Making My Voice Heard

Yesterday morning, I slipped out the front door at 4:30am while my family slept. I drove to Orlando through empty streets and boarded a charter bus full of people I had never met before. But I had something in common with the 54 strangers on that bus...we are all affected by developmental disabilities. And we were all outraged by proposed state budget cuts to programs/services for the disabled. Outraged enough to take some action and make a trip to the capital with only 24 hours notice.

We drove 265 miles (over 4 hours) to the capital in Tallahassee. Once there, we met others gathered outside the capital for a rally. The group consisted of people affected by many different disabilities: down syndrome, cerebral palsy, spina bifida, autism and more. Many people held up signs they had made to protest the funding cuts. Many people were angry and the crowd often broke into chants of "No More Cuts!". I was moved to tears by several of the speakers. The disabled man who was going to lose his group home and independence. The mayor of Tallahassee who told us about his autistic niece and shared his support. When the rally ended the crowd dispersed, and the plan was to meet again outside Governor Scott's office in 1 1/2 hours.

    

My main concern was how the budget cuts would affect CARD, the Center for Autism and Related Disabilities. This organization has been an invaluable source of information, support and guidance to our family since Ellany was diagnosed. They have already suffered repeated budget cuts and are down to 10 staff (without an office), serving 5,800 people in 7 counties. Enough!! I teamed up with 3 other people who were there to support CARD: Justin (unfortunately named mother of an autistic boy), George (father of an autistic boy),  and Erica (19 year old high-functioning autistic). We decided to use our time before meeting at the governor's office to talk to as many legislators as possible. We quickly discovered that it was not a good time to meet with them...both the House and Senate were in session! This news was frustrating. But we still crisscrossed the capital building countless times and went up & down more stairs than I care to remember, trying to locate the offices of senators and representatives. We talked to their aides, told our stories and asked them to pass along our message. I did finally manage to meet with my rep., Bill Nelson. He actually came out of his meeting to talk to me, which I thought was impressive!

Click here to read an article from the St. Petersburg Times about our rally.

I feel really good about doing something and making my voice heard, about a topic that I feel passionately about. I would gladly do it again! And I probably will... :0)