On November 4, tens of thousands of people with developmental disabilities and their parents, caregivers and advocates stood figuratively on Colorado’s streets with signs that read, “Will Save Lives for 2 Cents.” We put ourselves out there, needing help to provide life-saving services to people with developmental disabilities.

So many of you saw the need and reached out to us - and we are so very grateful to you. But crushingly, the majority of Colorado voters did not support us. The economy has had an impact on everyone, and I understand that. But people with developmental disabilities are least able to recover - because they are not able to get a first job without community support, let alone a second job. Some are unable to feed themselves or get out of bed without paying someone to help them. It is not that they don’t “want” to be self-sufficient - and they have nowhere else to turn.

This week, a mother I know who was the 24/7 caregiver of her son who has a developmental disability died unexpectedly at the age of only 49 years old.

She was an advocate for her son, and for all of the people like my son who have developmental disabilities. Her most dreaded fear has been realized, like so many other parents I know who are also facing the possibility of dying before they know who will care for their children and how the services they need will ever be funded.

As a citizen of Colorado and the mother of an adult with a developmental disability, I want to thank all of you who voted YES on Amendment 51. As the saying goes, “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.” I also want to thank the Rocky Mountain News for supporting 51 and for the kind words you have written and said about the great need to provide services for our most vulnerable citizens. I hope you will continue to write about this problem, and I hope that all the other newspapers in the state that came out for or against 51 will find an affected family today and write about them.

The defeat of Amendment 51 does not mean this enormous problem is going away. To those of you like Rep. Doug Bruce, Rep. Kevin Lundberg, Jon Caldara, Mark Hillman, and the anonymous anti-tax groups and others who said that Colorado simply needs to “reprioritize” where it spends its money and redirect funds to help these people, I am going to call upon you now. Because you believe that Colorado has this money somewhere, and because you made a concerted effort to help defeat Amendment 51 through your words, I look to you now to help find that money. Instead of just saying “no,” please begin to ask the question “how.” I would also call upon Gov. Bill Ritter, outgoing House Speaker Andrew Romanoff and all of our leaders to begin today to help find the funding that is needed to provide these services. This is a priority, and parents and advocates have now done all that was possible to obtain the resources necessary. Parents and advocates worked so hard, with little resources, to try to pass Amendment 51.

President-elect Obama called upon every American to come together and to make some sacrifices in his speech last night. Today is the day to get started. So I am going to ask one more thing of my fellow Coloradans. I ask you to do something wonderful for someone with a developmental disability today and in the coming weeks, months, and years. People’s lives are depending on you, and people like my son are feeling today as though Coloradans just don’t care. I know it is not true, and I ask you to help. Open up a job for a person with a developmental disability today. Offer to help their parents to care for them. Become a mentor, give a hug, or tell a parent you care. But most importantly, please call or write your legislators and tell them to make developmental disability funding a priority.