked in to the disability rights movement. If there's a Harvey Milk out there, I'm unaware of it and would love to hear that there is.

Please. Prove me wrong.