#WeAreEssential

Rebecca Cokley of the Disability Justice Initiative on how people with disabilities have been left behind in the COVID-19 relief packages so far — and what the disability community needs now to weather the pandemic. Subscribe to Off-Kilter on iTunes.

“There are 61 million people with disabilities in the United States. One-third of U.S. households have people with disabilities, and that number will likely increase over time, as the long-term effects of the coronavirus are still unknown. It is clear from past outbreaks such as the Spanish flu, scarlet fever, and polio that any governmental response should include people with disabilities — both those disabled individuals who acquire the coronavirus and those who may become disabled because of it. Considering the broader economic and health care impacts that the virus is having — as well as the significant poverty that people with disabilities and their families experience — it is unacceptable that the first three packages Congress has proposed thus far neglect people with disabilities.”

So writes Rebecca Cokley, director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress, in a scathing indictment of the White House and Congressional response thus far, for leaving people with disabilities behind in the relief packages enacted over the past two weeks.

For the latest installment of Off-Kilter’s ongoing series of COVID-19 conversations, Rebecca V. sat down (virtually) with Rebecca Cokley, for a look at how the disability community has been left out, why people with disabilities were especially economically vulnerable heading into the crisis, what the disability community needs now to stay healthy and stay afloat amid the pandemic, how this moment is shining a light on the long-term policy fixes people with disabilities need, and more.

This episode’s guest:

Rebecca Cokley, director of the Disability Justice Initiative, Center for American Progress (@rebeccacokley)

For more on this episode’s topics:

• Check out Cokley’s piece on how PWD have been left behind in the first three COVID-19 relief packages
• For more on how many low-income folks, including lots of people with disabilities may be left out of receiving stimulus payments specifically, check out this explainer from our friends at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
• Here’s the letter Cokley mentioned, from Reps. Katie Porter and Rosa DeLauro, calling for COVID-19 to be available and accessible regardless of insurance status and ability to pay
• #CripTheVote #COVIDChat #WhatWeNeed & #SeeUsSchumer are all great resources and homes for a lot of this conversation right now
• Join the conversation (and consider uploading your own video/story) on the value of disabled lives and the need to include PWD in the next COVID-19 package at #WeAreEssential — and here’s a handy call script to make calling your member Congress easy (h/t our friends at The Arc)
• If you’re looking for social isolation binging material, here was Cokley’s recommendation: Crip Camp

This week’s podcast:

♪ I work and get paid like minimum wage

sights to hit the class by the end of the day

hot from downtown into the hood where I stay

the only place I can afford ’cause my block ain’t saved

I spend most of my time working…. ♪

REBECCA VALLAS (HOST): Welcome to Off-Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m Rebecca Vallas.

“One third of U.S. households include a person with a disability, and that number will likely increase over time as the long-term effects of the Coronavirus are still unknown. It’s clear from past outbreaks, such as the Spanish flu, scarlet fever, and polio that any governmental response should include people with disabilities, both those disabled individuals who acquire the coronavirus and those who may become disabled because of it. Considering the broader economic and healthcare impacts that the virus is having, as well as the significant poverty that many people with disabilities and their families experienced heading into the pandemic, it is unacceptable that the first three packages Congress has proposed thus far neglect people with disabilities.”.

So writes Rebecca Cokley, director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress in a scathing indictment of the White House and Congressional response thus far for largely leaving people with disabilities behind in the relief packages enacted over the past two weeks. So, for the latest installment of Off-Kilter’s ongoing series of COVID-19 conversations, I sat down virtually, of course, with Rebecca Cokley for a look at how the disability community has been left out and why people with disabilities were especially economically vulnerable heading into the crisis. Let’s take a listen.

Cokes, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. And I’m just gonna sort of open this up by asking you to bring us up to speed. What do I mean when I say people with disabilities are being left out of the coronavirus stimulus conversation?

REBECCA COKLEY: Thanks, Vallas, and thank you for having me today. It’s great to be back on the show. And as you said in lifting up my tweet, we really aren’t seeing the disability community at the table in any of these conversations. So far, we have seen three separate legislative vehicles move through Congress, and not a single one of them has had the provisions outlined by the disability community as key priorities. There’ve been times where we’ve been able to stop really bad things from happening, but at the same time, we haven’t been able to make any good things really happen on the same end. And so, we’re really at a point right now where we’re struggling. You know, with the Senate on recess for about a month, that’s almost 30 days of people with disabilities sitting at home without the services or supports they need, really wondering what the future looks like for them in this current coronavirus context.

VALLAS: So, Cokes, you mentioned that there have been now three separate relief packages. As we’re taping, the third one is not law yet, but is moving towards its last legislative hurdle, hopefully to become law. None of those packages have been perfect by any measure. Lots and lots of communities and advocacy groups, grassroots leaders, others have been really screaming from the rooftops that none of these packages goes far enough in centering workers, centering families, the people who are hardest hit in this moment. And now there’s actually talk of a fourth package that negotiating leaders are promising is on the way, although real questions about when that’s going to happen. I don’t want to spend a ton of time detailing what’s in each of the individual packages. And actually, I’ll refer our listeners to the conversation I had with Matt Cortland last week about a lot of those packages, issues that are going to be really important to people with disabilities that are and are not being included. But Cokes, you’ve actually worked with a number of other leaders in the disability community to develop a list of the policies that you need to see in the next package, for people with disabilities not to be left behind. Talk a little bit about what those things are and why they’re not showing up in these conversations.

COKLEY: Well, they’re really commonsense critical ones. I think the most important thing that I could really emphasize right now is we know that people with disabilities are the most likely to get the virus. And so, we should be doing everything possible to make it worthwhile and make it feasible for people with disabilities and their families to stay at home. And so, what that looks like is shoring up the direct support professional workforce, helping home care providers have what they need to work safely with their clients, and making sure that people with disabilities have additional funds to be able to pay their home care providers. It’s making sure that if you’re the parent of an adult child with a disability, and their caregiver is no longer working for you because of the coronavirus, you should be able to have access to paid family medical leave to provide care for your loved one.

And the way it stands currently, that’s only available if the person that you’re caring for is under the age of 18. You know, in a time where we’re seeing specific medications being rationed by pharmacies because of the president’s non-factually-based rhetoric around what he sees as potential treatments for the coronavirus, disabled Americans are not able to stockpile the medications they need. And as it currently stands on most Medicaid policies, you’re not able to get your prescription drugs by mail. So, we’re still going to require people with disabilities and their families to have to leave their homes to go to the drugstore and possibly either get infected or infect others while out there, instead of allowing people to have up to 90 days of refills at home.

I think, and obviously, the most egregious conversation is the one around the need for the president to fully enact the Defense Production Act in order for us, as a country, to start building as many ventilators as we can, to start producing personal protective equipment for everyone, including our frontline folks working in hospitals and clinics, but also for people working at home with folks with disabilities. I mean, this stuff needs to be expedited. And I think there’s not a single request laid out by the disability community that anybody would look at and be like, oh, that’s egregious. I mean, we’re not asking for Porsches. We’re asking for facemasks.

VALLAS: And Cokes, one of the issues, you just listed a whole bunch of stuff that folks are probably listening, going yeah, that all makes a lot of sense. Then there’s a whole set of priorities that are being included in these packages, but that are being drafted in ways that explicitly exclude people with disabilities. You mentioned the way that that’s been playing out in the context of paid sick leave, which makes absolutely no sense, particularly in the middle of a pandemic. But it’s also very much at play and not getting nearly enough attention, I would say, in the context of these direct emergency payments that it is so fantastic that we’re actually seeing sufficient bipartisan support to make happen to tens of millions of Americans. That being said, there are specific ways that the direct emergency payments are envisioned that will actually explicitly carve out people with disabilities who need them most. And a big part of that population is actually SSI beneficiaries, Supplemental Security Income beneficiaries.

COKLEY: Definitely. And I think the fact that we’re going to actually force people with no income to go back and actually do their taxes in order to receive the same thing that everyone else is receiving, it’s onerous. It’s a form of bureaucratic discrimination against people with disabilities and low-income folks right now. I think at a time like this, we should be working to make services more streamlined and accessing aid easier for those, especially those with most significant need instead of, almost like putting people through like the Westminster Dog Show agility test in order to receive basic aid.

VALLAS: And I’m actually looking forward at some point next week to having a conversation with some of the wonks who can dig into the details of how direct emergency payments get administered, how we need to be thinking differently about that. There’s a ton to talk about there. But I bring that up in this context because as you note, Cokes, a lot of the folks who are not filing taxes are going to be the people who end up being left behind, whether those are people who receive SSI benefits or others. There’s a lot to this story about why the administration of this, the devil will truly be in the details. But suffice to say, people with disabilities are going to be many of the folks who end up having to jump through many, many more hoops to get the money that they actually need more than anyone else.

Cokes, one of the other things that really strikes me that sort of needs to be said explicitly in the context of this conversation is that, here we are saying people with disabilities number 61 million Americans, live in a third of households, aren’t at the table. There’s a level of that that matters from the standpoint of democratic participation. There’s a level of that that matters from the standpoint of what is good policy. But there’s also an aspect of this that, frankly, has to do with the fact that disability and poverty so firmly go hand in hand. People with disabilities, quite plainly, are among the Americans most likely to be struggling economically heading in to this this pandemic, before we saw 3.3 million jobless claims shatter previous unemployment filing records. And that’s because people with disabilities face poverty rates two to three times higher than their non-disabled peers. And — and I think this is especially important to note in the context of thinking about policies that we need to be changing and outright reforming in this moment and moving forward — they’re especially likely to be subject to harsh savings penalties that mean that many folks with disabilities, particularly those who rely on SSI or Medicaid or other means-tested programs, had nothing in the bank to rely on in a moment like this.

COKLEY: No, I couldn’t agree more. And I think this whole long, it’s been a longtime conversation around the fact that people with disabilities are legally not allowed to save money. And I’ve been really impressed by what’s being pushed by Senator Brown and Senator Coons around changing this. And I think obviously, this needs to be changed, or we’re glad to see attempts to make modifications specifically for this coronavirus cash benefit. But it needs to be eliminated for all means-tested programs. The fact that we require people to live in poverty and prohibit them from saving money at all is ridiculous. It’s cruel. And we know that the data tells us that people with disabilities in particular have between $1,000 and $7,000 dollars a year in unreimbursed disability-related expenses. This could be a broken wheelchair that is no longer covered by Medicaid. This could be loss of software on a computer. This could be a broken Hoyer lift. This could be an emergency surgery that’s not covered. Any number of things. And the fact that it’s actually written into a law that you can’t have more than $2,000 in the bank or you lose services, it really is criminalizing poverty.

VALLAS: And you’re, of course, talking about the outdated and incredibly counterproductive, as we can all see in a moment like this, savings penalties that exist in the SSI program, the asset limit you’re mentioning, $2000. That’s as much as an individual is allowed to have in the bank and still be eligible for SSI benefits. That amount has not changed since 1989 — almost as long as I have been alive, as long as my little sister has been alive. She was born in 1989 — and has not budged a dollar in the years since. That’s a huge part of what prevents people with disabilities and their families from being able to have even a modest cushion in a moment like this. So, the government created this problem, forced disabled people to have nothing in savings. And now, as you and others are pointing out, is leaving them behind in the context of this response in so many ways.

One of the other things, Cokes, that you have really been lifting up in this moment is the nefarious attempt by many — and I’m very happy for you to name names where they need to be named — to try to skirt or even explicitly waive critical civil rights protections for people with disabilities using the coronavirus kind of as an excuse. Some of that has been happening in the context of education.

COKLEY: Definitely. And I want to actually give a specific shout out to Sean Pierce on Twitter for what he said around Betsy DeVos. Everybody’s least favorite secretary, Betsy DeVos, otherwise known by her Harry Potter pseudonym, Dolores Umbridge. And what Sean said and I thought was so perfect was he couldn’t wait for the day for the centaurs to come out of the forest and drag her back in and not let her out. I don’t think a kinder statement could be said about the current Secretary of Education. Let’s be honest. From day one, actually, not even from day one, from before day one, from her confirmation hearing on, Secretary DeVos has made it abundantly clear that she does not care about students with disabilities. From waiving 72 pieces of guidance to not knowing what the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was, to repeated refusals to enact the equity in IDEA rule. Secretary DeVos has consistently attacked people with disabilities, but it’s a fundamental part of her job to protect them.

Within the first round of legislation, inside of the third coronavirus package — it’s hard to keep them all straight in your head some days — within the first round of legislation, the Senate actually had a blanket waiver for IDEA for one year. Which would allow schools to not have to comply with the law for a year. That was subsequently removed, thankfully, by the work of a lot of advocates and parents and students with disabilities raising up their voices about that. And instead, what we saw is a request by Senator Alexander to receive a report from the Secretary within a certain point in time that would lay out what her opinions are about what rules and regulations should be waived. And let’s be honest. IDEA is going to be at the top of her hit list. People should be very concerned. Yes, we need some flexibility now because it is different times. Schools are having to adjust to digital online learning. There needs to be thinking about how to make sure that that’s accessible for all people. There needs to be thinking about how to provide services to medically fragile children that they would’ve received in school, how to provide some of those additional services like speech or OT that kids were privy to before. And yes, so, we need to be thoughtful about that. But overturning 40 years of civil rights is not the right path forward.

I want to also be very clear that it’s not just the administration. It’s a number of their henchmen. As I said to you earlier today, Vallas, I feel like the vultures are circling. And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has added again in their recommendations to Congress for what they wanted to see in coronavirus proposals, they were very clear and open about a desire to allow employers the ability to ask current and prospective employees essentially anything they wanted to ask them about their current health and previous health records. This is really dangerous because the ADA specifically protects people who have a history or a record of impairments. And because of that, you could easily see the Chamber recommending people being denied jobs or supporting employers and denying jobs to people who once had the coronavirus. Because from what the data tells us, once you have it, you can get it again. It can come in a second wave.

Furthermore, we really don’t know yet what the long-term impact of the coronavirus could be. It could be that individuals struggle with respiratory illnesses for the long-term. We’re going to have to wait and see what this looks like. But the U.S. Chamber should not be using this as a license to discriminate.

And I want to give particular shout out to the amazing, the amazing Representatives Katie Porter and Rosa DeLauro, who sent a scathing hot fire letter to the Chamber, doubling down on the importance of ADA enforcement and the need for the Chamber to continue complying with employment and accessibility protections that are present throughout the ADA.

VALLAS: And we’ll make sure that that’s on our nerdy syllabus page as well.

So, I want to name a couple of the hash tags that have been in heavy use in the context of the past several weeks. You’ve been very active on them. Some of the other guests that we actually had on in another podcast in the context of our coronavirus series, Matt Cortland, has been very engaged with these as well as some of the other folks we’ve been speaking with recently, like Alice Wong and Ari Ne’eman and Sam Bagenstos. But want to send folks to #CripTheVote. Lots and lots of really great educational tweeting happening there in conversation. There’s also been a #COVIDChat — c-o-v-i-d-c-h-a-t — which Matt Cortland has been a big part of using as an educational platform with lots of multimedia and video, everything fully captioned and accessible as well. Cokes, are there other places that you want to send folks right now to be learning about this and getting involved in the conversation?

COKLEY: Definitely. I would really strongly also recommend people continue to keep an eye on #SeeUsSchumer. It was one of the earlier ones that was started that people have continued to sort of maintain using. As well as #WhatWeNeed and #WeAreEssential. #WeAreEssential came out of our colleagues over at The ARC to lift up the inherent value of people with disabilities and the fact that our lives are meaningful and that we should be considered essential personnel or essential individuals as some of these conversations around healthcare rationing continue to go down. And as always, I mean, I’m a huge proponent of #CripTheVote. I use that most frequently just because it’s a great catchall to see what the disability community needs. And we’re actually starting to see some of our partners across the broader progressive movement highlight the importance of it.

The last thing I would really add, you know, if you’re watching social media, if you’re home, Netflix and chilling this week, to make sure you check out Crip Camp, which is on Netflix. Which is a documentary that documents the early days of the independent living movement, really partially and largely co-founded by Judy Heumann, who I know we’ve had on the show before, and laying out just the lives of disabled men and women at a summer camp where they were, it was the first time for many of them being surrounded by other people with disabilities. It’s not inspiration porn. It’s not pity porn. They talk about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. And it’s definitely a must watch. And especially, I think, as people might be saying to themselves, “Well, I don’t know any people with disabilities. This issue doesn’t really affect me,” it really does put a human face on the disability experience. And a lot of these folks, I think it’s important to note, a lot of the folks documented in the video are polio survivors. And so, they know firsthand what a lot of this conversation really means in terms of access to healthcare and in terms of some of the tough decisions that the medical-industrial complex is claiming they have to make.

VALLAS: I’ve got a cat walking on my computer, so hang on just a second. But you know, that’s normal. I heard a little bit of the Cokley-verse in the background there. So, I know you’re contending with remote taping [laughing] too, Cokes!

COKLEY: Yes, Kendrick just smashed a lemon Oreo in his hair. So, I am totally with the cat right now.

VALLAS: [laughs] Aw. People might be wondering which cat, but I don’t want to name names. I think if you know me, you know I have several. So, anyway. So, Cokes, I really appreciate you actually making that suggestion, especially with folks kind of wondering what they should be streaming these days and having a little bit more time at home, obviously, to do that in many cases.

But I also, just in hearing you say that, that the thought that anyone who’s listening might say, “Oh, I don’t know anyone with a disability,” simply, obviously defies statistics when you think about what share of the population has a disability, whether it’s invisible or visible. And just it made me think back to a press conference that the Trump coronavirus team held at some point earlier this week when the coordinator — I know. I can hear your eyeroll right now [laughs], which is so well deserved given what those press conferences have looked like and all of the misinformation coming out of them — but the coordinator, I believe she’s the coordinator for the Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Deborah Birx, she stood up at a podium. And she actually said — I’m only going to paraphrase slightly here — that the numbers coming out of other countries suggests that the fatality rate for people who are not over 50 or who don’t have pre-existing conditions is very low, that most of the fatalities are among people with pre-existing conditions and who are over age 50. And she then said, just looking out at the television or the camera and into the homes of millions of Americans, she said, “That should be reassuring to all of us.” And it was so incredibly just telling to me and I know to many others watching in that moment who “us” was and the significance of her using “us” language to talk about pre-existing conditions when 61 percent of the American population has a pre-existing condition and should actually be the “us” as we think about this moment.

COKLEY: I couldn’t agree more. And something that I find myself reflecting on a lot right now is, we had a good colleague who was a New Orleans native. Her name was Susan Daniels, and she was a senior official at the Social Security Administration for a number of years and served on their Ticket to Work Advisory Board. And one of the things that Susan used to say when she would think back to Katrina and the response, or the lack of response, around people with disabilities impacted by Hurricane Katrina was, people would say, “Well, aren’t you hopeful? Where do you find hope?” And remember Susan saying — she was wearing a hot red lipstick and a big ole like wide-brimmed hat at that point in time and sitting like a grand dame in her wheelchair — and member Susan saying, “I’d like to have hope, but I have the burden of history.”

And it’s something that I find myself thinking about a lot. In a lot of the conversations I have, particularly with our progressive allies as they’re talking about this overall fight and fighting for this initiative or fighting for that initiative. And I’ve had to repeatedly bring it back to the fact that the fact that disabled, or the idea that people with disabilities are going to die, it’s not a potentiality. It’s a fact. Like, I wake up every morning, and I go to bed every night with the knowledge that there are people that I know and I love that are not going to make it through this. There are people who my children call their aunties and uncles, people who my kids ask to Skype with, people whose wheelchairs my kids climb on the back of at rallies and functions. There are people who are the people that brought me into this movement, who are our elders, who are doubly vulnerable being aging and disabled, who aren’t going to make it through this. And for me, it’s a luxury that other movements don’t have to deal with to the same degree that we have.

And, you know, I think about what Tammy Duckworth said when we established the Disability Justice Initiative, that sometimes it’s important to embrace the suck. And I don’t want to embrace this suck, but this suck right now is the reality. And I wish I could think of something funny and less morbid of a way to sort of end this. But I mean, for our community, the reality is, is disabled people are going to die, and very few people are drawing attention to it. I want to give a particular shout out to Senator Warren for lifting up Sara Luterman’s piece in The Nation, talking about future presidential candidate Xiomara, written by Elena Hung, talking about the impact of the coronavirus, response and the lack of coronavirus response on kids like her daughter. And we’re going to fight like hell for everybody. But even fighting like hell, we know that our folks are going to lose.

VALLAS: But the silver lining that I and some others, I think, have been potentially seeing, although preliminary for sure, is a somewhat different tenor of the public policy conversation, a greater realization on so many different fronts as all of the myriad public policy failures and breakdowns are just on full display with neon lights around them in this particular moment. Maybe an opportunity to rethink, not just in this temporary short-term period, but however long it may last, I should say, but maybe for the long-term as well, a growing and maybe, dare I say, bipartisan appetite to rethink some of the policies that put us in the position of not being able to be prepared for this moment economically, public health-wise, and really, frankly, our entire economy and the way it’s built and who it works for. So, I offer that in the context of this conversation about policies that matter for people with disabilities and particularly economic policies that matter for people with disabilities, wondering if maybe now is the moment. Cokes, you talked about asset limits before. Maybe now is the moment when people start to realize how absolutely boneheaded an idea it is to prohibit people from saving, so that they can be prepared in a crisis, along with the greater understanding that paid sick leave is something that should be universal and healthcare and on and on. And in the context of some of the attacks on the disability community that’ve been coming from this administration, is this moment potentially an opportunity to turn that tide? Or is my optimism unfounded as I grasp at straws to try to find a way not to end this in a totally doom and gloom place?

COKLEY: I think the opportunity really comes with what comes out of this recess right now. I think when members go home and start to see the ways that the coronavirus has directly impacted their community, I think seeing firsthand the impact on their loved ones, I think knowing that we continue to see the number of members that they themselves are infected — except for Tammy Duckworth. Thank God for that pool not being accessible in the Capitol gym! — that it’s going to become reality for members in a way that it hasn’t been so far. And so, I’m really hopeful that members of the House and the Senate will take some time during this recess to see firsthand, as safely as they can, the impact on their communities and really think through how do we create the best policy that gets to those that are more likely to be touched by this. That gets to those that are more likely to lose their jobs and their health insurance. That really lifts up those in the most need right now, instead of continuing to give massive, or promises of massive corporate bailouts to corporations that aren’t taking care of their workers in the first place.

VALLAS: I’ve been speaking with Rebecca Cokley. She’s the director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress, and obviously, a dear friend of mine and a dear friend of the show. Cokes, always appreciate you taking the time. Always love having you on the show. Thank you for everything that you are doing in this moment. What should folks be watching in the next couple of weeks, and how can folks get involved if they want to be part of trying to raise a collective voice to ensure that people with disabilities are not left behind in this fourth package, should it happen?

COKLEY: I like to lift up the work that The ARC of the United States is doing with their #WeAreEssential. There’s information on their website that’s available to look at in the social media tool kit. They’re asking folks to post videos online talking about why we are essential. Why do the lives of disabled people and their families matter? Especially in a time like this, to actively put a face on how this epidemic is impacting the community. We’ve tried through traditional means, and I think that’s one of the things that makes this situation so particularly frustrating. We can’t just show up at the Capitol and throw ourselves out of our wheelchairs and scream at members of Congress because the Capitol’s closed down. We can’t hit them with thousands of phone calls because no one’s at the offices. And so, it’s really requiring us to think through new forms of activism and new ways to tell our story. And I really do fundamentally think the key is going to be having to put a face on this issue in a way that people can’t turn away from it. And so, we’re strongly supporting the We Are Essential campaign. I’m going to be posting a video probably either later today or tomorrow — after I first have to post a video wishing Alice Wong a happy birthday. Happy Birthday, Alice!! — highlighting why a coronavirus response that’s inclusive of the disability community matters to me and my family. And so, I would recommend people start there.

I would recommend people share the articles talking about rationing and why it’s a bad thing. I would recommend people email and tweet their members of Congress. We’re putting out a piece today laying out a number of these priorities, and lift things up from that and share them with folks. Tweet your members about that. You know, even if — And this is one of those opportunities. If you have never reached out to your member of Congress before, we really need you to now. And there’s great guidance on pages like the Autistic Self Advocacy Network page, the Center for Public Representation page, with scripts you can use, with pre-tweeted pre-vetted language. So, you don’t have to worry about saying the wrong thing or sounding like you don’t know what you’re talking about. Most people that talk to Congress don’t know what they’re talking about. Most members of Congress don’t know what they’re talking about. So, we’re trying to make it as easy as possible for folks to weigh in at this time.

VALLAS: And we’ll have links to all of those tools, of course, on our syllabus page. And Cokes, you mentioned rationing. You also mentioned Alice Wong, whose birthday it is today. And I just want to promote a separate conversation that is already available as a podcast that I had earlier today with Sam Bagenstos, Alice Wong, and Ari Ne’eman on about healthcare rationing and how people with disabilities are at risk of being sent to the back of the line in this current moment against the civil rights protections afforded by the Americans with Disabilities Act and others. So, would definitely suggest listening there as well if folks are hearing Cokes mention rationing and wondering the relevance there to the disability community as well. Rebecca Cokley, director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress. Follow her on Twitter, if you are not already — I don’t know how you wouldn’t b — but @RebeccaCokley, , that’s our r-e-b-e-c-c-a c-o-k-l-e-y. Cokes, love ya tons. Go take a nap, and hi to the kids.

COKLEY: Well, thank you so much, Vallas. Hi to the cats, and hi to everybody in your life.

VALLAS: And that does it for this week’s episode of Off-Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m your host Rebecca Vallas. The show is produced by Will Urquhart and Allison Young, and our transcripts are courtesy of Cheryl Green. Find us on Facebook and Twitter @OffKilterShow, and you can find us on the airwaves on the Progressive Voices Network and the We Act Radio Network or anytime as a podcast on iTunes. See you next week.

♪ I want freedom (freedom)

Freedom (freedom)

Now, I don’t know where it’s at

But it’s calling me back

I feel my spirit is revealing,

And now we just trynta get freedom (freedom)

What we talkin’ bou