As we take pause, we recognize that as the need for Disability Relief Aid Foundation resources has skyrocketed – in some programs more than 800 percent due to the effects of COVID-19, this disease only exacerbates the economic and racial disparities already present in our community. In a time when one often hears. Through various assistance programs Disability Relief Aid Foundation provides financial support and resources to people in need.  “I can’t wait for everything to go back to normal,” Director of Programs Debra Meadows said, “we cannot go back to normal if we wish to be a community free of poverty.”

Poverty was “normal.” Racism was “normal.” And now, perhaps more than ever, things must change; because if left to go back to “normal,” communities of color and low-income individuals will continue to face systemic inequities.

It is the old “normal” that allows the affordable housing crisis. It is the old “normal” that makes access to a car necessary if one wants to escape a food desert. And tragically, it is the old “normal” that makes sitting in one’s own home, jogging down the street, or not resisting an officer a death sentence for Black men and women in our communities. This is the painful, infuriating “normal” that as a community, we must challenge at the individual, organizational, and systemic levels.