New Disabled South

Disabled Southerners cite New Disabled South's research and organize through its coalitions to campaign for disability justice issues such as policy coverage, civil rights, and employment equity when state legislatures fail to set requirements that protect them.

ENABLE Model location

• Builder-side Interventions → Set Requirements that Include Accessibility
• Navigator-side Compensations → Stage a Protest
• Navigator-side Compensations → Assert One's Rights
• Navigator-side Compensations → Submit Feedback to Creators

What it is

New Disabled South (NDS) is a disability justice organization founded in late 2022 by Dom Kelly and Kehsi Iman Wilson, operating across 14 Southern states where one-third of all disabled Americans live. Kelly, who has cerebral palsy and previously advised Stacey Abrams on disability issues, describes the founding impulse: "disabled people in the South needed a political home" and a regionally-focused strategy distinct from national disability organizations.¹

The organization operates through two arms: a 501(c)(3) focused on research, education, and coalition-building, and New Disabled South Rising, a 501(c)(4) launched in February 2023 for political organizing and lobbying.² Every member of the board and staff identifies as having a disability.³

NDS functions as both a builder-side actor -- producing research that sets requirements for policymakers -- and a navigator-side one, organizing disabled people to protest, assert rights, and give feedback when Southern state governments fail to deliver care. Its work spans three domains: poverty and the care economy (Medicaid expansion, home and community-based services, subminimum wage abolition); democracy (voting access for disabled people); and decriminalization (ending the disproportionate policing and incarceration of disabled people of color).⁴

The organization's research arm produces tools that translate complex legislation into plain language, including a real-time policy dashboard and a Plain Language Ballot Measure Tool covering statewide measures across 11 Southern states.⁵ As Kelly puts it: "a lot of the laws that govern us are unintentionally (or even intentionally) written in a way that can be confusing."⁶

Why it matters

New Disabled South addresses a geographic concentration of forces that disable. The South has the highest disability prevalence in the country (29% on average), the highest poverty rates (9 of the 10 poorest states are Southern), and the greatest gaps in care infrastructure: 7 of the 10 states that have not expanded Medicaid are Southern, and three-quarters of all Americans wait-listed for home and community-based service waivers live in these 14 states.^{4 7}

Upstream failure -- the requirement-setting gap: When state legislatures refuse to expand Medicaid, fund home care waivers, or ban subminimum wages, they fail at requirement-setting -- the most upstream builder-side intervention. NDS's research documents what that failure produces: over 7,000 people on Georgia's home care waiver waiting list, some for 10 to 20 years; disabled workers earning an average of $3.34 per hour under Section 14(c) certificates; and sheltered workshop directors earning six-figure salaries while their employees make pennies.⁷ This represents abandonment at the policy level.

Racial disparity as compounding neglect: NDS's October 2023 report on Georgia's waiver waiting list found that while nearly 90% of those receiving NOW and COMP waivers were white, 27.9% more Black Georgians were waiting for those same waivers than white people with developmental disabilities.⁸ When racial bias compounds disability neglect, the precarity is not evenly distributed -- it concentrates among disabled people of color.

Voting access as compensation for policy failure: When disabled Southerners cannot vote to change the policies that harm them -- because polling places are inaccessible, absentee ballot assistance has been criminalized, or curbside voting is unavailable -- the remedy for neglect is itself blocked. NDS estimates that only 17% of U.S. polling locations are fully accessible.⁹ Their research found that in every Southern swing state they analyzed, the disabled voting-age population exceeded the margin of victory in recent presidential and Senate races.² This is not a marginal constituency.

Intersectional disability justice: NDS's co-founders identify as the "ADA generation" but argue that disability rights alone "has not gone far enough" and has "fed into a capitalist system that continues to harm and disable people."⁶ The organization explicitly connects disability justice to racial justice, economic justice, and anti-carceral work -- noting that 50% of people killed by police are disabled, and 55% of Black disabled men are likely to be arrested by age 28.⁴

Real-world examples

In the news

Southern lawmakers undermine ballot access for voters with disabilities (July 2023)
-- Benjamin Barber, Facing South

• Mississippi's Senate Bill 2358, Georgia's Senate Bill 202, and similar legislation in Alabama, Arkansas, and Florida criminalized third-party assistance with absentee ballots -- the method disabled voters most commonly use. Dom Kelly emphasized the need for "diverse options for participation" across the spectrum of disabilities. When states criminalize the help disabled people need to vote, they block the very mechanism by which disabled people can assert rights and change the policies that harm them.

In the news

The Majority of Polling Places are Inaccessible. A Disabled Voter Bill of Rights Could Change That. (op-Ed) (2023)
-- Dom Kelly, In These Times

• New Disabled South is pursuing a standalone Disabled Voter Bill of Rights across five Southern states, starting with Georgia in 2024. Dom Kelly recounted his own experience: after relocating, his polling place lacked chairs, forcing him to stand and bend painfully while voting. His grandmother, immune-compromised in Atlanta, never received her requested absentee ballot in 2020 -- preventing her from voting for the first time since 1965. NDS is working to turn these individual experiences of compensation into structural requirement-setting.

In the news

A New Disabled South (2023)
-- Dom Kelly and Kehsi Iman Wilson, Ford Foundation

• The Ford Foundation profiled NDS's three-pronged approach: a Southern Disability Justice Coalition for regular alignment of disabled leaders, state-level advocacy and organizing, and original research to inform policy. Kelly stated: "For too long, the disability community in the South has been tokenized, scapegoated, forgotten, or sometimes just completely ignored." The piece documents NDS's work across 14 states as a model for regionally organizing disabled communities that national organizations have historically overlooked.

In the news

Making Disability Justice a Reality in the South (July 2024)
-- Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

• RWJF profiled NDS's health justice work, noting that the 14 Southern states NDS serves contain three-quarters of Americans wait-listed for home and community-based service waivers. The piece highlighted NDS's Medicaid enrollment education, care collective organizing, and the organization's research connecting home care waiting lists to racial disparities. When the care economy fails in the South, disabled people are "forced into expensive institutions for years" or left with family members who "can't work because they need to be at home caring for their disabled kids."⁷

• NDS's October 2023 report found 27.9% more Black Georgians waiting for home care waivers than white Georgians, while nearly 90% of those receiving waivers were white -- documenting racial bias in Georgia's disability care infrastructure.⁸
• Dom Kelly wrote in Facing South (January 2023) that sheltered workshop directors earned salaries ranging from $94,977 to $167,282 while paying disabled workers subminimum wages averaging $3.34/hour. Tennessee and South Carolina banned subminimum wages with bipartisan support in 2022.⁷
• New Disabled South Rising's 2024 analysis found that the disabled voting-age population exceeded the margin of victory in every Southern swing state analyzed, demonstrating the constituency's electoral significance.²
• NDS launched its Disabled Voters Rising political education and training series for the 2024 election, covering voter suppression, worker mobilization, and the "criminalization of disability."²

What care sounds like (builder-side interventions)

Care at the requirement-setting level involves legislators and policymakers embedding disability access into law before disabled people are forced to fight for it:

• "We're expanding Medicaid so disabled Southerners don't have to wait 10 years on a waiver list for home care."
• "We're banning subminimum wages because disabled workers deserve the same floor as everyone else -- Tennessee and South Carolina already did it."
• "Polling places must have accessible machines, curbside voting, and trained staff before Election Day, not after complaints come in."
• "We're funding 2,400 additional waiver slots so disabled Georgians can live in their communities instead of being institutionalized."

What neglect sounds like (builder-side interventions)

Neglect involves state legislatures refusing to set requirements or actively restricting access:

• "Medicaid expansion isn't in the budget this session." (While 7,000 Georgians sit on home care waiting lists.)
• "We need to prevent ballot harvesting." (While criminalizing the help disabled people need to vote absentee.)
• "Sheltered workshops provide a valuable service to people who can't work in the regular economy." (While paying $3.34/hour.)
• "Disability policy isn't a state priority this year -- we have other concerns."

What compensation sounds like (navigator-side compensations)

Compensation describes the labor disabled Southerners undertake when state governments fail to set requirements that protect them:

• "I've been on the waiver waiting list for seven years. My mom can't work because she has to stay home and care for me." -- experience documented in NDS research⁷
• "My polling place didn't have chairs. I had to stand and bend painfully to vote. No one should have to hurt to participate in democracy." -- Dom Kelly⁹
• "My grandmother never received her absentee ballot in 2020. She hadn't missed a vote since 1965." -- Dom Kelly⁹
• "I show up to the state legislature every session to testify, and they thank me for my courage and then vote no."
• "We're building our own coalition because national disability organizations never centered the South."

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All observations occur within the context of disability policy and democratic participation across the 14 Southern U.S. states where New Disabled South operates, a region where the highest concentrations of disability, poverty, and policy neglect intersect.

Footnotes

1. Ford Foundation: A New Disabled South ↩

2. New Disabled South Rising: Power of the Disability Vote Across Southern Swing States ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. New Disabled South: About ↩

4. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Making Disability Justice a Reality in the South ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. New Disabled South: Voting Rights Factsheet ↩

6. Waging Nonviolence: Disabled Southerners are building new paths to grassroots power ↩ ↩²

7. Facing South: VOICES: Southern legislatures must dismantle poverty traps for disabled people (Dom Kelly, January 2023) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

8. New Disabled South: Uncovering Disparities in Georgia's HCBS Waiver Waitlist ↩ ↩²

9. In These Times: The Majority of Polling Places are Inaccessible ↩ ↩² ↩³