Open Society

Of course, guidelines for how and where one can protest often serve to restrict protests that would disrupt “business as usual.” This willfully disregards the purpose of protest – to garner attention, to disrupt, to make it difficult or impossible to ignore ongoing struggles and demands. As many have articulated, a protest with permission is a parade. Disorder is the point.

“There’s a whole critical disability studies dissertation to be written on ‘disorder’ as pejorative for disrupting the political status quo.”

Throughout history, dissent and disruption has been attributed to disability in a derogatory manner ; there are countless instances of pathologization across politically disenfranchised communities rising up for justice. Black Americans have been pathologized for escaping or attempting to escape enslavement, for resisting Jim Crow discrimination, for protesting police brutality, and so on (read more in Dr. Sami Schalk’s Black Disability Politics). Queer and trans identities are pathologized, and gender-affirming care is still distributed or withheld by gatekeepers within the medical-industrial complex. Even the history of hysteria as a diagnosis inflicted upon women who rejected patriarchal standards points to disability and illness as an explanation for unexpected, unacceptable, and dissenting behavior and an excuse to cast aside the people who behave as such. Deeply rooted ableism makes all pathologized subjects disposable and as Talila “TL” Lewis explains, “You do not have to be disabled to experience ableism.” It becomes clear, then, that our liberation is bound up in one another’s. If ableism is and can be weaponized against one community, we are all in danger of being labeled “disordered” and facing disposal.

To be politically disabled is to simultaneously uphold and subvert ableist ideas about dissent. Yet, as my dear friend Cavar explains, to embrace our crip/Mad existence is always and already political.

The world demands participation in heinous systems – late capitalism, white supremacy, oppression, violence – and insists that we dispose of the people who refuse or are unable to comply.

Mainstream disability organizations play along with bland requests for “niceness” towards disabled people, rather than advocating for systemic change or challenging the violence enacted upon pathologized subjects

Subverting, resisting, or failing to adhere to these demands is only a transgression in so much as we are socialized to comply. Our failure to comply is an affirmation of our fragile and precious humanity, just as the noncompliance of our bodyminds is a reminder of the beautiful messiness of life. Our disabled lives are perceived as disorder, perceived as dissent, by those in power. I don’t see any reason, then, to continue participating in the status quo. The order is oppressive; let’s dis it.

Beyond the lack of working elevators, subway cars and stations, buses and bus stops, wayfinding, and information design often lack accommodations that would help people with vision, hearing, and cognitive disabilities travel independently on mass transit. As a result, disabled people are more auto-dependent. Drafters of congestion pricing legislation recognized this reality and included an exemption for disabled people. The MTA’s initial disability exemption plan did not address the needs of two groups (disabled, auto-dependent, and can drive, and disabled, auto-dependent, and can’t drive), but they were exploring technology to give more people in the second group an exemption while traveling in multiple vehicles.

the sun rises and sets over an America in which a different form of political violence – police violence – is normalized in every sense of the word.

Fatal gun violence is usually linked to intimate partner violence and white supremacy, not mental illness.

The public perception of a strong link between mental illness and violence is fueled in part by news coverage of mass shootings and other violent events. Two studies have directly linked news media coverage of high-profile acts of violence by persons with serious mental illness to negative public attitudes toward this group.

When suicide is examined as a part of the picture of gun violence, mental illness legitimately becomes a strong vector of concern; it should become an important component of effective policy to prevent firearm violence.

Evidence is clear that the large majority of people with mental disorders do not engage in violence against others, and that most violent behavior is due to factors other than mental illness.

Jeff Swanson at Duke published a study that estimated somewhere around 4% of violence was attributable to mental illness, which meant if you could get rid of all the violence that was caused by or related to mental illness, we’d still be left with 96% of the violence in this country. There are lots of reasons to want to provide good mental healthcare, but violence reduction is, in my view, pretty low on the list.