Save the Date: 1 Year of Crip News
Tuesday, October 11th
10-11am PT / 11am-12pm MT / 12-1pm CT / 1-2pm ET / 6-7pm BST / 7-8pm CET
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Please join me on Zoom to mark the first anniversary of the first issue of Crip News. We will have ASL and CART captioning, and next week I’ll share a participation guide with a fuller set of details about our access ecology in next week’s issue.
NEWS
New Works
Slow emergency siren, ongoing: Accessing Handsworth Songs is a year-long collaboration, co-led by LUX and Sarah Hayden, as part of a research project called Voices in the Gallery. The website and book documents a project to make Black Audio Film Collective’s ‘Handsworth Songs’ “more, and differently, accessible,” featuring augmented audio description by Elaine Lillian Joseph and creative captions by the Care-fuffle Working Group.
The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha ships next week! Check out Leah’s fall tour dates across Turtle Island here.
Writers and Disability Future Fellows Kenny Fries, Wendy Lu, Naomi Ortiz, and Khadijah Queen spoke to Wynter K. Miller from Electric Literature about their creatives lives and work.
5 BIPOC and/or Mad, Deaf and disabled queer and trans artists - TJ Cuthand, Raven Davis, Rodney Diverlus, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Dr. Jenna Reid - will participate in Crip Magic and Queer Joy mini-residencies during the 2022-2023 academic term at McMaster University, curated by Syrus Marcus Ware.
Madeline Thornton & Kavita Shah Arora report on the increase in requests for sterilization, highest among Black and Hispanic gynecological patients, in the last 3 months since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision eliminated the constitutional right to abortion services.
Disabled artist Selma Blair performed on the season 31 premiere of Dancing with the Stars.
South Africa’s Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities and the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture in collaboration with the South Korean Embassy, Nelson Mandela Foundation, Artscape in Cape Town and Playhouse in Durban are celebrating a 30-year bilateral disability arts relationship between the 2 countries.
Ahead of their keynote address at the Adding Voices Conference this weekend, Jen White-Johnson released a peek at The Anti-Ableist Art Educators Manifesto they will debut there.
Artist Sonali Menezes released a new zine, “DEPRESSION COOKING: easy recipes for when you’re depressed as fuck.”
Among the new grantees from the Pew Foundation is the Institute on Disabilities at Temple University’s Rhythm Bath project.
Airlines Continue to Destroy Wheelchairs
Toronto-based organizer Maayan Ziv arrived in Tel Aviv for an accessibility conference to discover that Air Canada had badly damaged her powerchair, leaving her stranded. The airline initially offered her a $300 e-voucher.
This is a horrifyingly common experience for wheelchair users. The U.S. Dept. of Transportation reported that in the month of June 2022 alone, 1,145 wheelchairs and scooters were “mishandled” by U.S. airlines.
Carla Qualtrough, Canada’s Minister of Employment, Workforce Development, and Disability Inclusion, penned an open letter and is pursuing “further action.”
The COVID-19 Pandemic is NOT Over
Speaking to CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday, Sept. 18, President Biden declared that “the pandemic is over.” 400-500 people in the U.S. die every day from the virus. 32,000 Americans are hospitalized each day. Millions cannot return to work as they grapple with long COVID. More than 98% of the U.S. population lives in areas with substantial or higher COVID transmission.
But it feels like none of these data points capture the true depth of the pain involved in how public life is leaving disabled people behind, or what some COVID longhaulers are experiencing as "the Great Gaslighting.”
Here are a few resources for continuing to elaborate new forms of vigilance and care:
The People’s CDC
The Cranky Queer Substack
EVENTS
NYC: The theatrical run of I Didn’t See You There by Reid Davenport begins this week at Firehouse. All screenings feature access integrations. More here.
NYC: The opening reception for Indisposable: Tactics for Care and Mourning, curated by Jessica A. Cooley & Ann M. Fox, will take place on Friday, Sept 30th from 6-8pm ET at 320 E 43rd St, New York, NY 10017. More here.
U.K.: Back to Back Theatre is bringing The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes to the Battersea Arts Centre from 19 – 22 October, followed by Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts 26 – 28 October and finishing at Leeds Playhouse 2 – 5 November. More information can be found here: https://bac.org.uk/whats-on/town-hall-forum-event/
Where Art Meets Science in the Forest - An Evening with Artist Marina Heron (Tsaplina) will take place on Zoom on Wednesday, Sept. 28th from 8-9pm ET. Register here.
CHRONIC LIFE: CAN WE GO THE DISTANCE WITH THE VIRUS? A Roundtable Webinar with Alexandra Juhasz, Theodore Kerr, Lorie Novak, & Meghan O’Rourke, moderated by Laura Wexler & Eilin Perez on Tuesday, September 27, 4:00 – 5:30 PM ET. Join on Zoom here.
[UPDATE: CANCELED] The Disability Pride Parade return to NYC on Sunday, Oct. 2nd. More here.