40 Big Ideas

Summary

Citizen advocacy is an idea that is both simple and radical. It pairs people with and without disabilities, creating trust and belonging that become the foundation for justice. The power of this work lies in seeing another person as simply that—a person, not a patient, project, or payment source. Advocates have protected people from neglect, abuse, and low expectations in countless settings.

What can people come to mean to one another? What can people come to mean to the common good?

Citizen advocacy was created in the early 1970s as a conceptual framework to answer these questions. The deinstitutionalization movement would bring people “closer at hand.” Could citizen advocacy help bring people closer to heart?

It calls forth well-connected local citizens to voluntarily stand with and for people who are marginalized because of prejudice toward disability. The idea, co-developed and nurtured by Dr. Wolf Wolfensberger and John O’Brien, is both simple and radical: pairing people so that the bonds of trust and belonging become the foundation for justice. The power of this work lies in seeing another person as simply that—a person, not a patient, project, or payment source. Advocates have protected people from neglect, abuse, and low expectations in countless settings. Many relationships last for decades. They become antidotes to loneliness and lifelines to opportunity—be that better work, health care, legal help, congregational life, or simply more friendships.

Becoming a citizen advocate changes the advocate as well. It challenges unconscious prejudice, calls forth compassion, and demands persistence in the face of professional indifference. People often discover and admire the resilience and creativity of their protege. Communities, in turn—whether civic clubs, workplaces, or congregations—see firsthand how inclusion is an opportunity for people to learn from one another and grow stronger together.

Over the years, we have seen citizen advocates adopt a child with a disability, stand up for their protege in court, organize over 200 people to build a house for their protege, celebrate birthdays together, be their protege’s birth coach, cry together, travel to the state capitol together to question and educate our state representatives about ineffective Medicaid policy that diminished their protege’s life. They laugh together. They ask a doctor, “Is that what you would do if it were your leg?” when the recommendation was to amputate (it wasn’t). They get on each other’s last nerve, step away, then come back together, both a little wiser for the experience. People on both sides of the equation discover an unexpected teacher.

Citizen advocacy is one way to bring the idea of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King's beloved community into being. “The beloved community is not a utopia, but a place where the barriers between people gradually come down and where citizens make a constant effort to address even the most difficult problems of ordinary people. It is above all else an idealistic community,” he said.

Elizabeth O’Berry, one of the founders of the Georgia Advocacy Office, said in 1978, “All we want to do is bring a little more love and justice into the world, one person at a time”. Citizen advocacy reminds us that we already have the capacity to create such a community: people, relationships, and the willingness to stand together. This is the beloved community.