(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — The City of Chicago will celebrate disability pride month with a parade in downtown Chicago.
The Chicago Disability Pride Parade is set for July 23 at 10 a.m., and it’s scheduled to kick off from Plymouth Court and Van Buren Street. It will come together at Daley Plaza.
Since the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law on July 26, 1990, people with disabilities all over the country have marched during the month of July.
The Chicago Disability Pride Parade has been running the longest, with 2022 marking 19 years of the event.
Although the parade has been running for nearly two decades, disability activism in Chicago predates the Americans with Disabilities Act.
In the 1980s, Chicago disability rights activists protested the lack of accessibility on CTA buses. Those protests led to the implementation of bus lifts on all of the city’s buses.
On its site, Chicago Disability Pride Parade organizers wrote that disabilities are a natural part of human diversity.
“[Disability pride] is a public expression of our belief that our disabilities are a natural part of human diversity, a celebration of our heritage and culture, and a validation of our experience,” parade organizers wrote.
The mission of the parade is to change the way people imagine and define disability.
Anyone who’d like to register their organization for the parade can do so here.
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