In her blog entry “Disabled In NYC : #MyCovidStory?” (alt link 1, 2), Rebelwheels NYC aka Michele Sommerstein discusses her reality during COVID as a disabled person receiving services at home, losing her usual CDPA home aides over a lack of resources, and contracting COVID from the ones sent by a more traditional agency. Published in October 2021, the article questions the absence of mandatory COVID testing for any of home healthcare workers offering service to disabled New Yorkers in their home. This leads the author to talk about the ableist framework through which COVID management functions at the state level. As she compares her situation to the one of people in nursing homes with no possibility of physical distancing, and where one-third of the deaths happened in New York, she expresses her fear of the triage protocols and condemns the austerity politics which collectively led us in this crisis.
— Yan Grenier
A Statement from the Author:
Disabled people exist within every other marginalized community. Therefore, when we fight for the rights, liberation, and safety of the disability community, be it in a pandemic or in better times, we can not just fight against ableism. For when we are only fighting ableism, we fail to fight for the freedom, safety, and liberation of all disabled people, including those in Palestine. The importance of this project’s existence which shines a much needed light on the heightened level of disability erasure during the worst of the pandemic, does not erase the fact that when any institution supports an ongoing genocide (and in this case occupation), they are not only contributing to the ongoing erasure of disabled Palestinians, but they also cease to fight for all disabled people. Not that we should only fight for disabled Palestinians. But in this instance, the latter does not negate the importance of the former, and the former does not negate the existence of the latter. As a queer, anti-Zionist Jewish, disabled, and intersectional activist, I felt it would be remiss not to mention this. In the end, there is no collective liberation without disabled people. There can never be safety (for anyone) through oppression, and never again means never again for all. Not in my name. Free Palestine.
— Michele Sommerstein, July 22 2025