By Laura Millar, MPH, MA, MCHES
I’m sharing this NPR news report by Katherine Kokal, published at WUWM Milwaukee’s NPR, titled “‘A lifeline’ lost: Trump admin cuts program for WI students who are deaf and blind.” It covers Wisconsin’s deafblind program losing federal funding, and I need to talk about something I’ve been hearing throughout my years in the Blind and Disabled community.
As a queer blind public health and sexual health professional working at the intersection of sexuality, disability, and ableism, I’ve been asked some version of these questions, or told some version of this statement, countless times:
“Why are we wasting time on LGBTQ issues, pronouns, gender identity, all that stuff? Why should blind organizations support transgender rights or gay marriage? We need to focus on what matters to US, braille, accessible technology, employment. Those other issues are distractions we can’t afford.”
I understand those frustrations. They are real. Our kids DO need braille, cane skills, accessible technology, and so much more. The exhaustion of constantly fighting for basic accommodations is overwhelming. And yes, learning about new terminology and other movements’ issues can feel like one more thing on an already impossible to-do list.
But here’s what just happened in Wisconsin, and why those questions miss something crucial: A program serving 170 deafblind children lost all federal funding. Not because of budget cuts. Not because it wasn’t working. They lost funding because the program had inclusive hiring practices and used words like “transition” (referring to students transitioning from high school to adult life) and “privilege” (in a family testimonial).
The same ideology that attacks transgender rights was just weaponized to eliminate services for deafblind kids.
This is why we can’t afford to stay in our lane anymore.
When we say “let’s just focus on blindness issues and stay out of LGBTQ stuff,” we miss that attacks on other communities become attacks on us. The same ideology targeting LGBTQ people? It just cut braille and intervener services for deafblind kids. The language and values we think are “distractions”? They’re being used as weapons to eliminate disability services.
And let’s be real: many blind people ARE LGBTQ. When we say “that’s not our issue,” we are telling blind queer and transgender people they don’t fully belong in our community. We are forcing people to choose which part of their identity matters.
The 10 Principles of Disability Justice, developed by Patty Berne, Aurora Levins Morales, Mia Mingus, Stacey Milbern, Leroy F. Moore Jr., Eli Clare, and Sebastian Margaret through their work with Sins Invalid, a disability justice performance project, show us that our fights are connected. These principles, rooted in the leadership of disabled queer and transgender people of color, include intersectionality, cross-movement solidarity, and collective liberation. They teach us that we are not standing with other movements just because it is nice (though it is), but because the same forces threatening LGBTQ people, immigrant families, and communities of color are the exact forces cutting our kids’ disability services.
The 10 Principles are not just abstract values. They are tools for practice. I encourage you to read them, study them, and actively incorporate them into your advocacy, your teaching, your parenting, and your organizational culture. Practicing cultural humility means recognizing that none of us has all the answers, and that our responsibility is to keep learning. Our movements get stronger when we let the leadership of queer, trans, disabled people of color guide us, and when we commit to embedding the 10 Principles into the daily culture of how we work, organize, and live.
It is not enough to know about the principles; we have to let them guide how we show up, how we build movements, and how we refuse to leave anyone behind.
We are not choosing between braille and transgender rights. We are recognizing that if we do not stand together across movements, we all lose separately.
The question isn’t “why are we wasting time on LGBTQ issues when our kids need braille.”
The real question is: “How do we build solidarity strong enough that when any of us are targeted, we all rise together?”
Because Wisconsin just showed us, they are already coming for all of us at once. And that means our survival depends on standing together. Blind advocacy and LGBTQ advocacy are not separate fights. They are interconnected struggles for dignity, belonging, and liberation. And those struggles are tied to the fights of immigrant families, communities of color, and so many others facing systemic erasure. If we allow ourselves to be divided, we will all keep losing pieces of the future our kids deserve. If we choose solidarity, we create the possibility of something bigger, stronger, and freer than any of us can build alone.
Read the full NPR news report: “‘A lifeline’ lost: Trump admin cuts program for WI students who are deaf and blind” by Katherine Kokal at WUWM Milwaukee’s NPR.
Learn more about the 10 Principles of Disability Justice at Sins Invalid: https://www.sinsinvalid.org/disability-justice-principles
Let’s have these conversations. I write about disability justice, sexuality, and building inclusive movements at https://www.lauramillar.com, where you can also learn about my consulting and training services. Support this work at https://www.patreon.com/lauramillar.
This piece was developed with the support of AI technology for drafting and editing. All ideas, perspectives, and final direction are my own.