Organizing in a Pandemic: Disability Justice Wisdom
Social Justice Resources for COVID-19 Rapid-Response series
Published April 14, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic is bringing real and significant disruptions to our lives, our communities, and our organizing.
The scale of this shift in our social fabric is new, but these are questions that disability justice organizers have been grappling with for years. How can we organize in a state of constant uncertainty and limitations on physical movement? How can we protect people with compromised immune systems as we work to build people power? How do we get the work done while leaving no one behind?
This episode shares stories and insights from disability justice organizers that all of us can learn from and apply to organizing in our current conditions. Thank you to JOIN for Justice, the Jewish Organizing Institute and Network, for organizing this call & working with us to turn the recording into a podcast episode. You'll hear featured voices Patty Berne, Lydia X. Z. Brown, & Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, moderated by Allegra Heath-Stout.
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Meet our Guests
Patricia Berne co-founded Sins Invalid with Leroy Moore in 2006, and has been the driving force and creative vision behind our project for the past 12 years. The caliber of Sins Invalid’s work is largely attributable to Patty’s artistry and analysis. Her professional background includes offering mental health support to survivors of violence and advocating for LGBTQI and disability perspectives within the field of reproductive genetic technologies. Her training in clinical psychology focused on trauma and healing for survivors of interpersonal and state violence. Patty’s experiences as a Japanese-Haitian queer disabled woman provides grounding for her work creating “liberated zones” for marginalized voices. She is widely recognized for her work to establish the framework and practice of disability justice.
Lydia X. Z. Brown (Lydia X. Z. Brown - Autistic Hoya) is a disability justice advocate, organizer, educator, attorney, strategist, and writer whose work has largely focused on violence against multiply-marginalized disabled people, especially institutionalization, incarceration, and policing. They co-lead the project on disability rights and algorithmic fairness at the Institute for Technology Law and Policy at Georgetown University Law Center, teach for Georgetown University's disability studies program, and support the Autistic Women and Nonbinary Network’s policy and advocacy work. They are also founder and director of the Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color's Interdependence, Survival, and Empowerment.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samrasinha is the author of Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home (short-listed for the Lambda and Publishing Triangle Awards), Bodymap, Love Cake (Lambda Literary Award winner) and co-editor of The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities. She is a lead artist with Sins Invalid.
Allegra Heath-Stout is the Jewish Organizing Fellowship Director at JOIN for Justice, the Jewish Organizing Institute and Network. JOIN is building a powerful field of Jewish leaders capable of effectively organizing for change across the United States and has trained over 6,000 Jewish leaders. They train rabbinical and cantorial students in seminaries across the country, offer a clergy fellowship, and host an online training institute called Don’t Kvetch, Organize!. Allegra directs the Jewish Organizing Fellowship, a year-long program in Boston training Jewish young adults as professional organizers, and is the founder of the Empower Fellowship, where fellows to work against ableism and provide focused leadership development for young Jewish organizers with disabilities.
Resources
The following resources are mentioned in this episode:
Disability Justice & Organizing online course from JOIN (forthcoming. Fill out the interest form to hear when it launches.
#NoBodyIsDisposable Know Your Rights Guide to Surviving COVID-19 Triage Protocols - This “Know Your Rights” toolkit is for people facing potential triage discrimination based on disability or weight during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The document covers rights and strategies for fat and disabled people of all ages navigating medical care in this time.
Crip Fund is pooling money for chronically ill, disabled, and immunocompromised people in serious financial need during this ongoing time of love, coronavirus, and apocalyptic joy & pain.
Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color’s Interdependence, Survival and Empowerment - Please donate to support the fund’s effort to provide direct financial support via micro-grants to autistic people of color during COVID-19.
Skin, Tooth and Bone (Second Edition) - To dig in deeper with your learning about disability justice, get yourself a copy of this fabulous primer all about disability justice principles and practice, published by Sins Invalid. Stay tuned for their forthcoming show: We Love Like Barnacles: Crip Lives and Climate Chaos.
Coronavirus resources from social justice leaders living with chronic illness
Access Irresistible’s practice library, Book Club, or weekly Care Circles for ways to stay connected and supported in community.
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