'Bad-Ass to the End': Carrie Ann Lucas, 1971-2019

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO – By Tina Griego for The Colorado Independent. In the wake of disability-rights advocate Carrie Ann Lucas’s death on Sunday, state lawmakers offer a moment of silence in her honor. Those who knew her summon the memory of Lucas powering through Capitol corridors and committee hearings with her wheelchair and her ventilator and a stare that could raze you to the ground if circumstances warranted. A House member chokes back tears, recalling Lucas’s words as she fought to block legalization of physician-assisted suicide: “My life has value, and I will fight to prolong it and the lives of others.”

In the wake of Carrie’s death, social media swells with an outpouring of grief, a torrent of praise, some of which she would have welcomed: “fierce,” “fearless,” “formidable,” “a fighter when a fighter was needed.” Other superlatives she would have taken time to dismantle because she rebuffed attempts, particularly from the abled, to cast her as exceptional among the community of people with disabilities. Veneration, she understood, all too often masks low expectations, and a pedestal makes it hard to see someone eye-to-eye. That she was exceptional among the community of human beings is simply a fact.

“Carrie taught, protested, litigated, wrote, and advocated for a broad understanding of civil rights and human dignity,” wrote her close friend, Amy Robertson, the founder and co-executive director of the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center. “[She] may have been the only wheelchair-using Latina with a bumper sticker reading ‘just another disabled lesbian for Christ,’ dressed in camo, driving her trak-chair into the wilderness in search of the perfect photo.”

In the wake of Carrie’s death, her mother, Lee, and her younger sister, Courtney, sit in the sunny living room of Carrie’s Windsor home in a daze, what with the New York Times obituary writer calling and Facebook alerts pinging and Carrie’s four children to comfort and flowers for the memorial service to be ordered. The pair wonder, only half-jokingly, how they might get away with a floral arrangement for the church that read something along the lines of: “Bad-ass b---.” Now that, Carrie would like.

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