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August 24, 2023
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Wesley Hamilton, a member of Schusterman’s REALITY alumni community, is on a mission to foster a mindset of courage, competence and confidence in every individual with a disability. This interview explores Wesley’s journey to becoming an advocate for disability justice and his reflections on how all leaders working toward social change can incorporate disability justice into their work.
This interview is part of Roots to Branches, an ongoing series featuring conversations with leaders working to build a more just and inclusive world. The series highlights the unique journeys that brought these leaders to where they are today and their visions for the road ahead. To explore more conversations in the Roots to Branches series, check out Schusterman’s digital magazine, Toward.
To achieve true equity and inclusion in our society, it’s important for leaders working on social change to embrace disability justice. That’s why I spoke with Wesley Hamilton, a member of Schusterman’s REALITY alumni community and a leading voice for disability justice, to learn more about tangible steps leaders can take to ensure their efforts are truly inclusive to all.
Wesley doesn’t define himself by his limitations. After a shooting that led to a devastating spinal cord injury at 24, he became paralyzed from the waist down. In 2015, he launched Disabled But Not Really (DBNR), a Kansas City-based nonprofit that provides adaptive health and wellness services for individuals with disabilities, and aims to educate communities on improving the overall quality of life for people with disabilities. Wesley was even featured on two episodes of Netflix’s “Queer Eye,” where he talked about his experience with a disability and DBNR’s impact.
Below, read my interview with Wesley to learn more about his journey to advocacy and insights from a career focused on empowering and celebrating people with disabilities.
Where did your journey as an advocate for disability justice begin?
I acquired my disability in January 2012 after sustaining multiple gunshot wounds to the abdomen that injured my T11 and T12 vertebrae. At the time of my injury, I was already overwhelmed. I had a pretty unhealthy lifestyle, and I had just become a single father with sole custody of my young daughter. Nobody prepared me for the mental and emotional aspects of suddenly living with a disability. I went through a couple of years assuming that my life was over.
But one day, when I was moving from my hospital bed into my wheelchair, my daughter asked, “Daddy, are you getting your Superman chair?” At that moment, I realized I had to “put on a cape.” I’m still a father, and my daughter needs me. She doesn’t see me for my disability first; she sees me as her daddy first. That changed my mindset. I saw my choice: am I going to live my life based on other people’s perceptions of what I can do, or am I going to live the best way I can?
After that, I completely changed my diet and lifestyle, taking nutrition classes at my local community college and developing a workout routine. I was hyped, but I also thought about how my perceptions of disability had made my life miserable for years.
Right now, 1 in 4 Americans live with a disability, and everyone will have one at some point in their life. I wanted to help people with disabilities get more active, shift their perspectives on themselves, and shift the world’s perspective on disability.
The first book I read in the hospital while recovering from my final surgery was on how to start a nonprofit. I registered Disabled But Not Really as a 501(c)(3) from my hospital bed.
For you, what does it mean to not only accommodate people with disabilities but celebrate them?
Approaching accessibility as an “accommodation” implies that disability is an inconvenience. And it projects the assumption that people with disabilities are not able to be independent.
Celebrating people with disabilities means organically making sure they’re included without tokenizing them. When you do things like make a building accessible to people in a wheelchair, you’re creating access for everybody.
I always say, “You can’t accommodate disability because it should already be included.”
What are some accessibility gaps you see in society today, and what can be done to improve them?
Disability advocacy has always been very white. I’ve seen firsthand that this type of advocacy doesn’t always serve a Black man with a disability. Back when I was first injured, I didn’t see anybody like me talking about living with a disability. Disability justice includes recognizing the intersectional identities people with disabilities hold. And it means ensuring that media representation of people with disabilities includes these intersections.
There also needs to be more mental health awareness around disability. I’m 11 years into my gunshot injury, and I’ve never once been referred to a counselor or a therapist. I didn’t even think to look into that until a year or two ago when I saw a TV show where someone mentioned the symptoms of PTSD, and I thought, “That sounds like me.”
I saw my choice: am I going to live my life based on other people’s perceptions of what I can do, or am I going to live the best way I can?
Can you share some short-term and long-term actions every leader can take to incorporate more disability justice into their efforts?
Step one is to bring disabled individuals to the table and increase representation within your organization. Make sure your team is diverse, and that this diversity is not an afterthought. Having more people with disabilities in your orbit will make outreach and inclusion easier and more organic.
Step two is to accept people with disabilities as they are and educate yourself on issues people with disabilities face so you can create solutions they actually need. For example, so much money is going into researching treatments to help people like me walk again. I don’t care to walk again—but I do want the world to be more accessible so that people who can’t walk are included. That’s one solution we need.
What’s one piece of advice you have for someone who has a disability and wants to be a leader for equity and inclusion?
Know yourself, and first accept the less-than-ideal state of things you are trying to change. In other words, you have to accept the world as it is in order to push it to be something different. Then you can visualize how you can best advocate for yourself and others.
What do you do each day—especially on hard days—to maintain hope for the future?
Now that I have a purpose and understand my mission, that mission has to be done every day, even if I’m not feeling that good. There are rough days: I have spasms and nerve pain. But I do have a good routine that’s rooted in gratitude for still having life.
I believe that if people understand that none of us are perfect as human beings, we can find a way to own our flaws and imperfections. I’m a work in progress, and I firmly believe that progress will never end because I can always do better. I love the fact that every day, I can learn something new. Even just a stroll down the street, looking at plants and bugs and other people, can teach me something. And that’s everything.
Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies welcomes the expression of personal thoughts and reflections in Toward, our digital magazine. Each post reflects the opinion of its author and does not necessarily represent the views of our organization or our partners.
