The truth is, if all I knew about trans people was what was in the WITH Foundation-funded NCIL Sex Ed guide for people with I/DD (it has been removed from the website but there has been no retraction, replacement, or apology), I would support Tulsi Gabbard's bill.

It talks about how you are told you are a boy or a girl. (No mention of intersex people.) Trans people don't feel as if they are what they have been told they are. There is no mention of trans people being right, or any form of transition.

The image description for the associated graphics reaffirms that AFAB people are girls (no no mention of women) and AMAB people boys (no mention of men) thinking of being something else.

This reinforces either that being trans is a stage or people with I/DD are eternal children.

NCIL has informed me that they never had the staff to do this work well, and that this was never a problem for the WITH Foundation. I have previously been told (by 3 other staff members) similar things about grants from the AAPD and the Ford Foundation.

I have reported these comments to NCIL administrators in case staff were misrepresenting the org's position. The only result was the pulling of this one document from one grant-funded project off the website.

It gives me no pleasure to say this about NCIL, an organization that we need to perform well. I want to be able to praise them. And sometimes I have been able to.

But we need to talk about the breadth, the quality, and the accessibility of the information people are provided.

Many, many disabled people face barriers to accessing information. There may not be sign language interpreters. Captions may not be accurate or (when not live) synced. Slides and images may be undeserved. Information may be screenreader-inaccessible or cognitively inaccessible.

Understanding information may depend on other information people have been denied.

In 2020, we have seen more clearly than ever before the death and devastation of denial of information.

How many people with real alternatives are hospitals STILL shoving into short-term rehab?

But we also need to talk about how we can ever, ever be a movement that has any political power if we *ourselves* are denying disabled people the information to make up our own minds on political issues?

It is not enough for the elites to make these calls on our behalf.

Our elites simply do not adequately reflect the diversity of our movement, and there are multiple specific demographics as well as immense numbers of individuals who are almost wholly excluded.

I have watched, in the name of "empowerment," many people with I/DD in the service systems given choices to make -- and partial information designed to steer them to a particular choice. If, despite this manipulation, they fail to make the desired choice, ...

... they may be subjected to "personal goals" designed to get them to choose "better," or the choices may be removed from them altogether, or they may be slandered on the first page of the file that every new staff person reads about them.

To watch the organizations disabled people founded in the hope of real liberation aping the practices of abusive institutional staff is heartbreaking. It is shattering.

A friend reminded me today that the orgs will never get us the revolutionary change we need, and that's true.

But the very orgs that dispense and take money in our names on the premise that they will being meaningful change are some of the greatest barriers we face to meaningful change. And that is something we need to address.

Here is my takeaway from all of this: if all I knew about who I am is what the orgs that say they represent me think I am worthy of being told (because I can't get better access from the LGBTQIA+ orgs than from the cross-disability orgs), I would choose to oppose my own people.

I would not know any better.

I would not *be able to* know any better.

And that fact should shame the HELL out of the orgs who put me in this position -- but I know it doesn't.