What makes advocacy for disability rights so effective? Can early intervention learn a lesson here?

We frequently dwell and ruminate on the topic of budget cuts, poorly-written policy, and politicians who just don't seem to listen. Yet budgets keep getting cut, policy changes into yet worse permutations, and politicians still ignore us.  Sometimes, it seems that the early intervention community suffers from learned helplessness.  Yet advocates for disability rights have made tremendous strides in working towards legal and social equity.  What makes their work so effective? And what can those of us who advocate for children's rights learn from this?

Effective advocacy has many layers.

The first begins with education.
Knowing the history of your cause, the facts around your population of interest, who serves them, and where the money comes from makes you an informed advocate.  This is an area where early intervention could do more work, and where the disabilities, AIDS, and homelessness movements have excelled.

The next layer is community wrangling.  Connecting with local people.  Organizing neighbors in your community (with education as a goal), and making connections with others who are advocating in other places.  Examining successful advocacy in other cities and countries is a powerful tool for shaping your own campaign.  And, you know, the reason I'm writing this blog post.

Which leads to my next layer, forming a plan of action.  Effective advocacy has a strategy.  You can base  your strategies on those that have proven effective in the past.

The disabilities movement enlisted people who had the skills necessary to make a difference on a policy level.  I'm talking lawyers, local representatives, and the media.  They got laws passed and funds given.  They did this through inspiring parents of children with disabilities to take action.  They informed people with disabilities of their rights and created advocacy organizations to help fight for those rights when they were impinged upon.  

These are lessons early intervention can learn.  To some degree, these are things we are already working on.  The "Stroll-In for Head Start" created headlines in local news and demonstrated to legislators and senators that people care about early intervention.  And, in the latest round of the budget, Head Start and Early Head Start funds were protected.  But there is more we need to do.