Antiracism & Social Justice Resources

Featuring Elliott Fukui and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. In response to heightened levels of abuse and violence experienced by disabled people, disability justice organizers have developed tremendous knowledge and creative approaches to care, safety, and preventing and stopping violence without relying on the state. How do disability justice strategies and knowledge inform transformative justice practices? In this video, disability justice and transformative justice organizers Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarsinha and Elliott Fukui explore some of the intersections of these movements. Leah and Elliott will expand this conversation during an online event on April 10, 2020. Learn more and join the conversation here: http://bcrw.barnard.edu/event/moving-at-the-speed-of-trust-disability-and-transformative-justice/ This video is part of the Building Accountable Communities video series. The Building Accountable Communities Project promotes non-punitive responses to harm by developing resources for transformative justice practitioners and organizing convenings and workshops that educate the public. Created by Project Nia and the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Video produced by Mariame Kaba, Dean Spade, and Hope Dector.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Elliott Fukui Live transcript (PDF): http://bcrw.barnard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Moving-at-the-Speed-of-Trust-live-transcript.pdf We are working on a word-for-word transcript that will be posted here when it becomes available. Slide deck (PDF) by Elliott and Leah featuring important definitions, notes, and frameworks for today’s conversation: http://bcrw.barnard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Moving-at-the-Speed-of-Trust.pdf During the event, you can send questions for the Q&A by emailing bcrw@barnard.edu or via Twitter @bcrwtweets #TransformingHarm On the screen: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Elliott Fukui (speakers) Darryn Hollifield and Natalie Cuddy (ASL) Hope Dector (introduction) RELATED LINKS Other events from the Building Accountable Communities Project: - Transforming Harm: Experiments in Accountability – featuring Stas Schmiedt and Lea Roth, moderated by Mariame Kaba: https://bcrw.barnard.edu/event/transforming-harm-experiments-in-accountability/ - Building Accountable Communities – featuring Kiyomi Fujikawa and Shannon Perez-Darby, moderated by Mariame Kaba: http://bcrw.barnard.edu/event/building-accountable-communities/ Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement, edited by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ejeris Dixon: https://www.akpress.org/beyond-survival.html Elliott Fukui – madqueer.org Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha – BrownStarGirl.org Sins Invalid - Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People: https://www.flipcause.com/secure/reward_step2/OTMxNQ==/20602 Event Description: “Disabled folks have never been able to rely on the systems that are in place or those systems have been incredibly harmful to us.” – Elliott Fukui In response to heightened levels of abuse and violence experienced by people with disabilities, disability justice organizers have developed tremendous knowledge and creative approaches to care, safety, and preventing and stopping violence without relying on the state. How do disability justice strategies and knowledge inform transformative justice practices? How are disability justice and transformative justice interconnected? “What would our transformative justice work look like if we put everyone’s access needs at the center?” – Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, in “Cripping TJ,” an essay in the groundbreaking new collection Beyond Survival co-edited with Ejeris Dixon How is anti-ableism essential to transformative justice? How do we start with the shared values of self-determination and the belief that no one is disposable to build capacity for personal and societal transformation?

Special Thanks: Pamela Rae Schuller @PamelaComedy Eman Rimawi @Eman_Rimawi Credits: https://www.buzzfeed.com/bfmp/videos/57021 Check out more awesome videos at BuzzFeedVideo! https://bit.ly/YTbuzzfeedvideo https://bit.ly/YTbuzzfeedblue1 https://bit.ly/YTbuzzfeedviolet GET MORE BUZZFEED: https://www.buzzfeed.com https://www.buzzfeed.com/videos https://www.youtube.com/buzzfeedvideo https://www.youtube.com/asis https://www.youtube.com/buzzfeedblue https://www.youtube.com/buzzfeedviolet https://www.youtube.com/perolike https://www.youtube.com/ladylike BuzzFeedVideo BuzzFeed Motion Picture’s flagship channel. Sometimes funny, sometimes serious, always shareable. New videos posted daily! Love BuzzFeed? Get the merch! BUY NOW: https://goo.gl/gQKF8m MUSIC First Day Of Summer_NoVox Licensed via Warner Chappell Production Music Inc. Walking On The Sun_Full Licensed via Warner Chappell Production Music Inc. Bliss Beach_Full Licensed via Warner Chappell Production Music Inc. VIDEO Abstract blue bokeh and blurred colorful nature background bouybin/Getty Images EXTERNAL CREDITS Pamela Rae Schuller @PamelaComedy + Eman Rimawi @Eman_Rimawi

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Safety: every law enforcement officer and every politician tells us that they're for it. And yet for many, police are a problem in their communities, and today's policies are only making things worse. If what we're doing isn't the answer. What is? We explore this issue, and what we all need to learn from the disability justice movement, with this week's guest. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer disabled writer, performer, poet, healer and teacher, inspired by poets and authors June Jordan, Suheir Hammad and Audre Lorde. She is the author of several books of poetry, including Consensual Genocide and the Lambda-award winning Love Cake. She has a new book of poetry called Bodymap, and a memoir, Dirty River. out this year. She also co-founded the performance group Mangos With Chili and is an editor of The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities, a book that grapples with the difficult idea of addressing violence without police. All this, and Laura discusses the roads less traveled.

"Violence in the lives of women with disabilities is not a new problem, but it is a problem about which little has been written. This gap in our knowledge needs to be addressed, as women with disabilities are valuable members of our society whose experiences need to be made known. Without such knowledge, political action for social justice and for the prevention of violence is impossible. Contributors to Not a New Problem examine the experiences of Canadian women with disabilities, the need for improved access to services and the ways this violence is exacerbated by and intersects with gender, sexuality, indigeneity, race, ethnicity and class"--

First published in 1999, the groundbreaking Exile and Pride is essential to the history and future of disability politics. Eli Clare's revelatory writing about his experiences as a white disabled genderqueer activist/writer established him as one of the leading writers on the intersections of queerness and disability and permanently changed the landscape of disability politics and queer liberation. With a poet's devotion to truth and an activist's demand for justice, Clare deftly unspools the multiple histories from which our ever-evolving sense of self unfolds. His essays weave together memoir, history, and political thinking to explore meanings and experiences of home: home as place, community, bodies, identity, and activism. Here readers will find an intersectional framework for understanding how we actually live with the daily hydraulics of oppression, power, and resistance. At the root of Clare's exploration of environmental destruction and capitalism, sexuality and institutional violence, gender and the body politic, is a call for social justice movements that are truly accessible to everyone. With heart and hammer, Exile and Pride pries open a window onto a world where our whole selves, in all their complexity, can be realized, loved, and embraced.

"An intimate and rousing memoir by progressive trailblazer Ilhan Omar-the first African refugee, the first Somali-American, and one of the first Muslim women, elected to Congress. Ilhan Omar was only eight years old when war broke out in Somalia. The youngest of seven children, her mother had died while Ilhan was still a little girl. She was being raised by her father and grandfather when armed gunmen attacked their compound and the family decided to flee Mogadishu. They ended up in a refugee camp in Kenya, where Ilhan says she came to understand the deep meaning of hunger and death. Four years later, after a painstaking vetting process, her family achieved refugee status and arrived in Arlington, Virginia. Aged twelve, penniless, speaking only Somali and having missed out on years of schooling, Ilhan rolled up her sleeves, determined to find her American dream. Faced with the many challenges of being an immigrant and a refugee, she questioned stereotypes and built bridges with her classmates and in her community. In under two decades she became a grassroots organizer, graduated from college and was elected to congress with a record-breaking turnout by the people of Minnesota-ready to keep pushing boundaries and restore moral clarity in Washington D.C.A beacon of positivity in dark times, Congresswoman Omar has weathered many political storms and yet maintained her signature grace, wit and love of country-all the while speaking up for her beliefs. Similarly, in chronicling her remarkable personal journey, Ilhan is both lyrical and unsentimental, and her irrepressible spirit, patriotism, friendship and faith are visible on every page. As a result, This is What America Looks Like is both the inspiring coming of age story of a refugee and a multidimensional tale of the hopes and aspirations, disappointments and failures, successes, sacrifices and surprises, of a devoted public servant with unshakable faith in the promise of America"--;Omar is the first African refugee, the first Somali-American, and one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress. Only eight years old when war broke out in Somalia, her family fled after armed gunmen attacked their compound and ended up in a refugee camp in Kenya. After a painstaking vetting process, her family achieved refugee status and arrived in Arlington, Virginia. At twelve Ilhan was determined to find her American dream. She became a grassroots organizer, graduated from college and was elected to Congress with a record-breaking turnout by the people of Minnesota. In chronicling her personal journey, Omar's irrepressible spirit, patriotism, friendship and faith are visible on every page. -- adapted from jacket

"This book analyzes how the particular dynamics and effects emerging from the COVID-19 crisis both impact and are perceived by its most vulnerable yet visionary populations, based on their pragmatic and prescient analysis of the American experiment of freedom with regards to race and religion. Without a doubt, this book addresses the various ways the COVID-19 crisis marks not merely a moment in time, but also a world-historical event that threatens to leave its imprint on lives and cultures for decades to come"--

"Provides a collection of both personal narratives and critical analyses of mental illness in the LIS field, exploring intersections with labor, culture, stigma, race, ability, identity, and gender"--

"This book starts the conversation about what attorneys can do to improve both health and justice outcomes for people of diverse backgrounds who have mental illness. Focusing on the role of litigators working in the criminal justice system-particularly prosecutors and defense attorneys-this book offers an overview of foundational concepts, lawyering skills, and legal theories that attorneys can use in day-to-day practice as they work toward achieving fair and equitable access to justice for all"--

Forbidden Signs explores American culture from the mid-nineteenth century to 1920 through the lens of one striking episode: the campaign led by Alexander Graham Bell and other prominent Americans to suppress the use of sign language among deaf people. The ensuing debate over sign language invoked such fundamental questions as what distinguished Americans from non-Americans, civilized people from "savages," humans from animals, men from women, the natural from the unnatural, and the normal from the abnormal. An advocate of the return to sign language, Baynton found that although the grounds of the debate have shifted, educators still base decisions on many of the same metaphors and images that led to the misguided efforts to eradicate sign language.

"A groundbreaking collection of first-person writing on the joys and challenges of the modern disability experience: Disability Visibility brings together the voices of activists, authors, lawyers, politicians, artists, and everyday people whose daily lives are, in the words of playwright Neil Marcus, "an art ... an ingenious way to live." According to the last census, one in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some are visible, some are hidden--but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Now, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together an urgent, galvanizing collection of personal essays by contemporary disabled writers. There is Harriet McBryde Johnson's "Unspeakable Conversations," which describes her famous debate with Princeton philosopher Peter Singer over her own personhood. There is columnist s. e. smith's celebratory review of a work of theater by disabled performers. There are original pieces by up-and-coming authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma. There are blog posts, manifestos, eulogies, and testimonies to Congress. Taken together, this anthology gives a glimpse of the vast richness and complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own assumptions and understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and past with hope and love."--

"Politics of (En)closure: Deinstitutionalization, Disability, and Prison Abolition argues that a complex understanding of disability is fundamental to an understanding of decarceration. Many argue that the rise of deinstitutionalization led directly to the rise of imprisonment. Liat Ben-Moshe complicates this narrative by looking closely at how people of color and disabled people are pathologized as well as how profit plays a roll in caring for "disposable" populations in nursing homes, rehab facilities, prisons, etc. Ben-Moshe puts forth a theory of carceral abolition as a way to understand the failed utopian dream of deinstitutionalization and how to move forward"--

Broadly attentive to the political and economic shifts of the last several decades, Robert McRuer asks how disability activists, artists and social movements generate change and resist the dominant forms of globalization in an age of austerity, or "crip times." Throughout "Crip Times", McRuer considers how transnational queer disability theory and culture-activism, blogs, art, photography, literature, and performance-provide important and generative sites for both contesting austerity politics and imagining alternatives. The book engages various cultural flashpoints, including the spectacle surrounding the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games; the murder trial of South African Paralympian Oscar Pistorius; the photography of Brazilian artist Livia Radwanski which documents the gentrification of Colonia Roma in Mexico City; the defiance of Chilean students demanding a free and accessible education for all; the sculpture and performance of UK artist Liz Crow; and the problematic rhetoric of "aspiration" dependent upon both able-bodied and disabled figurations that emerged in Thatcher's England. "Crip Times" asserts that disabled people themselves are demanding that disability be central to our understanding of political economy and uneven development and suggests that, in some locations, their demand for disability justice is starting to register. Ultimately, McRuer argues that a politics of austerity will always generate the compulsion to fortify borders and to separate a narrowly defined "us" in need of protection from "them."

Academic Ableism brings together disability studies and institutional critique to recognize the ways that disability is composed in and by higher education, and rewrites the spaces, times, and economies of disability in higher education to place disability front and center. For too long, argues Jay Timothy Dolmage, disability has been constructed as the antithesis of higher education, often positioned as a distraction, a drain, a problem to be solved. The ethic of higher education encourages students and teachers alike to accentuate ability, valorize perfection, and stigmatize anything that hints at intellectual, mental, or physical weakness, even as we gesture toward the value of diversity and innovation. Examining everything from campus accommodation processes, to architecture, to popular films about college life, Dolmage argues that disability is central to higher education, and that building more inclusive schools allows better education for all.

ableism, type of discrimination in which able-bodied individuals are viewed as normal and superior to those with a disability, resulting in prejudice toward the latter. The modern concept of ableism emerged in the 1960s and ’70s, when disability activists placed disability in a political context. Discrimination against disabled persons occurs in countries worldwide and may be reflected in individual, societal, and institutional attitudes and norms and in the arrangement or dynamics of certain environments. Indeed, interpretations of ableism are based on perspectives of what constitutes normal ability, which often gives shape to beliefs and norms and to physical and social

Recent coverage in higher education newspapers and social media platforms implies that chronic conditions, illnesses and disabilities are becoming more prominent amongst academics. Changes to fundi...

The Americans with Disabilities Act created regulations for the accessibility of buildings and services for individuals with disabilities, but libraries still have a deficit in information highligh...

Rachel Blick, MA , Matthew Franklin, BA, David Ellsworth, MPH, Susan Havercamp, PhD, Barbara Kornblau, JD, OTR/L, FAOTA, The Ohio State University Nisonger Center, UCEDD, Florida A&M University

a Media Study (2013-2015) and Overview David M. Perry, PhD Lawrence Carter-Long March 2016

Ableism (/ˈeɪbəlɪzəm/; also known as ablism, disablism (British English), anapirophobia, anapirism, and disability discrimination) is discrimination and social prejudice against people with disabilities or who are perceived to be disabled. Ableism characterizes people as defined by their disabilities and inferior to the non-disabled.[1] On this basis, people are assigned or denied certain perceived abilities, skills, or character orientations.

The Icarus Project (2002-2020) was a network of peer-support groups and media projects with the stated aim of changing the social stigmas regarding mental health.[1]

In 2011–12, about 3 in 10 state and federal prisoners and 4 in 10 local jail inmates reported having at least one disability.

A powerful five-point guide to undoing and unlearning ableism in our organizations, the social justice space, and the nonprofit and philanthropy sectors.

“I want to create a world that is reflective of all of us,” the disability activist said.

COVID-19 continues to spread, and the colleges and universities that are opting for remote learning are doing a terrible job of implementing it.

A year after many campuses transitioned to remote instruction, blind students continue to encounter barriers that undermine their learning.

Nearly every element of our workday is designed for neurotypical employees, leaving out millions of talented people. It’s time to rethink how we work.