HOW I GOT INVOLVED

I was in denial until i was 30ish I tried to be as non disabled as possible and worse non disabled people's ideas were more important to me than disabled people. I bought their attitudes about me and applied them to those few disabled people I came into contact with. Then Izzy came along...one of my staff in a radical youth work project who virtually forced me to work with a group of people with learning difficulties who were too old for the project.....transitioning!!! Well it started with taking them to bars and resturaunts and ended with an independent living project  where they chose to leave home in a positive way or for one person to get out of a Hospital ward.Along the way they taughts me everything I know about disability rights, about pride and about campaigning.

The Social Model of disability

Maybe one day on the web site i will put up some learned papers but when I encountered this great theory it was simple....the conclusion is that disabled people are being oppressed and discriminated against yet deserve the same basic rights as everyone else.They are oppressed by the systems in place at the moment, the environment we find ourselves in and the subsequent attitudes people have of us. I have been fortunate to get to know on a personal level and work with professor Mike Oliver who coined the term Social Model.We both agree that having found the tool for analysing our situation about disabled people we needed to constuct strategies around it. DAN the disabled people's Direct action network and ADAPT in the USA are the best examples of disabled people recognising that it is oppression we are dealing with and attempting to find a practical way of campaigning to resolve it.

DAN the DIsabled People's Direct Action Network

Having won the battle for legislation in the UK (the DDA) DAN went on to make sure all transport in the uk will be accessible. DANNERS like me have been arrested and gone to jail many times for these simple demands. DANNERS have develpoed into a hard core army of activists who are not afraid of what could happen to them because they know what is happening to disabled people in institutions all over the world.

DAN is campaigning in the uk to end the institutionalisation of disabled people so that every disabled person no matter what has the chioce to live in the community. Whilst there are many organisations in the Uk who would support this on paper or policy DAN is the only organisation prepared to put bodies on the line in demonstrations and non violent civil disobedience.

We know that in the UK and around the world there are many people who would want to support a grass roots organisation like DAN its aims and its objectives. In DAN we are proud that most of our members and activists are ordinary disabled people living below the poverty line. But because of that DAN always needs money to continue the fight.

GET INVOLVED DONATE NOW!

So here's the bottom line.. you can either donate now on what you've heard or contact by going to the contact page and finding out more.You can be anonymous or not. We will publish friends of DAN on this site who donate any amount of money. Ways to donate are on the contact page. Whatever you buy on the merchandise page also helps either ADAPT or DAN. You can also go to the ADAPT web site and find out more about them the dan web site is still under construction. Whatever here is your opportunity to contribute directly to the heart of the struggle for disability rights.