Being Rebecca: From the center of the only marginalized group anyone can join

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Imagine how you would feel if someone invited you to speak at an event because they recently noticed you use a mobility aid (a cane). You would have rather gotten the invitation for your ideas or accomplishments. But recognizing that the event can be a platform for normalizing seeing disabled people in important places, you decide to go. Upon arrival, the person who extended the invite hollers down at you from the fifth step, "it's just a few stairs; you'll be fine!"

Hard to imagine how you’d feel? Rebecca Lamorte told me you'd feel like a disabled prop. Rebecca is an Emmy-nominated, disabled New Yorker who advocates for labor and disability justice through her career and personal life. She’s also a former NYC City Council candidate. 

[Image Description: A series of 4 images show Rebecca, a white woman with long, curly brown hair, sporting a long, black parka and hat on a beach in the snow. Rebecca poses, walks, and extends her arms widely with her cane visible in each photo as she delivers a myriad of expressions.]

Fully able-bodied people may benefit from learning that mobility often falls on a spectrum. While Rebecca may be able to make the trek up the stairs, she explains that the choice to do so could come at a great cost. 

The climb exhausts Rebecca. The invitee’s insensitivity creates tension in her mind: “do I say something or remain silent for another person’s comfort… again?”

Rebecca, now physically exhausted and mentally distracted, will speak at the event. Do you think Rebecca will do well?  

Actually, she does. Rebecca performs very well and she’s pleased with her participation in the event. This time, Rebecca’s choice to aim high on her “spectrum of mobility” felt worth it. Rebecca’s ambition and her choice to lead a public life keep causing these scenarios to happen to her. Just because we are familiar with seeing Rebecca succeed does not mean that her path to get there is easy. 

[Image Description: Rebecca, a white woman with curly brown hair, poses for a professional headshot in front of the Queensboro Bridge. She holds her arms across her torso and without her cane in the frame. Rebecca’s warm, friendly smile softens the otherwise powerful and capable sentiment Rebecca emits through the photograph.]
Photo credit: Jeff Rae

Knowing where to fall on the “spectrum of mobility” can be challenging even for the individual who is disabled. Advanced notice of the stairs would have clued Rebecca into skipping her morning exercises and prompted her to avoid stairs during the day to more comfortably access the event. On Rebecca’s worst days, she’s unable to exit her apartment. And on those same bad days, she’s also a bright, 31-year-old woman confined to an inaccessible apartment. The loss is felt most by Rebecca; but the world is also losing when disabled people are left out. We need their contributions. 

Rebecca entered the disabled community 9 years ago after an accident on the NYC subway changed the course of her life in a single second. As much as I wish Rebecca could exit the disabled community for her own sake, she will never get to do so. 

THE VIDEO “7 YEARS AGO TODAY” DESCRIBES THE START OF REBECCA’S FIGHT FOR ACCESSIBILITY.

Actually, it might be a big factor into why you're even here reading my blog. Rebecca’s confidence despite her impairment has empowered me to expose myself as a blind person on the same site I use to get hired for marketing projects. 

"This is our city too. And it’s time to make it work for all of us."

Us?

I never heard a politician mention the disabled community as if they were speaking from the center of it.

Rebecca used those words in a campaign video for her race for the City Council seat in Manhattan's fifth district in 2021. As soon as I heard the line, I immediately began to research Rebecca’s qualifications and was impressed by her career supporting workers at unions in NYC, her contribution to the “fight for $15” minimum wage bill, her efforts in founding the #BLM Vigil in the Upper East Side, her volunteer work with Isaac’s House public housing, and for being articulate and knowledgeable about local and state politics. 

But I want to admit - there was another, more personal question I hoped to find an answer to by spending time with Rebecca as a volunteer on her campaign. I'd been blind all my life and I wanted to understand why I was hiding my impairment and Rebecca wasn’t hiding hers. 

[Image Description (excerpted from Rebecca’s Instagram): Rebecca leans with her cane against the counter of the wood paneled Senate document room while speaking and extending her hand out as if casting a magic spell. She is wearing a long black coat and gold sunglasses with her curly brown hair down.]

In addition to improving mobility, Rebecca’s cane indicates to others that she lives with an impairment. And the cane also appears to “grant permission” to people around her to ask prying, hurtful questions like: “do you really need this?” or “oh, are you hurt?” What’s worse, folks tease Rebecca with things like “oh did you fall off the slope?” when the Winter Olympics are in play until they cycle to the next trendy event in the zeitgeist to inspire their unoriginal humor.

As Rebecca vied for her accessibility-focused platform to be voted in, she was not hiding her impairment behind her intelligence and charisma. 

Wow. I had personally been doing the exact opposite. I had learned to capitalize on the hidden aspects of my blindness, working tirelessly to be the smartest, the most ambitious, and even the funniest in the room. I thought if I impressed people or made them laugh, they’d refrain from going deeper. I’d be accepted. 

Sitting down for this interview, I’d confided in Rebecca that I met people who had more comfort with their impairment than I did despite becoming disabled later in their lives. They had less time than I did to accept themselves. I think a lot about how the disabled community is somewhat transient. People can enter it unexpectedly and some of them eventually get to leave it.

I don’t mean to scare you but, “no human gets a promise of good health and a long life,” according to an article in Psyche written by Karen Cassiday, clinical psychologist.

Cassiday continues, “We all face uncertainty about what will happen to our bodies as we age and live in a world that includes illness, disability and death. This is not tragic, but rather normal for everyone, including you.”

So if anyone here on Earth lives at risk of an accident or medical condition that can severely compromise their mobility, one might think compassion for a disabled person could follow naturally. 

Instead it can be fear or impatience that often follows. We desperately need more compassion as many in NYC’s disabled community live in the outer boroughs of the city, unable to stretch their income to allow them to live near reliable transportation. That’s because less than a quarter of the stations that make up the largest transit system in the US are accessible, according to AJ Contrast’s Inaccessible Cities. How can we expect a person to compete for a higher paying job when three flights of stairs down into the transit system prevent them from attending an interview?

You may be thinking the disabled person in this situation could ask for an accommodation and you’re right! Meeting over Zoom just might feel a little “off” to the employer who has listed an on-site role.  

So, back to the reality: we need more accessibility and more inclusion. We face difficult questions as we work toward this. 

[Image Description (excerpted from Rebecca’s Instagram): Rebecca, a white woman with curly brown hair wearing a black face mask, blue skirt, black shirt and holding her cane, speaks into a bullhorn leading a dozen people in protest.]
Photo courtesy of UpperEastSite.com

“How many people are going to be disabled from long COVID,” Rebecca wondered between nibbles of manchego cheese at Pil Pil in the Upper East Side (UES). She continued, “...while unfortunate, it can change policy longterm. Many Americans now abruptly need different kinds of health care, accessibility, and work situations. Over time, policy is going to catch up; it will have to be about more access and more inclusion. More people are suddenly living differently.”

Rebecca goes a bit deeper, asking me to imagine a high school athlete who is on crutches for only six weeks and yet they become the impetus for accessibility solutions to happen in their neighborhood. Disabled folks and our allies create meticulous plans and solutions for accessibility that go unsung. So it can be frustrating when a young athlete whose parents live in the UES becomes the mascot for achieving accessibility. Quite frankly, the community likely responds to that person because they are seen as a fully-abled person. This suggests that able-bodied people relate better to someone on crutches than to a person using a tool that denotes a more life-long impairment. 

As far as the city council seat, Rebecca finished 3rd in a race of 7 despite the smallest campaign budget due to her choice to freeze fundraising during the peak of the pandemic. I interpreted the results to mean that more people in Manhattan’s UES care about accessibility and social justice than I realized.

During our conversation, Rebecca made an acknowledgement that her concerns may be smaller than others in the disabled community. Due to being able to hold a job, Rebecca lives fully independently. 

“I didn’t expect my life to be like this,” Rebecca says, reminding me of her accident. “I was just taking the subway home from lunch one day.”

You can learn more about Rebecca by visiting her website or by following her on Instagram or Twitter.