Pulse Wire for a human revolution!

Barriers are many and hard to tear down when it comes to issues of disability. There are physical barriers but even barriers in attitude. Challenges are many with arguments from the financial crisis taking the lead these past few years allowing societies to decrease social services. Human value seems to be relative when referring to people with disabilities. There is a hierarchy of value, with healthy people on the top and people with intellectual impairments at the bottom. There is a need to change to see people meeting one another with the same respect no matter shape, form or color. There is a need to change if we are to have true democracies with the participation of all citizens.
ENIL – European Network on Independent Living promotes change through awareness raising on Independent Living. We lobby politicians. Every other year we have the Strasbourg Freedom Drive that is a march to the EU Parliament to present our demands for Independent Living to the President. We work to strengthen our networks, networks working on a variety of issues as Independent Living has many aspects: self-determination, control over services, equal opportunities, with the right to personal assistance having a main focus. We want to be able to live our lives with full citizenship deciding where to live, with whom we want to live and how we want to live.
Online communities help us to reach out with our experience and needs. Pulse Wire has opened a space within which we can meet other women. Women issues and disability issues go hand in hand. We both experience exclusion and discrimination due to structural barriers. As allies we can together act against the systems which categorize discrimination confirming systems of hierarchy and power. As a MEP stated last week when ENIL visited the Parliament in Strasbourg, “you want a human revolution”! Pulse Wire can help us add logs to the burning fire, help us with our human revolution! Our revolution is one for change, change in attitudes, change in treatment, and change in our democracies so that all will truly be equal.