Center for Disability Rights

CDR is doing a survey to find out more about accessibility at the 2026 Rochester Lilac Festival. Please take a few minutes to take our survey and share your experience if you did attend, and if you didn't go, let us know why.

Event organizers have said they want to work with us to make the 2027 Lilac Festival the most accessible yet. So your answers will help make future Lilac Festivals - as well as other events and festivals in the region and across the state - more accessible.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6VQKZ76

They came for me without warning.

That's how our new blog post begins—and by the time you reach the end, you may not be sure who's speaking.

A Disabled person forced into a nursing home because the state won't fund care at home. A grandmother with dementia detained by ICE in the Arizona desert. A seven-year-old autistic girl held at a border checkpoint. A father who went to a routine check-in appointment and never came home.

The answer is: it could be any of them. Because the experience is the same.

In this new piece, CDR CEO Bruce Darling lays out how ICE detention and the forced institutionalization of Disabled and elderly people are not two separate injustices—they're the same system of confinement, running on the same logic, doing the same harm. Three groups. One fight.

Right here in Rochester, "Papa Omar" Ramos Jimenez—a father, business owner, and co-founder of La Casa in the South Wedge—went to a routine ICE appointment after twelve years of compliance and was handcuffed on the spot. He's still detained in Batavia, separated from his children and his community.

The logic that cages an immigrant family is the same logic that warehouses a Disabled person in an institution. If we oppose it in one place, we have to oppose it everywhere.

Read Part 1 now 👇

They Came for Me without Warning – Center for Disability Rights A A A How ICE Detention and Forced Institutionalization Are the Same Fight by Bruce Darling, CEO Center for Disability Rights and Regional Center for Independent Living They came for me without warning. I was in the middle of my life. I was the watching the light come through the window and thinking...

Today is Interpreter Appreciation Day 🤟

The Center for Disability Rights and the Regional Center for Independent Living extend our sincere appreciation to the interpreters who support our community every day. Your skill, professionalism, and commitment ensure that communication is accessible, accurate, and respectful.

We are especially grateful to interpreters everywhere, including those who work closely with CDR and RCIL, particularly Sign Language Connection, Inc. Your dedication makes it possible for people to fully participate, advocate, and engage without barriers. Access is a right, and your work helps uphold that right.

Thank you for the essential role you play in advancing inclusion and communication access.



[ID: Blue graphic with a white outline of hands making the sign for interpreting, the words “Interpreter Appreciation Day” and “Thank you, interpreters,” and the Regional Center for Independent Living and Center for Disability Rights logos at the bottom.]