Disability justice

Disability justice is a framework that examines disability and ableism as it relates to other forms of oppression and identity (race, class, gender, sexuality, citizenship, incarceration, size, etc.).[1] It was developed starting in 2005 by the Disability Justice Collective, a group of "Black, brown, queer and trans" people including Patty Berne, Mia Mingus, Stacey Milbern, Leroy F. Moore Jr., Eli Clare, and Sebastian Margaret."[1] In disability justice, disability is not defined in "white terms, or male terms, or straight terms."[1] Disability justice also acknowledges that "ableism helps make racism, christian supremacy, sexism, and queer- and transphobia possible" and that all those systems of oppression are intertwined.[1] The disability justice framework is being applied to the intersectional reexamination of a wide range of disability, human rights, and justice movements.[2][3][4][5]

Origins

Initially conceived by queer, disabled women of color, Patty Berne, Mia Mingus, and Stacey Milbern, in the San Francisco Bay Area, Disability Justice was built in reaction to their exclusion from mainstream disability rights movement and disability studies discourse and activism, as well as the ableism in activist spaces.[1] They were later joined by Leroy Moore, Eli Clare, and Sebastian Margaret.[1] Disability justice centers "disabled people of color, immigrants with disabilities, queers with disabilities, trans and gender non-conforming people with disabilities, people with disabilities who are houseless, people with disabilities who are incarcerated, people with disabilities who have had their ancestral lands stolen, amongst others."[1]

Sins Invalid, the group through which the founders were connected, defines disability justice through ten key principles: intersectionality, leadership by those most affected, anti-capitalism, solidarity across different activist causes and movements, recognizing people as whole people, sustainability, solidarity across different disabilities, interdependence, collective access, and collective liberation.[6][1][7]

The disability justice work of the Bay area activists has informed the development of the Disability Justice Initiative in Washington, D.C. On July 26th, 2018, the 28th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), the Center for American Progress (CAP) formally announced its Disability Justice Initiative, under the direction of Rebecca Cokley.[8] CAP is the first public policy think tank to specifically focus on disability.[8][9] Recognition of the need for an intentional and intersectional approach was driven in part by attempts to cut the Affordable Care Act.[9]

In April 2019, Performance Space New York hosted a three-day festival developed around the Disability Justice framework. Performance Space New York worked with the political arts group Arika, the Whitney Museum of American Art and others to bring together disabled artists and writers. Entitled I wanna be with you everywhere (IWBWYE), the festival attempted to create an experience of “access intimacy,” in which needs were "respected, anticipated, and lovingly welcomed".[10][11]

Critiques of Disability Rights

Like earlier critiques of reproductive rights by reproductive justice activists and critiques of environmentalism by environmental justice activists,[1] the founders of the disability justice movement thought the disability rights movement and disability studies overly focused on straight white men with physical disabilities to the exclusion of others.[12]

Many in the disability justice movement were also critical of an emphasis on rights without a broader examination of systems of oppression (for example, the right to an education does not mean that all education is equitable).[2]

Writer and activist Audre Lorde is frequently referenced as inspirational to the disability justice movement, for works such as her essay “A Burst of Light: Living with Cancer,” which addresses disability, illness, and racial justice,[4] emphasizing that “We do not live single issue lives”.[5] Writers such as Catherine Jampel have emphasized the importance of disability justice to an intersectional reexamination of environmental justice.[5] Writers such as Jina B. Kim draw upon disability justice and "crip-of-color" critiques in an attempt to develop an intersectional critical disability methodology which emphasizes that all lives are "enriched, enabled, and made possible" through a variety of means of support.[4]

See also

Further reading
  • Bartlett, Jennifer, Sheila Black, and Michael Northen. 2011. Beauty is a verb: the new poetry of disability.
  • Ben-Moshe, Liat, Chris Chapman, and Allison C. Carey. 2014. Disability Incarcerated. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US.
  • Block, Pamela, Devva Kasnitz, Akemi Nishida, and Nick Pollard. 2016. Occupying Disability: Critical Approaches to Community, Justice, and Decolonizing Disability. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9984-3.
  • Brown, Lydia X. Z., E. Ashkenazy, and Morénike Giwa Onaiwu. 2017. All the weight of our dreams: on living racialized autism.
  • Clare, Eli. 2015. Exile and pride: disability, queerness, and liberation.
  • Kafer, Alison. 2013. Feminist, queer, crip. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  • Khakpour, Porochista. 2018. Sick: a memoir.
  • Levins Morales, Aurora. 2019. Medicine stories: essays for radicals.
  • Lewis, Talia A. Disability Justice In the Age of Mass Incarceration: Perspectives on Race, Disability, Law & Accountability, Northeastern University School of Law, Public Interest Law Syllabus, Summer 2016. goo.gl/uwGIB0. Course Archive: #DisabilityJusticeNUSL.
  • Moore, Leroy F. Jr. 2017. Black disabled art history 101. San Francisco, CA: Xochitl Justice Press.
  • Onazi, Oche. 2020. An African Path to Disability Justice Community, Relationships and Obligations. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-35850-1.
  • Patterson, Jennifer, and Tourmaline. 2016. Queering sexual violence: radical voices from within the anti-violence movement.
  • Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. 2018. Care work: dreaming disability justice. https://public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=5396334.
  • Lorde, Audre. 2007. The cancer journals. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books.
  • Luczak, Raymond. 2015. QDA: a queer disability anthology.
  • Roberts, Dorothy E. 1997. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty.
  • Schalk, Sami. 2018. Bodyminds reimagined : (dis)ability, race, and gender in black women's speculative fiction.
  • Sicolo, Paola Silvana, and Alejandra Marchevsky. 2019. Enabling Disability Justice: Toward A Transformation of Latin American Studies.
  • Sins Invalid (Organization). 2019. Skin, tooth, and bone: the basis of movement is our people : a disability justice primer.
  • Washington, Harriet A. 2010. Medical Apartheid The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Paw Prints.
  • Wong, Alice. 2018. Resistance and hope: essays by disabled people. https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=DF2636B7-E153-49AA-8629-04A3B93500F8.
  • "Disability". State Sanctioned. 2015-06-13.
  • "What is Disability Justice? Some Resources to Get You Started". Civil Liberties and Public Policy.
  • Project LETS Resource list for Disability Justice

References
  1. Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi (2018). Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. Vancouver, BC, Canada: Arsenal Pulp Press. ISBN 978-1-55152-738-3.
  2. Mchangama, Jacob (2015). "Against a human rights-based approach to social justice" (PDF). In Lettinga, Doutje; van Troost, Lars (eds.). Changing perspectives on human rights Can human rights bring social justice? Twelve essays. Amnesty International Netherlands. pp. 53–58. ISBN 978-90-6463-370-6.
  3. Soto, Theresa I. (July 26, 2018). "What Plastic Activists Need to Know About Disability Justice". Greenpeace. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
  4. Kim, Jina B (May 2017). "Toward a Crip-of-Color Critique: Thinking with Minich's 'Enabling Whom?'". Lateral. 6 (1). doi:10.25158/L6.1.14.
  5. Jampel, Catherine (11 January 2018). "Intersections of disability justice, racial justice and environmental justice". Environmental Sociology. 4 (1): 122–135. doi:10.1080/23251042.2018.1424497. S2CID 158584968. Retrieved 10 May 2019.
  6. Berne, Patricia; Morales, Aurora Levins; Langstaff, David; Invalid, Sins (2018-04-25). "Ten Principles of Disability Justice". WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly. 46 (1): 227–230. doi:10.1353/wsq.2018.0003. ISSN 1934-1520. S2CID 89888984.
  7. Tataryn, Myroslava (May 2017). "Skin, Tooth, and Bone – The Basis of Movement is Our People: A Disability Justice Primer". Reproductive Health Matters. 25 (50): 149–150. doi:10.1080/09688080.2017.1335999. JSTOR 26495943. PMID 28784067.
  8. Perry, David M. (August 14, 2018). "'Disability Rights Are Civil Rights': Inside the CAP's New Disability Justice Initiative". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
  9. "The Disability Justice Initiative Moves Beyond the ADA to Raise the Bar for Progressive Movements". Autostraddle. August 2, 2018. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
  10. Crawford, Chloe (May 9, 2019). "A Performance Festival by and for Disabled Artists A glimpse into the impressive breadth and variety of performances and lived experiences of disability". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
  11. Kim, Sarah (April 26, 2019). "One Of The Kind Performing Arts Festival, By And For The Disability Community". Forbes. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
  12. Bell, Chris (2017). "Is disability studies actually white disability studies?". In Davis, Lennard J. (ed.). The Disability Studies Reader (Fifth ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 406–410. ISBN 9781317397861. OCLC 963580550.
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