This week I had a serious conversation with my mother that I never expected to have in my whole life:
What is the plan is to get my disabled brother to safety before they come for him next. Nazis began the T4 program barely two years after they created their first concentration camp. We have concentration camps now. Add to that, Trump publicly mocked Serge Kovaleski’s disability and the GOP has already launched a full scale assault on the ADA.
It is not a reach to think the disabled community will be a target.
It’s weird to simultaneously ask yourself ‘are you being an alarmist?’ but also knowing the dehumanization of the disabled community has already begun, and watching what is happening to asylum seekers and both legal and undocumented immigrants, it also still feels like it’s just pragmatism to make a clear plan of escape for your loved ones.
My great grandfather was placed in a concentration camp for dissent against Hitler, my family has already lived this, the terrors of tyranny is imprinted in our collective psyche, ingrained in our DNA. He survived, my brother won’t.
So maybe it is alarmist, maybe my family is acting out of irrational fear, and I really hope that’s the case. All I know is that I’m scared for the vulnerable and though a lot of can fight, we have to get those who can’t to safety first.
—natalie michelle
Flommist Natalie Michelle doesn’t have a bio. She just rants. Copyright © 2018 Natalie Michelle. Image source.
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