In collaboration with the 2025 New York Association on Independent Living’s (NYAIL) statewide conference, the New York State Independent Living Council (NYSILC) held its sixth New York State Disability Rights Hall of Fame awards ceremony and dinner, and Not Dead Yet’s Founder and CEO, Diane Coleman, [pictured right] was the first of the night to be honored with a posthumous award “For lifelong achievements which positively impact people with disabilities in society.”
For those who couldn’t attend the awards ceremony and dinner, the Patients Rights Action Fund’s (PRAF) Executive Director, Matt Vallière, and NDY’s Executive Director, Ian McIntosh, accepted the award on behalf of Diane Coleman who passed away suddenly, last November 1, 2024.
Please find NDY’s acceptance speech and two more photos below:
Not Dead Yet’s acceptance speech:
I know if Diane were here to receive this award, on behalf of NDY’s Board and Staff, and with gratitude, that she would turn to Matt and thank him for his friendship and his fight in this arena, so, thank you, Matt, and thank you to all involved in honouring Diane tonight.
Matt asked: Why did Diane care so much about the Community in the face of so many other pressing issues? In addition to Diane’s peerless dedication and results, already mentioned, I think there’s something else to be gleaned from Diane’s own words in remembering disability rights champion and dear sister-in-arms, Marilyn Golden. A couple of years ago, Diane wrote:
For Diane, in fighting for access, in pushing against the profit margins of big pharma and big insurance in order to cross the finish line as full citizens, the reason Diane cared so much about the community stems precisely from the word we remember Diane with tonight: Honour; Not honour as merely the act of fondly remembering, but in the repeated daily example of self-sacrifice for something of priceless value, like a life with room for beautiful friendships, and time to spend together laughing without worrying about basic needs being met.
Diane refused to let this war be sidelined by other battles. She knew that if we lose this one, all the other ones will be lost, too, because accepting Assisted Suicide and inevitably Euthanasia laws, is to accept ableist notions that suicide is rational just because you have a disability, or that disabled lives are worth less than nondisabled ones. And if we accept that proposition, then there’s no end to the horrors that other ableist policy areas can and will provide.
Michael Hickson’s life and death warned us. The recent HHS announcement that they’re investigating what appears to be a practice of harvesting organs from people with newly acquired disabilities who were given up on or whose signs of life were ignored to obtain something deemed more valuable than a disabled life — an organ from that disabled person — that announcement warns us. Diane warned us.
The name Not Dead Yet, as some of you may know was taken from a British comedy, a Monty Python movie about the crusades. Not Dead Yet is the name of Diane’s organization, and certainly referential in part to the idea that humour in the face of unjust authority is a good thing. But to be clear, with over 60 arrests to her credit, every time Diane mentioned the name Not Dead Yet, it was a taunt, a challenge: To ableist proponent activists and lawmakers, and those in the healthcare community that champion medical futility and disability bias. Not Dead Yet is a way of saying in the fight against assisted suicide laws – as Sparsh Shah compressed so wonderfully – that “We are Disabled but We are Unbreakable.”
However, wherever, whenever, as you can, join us in this fight for our lives.
Diane, we love you.
May we be forever in your debt.
* * *
On behalf of Not Dead Yet, sincere thanks to: Laura Cardwell, Executive Director of NYSILC; Lindsay Miller, Executive Director of NYAIL; Yaw Appiadu, Executive Director of Harlem Independent Living Center and Chair of NYSILC; Mariah Sepulveda, Honorary Committee Chair and everyone at the Albany Capital Center who made the night such a resounding success.
Congratulations to inductees: Christian Curry, Doug Hovey, Bryan O’Malley and Sharon Shapiro (Lacks) – all of whom acknowledged Diane Coleman’s immeasurable contribution to their own work – delivered speeches filled with wisdom, laughter, tears and hope for a New York and an America where disability advocacy emerges from the shadows and onto the forefront of American civil rights discourse.
From the NYS Disability Rights Hall of Fame awards program, Yaw Appiadu, Chair of NYSILC noted so poignantly of the night’s imminent inductees: “Their legacy lights the path forward toward a more just and inclusive future for all.”
The last words are always Diane’s:
“The official data shows that everyone who dies by assisted suicide is disabled, some terminal, some not, and their reasons are unmet disability related needs, especially for in home care. Enough is enough. Now, with our federal civil rights laws, the ADA, Section 504, and the Constitution, we’re going to fight this most deadly form of disability discrimination. We are Not Dead Yet. “ ....
MORE PHOTOS BELOW:
