Fighting to Stop Fighting: What Keeps Advocates Like Ryan Honick Going? ~ 1333

Ryan Honick: The reason that we’re here with DOJ right now is because Rideshare’s response has been what I’ve called compliance theater. They’ve gone through the process of issuing these robotic, canned responses about investigations that go nowhere, a $5 or $10 credit, and everybody moves on, and rinse, wash, repeat.

But that’s the reason why DOJ has gotten where they are, because there’s enough evidence now that’s mounted to say, you can have all the policies you want, it only matters if you enforce them. Zero tolerance policies only matter if you enforce them. So Uber can say whatever they want in press statements, media, but it doesn’t matter if they don’t enforce. So often the narrative is, “We can’t do that for you, ’cause if we did it first for you, we gotta do it for everybody.” And accommodations are individualized, they’re personalized, they are— At least that’s how they’re supposed to be. So when you talk about these schools that are pushing back and saying, “We can’t do this for you,” that is a failure not only of our education system, that is a failure of imagination.

And for that to come from educators, shame on you. Shame on you.

Tim Villegas: Hey, friends. Welcome back to Think Inclusive, real conversations about building schools where every learner belongs. I’m your host, Tim Villegas. Today’s episode is about what happens when a system refuses to let you in and what it looks like to keep knocking anyway, not just once and not just politely.

My guest is Ryan Honick, an award-winning disability advocate, speaker, and what he calls a professional persuader. He’s worked on Capitol Hill, in federal government, at nonprofits, and global PR firms. So when Ryan started documenting what it’s like to use rideshare apps with a service dog, he knew exactly how to make noise, and he did, for close to a decade, until the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit with his name on it.

We talk about the parallels between his rideshare fight and what educators face when they push for inclusive classrooms, including a phrase he used that I haven’t been able to quite shake, “failure of imagination.” And here’s one thing I wasn’t expecting. Ryan made a pretty compelling case that in the end, he’s fighting so that he can stop fighting.

There’s something powerful about that framing, and I think you’ll feel it when he says it. Before we meet our guest, I wanna tell you about our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by IXL. IXL is an all-in-one platform for K-12 that helps boost student achievement, empowers teachers, and tracks progress in one place.

As students practice, IXL adapts to their individual needs so that every learner gets just-right support and challenge, and each student gets a personalized learning plan to close gaps. Check it out at ixl.com/inclusive. Again, that’s ixl.com/inclusive.

All right, after a quick break, it’s time to think inclusive with Ryan Honick. Catch you on the other side.

Ryan Honick, welcome to the Think Inclusive Podcast.

Ryan Honick: Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.

Tim Villegas: Ryan, where should we start? There’s a lot of things we could talk about right off the bat. And one thing I know about you is that you are a disability rights advocate. The other thing I know about you is that you have a service dog named Lovey. Is that right?

Ryan Honick: Yeah. Lovey and I actually got matched, geez, what’s it been now? We’re heading into October, so it’ll be May, June, July, August, September, four months and counting. We got matched in May. It’s been—

Tim Villegas: Great. Oh, so you didn’t have a service dog before then?

Ryan Honick: I did. I had Pico. Pico and I were matched for, oh, about 10 years, and he passed—

Tim Villegas: Oh, gosh.

Ryan Honick: —away last October. So there was a little bit of a gap between Pico’s passing—

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

Ryan Honick: —and Lovey, but Lovey’s my second from Canine Companions, and she’s fantastic.

Tim Villegas: Oh, wow. Okay, great. How I heard about you was you were in the news, specifically talking about the challenges of riding, using rideshare apps like Lyft and Uber with a service dog. Can we just start there?

Ryan Honick: Yeah. I appreciate that. It’s so interesting to me because, as I’ve mentioned to a lot of folks, I didn’t expect any of the consequences of all this advocacy, that this would be the thing that would put me in front of so many people, right?

I was just—I think, like with so many advocates, I was just angry about a thing that kept happening, and I’m so grateful that it picked up momentum and that I started advocating very loudly, first on Twitter, which is where all this started, and from there, LinkedIn, and that’s where the majority, I think, of folks find me now.

But yeah, the rideshare thing is not something I expected to kinda blow up the way that it did. I’ve been documenting my rideshare saga, for lack of a better word, for, oh God, close to a decade now. And it’s interesting timing that we’re sitting down and having this conversation because it was on September 11, I think, was when DOJ formally filed their lawsuit that I am named in, and they have documented some of my experiences that I shared with them as part of the filing that they submitted on the 11th.

And I spoke with CBS about that last week. So again, it’s such an ongoing problem, this idea that just because I have a service dog, suddenly I have to build in rejection time because I’m anticipating drivers saying, “Hey—

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

Ryan Honick: —we’re not gonna take you,” right? Building in an extra 30 to 40 minutes of rejection time just to get where I gotta go. But—

Tim Villegas: I’m grateful. Yeah, that was something. I watched that CBS segment, and that was very surprising. And so, couple questions about that situation, and then I wanna tie it to—a lot of our listeners are advocates, specifically for inclusive education.

And tying these ideas of, we advocate for access to general education curriculum, and we’ve been doing that for decades, right? And so I’m hoping that maybe we can glean some lessons from just sticking with this advocacy, even though it doesn’t feel like you’re getting very far.

So anyways, I don’t wanna put too much reflection on it at the front end, but why don’t we talk about the response you’ve received from rideshare apps or companies so far, if at all?

Ryan Honick: So there’s a couple things that you raised I think are really important, and again, I’m so happy to be here and have these conversations ’cause education is the crux of how and why we do this work, right?

Educating the public as to what are the challenges that people with disabilities face and putting those stories, whether it’s mine or another advocate, putting them front and center so that everyone understands these aren’t one-off scenarios. These apply to everyone. I like to remind folks that disability can happen to anyone at any time, right?

And this argument that disability is somebody else’s problem or that it’s not something that affects them, it will if you live long enough, right? The running joke among a lot of advocates is—it sounds like a mafia threat, but—”It’s gonna be you eventually.”

So you should—and that shouldn’t be the rationale that gets people to care. But I think it does center it in front of people who are like, “Oh, if I live long enough, I’m going to acquire a disability and become part of the 25%.”

And so care about it now ’cause it’s gonna be you, right?

But you asked about the response from Rideshare. The reason that we’re here with DOJ right now is because Rideshare’s response has been what I’ve called compliance theater. They’ve gone through the process of issuing these robotic, canned responses about investigations that go nowhere, a $5 or $10 credit, and everybody moves on, and rinse, wash, repeat.

So, but that’s the reason why DOJ has gotten where they are, because there’s enough evidence now that’s mounted to say, you can have all the policies you want, it only matters if you enforce them. Zero tolerance policies only matter if you enforce them. So Uber can say whatever they want in press statements, media, but it doesn’t matter if they don’t enforce it.

Tim Villegas: Yes.

Ryan Honick: But education, to your point, is why we do this work, and the more people we get behind us, I think the louder our voices get. And getting the 80% of us that aren’t disabled behind the disabled voices, it also amplifies the cause. Because like it or not, those 80% are taken, I think oftentimes—I don’t want to paint with a broad brush, but I think oftentimes taken way more seriously than the 20% with disabilities advocating for our rights and our access.

And so getting that 80% behind us is equally as important, so education is how we do this work. Education through a constant dialogue is what I always say, because that’s how you get people to care about and tie it back to why it’s gonna matter to them. It’s either gonna be their friend, their family member, or it’s gonna be them at some point.

And by the way, it’s important to recognize disability does not have to be something that is—it can also be temporary. So even if you have a disability and you break your leg or something, yeah, eventually you’re going to experience what it’s like to have an access issue somewhere.

Or, hey, I broke my leg and now I realize, hey, I’m in a wheelchair for a month or two or for a summer, and I didn’t realize how steep these ramps were or what it was like when there weren’t automators to get into my local Starbucks, or insert whatever barrier comes up for you as you are just now faced with this world you weren’t used to.

The same thing happened to me when I was partnered with Pico starting in 2014. I was used to advocating—life for me as a wheelchair user and someone with a disability. But even within that, I developed chronic pain starting in 2018, so my disability journey shifted a little bit there.

And then, again, from 2014 on, I’ve been partnered with a service dog, so that’s gonna change the lens by which I’m navigating the world, ’cause now it’s not just about me and my access, it’s about how that intersects with safely navigating the world with a dog, right? So all these access things change as life evolves, as we move through processes, our lenses of how we look at things are going to change.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah. I’m wondering if you have an idea of why people are paying attention to it now. Why did DOJ pick up this lawsuit now? Were there any extra pressure, extra forces that happened, or was it just serendipitous?

Ryan Honick: That’s a really good question. That is a really good question, and I don’t know. I wish I had a firm answer for you, particularly in light of this administration—

Tim Villegas: Yes.

Ryan Honick: I was just as surprised, but equally happy that DOJ continues to do this work. And I’m grateful to the folks that I’ve talked to at DOJ who have been carrying this ball and have refused to let it drop as the political winds shift.

That to me is—I have complete respect for that.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I’m gonna tie it to what some of the people who listen, some of the challenges they experience. So many listeners are educators, or family members of students and children with disabilities. And the biggest access issue for them and for the students in schools is access to general education classrooms and curriculum.

Many, many times, you have a learner who could be included in a regular classroom, a general ed classroom, have access to curriculum, have access to teachers who have expertise in the standards, with support of special education teachers and services. But they are told, “Sorry, because you have autism, because you have Down syndrome, because you have these certain disabilities, there’s nobody to teach you at your neighborhood school,” or, “There’s no one to teach you in the class that you would be in if you weren’t disabled.

You have to go to somewhere else.” And so that’s essentially—this a little bit of a stretch, but you come to a school expecting to be treated like everyone else, right? But instead, because of your disability, you are treated different, and someone says, “Sorry, we can’t do that here.

We can’t do that for you. You have to go and do something else. You need to make other arrangements.” And so I’m wondering, does that resonate with you and your struggle and challenge with not only rideshare, but other disability topics?

Ryan Honick: Sure. And this is so important. And I will talk about this to the extent that I can do so intelligently as it relates to my experience because—

Tim Villegas: Sure.

Ryan Honick: —as we famously talk about with disability, we are not a monolith, right?

Tim Villegas: Absolutely.

Ryan Honick: I can speak to my experiences, and you’ve heard one experience from a disability advocate, you’ve heard literally one experience.

So no experience is truly universal in that sense. We’re all unique in terms of what we experience and what we bring to the table. And what I can say about that is this: these are challenges that affect education and the workplace. Disclosure is a big problem across the entire spectrum, right?

But let’s—and I want to touch on both, and I’ve got ways that I can do that. Let’s start with education. I can think back to several times in my—I’m focused primarily in this moment on my collegiate career, in undergrad, where I had disclosed some visual disabilities on top of my neurological CP and stuff like that.

One of the things that happened was I was unable to look at different charts and graphs that were part of certain exams that were printed for the exam in black and white. I’d been studying these things in the textbook in pure color, and then during the exam, the professor would proctor the thing in black and white, and suddenly I’m unable to distinguish a lot of labeling and things like that.

And so I expressed this to my professor, and he immediately understood this challenge. I said, “Hey,” ’cause I think on the first test of the semester, I had bombed it ’cause I didn’t think to raise it, right?

And he pulled me aside and just, “What happened?” And I explained it to him very matter of factly. I said, “Visually, I can’t distinguish these gradations without—I’m studying it in the book, it’s color,” right? And he said, “All right, I’ll let you retake it, and I’m gonna give you the exact color printout from the textbook.” And I aced it, right? And so for future exams, that’s what he did.

I will t—but I’m telling you that because the administration fought him on it. The administration said that you’re creating an unfair environment and giving your student an unfair advantage. And this narrative happens whether we’re talking about accommodations in academia or accommodations in the workplace.

So often the narrative is, “We can’t do that for you, ’cause if we did it first for you, we gotta do it for everybody.”

Tim Villegas: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Honick: And accommodations are individualized, they’re personalized, they are—at least that’s how they’re supposed to be. So when you talk about these schools that are pushing back and saying, “We can’t do this for you,” that is a failure not only of our education system, that is a failure of imagination.

And for that to come from educators, shame on you. Shame on you.

Tim Villegas: Yes, exactly. Failure of imagination. I love that.

Ryan Honick: Yeah. But again, these challenges transcend academia. They continue to follow you in the workplace, and that’s one of the biggest things that has gotten me so vocal in my advocacy work because the older I got and the deeper into my career I got, the more I realized that the things I had advocated for in my college environments did not stop in the real world, where I thought, “Okay, I’m in the real world now. Maybe there’s some safeguards and things,” but people are just as likely to be ill-informed about rights, protections, procedure. They’re just as likely to push back on perceived unfairness. They’re just as likely to argue about creating unfair environments for employees.

People think that reasonable accommodations are perks oftentimes, and they’re not. They’re leveling the playing field so that everyone can do what they are able to do and able to meet the requirements of whether it’s the academic setting that they’re in or the work environment that they’re in.

It is not a special envi—I personally, and this is probably gonna get me in some hot water, so I’m gonna parse this very carefully. But I personally, and again, I speak for myself, I detest the phrase special needs. It is a—

Tim Villegas: No argument here.

Ryan Honick: It is a—

Tim Villegas: No argument here.

Ryan Honick: It is a euphemism that not only, I think, puts the phrase disability as a negative, right?

I don’t like any euphemisms for it at all, ’cause disability is a—there’s nothing wrong with that word. And I have long believed that disability is just a part of life. There’s nothing inherently negative about it. But when you say to somebody, “We’re a special needs school,” or, “We treat students with special needs,” they’re human needs, right?

One of my dearest friends who’s also an advocate, Emily Ladau, right? She has this—

Tim Villegas: Oh, yeah.

Ryan Honick: —she has a phrase that I love when we talk about special needs. And this is fully to her credit. I do not take credit for this. This is hers. She says, “My only special needs are that I like to occasionally be fanned with grapes.”

Tim Villegas: Yes. Yes, Emily. Yes. We love Emily. Yeah.

Ryan Honick: And I can’t wait—I’m blanking on how we got on this topic, but there we are.

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I wanna tie it back to this idea of equity, and I know that can be a politically charged word, especially in 2025. But I think you and I and our listeners would look at the situation that is going on with you and rideshare, right?

And, well, not just you, but the problem of not having equitable access to rideshare. And we would look at that and being like, “That’s an equity issue,” right? That is an equity issue. What’s so wild to me about what you said about DOJ and this administration having getting involved is that when we talk about equity, when we talk about inclusion, that’s the E and the I in the DEI that this administration has been so vocal against.

And so I think there’s this fundamental misunderstanding that when you use those three letters together, that it means that someone is getting something extra—

Ryan Honick: Yep.

Tim Villegas: —or on top of, or now someone is preferred over another. And there are zero advocates that I know, 0% advocates, that would describe DEI practices or inclusive practices in that way.

And so this is a perfect example of how you have an inequity here. You have a situation where you’re not able to use these rideshare companies and vehicles, when they’re supposed to be accessible and you’re just fighting for access.

Ryan Honick: Yeah. It’s absolutely wild.

And again, the thing with advocacy, which is both rewarding and also—I center it on the fact that it’s rewarding, but it is a slow grind.

Policy change, particularly when you’re dealing with major corporations, and then you involve the government on top of it, it’s gonna be a slow grind.

I have close to 10 years of documented evidence, and we’re just now getting to the point where DOJ has filed suit. That being said, I was engaged with DOJ on this way earlier, under—I think might’ve even been under the first Trump admin. I gotta go back and see when they first got engaged, but it’s been a while.

And I think what’s important to highlight too, and again, I’m so grateful to DOJ for everything that they’re doing. Yes, there are political appointees as part of this administration, and all of that is very, very political. But there are also many, many civil servants, and I count myself among them, who have spent their careers dedicated to public service, and they are the ones who are continuing the work regardless of the political winds, who have dedicated their many years or in some cases their lives to federal service and public good.

And so—and I think that’s a big part of why we’re here with that, because there are still, despite the political winds, there are still civil servants fighting the good fight on the inside and saying, “This needs to be addressed.” And I’m grateful to everyone behind the scenes who’s making that happen right now.

Tim Villegas: How can we as listeners and educators and just being good humans, how can we be allies to disabled people, disabled advocates?

Ryan Honick: I think that’s part of what we touched on a little earlier. It’s standing behind your disabled friends, colleagues when we’re advocating for something.

I think, touching back to the accommodations piece for a second, however we look at that, whether that’s academia or the workplace or rideshare, if someone comes to someone in a position of power and says, “I need this accommodation,” or, “My service dog is medical equipment,” or whatever, it is incumbent upon that person who now benefits from that disclosure out loud.

And when I say benefit, the person that was being told, because the person that did the disclosing has now put themselves in a very vulnerable position, whether that’s with their employer or their educator or whomever. It is incumbent upon those individuals to believe the people with disabilities.

We are not asking because we think it’s a perk. We’re asking because we need it, and by disclosing our disability, we are opening ourselves up to tremendous scrutiny and needing to then prove ourselves exponentially more than had we not disclosed. I think this is particularly important to highlight with invisible disabilities as well, right?

If somebody with an invisible disability goes to their employer and says, for example, “I need X, Y, and Z accommodation,” and up until that disclosure, the employer had no idea—

Make that disclosure something and make the environment somewhere where the employee feels like, “Okay, I’m so glad now we can have this open dialogue conversation.” If the employee now feels like, “I disclosed and now there’s a target on my back ’cause now I have to provide medical documentation. Now they’re asking for proof of disability.

Now they’re asking for a bunch of extra documentation to prove it to them,” ’cause the employer may or may not then receive that news favorably, and they may push back a little. Make it easy, because the second you start telling employees, “If you disclose, there’s gonna be a target on your back and your life’s gonna be harder,” nobody’s gonna wanna work for that employer.

And then suddenly that disclosure becomes—it’s always a risk, right? And there’s always a question of, let’s say you’re a candidate for a potential job. Do you disclose it early in the interview process and risk those stigmas and stereotypes influencing the hiring choices? Or do you keep it tight-locked until you’re fully on board and you go, “Oh, by the way,” and then they tell you, you should’ve disclosed it before?

And now it’s a fight. Yeah. There are so many issues and this internal battle, at least that I’ve struggled with, and I’m almost positive this is something that has happened to more than just myself, ’cause I’ve talked to people who’ve all experienced a similar thing. And that’s part of what my advocacy has also taught me, is I was telling and sharing my stories because I was angry and frustrated about what I was experiencing. And what I got back a majority of the time was, “Oh my God, thank you for being so vocal, because this was a story for me too, and now I don’t feel so alone in having gone through this experience.” And that’s why I think it’s so important—

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

Ryan Honick: —for these discussions to happen, because the more we normalize disability and experiences and disclosure, the less people are gonna feel like, “How do I navigate this? There is no handbook for this. There is…” And many advocates have written about their experiences, but sharing those experiences is why it’s so important, because those lived experiences are how these handbooks, quote unofficial or official or otherwise, are written.

And, sorry, this is a tangent.

Tim Villegas: That’s okay.

Ryan Honick: This is a tangent. But this is also why, speaking of handbooks and things being written, this is also why we need disability in every aspect of an organization from the top down, because that is literally how decisions get made and handbooks and policies get drafted.

Tim Villegas: Yes.

Ryan Honick: And without having disabled people in the room, the literal room where it happens, you’re gonna miss the mark every time when policies get written and drafted.

Tim Villegas: Yes, absolutely. Gosh, there’s so much in there that what you just shared. So I wanna touch on a couple things.

The first is actually telling and sharing your story. And I hate that you had to get so angry and frustrated to be able to actually share it, I hate that’s the thing that is driving you or other people to share. But we need spaces for us to talk about these things.

Like you said, we need to normalize the conversation around disability. And I don’t remember if you said this or not, but the idea about not feeling alone, this is what it is. It’s like the thing that tends to be the most personal ends up being the most universal, right? Because you have a very personal and very difficult and frustrating experience, but when you share that experience and you share that story, someone out there is, “Yes, I went through the same thing.”

Or someone can say, “Oh, I can imagine myself going through that, and I would be frustrated too.” So those are the things that really move people to action, right? And I just wanted to mention that ’cause I think that’s really important. And then the other thing that you mentioned that I really liked was about organizations and having disabled people in the conversation, and developing policy because I’m trying to remember—I work…

I used to work for public school districts. I worked in California and in Georgia. And even in school districts where you have administration who is at least sympathetic to providing special education services in an equitable way, there weren’t always people with disabilities actually making decisions and making policy, right?

Ryan Honick: Yep.

Tim Villegas: And so I think that is so important, because otherwise, yeah, you’re making policy. You’re making your onboarding handbook or whatever. You’re creating policies on classrooms and schools and all of this stuff, and disability isn’t even in the discussion.

Ryan Honick: And, or even something as simple as just inclusive design.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been to a public place, and it both infuriates me, but at this point I also chuckle. I shouldn’t chuckle at inequity, but the absurdity reaches a point where that happens sometimes. I’ll be in a public space, and there will be an accessible restroom.

It’s labeled accessible, right? But it’s on the second floor. There’s a series of st—

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

Ryan Honick: —there’s a series of steps to get to it.

Tim Villegas: Oh, no.

Ryan Honick: There’s no elevator. And then if you get up there, so now let’s imagine I’m up there with my wheelchair and Lovey. Does the door then have an automator or not?

If there’s no automator, how am I supposed to push this heavy door open? So just because you slap a disability symbol on a door and make things a little wider or have an accessible stall, right? There are so many things that go into actually making something truly inclusive. And so again, design has layers of inclusivity that people forget.

Tim Villegas: Great. Yeah, great point. Great point. What keeps you going in advocacy? ‘Cause it always—it feels like it’s just a hard thing to do, right? So what keeps you going and keep moving forward?

Ryan Honick: There’s a couple things. And I don’t think it’s a single thing. I think it’s a multitude of things that I’m grateful to have. One is an incredible support system that continues to cheer me on both day in and day out when I have these advocacy moments, and particularly on both the big and small fights. People that look at me and do this gut check.

When I look at my fiancée and I go, “Am I crazy for fighting this?” And she’ll look at me and go, “Nah, this is something you gotta do. I got you.” Or my family who will look at something and go, “Yeah, you’re making waves. Keep doing it.” There are times when the advocacy—like there are so many inequities in daily life, and as cliché as it goes, you pick your battles.

But I tend to just get so infuriated by the daily inequity, and I end up trying to fix everything. I really try to pick my battles and figure out, okay, what do I have the spoons for today? But having a support system that kinda gut checks me and says, “No, you’re on the right track.”

And then again, back to why we share our stories. I have my support system that’s very close and near and dear to my heart, and friends and family and things like that. But also when I do decide to share something publicly, watching the connecting point and that feedback also fuels me ’cause I’m getting reinforced through that feedback that what I’m doing is hitting people and influencing their ability to go, “Okay, it’s not just me.”

I think that kind of feedback loop helps. That being said, and I’m sure you know this and your listeners know this, and what I’m about to say will surprise no one in your listening audience, but there is also the flip side of the advocacy coin. For as much support as I get, and I get a lot from friends and family and the disability community and other people that are part of watching all these things unfold, there’s also a fair bit of pushback.

People who look at the advocacy and still, with all the knowledge and all the things in front of them, they enter the chat uninformed or hell-bent on cherry-picking things to say that I’m doing it for attention or that I am failing to see X, Y, and Z side of the argument, and so therefore my access needs to take a back seat to something else.

The Uber piece right now is a big example of that. That pushback was heavy when I first started this advocacy work 10 years ago on that particular piece. And even now with the national attention it’s got, I get as much pushback as I do support.

So again, advocacy is rewarding, but I would personally say it’s not for—it definitely thickens your skin. It definitely thickens your skin, and you need to know that bringing people into the conversation will often involve pushback and conversations that are gonna be very uncomfortable if you’re planning on trying to get out of the echo chamber.

And there’s a personal line where you have to, as an advocate, draw between are we having a constructive dialogue, and I’m gonna bring you in to a point where you may or may not agree with me right now, but we can discuss it, or are you just here to troll me? Yeah. And hopefully people—I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, and I like to say when I talk to people and have conversations like this, that I meet people where they are, but I don’t let them stay there.

And I try to push them to think beyond where we started. Because if you’re leaving the conversation with me on any access issue and you feel the same as you did when we started, something needs to be looked at in terms of my approach or in terms of how the conversation’s being had.

Tim Villegas: These are really great reminders for our listeners, and there’s so many parallels between your advocacy work and our advocacy for inclusive practices in schools.

And so I wanna repeat something that you said, or at least repeat back to you, and let me see if I get this right. That it is fair to assume that through your advocacy work, that you will receive pushback. And just because you receive pushback, just because people disagree with you, or maybe misunderstand your intentions, it doesn’t mean that you’re not doing the right thing, right?

Ryan Honick: Yep.

Tim Villegas: 100%. You are doing the right thing. We do this work because it’s something that we believe in, and not everyone’s gonna be on board. But I love what you said about having the attitude that you meet people where they are and that you don’t let them stay in a particular spot.

You try to move people along. And I think that’s a really big lesson we can take away from this, so thank you.

Ryan Honick: That you’re gonna get pushback. And, oh, you had alluded to the fact, and we talked about, that part of what fuels my advocacy is a lot of times it’s anger at the inequity and the injustice.

But I say this so much in my writing, and I say this so much when I have a conversation. I’m not fighting because I enjoy the fight. I’m fighting so that I can stop, right? So many times people have said to me, “You know what? You should stop complaining and go out and live your life.

You’re out here advocating,” and that frame, by the way, is so interesting to talk about, people who talk about it as complaining versus advocating. That frame happens a lot when I talk about things in public. But I’m fighting so I can stop fighting.

I’m literally fighting so that I can do exactly the thing that people who are trolling me are trying to tell me to do, go out and live my life. Guess what? As soon as things are equitable, and I don’t have to spend energy and spoons fighting to get out my door, and I can get from point A to point B without a problem, or I can get from the first floor of a building to the second floor, and go to the bathroom without a problem, then I can go out and live my life.

But until that happens, I’ma fight. I’m fighting so I can stop, but I’m not the first advocate, and I’m not gonna be the last. This fight has been going on long before me. And we’re having this conversation right ahead of National Disability Employment Awareness Month, which happens in October.

And in July we have Disability Pride because that’s when the ADA was formally signed. But it is my sincere hope that we can get to a point where we don’t need those months, right? I’m always gonna be proud of being someone with a disability regardless of what the calendar says. Whether it’s January or July, I’m gonna have that pride. And when it comes to disability employment, which is October, that’s the month where we get to remind people, in case they forgot, that we need employment.

But we need employment all year round, not just ’cause the calendar said, “Hey, we’re gonna put a proclamation out,” or because we wanna remind people that people with disabilities also deserve to be part of the workforce, even though when you look at the metrics for that, those metrics for unemployment for folks with disabilities is almost twice as high as those who don’t.

So that’s why we have things like National Disability Employment Awareness Month. But I wish we didn’t need those reminders for the public. I wish we didn’t, because we need employment all year round. January through December, we deserve to be part of the workforce, and that’s why we get back to conversations about what enables that to happen?

Let’s tie it all back together. Good education, which allows for then people to go out into the workforce with the education they received. And also when they’re ready to enter the workforce, to get accommodations in the workforce so that they can succeed. So to me, it’s all one big thing that ties together.

You start with the education and give people the access to the education they need so that they can go out in the workforce and give them the skills they need to contribute and earn a living and an equitable wage.

Tim Villegas: I appreciate all of your thoughts and your advocacy, Ryan. Where can people find out more about you if they want to read your writings or follow your story?

Ryan Honick: The most central place for all of that is just our website. It’s ryanhoneck.com. But then from there, I’m very active on LinkedIn and, to some degree, on other socials, Instagram. I think I threw my middle initial in there for some unknown reason that I can’t remember now.

RyanLHoneck on both Instagram and Twitter. X, I keep calling it Twitter ’cause I’m apparently old now. And, I know, yeah, between all the places people can follow me, reach out, talk to me, whatever. I’m always happy to talk to anybody about whatever’s going on because, like I said, sharing those stories and sharing those experiences is how we continue to grow the conversation and people sharing their narratives about what’s happening to them is how we normalize these conversations.

So it’s all super important, and anybody wants to reach out, I’m happy to talk with them.

Tim Villegas: Ryan’s been in this fight for close to a decade, and if there’s one thing that comes through, it’s that he hasn’t lost the thread of why it matters.

Before we wrap up, I want to take things somewhere a little bit different.

Ryan Honick: Perfect.

Tim Villegas: All right, so my last segment I have is called the mystery question, and—

Ryan Honick: Ooh, pressure’s on, right?

Tim Villegas: Pressure’s on, yep. And so I have a random question generator, and if you are ready, we can—

Ryan Honick: As long as the random question generator doesn’t have to also come with a—I have to do it in a particular voice. I’m not really super good at that. It’s answer this question, but also do it like Mickey Mouse, and I can’t, no. No.

Tim Villegas: Anyway. Nothing like that.

Ryan Honick: Go ahead. No. No, I think that was a Jimmy Fallon-ism, right? Jimmy Fallon does that, the Wheel of Impressions.

Tim Villegas: Yes. Jimmy Fallon, yeah, I’m not good at impressions. It’s just not something that I’m very good at, so yeah. All right, so here we go. I’m gonna do this random generator. Let’s go with this one. If you could relive any year of your life, which one would it be?

Ryan Honick: Oof.

Tim Villegas: Oof. That is a tough question.

Ryan Honick: That is a t—

Tim Villegas: Tough question.

Ryan Honick: We couldn’t go a little lighter on a Friday? Come on. No, that’s a really tough one.

Tim Villegas: That is the luck of the draw, my friend. That is what we’re gonna go with. You know what? It’s that I don’t know that I would, and as cliché as that might sound—

Ryan Honick: No.

Tim Villegas: That’s an answer. That is an answer.

Ryan Honick: Yes. I don’t know that I would, because every single thing that I’ve been through for good, for ill, all of it has brought me here, right?

Tim Villegas: Good, yes.

Ryan Honick: All of the frustrations and things has brought me to a point where my advocacy has shaped—it’s shaped by what I’ve been through. And so while there are certain parts of my life that I certainly wish had gone other directions, and I wish the fights were not as heavy as they’ve been, I wouldn’t change any of it, because it has framed how I move through the world now.

Tim Villegas: That’s great. That’s amazing. No, I love that answer, I accept that answer, and I appreciate that. I’m gonna go a little bit different, and have it be more personal. So—

Ryan Honick: Yeah.

Tim Villegas: We are recording this a couple days before my wife and I will be married for 22 years.

Ryan Honick: Congrats.

Tim Villegas: Thank you. Thank you. Sunday is our anniversary, and so I was thinking, knowing what I know now, and I don’t know, you said you have a fiancée, is that right?

Ryan Honick: Yeah.

Tim Villegas: Okay. Knowing what I know now after 22 years, I would love to relive my first couple years of marriage, with a different mindset.

And not so much that our early years were bad or anything, but I think that as newlyweds, and I knew this going in, ’cause it’s just kids—we knew we had a lot to learn, but it’s just so much different on the other side of 20 years as opposed to the beginning.

So that’s what I would say is, as I’m thinking about our anniversary coming up. So that’s my answer. And without—and I love that. And without shifting too far from the foundation of why we’re here, what advice do you have for me on the—’cause you’re literally—

Ryan Honick: You’re literally saying to me, “I wanna go back and retool the first couple years.” And I’m on the very other end of that conversation. So help—maybe you could—we’ll talk offline if you want. No, but as far as right here, what do you got?

Tim Villegas: No, I’m certainly not a marriage expert. I claim no expertise in that. But as far as I—I think that one of the times that my wife and I have been the closest is when we’ve really invested time and energy into what each of us loves, right?

So I’ll give you an example. I love baseball. I am a big baseball fan, MLB. I’m a big Dodgers fan actually, ’cause I’m originally from Los Angeles. Same. Same. We both are. Yeah. So huge baseball fan. And I have a tendency to do that by myself because my wife, though she supports my baseball addiction, isn’t quite as much of a fan as I am.

I’m in the weeds and stuff like that. My wife loves reading and books. She’s devoured, probably, oh, let’s see. We’re recording this in September, so she’s probably over 20, close to maybe 24 books this year. So she reads at least a couple books a month, right?

That’s not something—I like reading, but that’s not something that I do. When we have a shared passion over travel, over planning a trip with our family, creating memorable experiences with the kids, where we’re both equally passionate about it and we both are involved and all in on a particular thing, that is when I feel like we’ve been the closest and our marriage benefits.

Very simply, finding things to do together and to stay together and to keep making sure that your marriage is that priority relationship in the family, that makes a big difference.

Ryan Honick: So—yeah, no, that’s great. And it’s f—

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

Ryan Honick: It’s funny you mention, I’m from Los Angeles as well, so the Dodgers happen to be in town for the last home stand of the season, with—oh, you’re in Seattle?

Tim Villegas: I’m in Seattle right now, so the Dod—

Ryan Honick: Oh, okay.

Tim Villegas: And we’ll see if we can make it to the game tonight or this weekend. But this is the last home stand of the year, and—

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

Ryan Honick: And we’re gonna try to make it, so we’ll see.

Tim Villegas: I think a Mariners-Dodgers series, the World Series would be really fun to watch.

Ryan Honick: They’re the only team that hasn’t been to the World Series yet in all of baseball, so if the Mariners can—we’ll—I’m not holding my breath, but it’s been fun to watch them. Cal Raleigh, is that right?

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Cal—yeah.

Ryan Honick: He’s legit. He’s legit, so anyways, I’m sure people are already tuned out because we’re talking about baseball.

Tim Villegas: But anyways. Ryan Honick, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive podcast. This was a lot of fun.

Ryan Honick: Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Tim Villegas: That was Ryan Honick. Here’s what I’m taking with me.

Ryan said he’s fighting so that he can stop fighting, and that landed with me because I think a lot of us in this work, whether we’re pushing for inclusive classrooms, accessible design, or just asking a school to try something new, we carry this same tension. The anger that fuels you is also the thing that wears you out.

But Ryan reframes it. The fight isn’t the goal. Belonging is the goal, and until we get there, you just have to keep going. He also said that without disabled people in the room where decisions get made, you’re going to miss the mark every time. One practical step for educators, pay attention to the language that you and your colleagues use.

When you catch someone defaulting to special needs, use it as a low-stakes opening. Ryan put it plainly, “These are human needs.” That conversation, I think, is worth having. Share this episode with a colleague who’s building inclusive schools. Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and follow Think Inclusive wherever you get your podcasts.

If you have something to share, you can always email me at tviegas@mcie.org. I read every single message. Now, let’s roll the credits. Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. This show is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Writing help from Claude, editing by Ray from internet.

Scheduling and extra production help from Jill Wagoner. Our original music is by Miles Kredich with extra vibes from Melod.ie. Big thanks to our sponsors, IXL and Adaptiverse. Visit ixl.com/inclusive and adaptiverseapp.com. If you’ve made it this far, you’re officially part of the Think Inclusive inclusion crew.

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Head to mcie.org and click the Donate button. Give $5, $10, $20. It helps us keep partnering with schools and districts to move inclusive practices forward and support educators doing the work. Find us on the socials almost everywhere at thinkinclusive. Thanks for hanging out, and remember, inclusion always works.