This document discusses the need for an "ecology" of disability rights that focuses on community, citizenship, and love in addition to legal rights. It argues that for disability rights to thrive, there must be conditions where people feel included and part of the community as equal citizens. Rights alone are not enough and can provoke anxiety, so disability advocates must find ways to express their principles that bring others together in a spirit of inclusion rather than division. An ecology of human rights is needed where the concepts of citizenship, community, and love support legal rights.

1. Truth and Citizenship
towards an ecology of disability rights
Dr Simon Duffy for the Norah Fry Centre for Disability Studies
and Sue Porter Memorial Lecture 2020

2. 1. Robbed of our illusions - now is a good time to think harder about
how we advance disability rights.
2. Keep the faith - there is no reason to doubt that disability rights is a
foundational value.
3. Rights are not enough - but a focus on rights by themselves is not
enough.
4. The value of rhetoric - we need to find ways to express our
principles that persuades those outside our own group.
5. The ecology of rights - disability rights will only thrive in an ecology
of community, family and citizenship.
6. Citizen Network - so let’s act as if we really believe in what we say.

8. Multiple campaigns
• Pat’s Petition
• Spartacus Network
• Campaign for a Fair Society
• Learning Disability Alliance
• Learning Disability England
• WOW Petition
• Save the ILF
• Bedroom Tax Campaign
• Rightful Lives
• Disabled People Against the
Cuts (DPAC)
• Reclaim Social Care

11. Truth
matters

12. Conceptually, we may call
truth what we cannot
change; metaphorically, it is
the ground on which we
stand and the sky that
stretches above us.
Truth and Politics. Arendt H (1956) Between
Past and Future. New York: Penguin. p. 264

13. Not all claims are
equally valid

14. Not all voices
need amplifying

15. Without trust in truth we
risk our destruction
Compare…

16. something
matters to
you

17. Relativists
can’t be
humble

18. There are three kinds of TRUTH
LOGICAL FACTUAL MORAL

19. ideology is
not truth

20. we are not
broken
happiness
robots

21. “The contradictions the mind
comes up against - these are
the only realities: they are the
criterion of the real.
There is no contradiction in
what is imaginary.
Contradiction is the test of
necessity.”
Simon Weil
Gravity and Grace

23. Hannah Arendt Arendt H (2013) The Last Interview and Other
Conversations. Brooklyn, Melville House. p. 81
“All our experiences - as distinguished from theories and
ideologies - tell us that the process of expropriation, which
started with the rise of capitalism, does not stop with the
expropriation of the means of production; only legal and political
institutions that are independent of the economic forces and
automatism can control and check the inherently monstrous
potentialities of this process. Such political controls seem to
function best in the so-called welfare states whether they call
themselves socialist or capitalist. What protects freedom is the
division between governmental and economic power, or to put it
in Marxian language, the fact that the state and its constitution
are not superstructures.”

24. Rights matter

25. Article 1 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights states:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and
rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience
and should act towards one another in a spirit of
brotherhood.
The first principle defined by the UN Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) is:
Respect for inherent dignity, individual autonomy
including the freedom to make one’s own choices, and
independence of persons.

26. But the language of RIGHTS also has limitations
NEGATIVE LEGALISTIC UNSTABLE

27. Claims to rights are
powerful but also
provoke anxiety

28. Do we really
need another
theory?

29. Rhetoric
matters

30. Pity is not just
wrong it’s
dangerous

31. Rhetoric is necessary to communicate truth effectively
ARGUMENT CONTENT STYLE

32. Rhetoric doesn’t
need to be stupid

33. Rhetoric
can be good

34. the inclusion
movement
John O’Brien
Beth MountJean VanierMarsha Forest
Jack Pearpoint
Judith Snow

35. The three key concepts necessary to disability rights
COMMUNITY LOVE CITIZENSHIP

36. Community
matters
Rights become
possible when a
community takes
them seriously

38. But we may need a bigger WE
so everyone feels included.

39. Love
matters
Love does
the work of
rights without
the sense of
obligation

40. Families
have
rights
too

41. Citizenship
matters
Citizens value
their status as
contributing to
the life of the
community

46. Aristotle explains that a
community is not made out
of equals, but on the
contrary of people who are
different and unequal.
The community comes into
being through equalising,
isathenai.
Hannah Arendt

47. Someone once told Rabbi
Mendel that a certain person
was greater than another
whom he also mentioned by
name. Rabbi Mendel replied: “If
I am I because I am I, and you
are you because you are you,
then I am I, and you are you.
But if I am I because you are
you, and you are you because I
am I, then I am not I, and you
are not you.
Buber M (1991) Tales of the Hasidim.
New York, Schocken Books. p. 283

48. We face a triple CITIZENSHIP challenge
EXCLUDED OPPRESSED ASLEEP

49. We can join with others to achieve:
INCLUSION JUSTICE RESTORATION

50. To defend human and disability rights
we need to understand the conditions in
which these rights thrive.
We need an ecology of human rights.
The seed of human rights
in order to flourish
needs the water of citizenship,
the earth of community
and the light of love.
Law - on its own - does no work.
Rhetoric is not mere rhetoric.
The ideas that inspire and motivate us
are the ideas upon which must build no
useful theory can afford to reject them.

51. but it starts within

52. subscribe
join
@simonjduffy @cforwr @citizen_network @ubilabsheffield