Crip News v.132
Remembering Stacey, new books, works, other news, calls, and events. Thanks for being here.
NEWS
Remembering Stacey Park Milbern
Yesterday, May 19, was the birth- and death-day of legendary activist Stacey Park Milbern. In an “Honor Song” from The Future is Disabled (2022), Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha describes Stacey as
the queer wheelchair tomboy femme with an MBA who was also a vanguard organizer, who could break down any concept, talk softly, and carry a big stick of brilliance, working to develop everyone she met as an activist, especially the disabled people who had been most written off as having nothing to contribute. (p. 281)
Stacey helped us understand many important concepts for disability activism, including access washing, crip lineages, and more catalogued in the #StaceyTaughtUs syllabus. Next year, Stacey will be featured on the U.S. quarter coin as part of the Smithsonian’s American Women Quarters program. Her work continues to guide our movements.
New Books
Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire, edited by icon Alice Wong and featuring work by 43 writers, is out now from Vintage. Wong recently spoke with Mina Kim about the anthology for KQED.
India-based nonprofit Rising Flame, with HarperCollins India, has published And They Lived…Ever After, an anthology of fairy tales retold by disabled women, featuring “a deaf Snow White, a wheelchair-using Rapunzel, a neurodivergent Ugly Duckling.”
Alt-Text Selfies is a project by Bojana Coklyat, Finnegan Shannon, & Olivia Dreisinger, with Laurel Schwulst, Taichi Aritomo, Tristan Douglas, & Jim Bauer, taking the well-known selfie form into the creative realms of alt-text.
Disabled author Matt Lee’s memoir The Backwards Hand, out now from Northwestern University Press, “interrogates what it means to be a cripple in a predominantly ableist society, deconstructing how perceptions of disability are—and are not—reflected in art and media.”
New Works
In a new opinion essay in The Squeaky Wheel, “Linda” explains how “I’m More than My Disability, I’m Also a Huge Bitch.” “In many ways, we're just like you,” she writes, “We laugh, we cry … and some of us commit light identity theft.”
Creative New Zealand recently featured disabled artist Pelenakeke Brown discussing what drives her her interdisciplinary artistry, which will be part of the country’s delegation to the Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture.
All of Me, a “hot disabled love story” by Laura Winters, is at the Alice Griffen Jewel Box Theatre (NYC) through June 16.
A new Bangala sign language was on stage at the First South Asian Disability Theatre Festival that recently concluded in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
A recent episode of KFPA’s Pushing Limits radio show featured disabled comedians Nina G & Michael Beers.
Disabled pianist Brianna Matzke recently performed a new performance work, TREMOR, at the American Sign Museum in DC.
Blind artist Kirsten Busby recently discussed her journey in opera and disability representation in the arts in Australia on SBS News.
Good Housekeeping recently featured disabled Tony nominee Ali Stroker in the magazine’s first-ever Accessibility Special Issue.
The Tuba Thieves by Alison O’Daniel premieres today on PBS’s Independent Lens.
In Other News…
Tangled Art + Disability has withdrawn from this year’s CONTACT Photography Festival due to Scotiabank’s $500M investment in Elbit Systems, one of the largest producers of weapons for the Israeli Occupation Forces.
In a recent convening in Jakarta, Indonesia, the British Council, Indonesian officials, and disabled artists discussed the “mutual exchange between the creative economies of Britain, Indonesia and other [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] member states.”
French Deaf and disability community leaders recently visited Buffalo, NY as part of the International Visitor Leadership Program through the US Department of State.
British Paralympian John McFall is working with the European Space Agency on a feasibility study about a physically disabled astronaut to live and work in space.
Disabled Virginia lawmaker Jennifer Wexton recently used voice assist to deliver a speech on the House floor.
EVENTS
Carolyn Lazard, Geelia Ronkina, & Constantina Zavitsanos at the Poetry Project
Wednesday, May 22, 8pm ET, in-person, outdoors at St. Mark’s Church (NYC)
This evening, like every evening day or nighttime, is gathered in our shared and irrefutable incapacity. Who do we arrive with, and what does it mean to never arrive alone? Carolyn Lazard, Geelia Ronkina and Constantina Zavitsanos meet outside for a series of experiments in un/solicited advice, crip foresight, among other improvisational forms toward being together.
Crip Bloc: Disability + Protest
Friday, May 24, 6 - 7:30pm PT, in-person at Coaxial (L.A.) and online
This panel discussion with Nat Decker, Cielo Saucedo, thai Lu, Xixi Edelsbrunner, and Espeon will explore the notion of a crip bloc, and methods of disability resistance and solidarity. Disabled people participating in on the ground protest confront numerous inaccessibilities and the realities of the body/mind: vulnerability, immobility, fatigue, over-stimulation, hyper-visibility. Security instructions - wear all black or discrete clothing, cover the face - fail to obfuscate the mobility device or bodily difference, resulting in increased susceptibility to surveillance. Public gathering and proximity to police can result in disproportionate risk, especially for multiply-marginalized people.