Crip News v.131
#DisabilityTooWhite, dangerous publishing, new works, other news, calls, and events. Thanks for being back here!
NEWS
The 8th Anniversary of #DisabilityTooWhite
On May 18, 2016, organizer Alice Wong noted the prototypical whiteness of a blog post about disability and beauty. “Where are the disabled people of color?” she asked.
As activist Vilissa Thompson started to respond to Wong’s tweet, a new hashtag came to her: #DisabilityTooWhite.
“It is pretty self explanatory that disability [representation] is too white,” Thompson explained in an interview with the Huffington Post the following month, “and I started putting it in my hashtag, and everybody saw it and started putting it on their tweets, and it kind of took a life of its own.”
Today, the hashtag continues to organize frustration about the predominance of white perspectives in disability movement work and has even been chronicled in the annals of Disability Studies where this predominance continues to reign.
Tell HarperOne Books: Pull Be A Revolution by Ijeoma Oluo Now
The author of a new book that takes an “eye-opening and galvanizing look at the current state of anti-racist activism across America” gathered information from several disabled organizers without transparency or informed consent and dangerously published falsehoods and misrepresentations of their work.
The Black & Indigenous disabled people who are misfeatured are asking for the publisher to pull all forms of the book, notify all interviewees of concerns, cease and desist using/sharing content, send interviewees unaltered copies of their videos, transcripts, and quotes, and immediately block the author’s access to the same.
You can support these demands by emailing the HarperOne General Counsel at Trina.Hunn@harpercollins.com and follow bit.ly/pullbearevolution for more.
New Works
Autonomist writer and artist Andrea Alakran has published an 8-page toolkit about direct action planning for and by sick and disabled organizers.
Crips4Palestine are also organizing webinars on “Disability Justice in Direct Action,” including a 101 training on Sunday, May 26 from 12 - 1:30pm PT on Zoom.
The Disability Action Research Kollective (DARK) has published a new zine called “DISABLED RADICALS” featuring work by Richard Amm, Jacob Prince, Alexandra Morris, Kirstie Stage, and Jabu Nala-Hartley.
For The New York Times, Jonathan Griffin writes about the partnership between Oakland-based disability arts studio Creative Growth and SFMOMA that has resulted in the museum’s half-million dollar acquisition of more than 100 Creative Growth artworks and the exhibition Creative Growth: The House That Art Built, up through Oct. 6.
The Lancet Public Health published an editorial calling for disability inclusivity to be thought of as a fundamental human right.
The US-based Interagency Committee on Disability Research has published “Surveying the Landscape of Disability Data and Statistics: A Toolkit for Interagency Collaboration.”
The Arc published “5 Disability Stories Journalists Should Be Covering Right Now.”
In Other News…
The Biden administration recently finalized new rules for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. As noted by Mia Ives-Rublee, director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress, the new rules will reduce barriers in receiving health care and social services, and increase protections for disabled parents.
Borealis Philanthropy recently announced the launch of a $1 million Black Disabled Liberation Project, co-funded by the organization’s Black-Led Movement Fund and its Disability Inclusion Fund .
CALLS
Health Justice Commons is hiring an Associate Director (.75 FTE). More here.
The Sick Times is hiring an engagement editor and a podcast producer, both remote, part-time. Apply by May 24. More here.
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) has launched the Teighlor McGee Grassroots Mini Grants Program, named after former ASAN staff member and activist Teighlor McGee. The program will award up to $5,000 to people or groups. More here.
Arts Midwest is accepting applications for the 2024 Midwest Award for Artists with Disabilities, an award supporting accessibility in the arts and celebrating the work of disabled Midwestern visual artists. Apply by May 23. More here.
The Modality, Acquisition, and Cognition Lab at Gallaudet University is seeking research participants for a study how deaf and hard of hearing people learn a sign language as a second language. More here.
EVENTS
Book Launch for Disability Worlds by Faye Ginsburg & Rayna Rapp
Thursday, May 16, 5 - 6:30pm ET, in-person outdoors at NYU (NYC)
Please join The Center for Disability Studies, Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp (NYU anthropologists/authors/activists) to celebrate the publication of Disability Worlds with a welcome from Jordana Mendelson (Director, NYU KJCC, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese) and remarks by Simi Linton (disability activist, project director and author of Proclaiming Disability Arts) followed by a brief reading from the book.
Disabled Artists Talk: Insights In Practice
Saturday, May 18, 12 - 1:30pm PT, on Zoom
Meet artists Vanessa Cruz, Jaklin Romine, and Ande Diedjomahor for a conversation with each other about disability, art, and life. This talk, organized and moderated by dancer and choreographer Alice Sheppard, is the culmination of a partnership with Pieter as part of an Access Initiative.
“No Incompletes In ‘Real Life’”: Surviving and Reimagining Ableist Institutions in Mad Times (While Centering the Medicine of Disability Justice)
TODAY, Monday, May 13, 5pm PT, in-person at Western Washington University’s Bellingham campus and on Zoom
Please join us for the 2024 Institute for Critical Disability Studies Scholars Week Keynote featuring Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu.
Disability Justice and Drama Therapy Talk with Lydia X. Z. Brown
Sunday, May 19, 12 - 1:30pm ET, on Zoom
Can finding pleasure in our activism help us to find a form of freedom? How might we find strength and pleasure in each other and in our work to reform our professional organization and training programs, and the institutions within which we work? How do we balance the fight for access with the love that is required to do transformative work? Lydia X. Z. Brown will speak to our disability justice interest group about reframing our relationship to activism.