I resent strongly the insinuation I have been recently getting from some quarters that I am politically nave when it comes to disability. I don’t think I am; I simply reject certain dogmas in the disabled community. Dogmas like the position that the disability rights movement is simply akin to the gay or black rights movement. It isn’t. disabled people are not hated in the way that black people once were, and gay people sometimes still are. By and large, once people get to know ‘us’, all prejudice goes – that is to say, it isn’t innate but stems from a lack of knowledge. This is why I reject this talk of ‘fighting’ and ‘counter attacks’. We simply need to open peoples eyes – to show them, in the end, that we are just the same as they are, with similar hopes dreams and aspirations as everyone else. With the right adaptations, we are just as capable as anyone else. It is my experience that people are more than willing to listen, and thereafter to adapt,, once we explain our views and needs. I’d argue that it wasn’t the hotheads in Dan that won us our freedoms, as much a growing general consensus that we have just as much of a fight to ride busses than anyone else. We need to explain, not argue or fight, for the latter will only ostracise us further.