Lauren Rivera

Delighted to be in Springfield today speaking with Illinois legislators on behalf of the Governor's Advisory Council on the Education of Children with Disabilities.

Script from 5calls: Hi, my name is [NAME] and I’m a constituent from [CITY, ZIP]. [IF CALLING SENATE]: I’m calling to ask that [REP/SEN NAME] push to defund ICE by opposing any appropriations bill that maintains ICE funding and supporting legislation that claws back the $75 billion ICE slush fund created by H.R. 1 last year. This lawless agency is violently attacking and killing immigrants and citizens around the country and must be defunded and dissolved for good. Thank you for your time and consideration. IF LEAVING VOICEMAIL: Please leave your full street address to ensure your call is tallied.

Snowed in? As long as you've still got power or cell service, it's a great time to send some emails or make some calls.

They're chipping away at voting rights-- this time, by going after people who procrastinate when voting by mail.

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

If you are looking to include sociological work on disability discrimination in education, linking two papers (one looking at elite private schools, the other public schools):
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

My 10 YO loudly boos them Princess-Bride-style here in Chicago

Wait, aren't we already there yet? ;-)

Thank you for speaking up, Dr. Gunter. I have a medically complex child; RSV is the #1 virus that wrecks havoc on our kiddos in childhood, resulting in prolonged hospital stays and even death. These therapies are literal lifelines for young children, and it is unconscionable to remove access.

Hmmm... many of these are related service providers who provide dedicated minutes to children with IEPs in public schools under the IDEA. What is the implication for special education and educational access for children with disabilities, under an already gutted IDEA compliance regime?

Black text on a yellow background - This is Alice's friend Sandy Ho, posting. Per Alice's wishes, this message is being shared at the time of her passing. Hi everyone, it looks like I ran out of time. I have so many dreams that I wanted to fulfill and plans to create new stories for you. There are a few in progress that might come to fruition in a few years if things work out. I did not ever imagine I would live to this age and end up a writer, editor, activist, and more. As a kid riddled with insecurity and internalized ableism, I could not see a path forward. It was thanks to friendships and some great teachers who believed in me that I was able to fight my way out of miserable situations into a place where I finally felt comfortable in my skin. We need more stories about us and our culture. You all, we all, deserve the everything and more in such a hostile, ableist environment. Our wisdom is incisive and unflinching. I'm honored to be your ancestor and believe disabled oracles like us will light the way to the future. Don't let the bastards grind you down. I love you all.

“Don’t let the bastards grind you down. I love you all.”

My partner's employer added a $90/mo employed spouse penalty (on top of another $200/mo hike) for employees with working spouses who enroll in his (rather than spouse's) plan. It penalizes dual career couples and those with preexisting conditions who need decent coverage. It is a healthcare company.

Thank you for the shoutout, Jen!

If you haven't read Estela Diaz and Lauren Rivera's excellent paper on how private schools manage kids with disabilities, you're missing out.

LMM framing is that parents will choose schools for their children. That is absolutely false. Private schools will choose their kids, based on criteria that would mangle your brain.

Trust me, I've read hundreds of private school applications. Mind blowing stuff.

100 percent. And they explicitly exclude children they believe are neurodivergent or have any type of disability.
urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

Congratulations!!

The monitor or the espresso? ;-)

And private schools can (and do) refuse to educated disabled or neurodivergent children

Deaths from heart disease down 75%, that’s NIH.

Deaths from stroke down 75%, that’s NIH.

HIV/AIDS no longer a death sentence, that’s NIH.

99% of FDA approved drugs in the last decade, that’s NIH.

Please show this video to anyone who doesn’t understand why the NIH is so important.

This is incredibly cool: if you search for a condition that’s affected your family, the site returns stats on how much NIH has done for that disease, *and* a contact form for reaching out to tell your Members of Congress why you want to see them defend NIH.

Pass it on!

Guys, I love all of you, but the answer to RFK, Jr. is not that autistic adults hold jobs, pay taxes, and get laid, it's that everyone deserves to live even if they can't work, pay taxes, or get laid.

Number of people who go bankrupt every year because of medical bills or illness-related work loss:

Australia 0
Canada 0
Denmark 0
Finland 0
France 0
Germany 0
Iceland 0
Ireland 0
Italy 0
Japan 0
Netherlands 0
Norway 0
Portugal 0
Spain 0
Sweden 0
UK 0
United States 530,000

There’s a lesson there.

Sharing an ungated version of a paper I recently published on private school early childhood admissions urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

Thank you so much for the shoutout @katemcnamara.bsky.social!

Congratulations! Looking forward to reading!!

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

While elite private schools do not (yet) require biomedical specimens as part of their assessments, their early childhood admissions practices—which essentialize merit and present some children’s bodies and minds as more or less intrinsically wired for success—share some concerning similarities.

We argue that these schools' admissions practices represent a case of essentializing merit, in which gatekeepers construct merit as an intrinsic rather than achieved property of individuals, an approach that is gaining traction in other elite contexts, but has troubling implications for disability.

Prior work has discussed how in every era, elite private schools maintain high status by identifying an outgroup against which they define themselves; our research suggests that, at least in the context of early childhood programs, disabled children are that contemporary outgroup.

Why did they do this? In a highly competitive admissions process, they believed screening on disability status was a fair and legitimate way of evaluating children who were too young to have established academic or extracurricular records to evaluate.

How do the most elite US private schools, which serve as Ivy League feeders, select their youngest members? In a new ASR article w/ @estelabdiaz.bsky.social, we show that schools explicitly design their early childhood admissions practices to identify—and exclude—disabled or neurodivergent children🧵