ASHLEY BROMPTON: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for 
joining us today. My name is Ashley Brompton with the Center on 
Victimization and Safety at the Vera Institute of Justice. I would 
like to welcome you to today's webinar. 

We are pleased to bring you this webinar as part of our 2020 End Abuse 
of People with Disabilities webinar series. Before we get started 
today, we have a few quick logistical items to go over. Today we will 
have American Sign Language interpretation, and we will [AUDIO OUT]. 
Can you hear me? 

SPEAKER: Sorry, Ashley, you cut out. We will have ASL interpretation 
and? 

ASHLEY BROMPTON: Apologies. We will have ASL interpretation and closed 
captioning. Hopefully, my audio will cooperate. If you would like to 
turn the captioning on today, please go to the Closed Captioning icon 
at the bottom of the screen. It looks like a little CC, and it says 
Closed Caption underneath it. If you click on that icon and the little 
arrow next to it, you can select the view that you'd like to see the 
closed captioning of. 

You can select either Show Subtitle, which will scroll the writing 
across the bottom of the screen, or you can select View Full 
Transcript, which will scroll as a transcript version on the right-
hand side of your screen. If you're using the American Sign Language 
interpreter and captioning today, we recommend that you use the View 
Full Transcript option, as that way there's no chance that the 
captions will scroll over the interpreter. 

Participants are in Listen Only and See Only mode today, which means 
we should not be able to hear you or see you, but you should be able 
to hear and see us. If you can't hear the presenter speaking, if 
you're having any technical difficulty with the captioning, the 
interpreters, or if your sound goes out, or any other technical 
difficulties that might come up with Zoom or with the presentation, 
please enter a message in the Q&A pod. 

You can find the Q&A pod at the bottom of your screen right next to 
that Closed Captioning pod. It says Q&A. It's easier for us to track 
any issues that might come up using the Q&A versus the chat, which 
constantly scrolls. Please note that we will make an interpreter 
switch every 20 minutes. So you'll notice that the presenter will 
pause and allow for that switch to happen. 

We'll also use the Q&A pod when we open up for discussion and 
questions at the end of the session. Please put your questions in the 
Q&A pod. You can also upvote questions in the Q&A by clicking on the 
Thumbs Up symbol that's right below the question. This will prioritize 
the question for the panelists. Answered questions move to the 


Answered column, but you should still be able to see them. 

If, throughout the presentation, the presenter wants you to interact, 
asks you questions, wants your feedback on anything, please use the 
chat for that. So to communicate with the presenter, use chat. To 
communicate with me or with Vera, use the Q&A. It just helps us to 
make sure we're keeping track of everything that's happening during 
the webinar. 

A note about your view in Zoom-- if you view the session today in a 
web browser, you may only be seeing the American Sign Language 
interpreter right now. If you joined via the Zoom application, you 
should be able to see the American Sign Language interpreter, myself, 
and our presenter today. Please note that we value complete access 
during our webinars. 

This means that we will ensure the functionality of the captioning pod 
at all times and that the interpreters are clear at all times. Due to 
the nature of technology, we may experience technical difficulties 
with one or more of these things. If we experience a technical 
challenge, we will work to resolve it as quickly as we can. If the 
issue cannot be resolved for some reason, we may have to cancel the 
webinar. If that happens, we will follow up via email with additional 
information to all attendees. 

We plan to have time after the session for questions and comments. If 
you don't want to lose a question, feel free to put them in the Q&A 
pod at any time, but please note that we may hold them until the end 
of the session. We'll also be recording the session today. The webinar 
recording and all materials will be posted on the End Abuse of People 
with Disabilities website within two weeks. 

A record of attendance and the PDF of the PowerPoint will be available 
for download via a link in the chat pod. You should see that going 
into the chat pod soon. We will also post it at the end of the 
session. So if you're looking for materials or a record of attendance, 
you'll just click that link, and it will take you to an online folder 
where you can download both of those materials. 

And now onto the webinar. Our presenter today is Luana Nelson-Brown. 
I'm so excited to have her here with us today. She is the executive 
director of the Iowa Coalition for Collective Change, which is an 
organization that provides training and technical assistance to 
culturally specific anti-violence organizations, homicide response 
programs, and organizations and corporations wishing to adopt and 
implement anti-racist policies and procedures in an effort to end 
violence. 

She has an extensive history of leading violence prevention and 
intervention efforts on a local and national level. In 2003, Luana 


headed the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Program aimed at 
improving public safety by providing intense and necessary wraparound 
services to offenders convicted of serious and violent crimes as they 
were released from incarceration. 

In 2005, she steered state-wide efforts surrounding the Prison Rape 
Elimination Act to support incarcerated victims of sexual assault and 
their families. Shortly thereafter, she redefined the parameters of 
certification training by advocating for an increase in essential 
training modules for sexual assault advocates in Iowa. After a short 
time away from victim services, she continued to advocate for families 
and communities by providing education and assistance to individuals 
on risk management, the effects of exposure to oppression, and general 
improvement of quality of life. 

In 2011, she returned to victim services and started-- and supported 
several federal initiatives aimed at building capacity in 
organizations providing services to marginalized communities in Iowa. 
These communities included the African-American, Asian Pacific 
Islander, African immigrant and refugee, Meskwaki settlement, Deaf and 
hard of hearing, LGBTQ, and Latinx communities. She has over 25 years 
of experience in victim advocacy, activism, and systems change. 

She holds a Bachelor of Science in sociology from Tennessee State 
University and a Master of Science in public health from Meharry 
Medical College. Both are historically Black universities of which she 
is a proud alumna. Luana believes in an all-encompassing approach to 
end violence that acknowledges racism and all systemic oppression as 
violent acts that are directly correlated with societal epidemics such 
as homelessness, poverty, and premature death. And with that, I am so 
excited to turn it over to Luana. 

LUANA NELSON-BROWN: Thank you, Ashley. Hopefully, everyone can hear me 
OK. This is extremely exciting. Hello, everyone. I am a little 
overwhelmed, actually, as I look at the chat and see everyone and 
where you're from. I'm super excited. I see people here from my home 
state right now, Iowa. But I also see people from Tennessee, where, as 
you just heard in my bio, I went to school, some very fond memories 
there. 

But then I see people here from all over the country. And it is just 
warming my heart, just making me feel amazing that we're all here 
together, one big, happy family. I see some folks from Chicago, which 
is where I was born. So I feel a little bit better. I feel like I'm 
presenting to family today. So I hope you all feel the same way, 
because we've got a full hour and a half together, which is quite a 
long time. 

So as Ashley mentioned earlier, we'll be taking a couple of breaks 
every 20 minutes or so to allow the interpreters time to change, so 


we'll do that. But mostly, I want to make this as comfortable as 
possible. The people that are on that know me know that I'm not that 
traditional formal presenter, so I crack jokes from time to time. I'm 
a child of the '80s, so if I use '80s slang, and you're a millennial 
and you don't understand, just let me know and I will interpret that 
for you. 

But we'll just jump right in and do what we can. Hopefully, technology 
will cooperate with us today, and we'll go from there. Feel free, too, 
for sure-- if you have a question in the middle or as we're talking, 
or you have a comment, or something strikes you as an aha, feel free 
to go ahead and type that in the chat. I'm going to keep my eye on 
that chat pretty closely, because I want this to be more like a huge 
family discussion, like a cookout with 355 of your best friends, 
right? So we'll go from there. 

Oh, someone just asked, how about if you're a boomer? If you're a 
boomer, then I may be able to interpret for you. Otherwise, I'm going 
to reach out to our other boomers who are on and ask if they can 
interpret. But hey, I think we can do it. I'm pretty 
intergenerational, so I should be able to translate from Gen X to 
Boomer. I don't know if I can hit the Zoomers, but we'll do the best 
we can. 

Thank you so much, everybody. So enough about me, because I could take 
20 minutes and just sit here and just chat with you guys, and you all 
will be like, can we get to the meat? So let's go ahead and jump right 
in. I'm going to share my screen. And if my staff were here, they 
would let you know-- oh, look, I did that seamlessly, which is not 
normal for me. Normally, I have a little pause there. 

I am going to open my chat so I can see you all, and we can jump right 
in. I have to say, it makes me feel great that everyone is interested 
in the topic today. We're going to be talking about disability 
inclusion in culturally specific work, which is something that we 
don't hear about on a regular basis, right? 

People who work in the disability arena tend to talk all the time 
about disability inclusion. And those of us who work in victim 
services, and work in culturally specific victim services, are very 
fluent in that. But it's not often that you hear about the 
intersections between disability, inclusion, and culturally specific 
work. So I'm excited to share that information with you guys today. 

So some of our objectives-- they're going to be quick and easy. We're 
not going overboard. We're just going to review the need for 
accessible services at culturally specific programs. We're going to 
talk about the benefits of increasing accessibility. And then we're 
going to outline some strategies that culturally specific programs can 
use to increase their accessibility. 


Now, for us here at the Coalition for Collective Change, we started 
right at the beginning thinking about disability as we were forming 
our organization. So I'm the first executive director of the 
organization after it became independent. And we knew right away that 
we wanted to live our values. And one of the main values of culturally 
specific programs is to ensure that services are reached at the 
margins. So we started creating our organization thinking about the 
margins of the margins. 

So you'll hear me say that term a lot throughout the presentation 
today, reaching the very, very edge of the margins. Because when you 
work in CSP, Culturally Specific Program, you know that when you reach 
the margins, then you end up creating services that are the best 
practice for everybody. And so it's no different when we talk about 
the intersections between disability and culturally specific services. 
So I'm super excited that you guys are here to learn about that today 
and talk and teach me something, because I don't know it all, right? 

So let's start out real quick with why this is important, even. Why do 
culturally specific services even need to have accessible services? 
OK, sorry, I didn't mean to do that. Why do we have to have that need? 
When you work in culturally specific programs, and you do culturally 
specific work, we spend an awful lot of time talking about the need 
for culturally specific services. And when we do, typically in the 
victim services arena, we find that folks with disabilities are 
typically lumped in with culturally specific services. 

And so here in Iowa, we have a 10% set aside with funding for 
culturally specific programs. And that includes not only ethnic, 
diverse programs but also disability programs. And in doing that, it's 
excellent to have that funding set aside, but by lumping everybody 
together, it also overshadows the intersectionality and the specific 
needs with that intersectionality. 

So culturally specific programs have a need to start thinking about 
how to create those accessible services. And it's not something that 
comes to our mind. We're not monolithic. Just like we're not 
monolithic communities, we're not monolithic programs. It's something 
that we have to intentionally think about and start to put some effort 
toward what does that need look like. 

So we're going to talk a little bit about that today. And I figured 
we'd start with a little bit of data. Now, as we started working and 
focusing and honing in on serving folks with disabilities, these were 
some of the statistics that I was presented with that really, really 
shocked me a lot. I'm looking at the chat real quick. "Surprised at 
the percentage for the Deaf. It sounds like one area of abuse you 
shared-- the statistics should include communication abuse, other 
abuses." Oh, and it got cut off. Sue, go ahead and finish typing that 


as well. 

Thank you. I'm surprised at the percentages as well. That's exactly 
where I was headed. These statistics shocked me. I knew that as people 
of color, as survivors of color, that we experience victimization at 
higher rates. I knew in some regions of my brain that folks with 
disabilities experience victimization at higher rates, but I was not 
at all prepared for these stats. 

People with intellectual and developmental disabilities-- seven times 
more likely to experience sexual assault. 49% of people with 
developmental disabilities are assaulted 10 or more times in their 
lifetime. And then this is what Sue mentioned. 20% of Deaf adults have 
experienced physical abuse by an intimate partner, and 15% have 
experienced forced sex in an intimate partner relationship. I knew 
that those numbers were high. I did not realize how high they were. 

And what was even more surprising for me was that, while I can give 
you these stats, and I can also give you stats on the rates of 
victimization with people of color, like 60% of Black women experience 
sexual assault before the age 18, what I can't tell you is what the 
stats look like for the intersection between race, disability, and 
victimization. So this just points to how invisible the population 
actually is. 

And I know when you work at a culturally specific program, you're used 
to talking about being invisible, right? We're used to having to fight 
to have our voices heard in the movement. And while we're used to 
doing that, we don't think about how invisible parts of our own 
populations are. 

So I just want to let you think about that for a minute and ingest 
some of these statistics, because we're going to need to take a quick 
interpreter switch. So I'm going to take a pause for a moment. And 
feel free to type something in chat while we do that. And I'm going to 
be quiet as we make that happen. 

OK, all right, thank you so much to the interpreters and all the hard 
work that they're doing. And they are ready. And you guys apparently 
are too, because there's a lot here in chat. So I'm going to scroll 
back just a little bit. I knew that this slide would start some 
talking, because it is definitely something to think about. So Sue 
said-- I'm going to reread Sue. And I have to scroll. Chat 
continuously goes. 

Sue Phillips said she's surprised at the percentage for the Deaf. "It 
sounds like one area of abuse that we shared the stats should include 
communication abuse, other abuses that give a better picture. It seems 
much full statistics covering all areas of abuses, including 
communication, which should be much more." Absolutely agree. 


And that's part of it, too, is some of our statistics-- we're not 
capturing data like we should be. And if we can't capture the data, as 
we all know, how do we then find solutions? So I think that's an 
excellent point, that capturing all areas of abuses, including 
communication, we should absolutely be looking into. And what better 
people to do that than those of us on this call today, is to start 
thinking about what that looks like. 

Gretchen says, "Once you include abuse of all kinds, and not just 
intimate partner, you see a lot higher." Absolutely. At the coalition 
here, we're actually the violent crime coalition in Iowa, so we get a 
lot of VOCA funding, and we work with survivors of all crimes, not 
just DA and SA. And one of the things that I'm sure everyone in Iowa 
is tired of hearing me say is that particularly for those of us in 
marginalized communities, victim services extends well beyond just DV 
and SA. 

We've got communication abuse. We've got homicide. We've got assault. 
Those are all things that culturally specific programs, while they 
only sometimes get funded for DA and SA, are actually working with 
survivors at all of the intersections, and the same with some of the 
disability serving organizations. We get funded for something 
specific, but we, in actuality, are covering all kinds of crimes. 

And so I think Gretchen's right. When we take that into consideration, 
what do the statistics then look like, right? I'm sure it goes up 
higher. Again, things that we do not typically capture in our data, 
and what better way to make people invisible than to not put them in 
the data? Oh, you guys have a lot. OK, let me scroll a little bit 
more. 

June says, "probably still underreported." Absolutely. While these are 
the stats that we have, we already know that reporting is lower in our 
communities. And it's even lower with folks with disabilities. So 
these numbers are probably much, much higher 

"I would love to know the statistics on Deaf adults that are people of 
color versus white Deaf people who have experienced DV." That's 
exactly what I'm talking about. I can't find that information. And 
what does that say? What are we communicating with our movement? What 
is the movement communicating when we can't even give that statistic? 
And I think my next slide actually is going to talk about why-- no, 
it's not. I lied. 

There's a slide coming that's going to talk about why culturally 
specific programs are really the best positioned folks to get this 
data, because we're already poised to think about what disparities 
look like, right? A quick example-- and Ashley, you're going to have 
to keep me in line when it comes to time, because they've got me on my 


soapbox now. A quick example-- we're doing some work with one of the 
school districts here in Iowa, and they released their annual data 
report. 

And in that report, they told us things like so many white children 
have been disciplined, so many Black children have been disciplined, 
but nowhere in those statistics did they tell us Black children are x 
times more likely to be disciplined. Because mainstream programs just 
don't typically think like that, right? But culturally specific 
programs do. And that's why culturally specific programs actually--
you all and we all are the best position to start to capture some of 
these questions that we have about statistics. 

Lana says, "Sadly, I'm not surprised at all when I see these 
statistics, because abusers are so good at what they do, and they'll 
use any vulnerability they can against people as a means of gaining 
power and control over them." Absolutely. And she can definitely 
relate to this. That is an excellent point and actually segues 
beautifully into my next slide, which talks about those factors that 
increase risk, right? 

We know how good abusers are at keeping people isolated. We know how 
good abusers are at using power and control. And when we're thinking 
about power and control as you're looking at this slide, think about 
that power and control wheel, and think about how more of an increased 
risk folks with disabilities are when we talk about that, when we talk 
about that power and control. 

There's a dependence on others when you have a disability. What does 
that look like when you're dependent on someone that does not have 
your best interests at heart, right? And you're reliant upon those 
around you, so that dependence increases that risk of victimization. 
Not knowing about basic rights also increases risk for victimization. 

And not to mention, if we're going to really have a real talk, and we 
start to talk about our own communities, do we really talk to folks 
with disabilities about healthy sexuality and healthy relationships? I 
know here in the African-American community, it's not something that 
we talk about all the time anyway, but we certainly do not talk about 
it to folks with disabilities. And if we're real honest, a lot of 
times we don't even think about folks with disabilities having sex, 
right? It's something that we just don't want to think about. 

I have a 13-year-old son who has-- who's on the autism spectrum. And 
as his mom, and him being 13 anyway, I don't want to think about him 
having sex. But it's extremely important that I do, right? Because I 
relinquish him to respite workers. I relinquish him to the school 
system. I relinquish him to day camps. And he's a sexual being just 
like the rest of us, 13 years old. So you know that time that puberty 
is upon us, right? 


But it's uncomfortable for us if we really, really think about it. 
It's not something that we talk about in our general population. I see 
WYC at Greater Cincinnati's Project CARE say that they talk about it. 
And I'm so excited that you do. And in fact, that's one of the reasons 
that we started building some partnerships. 

Because in the areas of victim services, we talk about healthy 
sexuality all the time, but still, we're a little nervous about being 
able to effectively use that plain language and be accessible to talk 
about it with folks with disabilities. On the flip side, you've got 
disability service organizations who are comfortable communicating 
with folks with disability but uncomfortable talking about healthy 
sexuality or sexual relationships. So all of that puts our portions of 
our population at risk, right? 

As we start to talk about culturally specific populations with 
disabilities, I want you to just think about that bullet that says 
learned compliance, right? As we're seeing across the country, we've 
got all sorts of protests happening right now because of the murder of 
George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and so many countless others that I'd 
be reading their names off for an hour. 

What does it look like for folks with disabilities who, for their 
entire lives, have learned to be compliant with authority figures, 
have learned to be compliant with the folks that are in charge of all 
of their basic needs? How do we start to think about what the 
intersection of racism and victimization looks like? And in order for 
us to do that, the first thing we have to do is think about victim 
services beyond DA and SA, right? Because now we're talking about 
violent crime, violent crime that we know they experience and that 
learned compliance puts them at a greater risk. 

Lack of control over life choices, a culture of institutionalization, 
no choice of where you live and with whom one lives-- I mean, that 
increases risk significantly. When we think beyond sexual assault, and 
we start to think about violent crime, when we start to even think 
about microaggressions-- which, microaggressions are really violent 
acts, right? 

Think about when we send our kids to school, and we put them in 
schools with teachers that are not from their own culture. What outlet 
do they have to talk about those experiences of homophobia, those 
experiences of racism? Kids without disabilities have struggle with 
finding places to go for those outlets. Kids with disabilities really 
don't have outlets, because we struggle to talk with them in our own 
homes, oftentimes. 

I'm going to pause just a little bit, because you guys are blowing up 
the chat. And I know I missed a whole lot. So I'm going to scroll back 


a little bit just to make sure I catch everybody. And all right, 
surprised at the percentage-- OK, got that. Oh, this scrolling-- I was 
going to say sex. That's not very professional, is it? 

Jacqueline said-- OK-- "Do you think it's because the demographics 
aren't asked?" I think that's back to the previous slide. I think it 
is because we do a bad job at collecting data. I think we do a bad job 
at asking our populations, and we do a really bad job at focusing. 
Because you can collect data in various ways. And culturally specific 
programs are excellent at that. They're excellent at doing 
storytelling and collecting data through storytelling. 

But it does take an intentional focus, the same way that we talk to 
mainstream organizations about collecting data on our ethnic 
populations, about people of color. We tell them they have to put a 
focus on collecting that data. It's the same thing for us when we're 
talking about the disability population. We have to focus on it. We 
have to set funds aside to do it. And we can do it in our own unique 
way. And we're actually the best people to do that, because we're 
already used to pulling that data that isn't normally captured. 

Let's see. "There is Casa de la Familia--" hi-- "nonprofit based in LA 
and Orange Counties. They provide many services and continue under 
COVID-19 low-cost telehealth services, both in Spanish and English, 
for victims of crimes such as elder and dependent adult abuse, DV 
homicide, sexual assault, human trafficking." You guys do it all. And 
there's a no-cost option. That is incredible and amazing. 

Now, think about how all encompassing that organization is, how all 
encompassing. And when you're completely accessible, that's what it 
looks like, right? I'm skipping ahead a little bit in my presentation, 
but that's what it looks like. And then, as you focus in on all of 
those services as it relates to the disability population, that just 
means your services are now even more inclusive, and they're the best 
services that can be there. I want to come visit you guys. 

"Would you be able to send out these statistics after the webinar and 
their citations?" Absolutely. You will get this presentation as well 
as my email address and these-- after this presentation. Let's see. 
Scroll, scroll, scroll. Jaclyn, OK. Kaleil, I think? "Interested in 
learning more about those who have experienced sexual assault." The 
citations will be emailed out. 

OK, just scrolling through. "Are there statistics on obstruction of 
services or neglect of care for people with physical disabilities by 
caregivers?" That is a really good question. And I'm actually going to 
ask Ashley to unmute herself real quick and see if Vera might have 
some information there. 

ASHLEY BROMPTON: This is Ashley. I am going to say we do have some 


information, and we will provide our contact information at the end of 
the session as well. I think, for today, let's focus on the 
presentation, and then these other questions we can try to get 
answered at the end or as follow-up just to make sure we don't run out 
of time. 

LUANA NELSON-BROWN: Sounds good, yeah. I wasn't expecting you guys to 
have so many. All right, thank you, Ashley, so much. And yes, Katie, 
you did hear correctly. 60% of Black women are sexually assaulted 
before the age 18. That's absolute information. I'm going to go ahead 
and pick back up, because we're also going to have a Q&A session at 
the end as well. Whoops. I did that, didn't I? 

So I'm going to have to cut it off, because otherwise I won't get you 
the rest of the information. And we haven't even gotten to strategies 
yet. So yeah, so something to think about-- the main thing from this 
slide to think about is some of the things that we struggle with as 
adults working in victim services are some of the same things that 
folks with disabilities struggle with, except they have no outlet to 
talk about it. 

How do I talk to my 13-year-old, who's on the spectrum, about racism? 
As he starts to drive, how do I have that come-and-talk that African-
American moms have with their son? How do I have that with him in 
language that he can understand? And are we doing that? In victim 
services, are we having those conversations with folks with 
disabilities in our populations? 

So quick question for you guys, and maybe you can throw some answers 
up here in chat. Only 13% of victims of violent crime with 
disabilities receive support from victims services. Why do you think 
that is? I will give you just a couple of minutes to throw some things 
in chat. And I actually have to open my chat back up. 

Shame. Somebody said shame. Absolutely. "Aren't aware that they're 
being harmed," "limited resources," "barriers to equal access," "often 
not believed," "fear of being believed," "lack of comfort," "because 
their only caregiver is their perp," "communication," "no access--" 
all absolutely true, absolutely true-- "no outreach made to them," 
"inaccessible services." 

As I look at the statistic, everything that you guys are saying are 
all the reasons. As I looked at this statistic, I felt like it was a 
throwback to when I first started fighting for culturally specific 
services, right? Culturally specific services here in Iowa is barely 
at 10%. And when we're talking about services for violent crime beyond 
DA and SA, the number gets even smaller. 

So the same way that we fight and we advocate for culturally specific 
services to receive funding is the same way that we need to advocate 


for the population of folks with disabilities in our communities to 
receive funding. Because it's expensive, right? And when you make an 
investment, that's the only way that you can do services in the best 
way. You have to have resources to put towards some of those things. 

So one of the things that we figured out very early on as we started 
to intentionally focus on folks with disabilities in our populations 
is that we hadn't put in our budget nearly enough money for 
interpreters, right? Interpreters are expensive, as they should be. 
It's a specialized skill that they do. But if you don't have money in 
your budget for it, then how can you provide those services? 

So this is something that I feel like everybody on this call can go 
back to their states and advocate for. 13% receive support from victim 
services, both financially as well as the services themselves, right? 
So this is something that we need to really, really think about and 
pay attention to. 

"Services are unknown and clients don't know how to reach out." 
"Systems and organizations playing savior are not allowing folks to 
make autonomous choices." Absolutely, which is something that, as 
culturally specific programs, we know all too well. We talk about 
white savior syndrome all the time. It's the same way when it comes to 
ableism. 

And so if we don't pay attention, and if we don't intentionally focus 
on these populations, then this statistic will continue to exist or 
even increase, right? And it is time for us to switch interpreters, so 
I'm going to take a couple of minutes, regroup myself, and allow that 
to happen. And you guys just let me know, interpreters, when you're 
ready. 

Are we ready? Yes, OK, we're ready. Excellent. OK, so yeah, this is 
something that we have to pay attention to. Just like we tell 
mainstream organizations that they will miss providing services if 
they don't put an intentional focus on culturally specific services, 
it's the same thing that we need to do with folks with disabilities in 
our own populations. 

So you guys are super talkative. I'm going to pick it up just a little 
bit, because I'm looking at my time, and I don't want to miss anything 
for you guys. But please, feel free to continue to type in chat, and 
then we'll talk a little bit at the end as well. 

So this slide right here actually tells us what we already know, and 
that's disability doesn't discriminate, right? Every race, every 
ethnicity, every gender experiences disability. And this is an 
infographic to let us know why it's important for us to focus in on 
this area of the population in our own communities. 


If you look at just the American Indian, Alaska Native population, 3 
in 10 have a disability. In the Black population, one in four have a 
disability. So we already know that folks with disabilities have 
higher rates of victimization. We already know that people of color 
have higher rates of victimization. So as we look at this infographic, 
it tells us how many folks we are probably missing in providing 
services to as we look at our own populations, right? 

So I know in my community, at least one in four folks have a 
disability. And if I'm not concentrating and providing intentional 
services to that population, then I'm missing a quarter of victims, 
right? So something that we need to really focus on and think about--
oops-- and think about. And this slide is helpful to let us know just 
how prevalent disability is in our own specific communities. 

And we understand one of our biggest values that we ascribe to as 
culturally specific programs is that when you reach the margins, the 
solutions you come up with are the best decisions for everybody. So 
when I'm training mainstream organizations, I typically talk about 
the-- I think it's called the curb cut is the actual term for it, but 
I usually call them sidewalk scoops. So very technical, because it 
looks like someone scooped up the sidewalk. 

But you know when you get to the corner, and there's a curb cut there? 
One of the ways that I explain to mainstream organizations this 
concept of "when you reach the margins, your solutions are the best 
decisions for everybody," is I use that example. And I ask folks, how 
many times have you used that curb cut, right? And people typically 
give me answers like they use it for when their babies are little, and 
they have strollers. That curb cut comes in handy. 

If you're a bike rider, that curb cut comes in handy so you don't have 
to lift your bike over. And then I tell them that that curb cut 
actually wasn't created for me and you. It wasn't created for folks 
who are mobile. It was an ADA regulation, and it was created for folks 
with disabilities. So that is one of the best examples I can think of 
to let people know that when you intentionally focus, and you put 
investments and you put intention behind reaching specific 
populations, you come up with a solution that works for everyone. 

That is no different in our own programs, in our culturally specific 
programs. We're already really good at reaching our communities. And 
if we focus at the very edge of the margins of our communities, not 
only do we make the best services for our communities, but we make the 
best services period. So basically, what I'm talking about is more 
accessible services that make our programs unstoppable, right? 

So Black, Indigenous, people-of-color organizations focusing on 
creating accessible services would, hands down, be the best program 
for every single survivor. And you can go to your funders with that, 


right? So one of the reasons that we need to do this is because we 
want to live up to our own values. And as long as we're not focusing 
on folks with disabilities, we can't say that we're living up to our 
own values, if that makes sense. 

So real quick, another question-- after we've gone through all of 
this, and you guys have come up with so many things, how do you think 
increasing the accessibility of services benefits the survivors that 
you serve, and how can it benefit your program? Throw just a couple of 
answers in chat, and I'll just grab just a few as you go, because I 
want to hear from you guys. 

OK, here we go. "Creating awareness of not being alone," absolutely. 
"Reduces isolation," absolutely. How could it benefit your program? 
"Has to start with staff and acknowledging our own bias," 100%. That's 
a benefit to the program. "We would actually meet our mission of 
serving everyone who needs services." That really hits the nail on the 
head right there, Kathleen. We pride ourselves in reaching the 
margins. And this would mean we would absolutely really be reaching 
the margins. 

"Survivors would feel more empowered to gain access to safety," 
absolutely. "Improve access for reporting," absolutely, and "allows us 
to have resources and tools that can cater to a wide variety of 
needs." That's also hitting the nail on the head, right? So some real 
easy benefits for creating accessible services for survivors is it 
allows survivors to not only receive accessible services but also 
receive culturally competent accessible services. 

So we're not leaving folks with disabilities to access mainstream 
populations that might be accessible but further re-traumatizes or 
harms them, because they are providing culturally competent services. 
And then, on the flip side, we're not leaving folks with disabilities 
to receive culturally competent services in a program that might not 
be fully accessible, might not have plain language, might not have 
interpreters, and then further causes traumatization, right? 

So the benefit is that we increase services for all of the survivors 
in our community, not just a certain small portion of our community. 
Because as we saw in the last slide, there are huge sections of our 
community that have disabilities. So we will be reaching them. 

Program benefits-- there's a lot. As we started doing this work at the 
coalition, there were so many perspectives that I had never considered 
at the intersection of DV, SA, racism, and ableism, and other violent 
crimes and racism and ableism. We have biases, too. Folks that work 
with folks with disabilities have biases as well. And so as you start 
to do this work, you start to get some new perspectives, right? And 
you start to find that there are victimizations that you hadn't even 
thought about. 


Your spaces become better as you start to do this work. Your spaces 
become more accessible. Your materials become more accessible. Your 
programs start to reach a wider audience. One of the things that 
happened when we started to do this work, which was a big learning 
curve for me, was accessible written materials. Hadn't thought about 
it. 

As you heard in my bio, I have two degrees, and so I tend to be very 
academic, and hadn't thought about how exclusionary that is through 
our communication, right? So one of my staff brought our code of 
ethics to me. And they said, look at this code of ethics, and look at 
this language. And I said, oh my god, who wrote that? And I didn't 
realize it was ours, right? 

So one of the benefits of focusing on this work is that our materials 
got a whole lot better. We also built some huge relationships with 
organizations in our community, which has been extremely beneficial, 
especially now during COVID, right? Because we know the death rates 
and the rates of infection with folks with disability and with Black, 
Indigenous, and people of color are extremely high. And as we're 
working in our silos, we're not able to come up with the best 
solutions to reaching the populations like we need to. 

But as we started to collaborate-- we're a victim services 
organization and started collaborating with disability serving 
organizations-- we were able to come up with some creative things that 
really did some really good for our population. And because of that, 
we now have long-standing relationships with those folks. So as the 
George Floyd protests started to happen, we started to see support 
come in from places that we never had before, just because we had 
started relationship building. 

And also, it's going to save you time and money. There is a study out 
there right now, and it's actually with for-profit organizations, 
Amazon, Google, Facebook. And they did a study where they had 
executives try to solve a murder mystery. And they put all of the 
executives in the room. They were all the same person, meaning white, 
male, cisgender, monolithic. 

And as they started to debrief and started to try to figure out what 
the answer to this murder mystery was, they were headed down the 
absolute wrong path, right? So they were not coming up with the 
solution. They introduced one person who was different, different in 
ideology, different ethnically, different in gender. And because that 
person was introduced in an inclusionary fashion, not in a tokenizing 
fashion, meaning they had the same amount of power, their chance at 
reaching the correct decision increased by 60%. 

So one of the things that I think we don't often think about is that 


when we are diversifying, we are saving time and money simply because 
we arrive at the best decision a whole lot faster than when we're 
monolithic, right? And culturally specific programs know that being 
monolithic is not a thing for our communities. But oftentimes, we 
don't think about that portion of the population with disabilities. 

We also found as we started to do this work that fundraising 
opportunities skyrocketed, because now we had a bigger pool of 
population of folks to fundraise with. It is a myth that marginalized 
communities do not give to organizations they care about. They do. 
They give to organizations that make a difference. And when your 
organization is focused and intentionally doing good things for all of 
your population, your fundraising opportunities go up, as do your 
funding opportunities. 

Now that we're working with folks with disabilities, there are grants 
that we never would have seen just focusing on victim services, and 
vice versa. And the chances to do some amazing work is almost 
unlimited. If we're really honest, we work in silos. The disability 
service organizations work in their silos. Victim service 
organizations work in their silos. But when we combine that work, we 
have opportunities to do some incredible, incredible things. 

Here in Iowa, we're working with Vera on a learning community. And all 
we did was pull together various organizations, pulled all of us out 
of our silos to start to work together. And this is a perfect segue to 
this next slide, which is some of the work that we've been doing here. 
So we pulled together several organizations to focus specifically on 
one of our marginalized-- our immigrant and refugee populations here 
in Des Moines. 

So we pulled together several programs. They became member agencies of 
ours. And we started to just have discussions, right? Talk about, what 
does it look like for us to work together? What does it look like to 
come out of our silos? And there were things that came up that I never 
even imagined would, like differences in what mandatory reporting 
looks like. In victim services, we tend to think of child abuse 
mandatory reporting right off the bat. But in disability serving 
organizations, mandatory reporting means a whole different thing. 

So what about confidentiality? So we started to have these 
conversations. And the next thing we knew, we started to be able to 
come up with some real solutions around that. I see Jess Morgan says 
that they have a lot of conversations about that, too. And then, just 
as we were getting our relationship building going, COVID hit, right? 
And we had to actually jump into action. So it was a good thing that 
we had started building those relationships, because the population 
that we were intentionally focusing on got hit really hard with COVID. 

I don't know how much you know about Iowa, but we're an agricultural 


state. We have lots of meat-packing plants, and lots of our immigrant 
and refugee populations work at those plants. And we started seeing 
some serious victimizations happen in that population just around 
work, being forced to go to work whether or not you were sick, being 
forced to go to work whether or not someone in your family was sick, 
and then if you chose not to go to work, not getting paid, and then 
facing evictions. 

And then we found that some of our mortgage companies were not being 
very helpful around those evictions, despite the fact that we have 
general assistance that's available for that. So those were one of the 
things that one of our programs brought to the table. And navigating 
these systems was quite difficult during COVID. One, you can't be in 
person. Two, a lot of the systems were not very responsive. 

So what we were able to do was come together as a group and start to 
tackle these things together. We were able to successfully get some 
additional funding for one of our organizations to hire a specific 
COVID case manager so that they could start tackling some of these 
institutions that were being nonresponsive. We were able to put 
together some structure around collection of the issues, because these 
were all issues that were new because the pandemic was new. 

And so we were able to start to collect some of those issues in a 
structured way, because let's face it. Our culturally specific 
programs barely have enough staff to do the work that they do 
currently, let alone add a pandemic on top of it. So our disability 
serving organizations and some of our culturally specific programs 
came together, and we just started to fight the battle together. And 
it was tough. But if we hadn't started the journey, and if we hadn't 
started to focus on this, then we never would have gotten a chance to 
do some of those things. 

Oh, there's a couple of other things I'm looking at in my notes that 
we were also able to do as the rallies and the riots broke out. We're 
the violent crime coalition. Every time there's a rally or a protest, 
those are actually homicide awareness events. Every time you hashtag 
#SayTheirNames, you're saying the name of a homicide survivor. So of 
course our work increased dramatically when it came to the rallies and 
the protests. 

And something that I noticed right off the bat, and probably never 
would have noticed had we not started doing this work, is that there 
were no sign language interpreters at any of the rallies. So we were 
able to jump in and provide support to-- oh, hi, Brianna. Thank you. 
See you later. 

We were able to provide support to some of the protesters, right? As 
they, in essence, did homicide awareness events, we were able to pay 
for interpreters, because we had already positioned our budget to have 


interpreters in. And we did that because we started this work. So 
almost every rally and protest here in Des Moines ended up having sign 
language interpreters. 

We also infiltrated Des Moines City Council meeting, which was virtual 
and on Zoom. And it was discussing a very important issue on racial 
profiling here in Des Moines. There were 1,100 people on this Zoom 
call-- it's a city council meeting, and it was open for public 
comment-- over 1,100 if you include people watching YouTube. And 
people were commenting on the plan that they were trying to put forth 
on racial profiling. 

And they did not have any captions, and they did not have any 
interpreters, and they did not have any translators. And so we were 
able to step in and call that out in the middle of the meeting. How 
are you going to talk about something as important as racial profiling 
and effectively exclude a huge portion of the population? So we did 
that, and I got a little bit of hate mail after, but whatever. We're 
used to that, right? 

But in the next Zoom meeting that they had, guess what they had? 
Captions and interpreters. So they're getting a little bit better at 
what they do. And I almost missed that we are ready to switch 
interpreters again. So I'm going to stop talking about Des Moines for 
a minute and let our interpreters switch. Just hit me in chat when 
you're ready. 

OK, we're ready. Thank you so much for that switch. Yeah, we had to 
call it out, but I will be perfectly honest. Had I not been 
intentionally focusing on the population, had I not been intentionally 
doing this work, I probably would have been right with the other 1,300 
people that completely missed it. So that was a new opportunity, new 
areas, new spaces that we have now to help folks think about it, to 
help people think about beyond even DA and SA, to help folks in other 
arenas think about the importance of being accessible. 

So we are going to give you some strategies, if I can stop my mouse 
from doing really weird things. Sorry. And the strategies that we took 
here are simple. And the strategies that I'm going to give you today 
are simple. Usually, when we talk about becoming more accessible, the 
first thing people think about is, oh my gosh, I'm going to have to 
have a ton of money to make structural changes to my building, and 
that sort of thing. 

But no, the changes that we made were small changes that had big 
impact. And everyone's got to start somewhere. And the place to start 
simply is with conversations, conversations that can be hard but are 
necessary. I mean, we had to think about, and I encourage you all to 
think about, how is disability even viewed in your community? For 
Black and Indigenous and people of color, in some of our communities, 


disability is not talked about. 

If we're really honest, it's taboo to even talk about disability in 
your community. It's also taboo to talk about victimization in your 
community. So as you start to do this work, you're going to have to 
tackle that, right? What does your community think about disability? 
How much education and learning are you going to have to do? Is it 
negative in your community? Is it positive in your community? Is it 
neutral? And how is that going to have an impact on how you provide 
services, right? 

One of the agencies that we work with said that, hey, disability is 
not something that we talk about. It's more of a shame-based thing. 
And so in order to go into the community and advocate, they had to 
deal with that, right? How does your agency think about disability? 
That's something that we have to think about. 

And I'd like to, here, talk about, this is where you can really put 
your money where your mouth is. How are your funds allocated? Are you 
allocating for interpreters? Are you allocating for accessibility? How 
does your agency think about it? Like I told you before, that document 
that my staff brought to me that I didn't know was ours, and I looked 
at it in a different light as I started to think about plain language. 
And I thought, oh my god, who wrote this? Who wrote this? And it was 
me. 

So how does your agency really think about disability? How would you 
serve a survivor with a disability right now if they walked into your 
door? Is your space ready to accommodate? Are your materials 
accessible? And what are some of the biggest barriers and challenges 
when you're providing advocacy and other services for these survivors? 
So these are some things that we have to think about as we start to do 
this work. 

And I'll be honest with you. When we first started, I knew it was 
important to focus on the edges of the margins, but I didn't know what 
it looked like. So we just started with conversations. And it turns 
out that those conversations-- I'm going backwards-- were really what 
laid the groundwork for our work moving forward. Someone says, "That's 
a start on how and where we got our disability from." Excellent. Yeah, 
absolutely. 

Some of the other agency program needs-- you've got to review your 
policies, procedures, and practices. Are they inclusive for survivors 
with disabilities, or are they exclusionary? This is the same 
narrative for my culturally specific programs that we talk about with 
mainstream programs. It is the same thing. What do those policies look 
like? What do those procedures look like? We hear about this a lot 
with shelters and how shelters don't allow service animals, for 
example. That is an exclusionary, ableist policy, right? 


So as you start to address your agency's needs, I'd encourage you to 
look at your own agency's policies, procedures, and practices. And you 
might be surprised that there's some work to be done in your own 
agency. You can do an access review of your physical space. This is 
where we left off, actually, when COVID hit, right? So we are ready to 
do this review of our physical space and super excited, but we can't 
do it in person right now. 

But you know what we can do and what we did do instead? We started 
viewing our materials. And so whenever things get back to in person, 
one of the first things we're going to do is do an access review of 
our physical space. And I know that Vera helps with that. 

Review your budget. I am a strong, strong believer in putting your 
money where your mouth is. If you don't budget for the needs and being 
accessible, you're just not going to do it. It's just not going to 
happen. This is the same thing that we tell mainstream programs about 
culturally specific services, right? 

I am scrolling down. OK, there's graphic-- OK, my chat is doing weird 
things, you guys. I want to make sure I'm not missing anything. All 
right, excellent. You guys just keep chatting away. I'm going to keep 
going, though, here, and then hopefully I'll have enough time to maybe 
back up a little bit at the end so I don't miss some of this good 
work. 

The hardest part for me in doing a webinar is not communicating with 
you in chat. I just want to really just go in and just have that 
conversation. And then I remember, oh, yeah, I have actual information 
to give you. So bear with me. 

Partnering with other agencies-- this was the biggest part of the work 
that we did here, right? The disability organizations in your 
community can be such a good resource on how to increase access, 
because it's what they do every day. Also, they're a great resource on 
how to collaborate with people with disabilities. Because, like we 
know in our culturally specific programs, people with disabilities 
should be leading the charge, right? They should have a prominent 
position of power in our agencies, because they have the answers for 
their population. 

This is the same thing that we say when we're talking to mainstream 
organizations, right? But if you don't have relationships with the 
population, how are you going to do that, which is something that we 
hear mainstream organizations say to us all of the time. The way to do 
that is to partner. Partner with disability organizations. Partner 
with those organizations that are led by folks with disabilities. And 
that's what we've done here, and it's opened up an entire new access 
to a population that we hadn't even thought about. 


Someone's asking what training do we suggest for our advocates to 
learn basic ASL. I'm going to, at the end, answer that, because I 
think Ashley probably has a good answer for that as well as some other 
folks on. And at the same way that disability organizations can be a 
great resource, we can also be a great resource for them on how to be 
culturally competent and how to integrate a culturally competent 
framework into their work. 

So one of the organizations that we work with here in Iowa as the 
protests started to happen hadn't really thought a whole lot about 
being culturally competent. And in fact, very little of their staff 
were Black, Indigenous, or people of color. But now, just like 
everyone else, it is something that they're thinking about now. So 
they were able to reach out to us in our own little cohort to ask how 
to start the conversation in their agency. 

What should a statement on Black Lives Matter look like in their 
agency? And because we had already built that relationship, we were 
able to sit down and work together. So when you think about it, if 
disability serving organizations become more culturally competent, and 
culturally specific organizations become more accessible, now there's 
no wrong door for survivors, right? 

So we're increasing access twofold. When they reach out for 
assistance, they may come to a culturally specific program, or they 
may not. They may go to a disability serving program, or they may not. 
But wherever they go, the goal should be that none of those areas 
should be a wrong door. 

Jamie says, "I'm not sure how to best frame this question, but I'm 
curious to know how other folks here work within really limited 
definitions of disability. I so often see people who self-identify as 
disabled but don't have medical system validation or documentation or 
folks who have not a lot of visibility get turned down by support 
systems. How do you help the survivors you're working with navigate 
this?" 

You know what, Jamie? This is where those partnerships come in really 
handy, because we struggled with this as well. How do you help 
survivors navigate the limitations of disability? And we leaned on our 
partnerships with disability serving organizations to help us through 
that. And they leaned on us quite a bit to help them with navigating 
the systems of victim services, right? 

How do they get advocates? How do they get victim service advocates? 
How do they get court advocates? How do they get medical advocates? So 
when you bring the two partnerships together, I think that's really 
when you get the best services. And it's not easy. I'm not saying that 
this work is easy at all. 


So we are at final thoughts. Woohoo. And I made it to the last 15 
minutes, which is where I wanted to answer some of your questions. And 
I know I missed a lot of them. So I may not be able to get to them 
all, but we'll try to get to a few. I actually do have-- whoops-- some 
final thoughts for you guys as we go. And these are some of the things 
that, if you didn't take anything else away from today, take some of 
these things away as our final thoughts. 

Culturally specific programs, I'm talking directly to you. You are 
absolutely, positively the best position to meet all of the needs of 
the people that we serve when you ensure that your programs are 
accessible and disability responsive. We are the experts. You are the 
experts in culturally competent services for your population. If you 
reach a little bit further out to the margins, you are in a prime 
position to literally say you have the best services in the country. 

This is important for your funders to know. This is important for your 
constituents to know. You are in that program. Mainstream 
organizations have a further way to go, because they not only have to 
become accessible, but they also have to become culturally competent. 
When you're working in your own population, you don't have to do that. 
You're just reaching the needs of all your population. 

And you can take small steps to make that change, looking at policies, 
practices, materials, your physical materials, and then making those 
connections, which is easy for culturally specific programs because we 
are a relationship people, right? That's one of the things that we 
know that's different with Black, Indigenous, and people of color, is 
that we are relationship based. And we are already doing things like 
sewing circles and book clubs, things that we know reach survivors but 
reach them in the way they need to be reached. 

If we do those same things, and we make them accessible to folks with 
disabilities, then we have created a model for every program in the 
country to provide best practices. And you know what? Always ask for 
help, because you're not in this alone. This is new for the entire 
country, pretty much. We're in our silos, and coming together is 
something new. Even data collection is new. So ask for help, and reach 
out and make those connections with each other. 

I'm super excited that a lot of people are in chat, and hopefully you 
will get that chat, and you'll be able to reach out to some people 
that maybe you didn't know before. So the last question I have for you 
guys before we do a little bit of Q&A is, can you tell me one thing 
that you learned today that you think you can apply to your work? I am 
going to ask if you could put that in chat, would be awesome for me. 
And I'm going to scroll as we do that. 

One thing-- is there any one thing that stuck out for you? "When 


you're intentional in reaching the edge of marginalized communities, 
you have the best services." Absolutely. "There are multiple starting 
points to this work." Absolutely. "Three specific things--
conversations, address program needs, partner with others." 
Absolutely. 

"Push cultural competency to be something more, to transform into 
cultural humility. Cultural humility consists of lifelong learners, 
self-evaluation, critical reflection. Be aware. We have a 
responsibility to create a welcoming space and make room for openness 
for the human experience and ongoing growth." Absolutely. "Increase 
communicating about mandated reporting, budget accommodations." Yay, 
you guys learned stuff. Whoo. 

Now, those of the people here from Iowa that know me know that I do 
this a lot. I was also a cheerleader. So that makes me feel really, 
really good. I know I pushed a lot of information on you, but it 
sounds like you guys actually really, really heard what we said, and 
you're taking things away. I'm super excited about that. 

"60% of Black women-- Black women, that is-- 60% of Black women are 
assaulted before the age of 18." Absolutely. So I am going to actually 
ask Ashley if she would unmute and help me know if I left anything 
out. I didn't look at Q&S, so if you could help me with that, Ashley, 
too, that would be great as we do this final Q&A part. Are you there, 
Ash? 

ASHLEY BROMPTON: This is Ashley. Hello, everyone. Thank you so much, 
Luana. That was an amazing presentation. And it felt like, I think, we 
all learned something from this, and if everyone's like me, learned a 
bunch from this. So I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to 
us today and also just how appreciative I am of your spirit in this 
moment and bringing that to our audience. I can't say thank you enough 
for that. 

We have a lot of questions, and we don't have a lot of time. So for 
those of you who ask a question that maybe got missed or that we are 
unable to address, we have Luana's email address on the screen, so 
hopefully you can reach out to her. We can also put our CVS email 
address in the chat, so you could reach out to us at CVS, and we can 
hopefully get your questions answered. Before we go to questions, I 
want to pause for just a moment to do one last interpreter change. 

OK, so we got a lot of questions, some of which you addressed 
throughout the presentation, but there's quite a few that are new 
questions. And one of them is, you talked about-- when you were 
talking about the factors that increase risk, you talked a little bit 
about how people with disabilities who also have other identities may 
not have a space to process or have an outlet for talking about those 
identities. You gave examples of racism and homophobia. And one of our 


participants was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more on 
what you mean when you say an outlet to process those identities or 
the experiences that they have. 

LUANA NELSON-BROWN: Sure, absolutely. The best example I can give for 
that is to talk a little bit about my own experience. As I said, I 
have a 13-year-old son who's on the spectrum, on the autism spectrum. 
And he is a Black male child in Iowa, right? And we live in a suburban 
area that is predominantly white. In our school district, there are 
only three Black teachers in the entire district. There are no Black 
administrators in the entire district. And there's only one person of 
color on the school board. 

As a result, there are lots of instances of microaggressions. There 
are lots of instances of outright racism. We're working with the 
district right now, and they-- one of the principals at one of the 
schools in the district outright said that they don't believe that 
Black history belongs as part of the curriculum for the entire 
district. 

So I know that my son feels that. I know he understands that something 
is wrong. I know he feels microaggressions. But he doesn't have an 
outlet to talk about it, because his teachers, his administrators--
while they may be competent in communicating with him on his 
disability, they certainly aren't comfortable or competent talking 
about his experiences of microaggressions and racism. They don't even 
know that exists. 

So that's what I mean when I say there's no outlet. And if we're in 
one of those communities where working with our folks with 
disabilities is taboo, where we just put them to the side and assume 
that they're doing OK, and we further isolate them at home, then they 
don't even have us to come and talk about that with. 

That's one of the strategies that we tell our kids when we talk about 
bullying and victimization, is come home and talk to your children 
about their day. Well, when you're not talking to your children about 
their day because they have a disability, then where do they go to 
talk about those experiences that we know they are having around 
racism and homophobia and other things? So that's what hopefully 
answers that a little bit. 

ASHLEY BROMPTON: Great. Thank you so much. The other thing you talked 
about is this idea that having people at the table in your decision-
making process can help you make change faster, more economically, and 
better overall change. Can you provide an example of what that might 
look like for an organization looking to incorporate people with 
disabilities more into their work? 

LUANA NELSON-BROWN: Absolutely. Just like we talk about with 


mainstream organizations that put in every single grant application 
that they are going to increase their services to the Black community 
by 20%, and then they commence to putting together a plan that is made 
up by all white folks, and that plan misses a whole lot of obvious 
things that Black, Indigenous, and people of color could have told 
them that's not going to work, and it takes them several to figure out 
that they've gone wrong and they've spent a lot of money trying to 
arrive at the right decision, it's the same way with us. 

As we start to do this work, it's extremely important that we 
incorporate folks with disabilities in on the planning from the ground 
floor. Because as people who are able-bodied and without disabilities, 
we're going to miss a lot of stuff. So we could do it ourselves and 
say we're going to do this, we're going to reach the margins and put 
together a plan, but I can guarantee you that you're going to spend 
money backing up that plan and redoing it if you don't include folks 
with disabilities on the ground floor and put them in positions of 
power in our agencies. Our agencies should look as diverse as we have 
been asking mainstream agencies to look, if that makes sense. 

ASHLEY BROMPTON: It does make sense. Thank you so much. We are getting 
very close to the end of our time together. There were quite a few 
more questions that I don't know that we're going to have time to get 
to. I do want to, again, point you all to Luana's email address. And 
hopefully someone on my team can put our cvs@vera.org email address 
into the chat. That's a great way to get your questions into CVS, and 
then we can get them to Luana, or we can hopefully start to help 
answer them ourselves. Again, that's cvs@vera.org. 

I apologize that we did not have time to get to all of the questions 
today. I think there was just a huge wealth of material that we wanted 
to get to and a lot of conversation happening. So thank you all so 
much for actively participating today. I would say this is one of our 
top five most active webinars we've ever had in the chat. It was 
constantly going, and you all were really critically thinking about 
some of these issues. 

We really want to continue talking about these intersections and these 
topics that matter to you, so I am going to ask you to please fill out 
our survey that we ask you to complete after the session. And Luana's 
putting it on the screen right now. There's a link to a brief survey. 
It's really, really helpful to us to have the survey there. It gives 
us an opportunity to see what went well with this webinar, what you 
didn't like, what you wish would have been different as we move 
forward. 

It will also pop up on your screen when you close the webinar. So 
don't worry. I know you can't click it. Unfortunately, you can't click 
it. But you can definitely fill out the survey when you close out the 
webinar today. And we will post one more time the materials in the 


chat. So if you need a record of attendance or you want a copy of the 
PowerPoint, which includes the statistics and any links, we will make 
sure that that's posted one more time in the chat so that folks have 
access to that as well. 

And again, I want to thank Luana today for the amazing information 
that you provided. It was really helpful and eye opening for me 
personally and I know for a lot of the people who are here listening 
today. And thank you so much to our access team who has done so much 
on today's webinar, our interpreters and our captionists, and the 
people working behind the scenes to make this happen for all of you 
today. We appreciate all of you as well for taking the time to come 
have a real, authentic conversation with us. 

And we hope to continue to have these conversations with you. So 
please feel free to reach out and continue this process with us. And 
with that, the links to the materials will be sent out via email as 
well in a follow-up. So if you don't have a chance to click on that 
today, you'll see that in the next couple of days. And you should see 
a recording on our website in the next couple of weeks. Thank you all 
so much, and have a great afternoon. 

LUANA NELSON-BROWN: Thank you. Bye bye.