Politics & Power Quote by Janet Reno

Reno’s sentence is bureaucratic on the surface, but the intent is quietly muscular: frame disability rights not as a domestic compliance project, but as a coalition-driven movement with global gravity. By leading with “international network,” she shifts the Americans with Disabilities Act from a piece of U.S. legislation into a model of governance that travels. That matters because the ADA, passed in 1990, wasn’t just about ramps and captions; it was a recalibration of who counts as fully public, fully employable, fully protected. Reno’s phrasing treats that recalibration as unfinished work.

The subtext is political strategy disguised as administrative plainspokenness. “With many others” signals a deliberate de-centering of singular heroism: progress is portrayed as infrastructure, built through alliances and replicated through policy. It’s also a reminder that rights expansions survive by being networked. Laws are passed in a moment; enforcement, interpretation, and funding are won over years, often by organizations and advocates who outlast any one administration.

Then there’s the verb choice: “carry forward.” It’s the rhetoric of continuity, not rupture. Reno, a law-and-order Attorney General by public reputation, is here emphasizing the state as an engine of inclusion rather than punishment. In the broader 1990s context - culture wars, “tough on crime” politics, and skepticism toward federal mandates - this is a subtle bid to normalize disability policy as practical governance: something you “do,” iteratively, alongside others, until it becomes the baseline.