We Are At a Breaking Point
The recent $2.15M (and anticipated additional $9.9M) in federal grant cuts to Activating Change threaten far more than our organization—they endanger a national network of services, programs, and protections designed to ensure Deaf people and people with disabilities are not left behind or left out.
These cuts are not isolated. They are the latest escalation in a broader pattern of rollbacks targeting accessibility protections, survivor services, and disability rights.
Without immediate action, real people will lose life-saving services. Deaf survivors will be denied interpreters. Disabled people in jails and prisons will go without the most basic accommodations. And countless community-based solutions will be dismantled before they can take root.
But we are not powerless. Nonprofit partners, coalitions, and advocates can take meaningful action right now.
Stand with us
Signal your support for the campaign, our work, and the progress we’re making.
What You Can Do
1. Raise Your Voice
Use your platform—organizationally or personally—to name this moment for what it is: a civil rights crisis. Speak up on social media, in newsletters, and during coalition calls. Name the cuts. Name the harm. Call for urgent public and philanthropic support.
See our toolkit below for social media sharing – and use the hashtags #NoEquityWithoutAccessibility and #JusticeForEveryBody
2. Endorse Our Demand for Funders to Step Up By Signing Up and Signaling Your Support
Join us in publicly urging philanthropic leaders to fill the gap left by the federal government. Support our call to move from funding charity to resourcing justice. Philanthropy must invest in long-term access and equity, not short-term optics.
We are collecting signatures from nonprofit partners, advocates, and service providers calling on public and private funders to immediately invest in accessibility justice and survivor-centered disability rights work. Sign up below!
3. Invite Us to Your Networks
We are offering briefings for coalitions, advocacy networks, and philanthropic convenings. Bring us into your space so we can share what’s happening and co-develop a strategy to protect and scale this work together.
4. Mobilize Emergency Resources
If your organization can mobilize a small grant, redirect discretionary funds, or provide in-kind support, we need you. Whether that’s interpretation access, legal strategy support, or direct funding, every contribution helps sustain the work in this moment of crisis.
5. Follow Activating Change on LinkedIn
We’ll keep sharing updates and building the movement. Follow along and stay engaged.
This Isn’t Just About Funding. It’s About Access.
If these cuts move forward without public response and sector-wide resistance, we will see:
Deaf survivors turned away from services because no interpreter is available
Public defenders forced to represent disabled clients without basic accessibility training
Jurisdictions dropping disability equity from criminal justice reform altogether
And countless people denied the very accommodations that accessibility justice demands
We’re fighting for a future where justice is accessible to every body—but we cannot do it alone.
Join Us in Building That Future
If you’re a nonprofit leader, advocate, or ally, your voice matters now more than ever. Together, we can reject these cuts, rally new resources, and ensure that people with disabilities and Deaf people are not erased from justice movements.
Share Your Vision for Accessibility Justice – Far and Wide!
The Work We Will Keep Doing
While we respond to these attacks, we remain steadfast in our long-term mission:
Expanding Deaf Services and Advocacy
Ensuring Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals have access to victim services and accommodations.
Ending Incarceration of People with Disabilities and Deaf People
Addressing the systematic over-policing and criminalization of disability, fighting against discriminatory policies, and ensuring that disability justice is central to legal system reform efforts.
Creating Pathways to Healing
Centering survivors of violence with disabilities and Deaf survivors in survivor advocacy and justice reform efforts, ensuring trauma-informed services remain a priority.
Healing Behind and Beyond Bars
Expanding our work to reduce harm, improve conditions, and increase accessibility for incarcerated people with disabilities and Deaf people, while also reducing the number of people with disabilities and Deaf people trapped in these systems.
Building Cross-Movement Solidarity
Bringing together leaders from disability justice, survivor advocacy, and criminal legal system reform to develop shared goals and strategies that will create real, systemic change.
Stay informed.
Signal your support for the campaign, our work, and the progress we’re making.
Who We Are
At Activating Change, we are building a movement at the intersection of disability justice, survivor advocacy, and criminal legal system reform.
We believe:
People with disabilities and Deaf people deserve equity and justice.
Survivor advocacy and criminal legal system reform must address the criminalization of disability.
Our work must center racial, disability, and language justice.
Divestment from harmful systems and investment in community-based solutions is the path forward.