Drawing on six decades of American legislative history; from the doomed Civil Rights Act of 1875 to the landmark Social Security Amendments of 1965 to the federal policy dismantling underway today, the pattern is the same: rights do not sustain themselves. With 7,000 Social Security Administration positions eliminated, nearly one million disability determinations backlogged, 250 Civil Rights Division attorneys gone, and fifty years of disparate-impact enforcement rescinded, what is being lost is not being lost through repeal. It is being lost the same way it was lost before — quietly, technically, and incrementally, justified as efficiency while the human cost accumulates out of public view. The collapse of Reconstruction is not ancient history. It is the instruction manual.
Tag: Disability Rights
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Shedding Light on the Past: North Carolina’s Eugenics Program and the Fight for Justice
"They cut me open like I was a hog." These harrowing words from Elaine Riddick, a survivor of North Carolina's eugenics program, lay bare the brutal reality faced by thousands of women who were forcibly sterilized under the guise of public health. Stripped of their reproductive rights without consent or understanding, these women became victims of a state-driven agenda aimed at controlling who was deemed "fit" to bear children. This article uncovers the hidden truths of North Carolina's dark past, revealing a legacy of systemic abuse and injustice that reverberates into the present, demanding acknowledgment and action from a new generation.