So, as Sam introduced, my name is Amythest.
It’s my honour to be here today.
I am autistic, and I am chronically ill, and I am disabled.
And every year I find it more difficult to speak on disability and filicide.
The challenge is this: How many ways can I come up with to say, “Please stop killing
us”?
This is a day of remembrance.
This is a day of mourning.
This is a day where we gather as a community and say, through our presence and our vigil,
that we will not forget those who were lost.
We will not look away from this horror.
We will witness, and we will grieve the loss of life, and we will not accept this.
Because this is also a day of judgement.
This is a day of accountability.
This is a day on which we lift our voices and call for justice; on which we affirm with
our strength, our numbers, and our fire that this is not okay.
That we are watching.
That we demand better, and we won’t be silenced, and we stand together to demand protection
under the law and full rights for every disabled person.
But how does this happen?
It’s a question that’s asked a lot.
How does this happen?
This happens because disabled lives are considered less valuable, less valid, and because disability
is thought of as worse than death.
Because disabled people are considered burdens, objects of pity or inspiration, as incomplete
or extra or subhuman.
Ableism has been around a long time, but disabled people have been around longer.
It’s been this way for a while, but it hasn’t always been so, and it doesn’t have to be
this way.
Tens of thousands of years ago- stay with me- there was a Neanderthal man who lived,
who loved and was loved.
We know from his skeleton that he was disabled at a young age and later incurred serious
injuries and developed a joint disease that would have made daily life difficult and painful.
Researchers call him Shanidar-1, after the location where he was found.
He died elderly and well cared for, at an age impressive even for non-disabled Neanderthals
to reach.
What that means that, disabled as he was, his life was considered valuable.
Although he could not contribute to group welfare in the same way was as his non-disabled
peers could, he was still an important member.
Shanidar-1 was cared for by his community for decades, and he is not alone.
There are many other examples of early humans and pre-humans caring and providing for disabled
individuals.
There is nothing natural, just, or fair about the way we treat disabled people today.
Colonialism is not natural.
Capitalism is not natural.
Ableism is not natural, it is created and cultivated.
They appeal to “nature” to justify their bigotry.
They defend their position as oppressors with lies.
They say, “Survival of the fittest.”
They say, “Burdens on society.”
They say, “Unnatural, abnormal, to be corrected.”
And they are wrong.
We are as natural as the Western Red Cedar.
We have every right to be here.
But oh, how they hate us and fear us, all the more when they can’t control us.
We are not burdens.
We are not black holes.
We are not broken, or bad luck, or better off dead.
There is nothing true in their hatred.
Their fear is not sacred.
And their ignorance is not untouchable.
We will change the world, and they will change with it or be left behind.
I can’t speak to hate anymore.
Let me speak on love.
Love moves mountains.
Love is hard work.
Love is labour, love is sacrifice.
Love is giving, is healing, is changing.
Love implements policy.
Love demands justice.
Love listens and follows.
Love is allyship, is uplifting, is empowering.
Love must motivate what we do, always.
Love should be our highest goal.
It is love that brings us here today.
Love, and her sister Hope, and those beautiful daughters Anger and Courage.
It is love that illuminates fear and reveals it for what it is.
It is love that combats hate, that calls for progress, that demands we do better.
It is love that drives us, because it has to be.
And now I speak to every disabled person who is listening: You deserve the world.
You deserve to experience its daily majesties and mundane miracles.
What you can do matters.
What you want is important.
Your life has worth and value.
Together, here today, we affirm that we deserve to live.
We are better alive than dead.
We are just as human as they are.
We are not alone, and together we are mighty.
We have done and will do incredible things.
And to those we have lost to the violence of ableism, those named and unknown, those
relative few accounted for and the countless lost to indifference and time: I am so sorry.
You were wronged.
You deserved so much better.
We remember.
What will they say about us?
I know what I’d want the children of the future to hear from their teachers, to read
from their books.
“The early 21st century was marked by the resurgence and new growth of the disability
rights movement.
At that time filicide was a systemic and frequently occurring horror, and yearly vigils were held
to mourn the dead and call for justice from a biased system and a seemingly uncaring society.
Though we find it difficult to imagine now, disabled people were forced to defend their
humanity in the face of violent ableism and to beg for their very lives.
We owe much of society’s advancement in human rights to the work of these disabled
activists.”
I know that's what I'd like to hear.
We have a long way to go.
This is uphill every way and we are opposed on all sides.
But I look at the work of past and present activists, and I look at how far we’ve come,
since Woodlands, and I believe.
I believe we can achieve a future in which these vigils are a part of our history.
In which the lives of disabled people are just as valued, cherished, and defended as
non-disabled lives.
I believe that because I have to.
Because we’re not alone.
Because hope is kept alive by each one of us.
So when I want to hide, I show up.
When I feel hopeless, I find reasons to hope in my community.
And I challenge myself:
How many ways can I come up with to say, “Please stop killing us”?
Thank you.