The cool foggy air of the city has a damp, sticky feel to it. The fatigue of the morning is contagious, but the wind is still — almost holding its breath waiting for something to happen. 

The movement of a large amount of various sized wheels and mobility aids etches the street below, making their marks. 

All of a sudden, the fog parts to a large amount of bright flashing lights on top of police cars. 

“Remember the disabled folks dragged out of Senator Mitch McConnell’s office over the Affordable Care Act? That was ADAPT. Yes I was there and yes, I was arrested. The folks who interrupted the hearings, fighting for Medicaid? Yeah, that was ADAPT. Once again, yes I was there, and yes I was arrested. Those folks who did the Capitol Crawl, pushing for passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act and who later took over the Capitol Rotunda? That was also ADAPT, and I was there and arrested,” said Anita Cameron, a disabled activist with ADAPT. 

On Jan. 6, the United States Capitol building was stormed by rioters, mere weeks before then President-elect Biden’s inauguration. The rioters were mostly Trump supporters protesting the results of the presidential election. Following the Capitol insurrection, disability rights activists argued against police treatment of the protesters, saying that police treatment vastly differed from experiences of many disabled protesters. The Black Lives Matter protests from 2020 were also called into comparisons in police actions to protesters. 

Cameron is a 55 year old Black, disabled activist who has worked with ADAPT, a Washington D.C.-based disability justice group, for 34 years. She participated in the sit-in of the Capitol in 2017 in protest of cuts to Medicare. In contrast to the majorly peaceful handlings of the Capitol infiltration in 2021, this sit-in resulted in people being thrown from wheelchairs, many arrests, and inconsideration for physical disabilities.

“When ADAPT goes to the Capitol, we go through security and every part of us, including our wheelchairs and mobility equipment, is searched,” Cameron said.  “When we get to our target and occupy the office, the police are called. Sometimes they’re waiting for us. There’s an average of hundreds of police on hand. I’ve been personally surrounded by more cops on ADAPT actions than were in the Capitol that day.”

Both Anita, and the organization of ADAPT as a whole, are no stranger to unnecessary police presence and force. Anita has been arrested 139 times throughout her activism career. Some of the particular protests she’s attended have been to stop the passage of HR620, affordable and accessible housing, the Disability Integration Act, the Community Choice Act, the Community Attendant Services Act, and more. 

“In the early days of ADAPT, I was routinely beaten or roughed up by cops during protests,” Cameron said. “While it happened to many of us, it was black ADAPTers who bore the brunt of the beatings. The most traumatic arrest was in Orlando, Florida, where cops beat me up on live TV and tried to intimidate me with their horses.” 

Stories of ableism and racism still permeate the justice system, extending their roots deep into the soil of our society, despite being 2021. People with physical disabilities are 30% more likely to be arrested as juveniles or young adults then people with no disabilities according to the American Journal of Public Health. Along with this, black people with disabilities are at even greater risk overall. More than half of black disabled people in the U.S. will be arrested by the time they reach their late 20s, compared to the 28% risk of white people with disabilities, as unearthed by a Reuters study. 

The sheer multitude of the amount of similar stories show that the system doesn’t know how to accommodate those outside of the norm of being able-bodied. Anita described an experience regarding inaccessible jail cells and general inattentiveness to the disabled population. 

“Generally, the police don’t know how to deal with disabled folks, especially those of us who need attendant services, or those with communication disabilities,” Cameron said. “In Philadelphia, we sued and won because we were taken to inaccessible jail facilities in ambulances. When we couldn’t get in, they left us in the ambulances for several hours.”

Outside of general disabilities, natural physical incapacitations also play a role. Olivia Garcia, a 21-year-old biracial Sacramento resident, attended many Black Lives Matter protests throughout the course of 2020. 

She said that she protests for her siblings, whom she stated are all less white-passing than her. Her younger brother also has autism and she is scared of the discrimination that he may face in the future. 

She detailed a disconcerting story, one regarding police targeting her visibly pregnant sister at a BLM protest. The chaos of the night separated her family from one another — each trying to find other members while attempting to remain safe. Her mom and pregnant sister were in a car together during a harrowing encounter.

“Just before the cops dispersed the crowd with rubber bullets and tear gas, the video shows one police officer tapping another on the shoulder and pointing directly at my sister recording and both officers taking aim and shooting tear gas at them,” Garcia said. “In the video, just before they shoot the gas at my mom and sister in the car, you can hear my sister frantically telling our mom to roll up the windows and close the roof. Luckily, they both had n-95 masks with them, but the entire car filled with smoke very fast and they had to park quickly and get out. The bullets that were shot at my mom’s window cracked the glass and she had to replace the window out of pocket, despite having evidence that the police intentionally shot at her.”

In total, her sister was tear gassed 3 times.

These events can be connected to the events of the Capitol that occurred on January 6. Protesters broke windows, forced senators into hiding, and stole government property and art. All while most police officers at the scene barely bat an eye, doing most of the arrests days after the initial event. 

“BLM activists marching in those numbers would have been mown down in the streets, blocks before reaching the Capitol,” Cameron said. “The streets would have run red with our blood, and they’d still be stacking the bodies a week later.”

Many disabled activists are calling for a deeper look into the intertwining of ableism and racism in the justice system. They implore people to recognize these connections and realize that they cannot be ignored, as they are a vital point to building a more equitable future.