Jennifer David for Hoosiers 2026

15/10/2025

It’s a Howling Good Time! 🎃

All across our communities, the trick-or-treat and trunk-or-treat festivals are lighting up the season. Free candy, fun, and friendship everywhere you turn. These events bring people together in the best way—safe, family-friendly, and full of community spirit.

Check out one near you and join the fun!

15/10/2025

It’s a Howling Good Time! 🎃

All across our communities, the trick-or-treat and trunk-or-treat festivals are lighting up the season. Free candy, fun, and friendship everywhere you turn. These events bring people together in the best way—safe, family-friendly, and full of community spirit.

Check out one near you and join the fun!

11/10/2025

AI, Accessibility, and the Environment

As a Democrat and as an autistic person, I rely on technology like ChatGPT every day to communicate, organize my thoughts, and stay productive. For me and for many people with disabilities, AI is not just a tool. It is accessibility. It is independence.

It can be the difference between having to live on social security for the rest of your life or being able to work, whether in an office or remotely, and earn an income to support yourself. That kind of opportunity matters. It creates dignity and equality, not dependency.

I also know AI has a real environmental cost. The data centers that run it use a lot of energy. That is something we can and must address, not by scaring people or limiting access, but by finding solutions that make technology more sustainable.

We need renewable-powered data centers, energy-efficient AI models, and policies that treat accessibility tools as essential, because they are.

Transparency matters too. When we make proposals or build projects like solar farms and other renewable initiatives, the community should be involved before, during, and after the process. We should not place those projects in the most vulnerable communities or use up the limited resources they already have. Environmental progress must not come at the expense of equity.

We can balance ethical and responsible technology, sometimes called ethical compute, with real transparency and with full inclusion of people with disabilities in the decision-making process.

I believe in accessibility as a civil right, transparency in how we shape technology and policy, and creating real opportunities for people with disabilities and other marginalized groups to thrive.

We can protect both people and the planet at the same time. We can have accessible technology that is also environmentally responsible.

09/10/2025

ADA and Performative Compliance

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) wasn’t a suggestion. It was a line in the sand, a civil rights law meant to stop discrimination and enforce accessibility as a basic standard of participation in American life. But in too many towns, we still see leaders celebrating ADA compliance as if it’s an act of generosity rather than an obligation.

When a city adds 200 new parking spaces and designates eight of them as accessible, that’s not a win, it’s the bare minimum required by law. Yet you’ll still see ribbon cuttings and press releases treating it like a gift to the disability community. It’s not. It’s compliance.

When a city installs a ramp, updates a restroom, or adds captions to a video, these aren’t “gifts” either. They are overdue corrections to long-standing barriers. The ADA is the floor, not the ceiling. Meeting its requirements doesn’t make a local government progressive; it makes them compliant.

The real work, the work worth celebrating, comes when leaders go beyond compliance. When they invite disabled people to the table before decisions are made. When accessibility isn’t an afterthought added for optics, but a foundation for how a community functions.

What’s frustrating is how often minimal action gets spun into moral achievement. A new automatic door or a sensory-friendly event becomes a PR headline, while systemic inaccessibility in employment, transportation, and civic participation goes unaddressed. Accessibility shouldn’t depend on who’s in office, and it shouldn’t require applause to be maintained.

We have to stop treating compliance as compassion. The ADA didn’t create a favor economy, it codified equality. And equality doesn’t need a press release.

08/10/2025

In Puerto Rico, part of the United States, medical cannabis is legal. Patients can qualify under 20 or more conditions (like chronic pain, seizures, PTSD, cancer).

My home in Indiana? We are denied that access. And that denial is more than policy, it’s discrimination against sick, disabled, and suffering people.

Why is it that a U.S. territory with fewer resources can offer medical cannabis as a health tool, while Indiana refuses? Because the system has drawn lines about who deserves care. I believe every Hoosier deserves the same access to medicine, especially when evidence, compassion, and science align.

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I remember signing my first petition to legalize ma*****na at a concert at Red Rocks in Colorado. I was 19. Today, at 52, I was finally approved for a medical ma*****na license in Puerto Rico due to my Autism and PTSD.
It’s time Indiana! It’s time!
Indiana Rural Summit

08/10/2025

It’s time for the Hoosier State to allow access to medical cannabis. Medical cannabis is available in surrounding states for many of the following conditions:
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
• Anorexia or appetite loss related to chronic illness
• Anxiety disorders
• Arthritis (rheumatoid or osteoarthritis)
• Autism spectrum disorder
• Cachexia or wasting syndrome
• Cancer and treatment side effects
• Chronic pain (neuropathic, intractable, or severe)
• Crohn’s disease
• Depression (in some states)
• Epilepsy or seizure disorders
• Fibromyalgia
• Glaucoma
• HIV or AIDS
• Huntington’s disease
• Inflammatory bowel disease
• Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
• Migraine
• Multiple sclerosis (MS)
• Muscular dystrophy
• Nausea (severe or chronic)
• Neuropathies or nerve pain
• Parkinson’s disease
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Sickle cell disease
• Spinal cord injury (pain or spasticity)
• Spasticity (from MS, cerebral palsy, or similar conditions)
• Terminal illness or end-of-life care
• Tourette syndrome
• Ulcerative colitis

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06/10/2025

Good deeds and good times across SOIN.