NEWS
Disabled Students & Active Shooter Preparedness
The horrors of the Uvalde school shooting show us again the deeply rooted place of gun violence in U.S. public life. There are many ways we need to bring disability into these conversations, but today I’ll highlight one question: Are disabled students being left out of schools’ active shooter drills?
Some parents have hypothesized that their disabled children are safer than most, perhaps an upsetting windfall of segregated educational settings. But it’s very difficult to find resources about how disabled kids should participate in guidance like “Run. Hide. Fight.”
One federal guide from 2013 for general emergency preparedness in schools stresses disability-inclusive planning but offers little by way of specific tactics. How can we use anti-ableism in all aspects of gun violence prevention?
Expanding Medical Assistance in Dying
In Canada, limitations on how one can access medical help in ending their life (also called medical assistance in dying, or MAiD) have been eroded in recent years. A sunset clause in Bill C-7 that prevents mental illness from being the sole qualifier for legal access to MAiD means that there could be considerable expansion as soon as March 2023. Serena Bains has a helpful long-read on the ways that the situation is a signal to disabled and low-income people that their lives are not worth life. “The government will cover the costs of the medications needed for MAiD,” they write, “but they won’t cover the cost of medications needed to live.”
Tune into the next Disability Filibuster on May 31st at 5pm ET to learn more and strategize about how to stop MAiD’s expansion. You can also send in statements to the Special Joint Committee on MAiD.
Social Security “Anti-Fraud” Penalties
The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration’s Inspector General’s office used a little-known anti-fraud program to heap unconscionable fines on poor and disabled people who mistaken accepted federal support. Over seven months in 2019, 83 people were charged over $11.5 million. The reporting adds more urgency to the call for a Beneficiary Advocate within the SSA.
Beyond the Biomedical Model
An essay in The New York Times Magazine profiles the Hearing Voices Network and other organizers trying to build alternatives to the highly medicalized and carceral approaches to support for people experiencing “nonconcensus realities.” “[P]artly by lifting the pressure of secrecy and diminishing the feeling of deviance, the talk will loosen the hold of hallucinations and, crucially, the grip of isolation.”
France’s Disabilities Minister
The newly-appointed “Minister for Solidarity, Autonomy and Disabled People” in the Macron government has been accused of rape by 2 people and he is refusing to resign (or engage in any process that centers solidarity, autonomy, or disability justice for survivors of sexual violence).
New Works
The Ownership of Onomatopoeia by Alison O’Daniel is up at Commonwealth and Council in L.A. through June 25th. The project explores “sound segregation,” which O’Daniel identifies as “inequities in access to sound or safety from sound, wherein precarity can be manifest in ways ranging from airport-adjacent communities being denied access to soundproofing (and thus air conditioning) to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing fighting for access to language.”
An upcoming exhibition at Philip Mould in London will focus on disabled Victorian painter Sarah Biffin, with advising from Alison Lapper and Essaka Joshua.
Black, purple, pink, and blue text reads: ABNR (Awareness-Based-Neuromuscular Re-Patterning) is being renamed. Introducing HAPT: Hypermobile Accessible Proprioceptive Therapy. @HYP_ACCESS. The background is a photo of Audre giving L HAPT. L and Audre are two thin, white people wearing masks. L is laying on a cushioned table, Audre is standing with her hands on L’s arm.
Routledge has published two new anthologies: Disability and Art History: From Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century, edited by Ann Millett-Gallant and Elizabeth Howie and The Routledge Companion to Art and Disability, edited by Keri Watson and Timothy W. Hiles.
“They’ll Fix You. They Fix Everything: Memory, SuperCrips, and a Disabled Boy’s Obsession with Robocop” by Christopher Unpezverde Núñez has been published in the 10th issue of Imagining: A Gibney Journal.
The Disability Collective’s No Body Left Behind project “is an online campaign centred around the disabled community’s concerns regarding the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, including mask and vaccine mandates.” The project includes video works from 10 disabled artists. There will be a screening, discussion, and artist Q&A on Thursday, May 31st at 7pm ET.
CALLS
Introduction to Protactile Theory
John Lee Clark will offer a 3-week intensive course organized over email from June 12th through July 1st. 2.0 CEUs, $250 registration fee, June 3rd registration deadline. Contact jlc@johnleeclark.com for further information.
QUIET PARADE
In collaboration with MSVU Art Gallery (MSVUAG), and with support from the Bluenose Ability Arts and Film Festival and Eyelevel Gallery, artist Aislinn Thomas is seeking proposals and participants for QUIET PARADE, a sensory-friendly celebration taking place in Kjipuktuk / Halifax on the afternoon of October 15, 2022 as part of Nocturne 2022. Submission deadline is June 3rd at 12pm ADT.
Bed Zine Issue 3
Bed Zine Issue 3, Call for Submissions. Bed zine reflects the complex way disabled people relate to our beds, through a combination of art & writing. Submissions are open until July 22, 2022. Underneath the text is a digital illustration of a purple and blue bed with a lamp and side table. Please send all submissions, along with their titles and your name, as a PDF to bedthezine@gmail.com.
Crip Lit for Spoonies II
The Crip Lit for Spoonies workshop series is a series of reading group-style writing workshops that centers literatures of chronic illness and disability. This series, with Ashna Ali, will focus on the genre and poetics of writing about one’s own experience of illness and disability as a way of healing and asserting the truth of one’s own experience in the face of isolation, silencing, pathologization, and gas-lighting. Every Monday for 6 weeks starting June 13th. More info here.
Cash Advance Program for NYC-based Artists
Pentacle’s Cash Advance Program is an interest-free $5,000 cash advance loan paired with sound financial planning through mentorship and fiscal personnel support to help performing artists overcome obstacles to their growth. Applications close June 8th. More info here.
Heidi Latsky Dance
The company is hiring a full-time Executive Director and a part-time Fundraising/Development Associate.
EVENTS
Virtual Guided Movement Workshop with Kayla Hamilton
In conjunction with the exhibition Carolyn Lazard: Long Take at Walker Art Center. Tuesday, May 31st from 6-7pm CT on Zoom. More info here.
Pajama Party Politics: There is no justice without access
Listen to Dis’ (LTD’) and the Saskatchewan Arts Alliance (SAA) invite you to take part in a cultural conversation on May 31st from 10am-12pm Canadian Central (U.S. Mountain) about why it’s important we all, as artists and cultural workers, both independently and as part of organizations, do the work to catch up and keep up with the current understanding of access and accommodation with and for the Deaf/disabled community. Register here.
CreateSpace Panel Talk: Art and Accessibility in Public Spaces
Join STEPS and Arts AccessAbility Network Manitoba for a free panel discussion on the subject of accessibility through the lens of public artworks and projects. June 1st from 6-7:30pm ET. Register here.
Afield Study : The Construction of Ableism
3 public sessions, and one closed workshop, on separate days in the first two weeks of June, starting today, May 30th from 11am-12:30pm ET. More info here.
Beyond Barriers Boundaries & Belief
A National Touring Physically Integrated Dance Festival, featuring Heidi Latsky Dance (NY), Karen Peterson and Dancers (FL), and Dancing Wheels (OH). The New York program on June 14th at Mark Morris Dance Center will include a physically integrated workshop and informal showing. Additional stops in Cleveland, Ohio on Friday, June 10 and Miami, FL Saturday, June 25 at 7:30pm.