Why Tectonic Change?
In our society, and in societies around the world, there are deep myths and misconceptions about people who experience disabilities. Myths about what our lives are like. About how valuable we are to the world. About what rights we should have, and what rights we already do.
There are misconceptions on the other side, too. Myths about what the able-bodied world believes about us, and about how easily life, choices, and decisions come to people who don't live with a disability.
I have always seen these as two different worlds, like two tectonic plates: the disabled world and the able-bodied world. You could name almost any minority group and find the same thing. Each side carries its own myths about the other, and the plates keep grinding past each other without ever really meeting.
Tectonic Change exists to make them meet.
When tectonic plates collide, the earth changes and something new rises up. That is the change I want to create: a shift of epic proportion where our two worlds come together and build something new. Something exciting! And as they collide, the myths and misconceptions each side holds about the other break loose and fall away.
We do that work through education, with people who have lived experience doing the teaching and all of us learning from each other. Our goal is a world that is new, beautiful, and as free of myths and misconceptions as we can possibly make it.
That is the tectonic "change" we are working toward.
Joni Thomas, Founder and President