Take the case of disability communities in Puerto Rico, who faced catastrophic harm in the wake of Hurricane Maria in 2018. To call the hurricane a “natural disaster” is to obscure the way United States colonialism laid the groundwork for the devastation. U.S. economic austerity policies left the island subject to poor infrastructure, a shaky electrical grid, patchy medical systems and inadequate public services — all of which were stressed to breaking point when the hurricane hit. And when it comes to disability, eligible Puerto Ricans receive an average of $74 a month, a fraction of the disability benefits provided to U.S. citizens on the mainland.
Social inequality can be a death sentence. Consider Benilda Caixeta, a wheelchair user living in New Orleans who relied upon the city’s paratransit system for accessible transportation, a service notorious for its unreliability in the best of circumstances. As Hurricane Katrina advanced, she worked for days to arrange transportation to evacuate. But despite repeated promises, her driver never arrived. When floodwaters rushed into her apartment, Caixeta drowned — waiting for transit that never came.
When we tell Caixeta’s story, we face a choice: We could use her story to illustrate the essential vulnerability of people with disabilities; or we could use it to tell a political story about disability discrimination, about transportation systems that are inequitable and unreliable even in fair weather — and that fail, utterly, in the face of a storm. The political story makes plain that Caixeta’s inability to evacuate isn’t a personal tragedy caused by disability, but a public failure: a devastating indictment of the deadly cost of ableism and inequality.