Disability Pride Madison presents: Anita Cameron!

Please come through for what will be an amazing night! RSVP and tell your friends!

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This event will be virtual, hosted over the Zoom platform. It will be ASL interpreted. If you have any additional access needs, please let us know through DM, over email ([email protected]) or via our contact form on our website.

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Anita Cameron (she/her/hers) began working as Not Dead Yet’s Director of Minority Outreach in January 2017. She has met with national and state policy makers and written persuasively about opposition to a public policy of assisted suicide from the perspective of communities of color who experience disparities in access to healthcare.

Anita has had 37 years of experience in transportation issues, beginning with her employment in 1984 as a Transit Information Agent with the Chicago Transit Authority, where she first became aware of transportation issues affecting people with disabilities.

Since then, Anita has served on the Regional Transportation District’s Disability Advisory Committee in Denver, Colorado, and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority (WMATA) Elderly and Disabled Advisory Committee in Washington, DC. While serving in that capacity, she was appointed Chair of the Bus Subcommittee. Each of these committees advises the transportation authorities on the issues affecting people with disabilities.

Anita served on the Bus Fareness Committee in Rochester, New York. The Bus Fareness Committee sought to bring awareness of issues of concern to people with disabilities, seniors, and people who have low incomes, and create a citizens’ oversight committee to give input to the Rochester Genesee Regional Transportation Authority (RGRTA).

Anita also helped to conduct two trainings in Indiana to riders with disabilities to form citizen oversight committees for their transit associations.

Voting rights and accessibility for people with disabilities is a particular passion for Anita, who, as a Black woman, feels that because people died fighting for her right to vote, it is her duty to do so. She has fought for the right of people with disabilities not only to vote, but to serve in their communities. In 1992, she became the first person with disabilities to serve as an election judge for the city and county of Denver. She went on to serve as a poll worker in Washington, DC, while working as a disability vote organizer for the American Association of People with Disabilities. She has trained poll workers and precinct captains in voting access for people with disabilities

From 2004-2006, Anita worked at the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) in Washington, DC, as the DC Metro Disability Vote Organizer, working with the Board of Elections and Ethics to increase voting access and recruited 67 disabled people to serve as poll workers and election judges.

Anita worked as Systems Advocate for the Center for Disability Rights in Rochester, NY, from 2006-2010, addressing a broad range of disability rights and access issues with advocates and lawmakers at the local, state and national levels.

In 2004, while in Washington, DC, Anita trained to become a CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) member. In 2008, she helped to form the first CERT class consisting of people with disabilities in Rochester, New York. After joining Denver CERT in 2011, Anita became the first blind CERT instructor for the State of Colorado, and in 2013, became a CERT Program Manager for the State. Because emergency preparedness for disabled people is her passion, she personally recruited over 30 disabled people to complete CERT training in the state of Colorado.

Anita taught over 250 students and provided training on emergency preparedness to over 200 seniors and people with disabilities living in the community.

Anita has assisted in numerous exercises and real-world incidents with Denver CERT, including serving as a radio communications operator during the Colorado Flood of 2013 and remotely assisting survivors of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma in disaster relief in 2017.

Anita has written extensively, for numerous agencies and publications, on emergency and disaster preparedness for people with disabilities, as well as the role and participation of the disability community in emergency management. She has blogged for the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies. Anita serves on the Equity Workgroup for the Global Alliance for Disaster Resource Acceleration (GADRA).

Since 1986, Anita has volunteered with ADAPT, a national, grassroots disability rights organization. In 35 years of involvement, she has risen to a position of national leadership and has been arrested 139 times for nonviolent civil disobedience fighting for the civil rights of all disabled folks. She was invited to the White House on two occasions, has met three sitting U.S. Presidents and two Vice-Presidents, and helped to organize a national march.

Anita is an accomplished writer and blogger who has served as a guest columnist for newspapers, magazines and blogs, writing mainly about issues affecting people with disabilities, including issues of discrimination, voting rights, transportation, opposition to physician assisted suicide and emergency preparedness. She has written for Yahoo! Voices, The Mobility Resource and The Huffington Post, and has been published in “Voices of A People’s History of the United States”, by the late, award winning historian, Howard Zinn. The book underwent a tenth anniversary reissue in 2014, which includes Anita’s original article, “And the Steps Came Tumbling Down: ADAPT’s Battle with the American Homebuilders’ Association”. Anita’s work and articles were cited in the 2019 National Council On Disability report on the dangers of assisted suicide as public policy.

As a Black Disabled Lesbian, Anita has dealt with racisim, sexism, ableism, and homophobia – sometimes combinations of these. She has used her experience of discrimination and her unique intersectional perspective to promote understanding among different groups of disenfranchised people and increase social justice among those fighting for social justice. She worked to get nondiscrimination ordinances for the LGBTQIA2S+ community in Chicago, IL and Denver, CO. She helped organize the first Pride March in Colorado Springs, Colorado, wrote a nondiscrimination policy for a Center for Independent Living in Denver, CO, and served as the national representative for the disability community at the 1993 March on Washington.

In 2017, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network honored Anita with the 2017 Service to the Self Advocacy Movement award for her national advocacy work, and in 2018, Anita received the Lead On award for her work with ADAPT. In 2020, Anita was honored as a Changemaker in the Rochester Museum and Science Center’s exhibit, Rochester Women Changing the World.

Anita also serves on the National Disability Leadership Alliance’s Steering Committee, as well as it’s Racism Taskforce, and created and co-Chaired the Intersectional Justice Committee for ADAPT.

Anita lives in Rochester, New York, with her wife, Lisa, and cats, JoJo and Nemo.

“Civil rights are not given. You must fight to get them, then, fight to keep them.”