NEWS
New Works
The Sick Center and chronically ill artist Anna Roberts-Gevalt recently opened an office in Dumbo (Brooklyn) for Songs on Call, “a serenade service for the sick, by the sick.”
Jasmine Mithani writes about the life-saving practices of disability doulaing for The 19th.
For the Disability Visibility Project, Aparna Nair writes about “Why We Need to be Critical of Medical Museums as Spaces for Disability Histories.”
Canadian artist Rae Spoon’s album, Not Dead Yet, “an expression of the unpredictable joy [they] discovered despite discrimination, indignities, medical abuse, relationship break-downs and near-death experiences,” is out this week.
Harvard Law’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics has published papers from “Beyond Vulnerability: The Rights and Agency of People with Disabilities in the Climate Crisis,” a recent symposium organized with the Harvard Law School Project on Disability and the Disability-Inclusive Climate Action Research Programme at McGill Law Faculty.
Autistic researcher and organizer Hari Srinivasan writes about many forms of exclusion in autism research for TIME:
Just as psychology research had its WEIRD (“western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic”) sampling bias, autism research has not only a WEIRD sampling bias, but also has essentially oversampled the same, narrow band of what are considered the easily “researchable autistics,” and expected those findings (as well as the applications and interventions that resulted from them) to apply to everyone.
Jerron Herman’s VITRUVIAN, “an allegorical tale of the life cycle of the Vitruvian man as he traverses multiple hemispheres, now in the embodiment of a Disabled Black man,” comes to ODC’s State of Play Festival in San Francisco this week.
Disability + Design
Some great takes on the difference disability makes in design have come out recently:
s.e. smith makes the case for- and rounds up some excellent examples of design for disability in The Nation.
Sara Hendren offers “six verbs for accessible design” in a recent Substack essay:
After Universal Design: The Disability Design Revolution, edited by Elizabeth Guffey, is out from Bloomsbury Press.
In Other News…
There’s a swell of upsetting and important news. I’m putting some items in the last section, called “Intensities,” so you can easily navigate away before then if you need to.
New federal U.S. legislation seeks to support disabled workers without them losing access to the so-called “Disabled Adult Child” Social Security benefit.
Ahead of the Acheson Hotels, LLC v. Laufer case that involves the Americans with Disabilities Act and will come to the U.S. Supreme Court this fall, DREDF broke down some myths about ADA enforcement.
EVENTS
Building a Disability Politic & Access-Centered Cultures for Black Practitioners
Wednesdays, Aug. 9 & 16, 4 - 6pm ET, on Zoom
Applying a framework of disability justice is critical in uniting against the far right and protecting each other throughout the pandemic. This is for Black people that are interested in incorporating an anti-ableist approach to their movement work and developing values to support the increase of access.
Bitchin’ Heals
Aug. 10 - 13, online and at JACK (Brooklyn)
Bitchin’ Heals is a week of performances, workshops, artist markets, and mutual aid curated by x senn-yuen that amplifies disabled joy: centering disabled artists and prioritizing event accessibility. Created by and for disabled people, LGBTQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex, asexual) people, and Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color, Bitchin’ Heals serves as a vessel to increase community access to resources, bridge gaps across the 8 dimensions of wellness, and reduce mortality rates among oppressed populations by providing tools, techniques, tips, and tricks to achieving self-determination. In a world that does not want us to succeed, what if we survived and thrived, despite it all? From the tangible to the ephemeral, all sentient beings deserve the right to pursue happiness.
Vibrant Verbal Description Tour: Concert Posters
Tuesday, Aug. 8, 4 - 5pm ET, on Zoom
Every month, Poster House (NYC) offers virtual Vibrant Verbal Description Tours specifically for community members who are blind or have low vision. In order to reach a wide, art-loving audience around the world, we offer our description tours online through Zoom. These tours are led by our Chief Curator, allowing you intimate access to the items in our current shows and permanent collection. This month’s tour will focus on concert posters.
The current and coming surge of Covid is proof of what disabled people have been saying all along: this pandemic is not over.
The People’s CDC has been doing the solid and steady work of tracking the virus and issuing essential calls to action, including their recent demand for oversight of the CDC’s Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee.
The Urban Institute released the video from their recent event, “Early Insights on Long COVID, Chronic Illness, and Economic Well-Being.”
Australian researchers Sue Williamson, Helen Taylor, and Vindhya Weeratunga wrote about the dangers of corporate return-to-office plans for disabled workers in The Conversation.
A coalition of disability and open government organizers have proposed legislation in Massachusetts that seeks to guarantee remote access to open meetings.
Leaked memos from In-n-Out Burger’s corporate bosses reveal the fast-food chain will prevent workers from wearing masks - and fire those who do not comply - starting Aug. 14th.
The Kaiser Family Foundation published an update to its Medicaid Enrollment and Unwinding Tracker, revealing 3,849,000 people have been thrown off Medicaid so far.
Hello!
We are launching tickets for a free virtual disability accessible/disability themed film event later this month. It’s called Art & Mind: I Know Who I Am! Journeys of Women of Color & Femme Expressing Creatives. It will also serve as a fundraiser where 100% of funds will become mini grants for this demographic of artists. We’d love to share and get the word out via Crip News. What is the best way to contact you?
More here (website being updated)
https://www.sistacreativesrising.com/art-mind-event-page
Thank you!
SCR