Anita Cameron

Anita Cameron is a disability justice activist who has been involved in social change activism and community organizing for 42 years.

In 2017, she began working as Director of Minority Outreach for Not Dead Yet, a Rochester, NY-based, national disability rights group opposed to medical discrimination against disabled people, medical rationing and assisted suicide. She has met with national and state policy makers and written persuasively about opposition to a public policy of assisted suicide from the perspective of communities of color who experience disparities in access to healthcare.

Anita has had 39 years of experience in transportation advocacy, beginning with her employment in 1984 as a Transit Information Agent with the Chicago Transit Authority, where she first became aware of transportation issues affecting people with disabilities.

Since then, Anita has served on the Regional Transportation District’s Disability Advisory Committee in Denver, Colorado, and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority (WMATA) Elderly and Disabled Advisory Committee in Washington, DC. While serving in that capacity, she was appointed Chair of the Bus Subcommittee. Each of these committees advises the transportation authorities on the issues affecting people with disabilities.

Anita served on the Bus Fareness Committee in Rochester, New York. The Bus Fareness Committee sought to bring awareness of issues of concern to people with disabilities, seniors, and people who have low incomes, and create a citizens’ oversight committee to give input to the Rochester Genesee Regional Transportation Authority (RGRTA).

Anita also helped to conduct two trainings in Indiana to riders with disabilities to form citizen oversight committees for their transit authorities.

Voting rights and accessibility for people with disabilities is a particular passion for Anita, who, as a Black woman, feels that because people died fighting for her right to vote, it is her duty to do so. She has fought for the right of people with disabilities not only to vote, but to serve in their communities. In 1992, she became the first person with disabilities to serve as an election judge for the city and county of Denver. She went on to serve as a poll worker in Washington, DC, while working as a disability vote organizer for the American Association of People with Disabilities. She has trained poll workers and precinct captains in voting access for people with disabilities in several jurisdictions.

From 2004-2006, Anita worked at the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) in Washington, DC, as the DC Metro Disability Vote Organizer, working with the Board of Elections and Ethics to increase voting access and recruited 67 disabled people to serve as poll workers and election judges.

Anita worked as Systems Advocate for the Center for Disability Rights in Rochester, NY, from 2006-2010, addressing a broad range of disability rights and access issues with advocates and lawmakers at the local, state and national levels.

In 2004, while in Washington, DC, Anita trained to become a CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) member. In 2008, she helped to form the first CERT class consisting of people with disabilities in Rochester, New York. After joining Denver CERT in 2011, Anita became the first blind CERT instructor for the State of Colorado, and in 2013, became a CERT Program Manager for the State. Because emergency preparedness for disabled people is her passion, she personally recruited over 30 disabled people to complete CERT training in the state of Colorado.

Anita taught over 250 students and provided training on emergency preparedness to over 200 seniors and people with disabilities living in the community.

Anita has assisted in numerous exercises and real-world incidents with Denver CERT, including serving as a radio communications operator during the Colorado Flood of 2013 and remotely assisting survivors of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma in disaster relief in 2017.

Anita has written extensively, for numerous agencies and publications, on emergency and disaster preparedness for people with disabilities, as well as the role and participation of the disability community in emergency management. She has blogged for the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies. Anita serves on the Equity Workgroup for the Global Alliance for Disaster Resource Acceleration (GADRA).

In 2021, Anita wrote CERT based COVID protocols for disability and other groups doing in person actions, protests and rallies.