Merry Christmas
Do we need policy for persons with disability or disabled persons for policy? No doubt: both!
As long as our society will not acknowledge legal capability of persons with disability, their rights to mobility, instruction, work and home owning will continue to be out of reach.
As long as our society will continue to violate the rights of persons with disability, disregarding our Constitution, it cannot be considered as a real democracy. Notwithstanding our Country approved very advanced laws in the field of disability, which were also an example for other countries – laws on social integration, on the access and integration in the world of work, on the equal opportunities, etc. – persons with disability are still at the border of our society; the System is still wasting, with easy and guilty indifference, important human resources.
In my opinion it is not excessive to affirm that, being a person with disability, my dignity as a person, due to this total carelessness by the State, is infringed every day.
On the last December 3rd, I was honored to be invited at Palazzo Chigi to celebrate the World Day of Disability: I could not imagine a better place to report and evidence the huge efforts and difficulties that a persons with disability has to face daily.
Discussing with the people that have always striven to legally recognize the rights of persons with disability, was for me an opportunity to think over a fundamental issue: persons with disability for the politics.
The right to be in politically active has to be effective for everybody; also for other very important reasons: the rights and duty to political representation; the presence of a persons with disability could in itself contribute to break down skepticism and prejudices; the person with disability could contribute to substance social and solidarity issues; the person with disability could even strongly validate the concept “nothing about us without us”.
In the end, the presence of persons with disability in the State institutions could contribute to make our society fair and accessible to everybody.
Merry Christmas.
Salvatore Cimmino