Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, author of The Future is Disabled, talks about disability justice, interdependence and rejecting human disposability in the COVID era.
, and disabilityvisibilityproject.com. Leah explores and expounds upon these ideas in their books, while also grounding disability justice in their real world experiences of activism, performance art and catastrophe. Leah’s writing in, is so engaging. I especially love that they record their own audiobooks, because when I listen, I feel like I have a friend at my side, breaking down complex topics for me — which has been especially comforting during the pandemic.
And being a writer at the same time from a really working class, no trust fund, you do it on your kitchen table, queer feminist of color, tradition and lineage. And then, fast forward a bunch of years, I decided to move back to Oakland, back to the States for the first time in a decade to go to this wild and crazy thing called graduate school which I was like, “What the fuck am I doing?”
Alice Wong of the Disability Visibility Project, she started the #HighRiskCA and was talking a lot about how… you know, she’s like, I didn’t leave my house for a year literally because I am on a ventilator. I have a trach. I’m extremely high-risk if I get COVID, right? And I’m visibly disabled, and it is likely that if I go to the hospital with COVID, I might not get the first crack at things.
Whereas disabled people, we know we’re just living our little lives. Like, shit happens all the time. Our diseases are chronic and so are the conditions we’re dealing with, still we do a lot more low-key checking in before before shit gets bad. I think the TL;DR is abled mutual aid often views disabled people as a problem to be solved and fixed, and us as clients or patients to be served or cared for. And disabled mutual aid sees us as agents and as people who have skills and gifts to offer.
I mean, so many of us come from people who never got to be cared for. I would also say, I think that people who romanticize interdependence, I just want to say as a long-term disabled person who loves other disabled people and neurodivergent people caring for each other, people are in bad moods sometimes. A lot of the time, especially when we really need the most help.
And I think the response that I would say then is not… “Well, yeah, clearly interdependence is a lie and sucks.” But to be like, how can we resource this more? The TL;DR is like, don’t romanticize it, it will suck sometimes, it will be beautiful sometimes, it is… It can be highly pleasurable and it’s not always, and it still needs to get done.
I know a lot of disabled people, myself included, have really been struggling with a lot of despair and a lot of really, it is a bleak fucking time. Especially, I think, in the parts of the northern hemisphere that are in winter right now. It just feels like, “Fuck, this is it. It’s never going to be over. We’re in this forever.
And the writers of the letter to the Chicago party scene were like, “This is what we’re asking. We’re asking you to be in solidarity.” And they have this line, they’re like, “We don’t want to go back to what was, we want to create something better.” And The Click Clack Club was like, we still require everyone to wear masks, unless you’re actively eating or drinking.
She was going to a Korean radical church, a jazz Black liberation fellowship church, and also doing traditional Korean Indigenous spirituality. And she leaned on that spirituality to do disability liberation, theologically led work. She believed that God made disabled people as we were, and that we’re fucking perfect.
So you can check out the StaceyTaughtUs hashtag, it’s up on Disability Visibility Project, it’s easy to find. And I just want people to keep learning from her work and not making her into a plastic saint, but engaging her as a real person, and I hate the term thought leader, but she was such a fucking badass thought leader and innovator and grassroots intellectual and worker in creating DJ. And that’s why we wrote with each other for our whole 11 year friendship and comradeship.
But I think the questions I have are… I mean, right now it does feel like we are banging on a brick wall that does not cure, in terms of screaming at the government. Like, the CDC is bullshit, Trump’s bad, Biden’s not great. I mean, when you have the head of the CDC, I know it’s been over a year saying, oh, well, only the chronically ill and disabled are really suffering from Omicron, so that’s great.
And what’s on my heart is connected, which is that… I’m not the only person to say, we’re in a huge grief crisis right now, and things are not good in Denmark. They’re not good here. And I hear so many people talk about just witnessing, just seeing a lot of people, you know, losing it, starting to scream on the subway, going into mental health crisis, lashing out horizontally at each other, completely withdrawing, not trusting anybody, all of it. A lot of people have really broken hearts.
Argentina Últimas Noticias, Argentina Titulares
Similar News:También puedes leer noticias similares a ésta que hemos recopilado de otras fuentes de noticias.
Why Tony Stewart Refuses to Race in NHRA Top Fuel Dragster Class against Wife Leah Pruett‘Happy drag-racing wife, happy life’ only part of reason Tony Stewart chose Top Alcohol ride over Top Fuel Dragster
Leer más »
Why Tony Stewart Refuses to Race in NHRA Top Fuel Dragster Class against Wife Leah Pruett‘Happy drag-racing wife, happy life’ only part of reason Tony Stewart chose Top Alcohol ride over Top Fuel Dragster
Leer más »
Mendoza, Lightfoot Clash Over Benefits for Chicago Police Officers Disabled by COVID-19The dispute is over what sort of disability benefits Chicago police officers deserve if they contracted COVID-19 before the vaccine was available.
Leer más »
Disabled South Bay residents stuck after elevator stops working at supportive housing facility'We had one lady who was wheelchair bound, who absolutely had to go to this doctor's appointment and tried to get down the stairs and fell.'
Leer más »
Lightfoot denies Mendoza claims she directed board to deny full benefits for cops disabled by COVID'The city is making some of these officers feel like they are worth more dead than alive. That's unforgivable,' Mendoza said.
Leer más »
Joliet woman, 30, hit, killed while attending to disabled vehicle in Bolingbrook: policeBolingbrook police are investigating after Joliet woman Jenna Cawthon was hit and killed by a vehicle at Joliet Road and 107th Street Wednesday.
Leer más »