NEWS
A Moment for Care Work
In late March, Biden declared April 2023 as Care Workers Recognition Month. Last week, he issued a wide-ranging Executive Order to increase the job quality of care work and expand access and engagement to federal support for many kinds of care. (See the fact sheet for a shorter explainer.)
The Order directs specific federal bodies to increase compensation and benefits for care workers. It also specifically names Black, Indigenous, and other women of color who are most affected by the crisis of the care economy.
It’s been roundly applauded by organizations working to bring attention and action to the crisis, including many involved in the Care Workers Can’t Wait Summit that was getting underway in DC right as the Order was issued.
New Works
Sins Invalid has released a 3-day email-based “Crip Crash Course” as “an invitation to include disability justice in your work and your life.”
Sins Invalid will also be a part of a town hall event in NYC on May 2nd to mark the launch a new book, Voices of a People's History of the United States in the 21st Century: Documents of Hope and Resistance.
The May 2023 issue of British Vogue (available in print tomorrow) features portraits and interviews with 19 “brilliant, beautiful and impactful Disabled talents from across fashion, sport, the arts and activism,” including 5 different covers. Sinéad Burke worked with the Vogue House for months advising the project. Check out the audio described video with the “talent.” And read the blog post from Burke’s consulting agency for a detailed account of the process.
Video of Dolly Sen’s performance, “Is It Willful Ignorance That Enables Psychiatry To Disregard Racism?” with a panel discussion featuring Colin King and Cassandra Lovelock, is now online.
Lizzy Rose’s In the Studio: In Hospital (2015) was one of the pieces in a retrospective of the artist’s life, Things I Have Learned The Hard Way, which closed yesterday at Limbo Project Space in Margate, UK.
The People’s CDC has released “A People’s External Review of the CDC,” that considered “over 200 journal articles, government reports, news articles and white papers and surveyed nearly 500 public health experts and community leaders.”
An recent article published by The Chicago Tribune offers a portrait of Monserrat Moran, a Chicago-based disabled Mexican artist, as she has navigated inaccessible education, housing, immigration to the U.S., and the art worlds. (CW: The article is solidly, frustratingly framed by inspiration porn.)
Kirby McClure’s indie film Spaghetti Junction is about “a disabled teenager who encounters a traveler claiming to have supernatural origins.” Coming to Amazon Prime soon.
Jeffrey Yasuo Mansfield writes for Architect Magazine about the possibilities for integrating Disability Justice into design worlds, including highlighting his work with The Deaf Space and Disability Justice Design Lab and Gallaudet’s Center for Black Deaf Studies.
Le’Andra Leseur and Finnegan Shannon have been named Summer 2023 Visual Arts Residents at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn.
Off The List Records, an Australian “record label and event organising collective focused on empowering artists and music lovers with a disability,” was recently featured on ABC.
Major congratulations to Peter Torres Fremlin on shifting his full professional focus to Disability Debrief, an essential newsletter and library.
WashPo’s Ableism Quiz
The Washington Post recently published a quiz to help readers identify their unconscious ableist biases. Disability reporter Amanda Morris and graphics reporter Chris Alcantara consulted 25 disabled experts to formulate the quiz, with illustrations by Oaklee Thiele.
The quiz offers 3 choices for responding to different hypothetical scenarios, with 1 “good choice” and 2 that “suggest you may have bias.” There is a lot of great writing in the reporting that explains your answers. For example, in one response, Patty Berne distinguishes between fear of disability and fear of living with the costs of ableism.
I have a quizzical feeling here that seems related to the ways ableism is maintained. Does this project further the sense that ableism lives primarily in situations, individual choices, and terminology? Or are those things part of a larger ideological framework that the quiz doesn’t bring us to interrogate? I wonder about the nondisabled people who seek a broad measure of their goodness as people, which they find here in the form of their quiz-end recap. And I wonder about a news quiz that invites readers instead to identify the mechanics of ableism in the headlines of a day.
On Campuses
Some recent headlines from colleges and universities:
For Truthout, Mary Jirmanus Saba and Adam J. Moore chronicle the union organizing in the University of California system has built coalitions around Disability Justice for wins toward safer and healthier workplaces.
UC Berkeley installed new benches for disabled riders of its Loop shuttle system.
Student journalist Nica Leung recently reported on “degrading” access experiences at Emory University.
CALLS
Disabled artist Molly Joyce is seeking German disabled individuals for a paid disability interview project in Düsseldorf / Germany. The work is titled Perspective and is an ongoing project featuring disabled interviewees responding to what access, care, and more mean to them. The interviewees' voices are heard aurally with musical underscoring and seen visually in open captions. If you may be interested and/or have questions please be in touch at: mollysjoyce@gmail.com. Check out the past project:
The Spoonie Uni project is raising funds for 2 Black disabled care recipients, Melissa and Amari, by offering sliding scale tarot readings. More here.
HEARD’s Prison Visitation Fund supports loved ones (family, friends, partners, spouses, etc.) visiting deaf/disabled people in jails and prisons to cover the costs of travel such as: gas, plane/train/bus tickets, hotel stays, or other expenses related to visitation. Donate here.
Disability Arts Online and the Cathy Waller Company are seeking 2 UK-based freelancers to support Decode, a “service that empowers disabled creatives to navigate through the Access To Work application process.” If you’re interested, check out the info session on May 4th.
Disabled Hikers is hiring an Executive Assistant. Applications due May 5th. More here.
Applications are open for AAPD’s NBCUniversal Tony Coelho’s Media Scholarship Program for high school seniors, undergraduate, and graduate students with disabilities. Deadline is May 22nd.
EVENTS
Carolyn Lazard and Jerron Herman: Long Take
Friday, April 28th, 4 - 5:30pm ET, on Zoom
A virtual celebration of the opening of Carolyn Lazard’s solo exhibition, Long Take, at ICA Philadelphia. Lazard will be in conversation with dancer and artist Jerron Herman, whose audio recorded and described performance anchors the exhibition. Lazard and Herman will discuss their ongoing collaboration as artists and curators, experimentation with access protocols, and the experience of dance as both performer and spectator. Moderated by Prof. Mara Mills.
Let's Laugh More: Exploring the Relationship Between Disability and Humor
Monday, May 1st, 7 - 8pm ET, on Zoom
Since launching the disability satire publication, The Squeaky Wheel, Steven Verdile has joined numerous podcasts and interviews on the intersection of disability and humor. Joined by other disabled humorists from The Squeaky Wheel, the panel will cover topics including the importance of on-screen representation, and why comedy is such a powerful tool in combatting ableism.
AOL: Access Oriented Lit
Sunday, April 30th, 3 - 4:30pm ET, on Zoom
Featured Poets & Writers: Romany Stott (she/her), Estephanie Seis (she/her), Bri Joy Yakshini-Moore (ze. zir. zirs. zirself.)...and an open mic time permitting! So bring poems :)
Mutual Aid Request: Support disabled artist & organizer Thai Lu!
Venmo: SensiSkins
Cashapp: sensiSkins
Website: sensiskins.com
Gofundme: gofund.me/34bb8eec
The Power of Somatics for Disability Justice
Friday, April 28th, 7 - 9pm BST, online
With Patty Berne of Sins Invalid, Lani Parker of Sisters of Frida, The Triple Cripples, and Farzana Khan. As we sit in this work and continue to learn, holding the complexity and multiple ways of being in relationship to our bodies, we hope to uplift and sustain the resistance and creativity of disabled bodies as liberatory and life-affirming practices in the face of ableist harm and violence. The practice of disability justice teaches us to think about the body in a politicised way, to think about which bodies are deemed disposable, and to challenge radical movement spaces that rely on burnout without acknowledging bodily/mental limitations or access needs. “The Power of Somatics for Disability Justice” is the third of a 3-part Healing Trauma and Social Justice series looking into the potential of somatics.
ReelAbilities New York
Kick-off on April 27th, through May 3rd,
Founded in 2007 by the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, ReelAbilities Film Festival: New York is the largest festival in the country dedicated to promoting awareness and appreciation of the lives, stories and artistic expressions of people with disabilities. The weeklong festival is renowned for its wide-ranging international film selection, riveting conversations, and performances, presented annually in dozens of venues across the New York metropolitan area. In 2010, ReelAbilities Film Festival: New York expanded into an international program, presenting its one-of-a-kind programming in cities throughout the United States, Canada, and Central America.