Disability Justice Activists Look at "Ways to Maintain Ablism"
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0:00 - 0:02[Stacey Milburn]... the National Youth Leadership Network.
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0:02 - 0:08And I'm Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and I'm a performance artist, I do some work with Sins Invalid.
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0:08 - 0:10[reporter] And what's this gathering here today?
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0:10 - 0:13[Stacey Milbern] Sure, this is a disability justive convening, um,
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0:13 - 0:17a bunch of us have been at the Allied Media Conference (AMC)
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0:17 - 0:22and there's been kinda, just this growing space for disability um and disabled people,
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0:22 - 0:29and there's this kind of growing framework about looking at the ways disability connects with other issues.
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0:29 - 0:35So, often times, disability gets separated, and it's a way to really like maintain ableism,
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0:35 - 0:39and not look at the way that disability connects in with like how our bodies are policed,
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0:39 - 0:44or how our bodies um experience trauma in the medical industrial complex,
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0:44 - 0:54or even just like how our bodies, yeah, are kind of forced to fit this standard of what beauty is, or what independence is.
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0:54 - 0:57[Leah] Yeah, and so the way I've been trying to describe it
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0:57 - 1:02is that I think that I feel like disability justice is to the mainstream disability rights movement
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1:02 - 1:06it's similar to the difference between environmental, the environmental justice movement,
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1:06 - 1:08and the mainstream environmental movement.
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1:08 - 1:11Um, what a lot of us in disability justice are working against
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1:11 - 1:15is a mainstream movement that's very white, very straight, very middle class,
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1:15 - 1:18um, we are led by people of colour, by queer people of colour,
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1:18 - 1:20and we have analysis that goes beyond access
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1:20 - 1:23to looking at the effects of environmental racism on disability,
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1:23 - 1:26or poverty, or the medical industrial complex,
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1:26 - 1:28and also, um, just echoing what Stacey said,
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1:28 - 1:32a lot of us feel that as people who do social, many kinds of social justice work,
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1:32 - 1:36often people with disabilities, y'know we get to kind of be the cute people who march at the beginning,
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1:36 - 1:39who roll at the beginnning of the march, who people feel heart-warmed by,
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1:39 - 1:41but we're not seen as leaders or as part of the movement,
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1:41 - 1:43and we wanna change that.
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1:43 - 1:47[interviewer] And what does disability justice mean to you?
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1:47 - 1:50[Stacey] To me, what I think what's been most amazing about it is like,
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1:50 - 1:53disability justice has been a, just has been a space to kind of be whole.
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1:53 - 1:56Like, you don't have to cut yourself up into little pieces,
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1:56 - 1:57and go here and go there,
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1:57 - 2:02and also just like being able to connect with folks in like this really interdependent way,
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2:02 - 2:05where everybody's really taking care of each other,
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2:05 - 2:11and yeah, just, yeah kinda creating community and developing relationships
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2:11 - 2:14where people are actually like practicing liberation.
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2:14 - 2:19[interviewer] And what are some of the specific things that you're calling for?
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2:19 - 2:24[Leah] I think it's really important that we build movements that are sustainable.
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2:24 - 2:28Um, and I think that's one of the things that disabled people are really fierce and know a lot about.
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2:28 - 2:34Um, speaking as a chronically ill, queer, disab... queer woman of colour, I've been working in movements since I was 16,
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2:34 - 2:39and there's a way of organizing that assumes that everybody can make it to 16 meetings a week, and live on coffee.
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2:39 - 2:44And for a lot of us, whether we're disabled, whether we're parents, whether we're old, that's not an option,
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2:44 - 2:47and it stops us from making movements that don't burn out,
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2:47 - 2:50and that are actually going to be around to transform society.
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2:50 - 2:54So I think making sustainable and interdependent movements in the new world we're building
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2:54 - 2:56is what DJ (disability justice) is all about.
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2:56 - 2:58[Stacey] Yeah, actually can I add onto that?
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2:58 - 3:03I think, too, disability justice has just been, I don't know, like when we think about...
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3:03 - 3:06there's a really limited idea of access and accessibility,
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3:06 - 3:11and when we're really really able to stretch it out to like what do people need to be who they are?
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3:11 - 3:15It becomes like creating a world where everybody can really participate.
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3:15 - 3:19Mothers, we've seen that work out well, and um, yeah, working class folks, everybody,
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3:19 - 3:23and disability kind of really pushes that forward.
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3:23 - 3:32[Amy Goodman] We'll be broadcasting from the US social forum tomorrow, then on to Toronto, I'll be speaking in Toronto on saturday night, you can go to our website democracynow.org...
- Title:
- Disability Justice Activists Look at "Ways to Maintain Ablism"
- Description:
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Disability Justice Activists Look at "Ways to Maintain Ablism" and Counter "How Our Bodies Experience Trauma in the Medical-Industrial Complex"
Disability justice activists gathered in Detroit to take part in the US Social Forum and the Allied Media Conference. "There is a growing framework about how disability connects with other issues," says Stacey Milbern. "It's a way to maintain ablism and not look at the way disability connects in with how our bodies are policed or experience trauma in the medical-industrial complex." [includes rush transcript] - Video Language:
- English
- Duration:
- 03:40
Radical Access Mapping Project edited English subtitles for Disability Justice Activists Look at "Ways to Maintain Ablism" | ||
Radical Access Mapping Project added a translation |