Mission of the Disability March:

While we did not come together to adopt a formal mission statement, the effort was launched through a desire to have disabled people visible during a time in which far-right policies will fall hard on the disabled community. The disabled community is endangered because much able activism is difficult to access, and that needs to change. We need to be visible, to be leading and forming alliances, to be counted as activists and as members of our communities.

Our ongoing function here and on the site is going to focus on these elements:

1. Providing way for people to connect and support each other via Facebook and Twitter to dialogue around disability rights in activism;

2. A space on the website for disability activist resources. If you have specific organizations that we have not posted yet, please send a message to disabilitymarch@gmail.com and I will add it to our site; we can also add additional pages of resources.

3. We will also be e-mailing out occasional activist updates via our newsletter and here on this group as needed if anyone contacts me about organizing efforts; if you have not yet signed up for that mailing list, you can do that here: http://eepurl.com/cywY_9

4. Opportunities to get involved in specific campaigns, which we will share in this group as we hear about them.

We discussed whether or not to found an organization and decided that the leaders of the effort don’t have the ability to start a nonprofit or formalize an internal structure, but we have the strength here of all these great activists, and we hope this can be the seed for many other projects we do together.

We will not be adding additional marchers or doing other marches, but we hope that the model is something that will spread!

Mission of the Women’s March:

“We stand together in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families—recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country…The rhetoric of the past election cycle has insulted, demonized, and threatened many of us—women, immigrants of all statuses, those with diverse religious faiths particularly Muslim, people who identify as LGBTQIA, Native and Indigenous people, Black and Brown people, people with disabilities, the economically impoverished and survivors of sexual assault. We are confronted with the question of how to move forward in the face of national and international concern and fear. In the spirit of democracy and honoring the champions of human rights, dignity, and justice who have come before us, we join in diversity to show our presence in numbers too great to ignore. The Women’s March on Washington will send a bold message to our new administration on their first day in office, and to the world that women’s rights are human rights. We stand together, recognizing that defending the most marginalized among us is defending all of us.”