New Disabled South is Building Political Power Among Disabled Southerners
In 2023, Northwest Health Foundation’s Director of Programs Jen Matheson and Program Officer Cleo Tung traveled to Louisiana for the Funders Committee for Civic Participation’s annual convening. While there, they heard from New Disabled South, a new nonprofit that is working to improve the lives of disabled people and build strong disability rights and justice movements in the South. Jen and Cleo loved what they heard, so of course we had to learn more.
We spoke with Dom Kelly, President & CEO of New Disabled South, at the beginning of August 2024.
If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it 100 times: the people most affected by policies should have a voice in creating those policies. Decision makers should come from the communities they’re making decisions about. And yet, this often isn’t the case. Throughout U.S. history, U.S. governing bodies have blocked many, many communities from participating in our democracy: people who didn’t own land, Black people, women, immigrants and, of course, disabled people.
As long as our democracy isn’t truly reflective of everyone it represents, our policies and systems will continue to do more harm than good. And we know that many of our policies and systems actively harm disabled community members.
New Disabled South, which includes both a 501(c)(3) and a 501(c)(4) called New Disabled South Rising, is fighting for disability representation in 14 states in the U.S. South. They have three priorities—poverty and care, criminalization, and democracy—and they’re building a coalition of organizations and individuals aligned around the ten disability justice principles. The coalition meets regularly to strategize, organize action, hold each other accountable, celebrate wins and recognize barriers.
Dom told us there was already a lot of great disability rights and justice work happening in the South, but no one was talking to each other. That’s why New Disabled South has created a regional forum for research, organizing, narrative and policy work. From the start, they knew New Disabled South needed a 501(c)(4) arm to fully participate in policy work. 501(c)(4)s are too rare among disability-led organizations.
So far, they’ve done policy work at state and federal levels. For example, New Disabled South is advocating to pass a Disabled Voter Bill of Rights in five southern states. This bill would protect access to voting for disabled citizens, guaranteeing curbside voting, accessible polling locations, and more. While some of the policies they’ve advocated for, like the Disabled Voter Bill of Rights, have been disability-specific, they also speak up on intersectional issues, like reproductive justice and gender affirming care.
In addition to direct policy advocacy, New Disabled South has created a Plain Language Policy Dashboard that uses AI to translate policies into more accessible language. (Don’t worry, a human is reviewing the translations before they’re published!) They also ran Disabled Voters Rising, an online training and political education series that attracted hundreds of disabled and nondisabled audience members.
There’s been no shortage of interest in New Disabled South. People are hungry for the work that New Disabled South is doing. The need has existed for a long time. Not to mention, many people found themselves disabled by the COVID-19 pandemic, and now those people are searching for community and a political home. In addition, funders are starting to pay attention and devote real money to disability rights and justice.
Launched in 2022 with Dom as the sole staff member, in two years New Disabled South has grown to 15 full-time staff and four part-time staff. And Dom isn’t stopping there. Recently, they’ve been planning to launch a national organization with a “New Disabled South for every region.” Maybe sometime soon there’ll be a New Disabled Pacific Northwest.
Disability-led 501(c)(4) infrastructure is a long time coming, and NWHF couldn’t be more excited to witness it emerging across the country!