Some Brief Updates
I have been doing a lot of work supporting a Black disabled survivor in a call out of a well-known disability writer. You can see that call out below. It begins with an offering titled: “Protecting Vulnerable People: Navigating Exploitation and Power Dynamics in Informal Caregiving.”
If you do not have access to IG, the summary is that this well known writer disposed of and did not pay their dark-skinned Black fat disabled non-binary caregiver for over a year then after disposing of them, *then* proceeded to release a book mentioning this person several times, changing their name.
Survivor support is incredibly unpopular, and as fascism continues to escalate, I believe we will see abuse apologia normalized more than ever. It is our collective responsibility as disabled people, specifically those of us who long for Black mad liberation, to support those furthest marginalized. Capacity is at an all time low. I want to be visible around how I show up for community, so that this can be replicated and built upon.
Secondly, I plan on sharing some of my work on IG. The full versions will live on Substack. I will provide summaries for free subscribers and paid subscribers will be able to access full versions. I am doing this because a lot of my work has been stolen and co-opted. Unfortunately, I am still running into this problem with white autistic “advocates” like Dawn Prince Hughes using neuroexpansive without applying any political framework to it. If you see non-Black people using this term, please correct them. It is very disrespectful and continues to subvert the offerings and interventions that I want to make around anti-Blackness within disability spaces. Black mad liberation will not happen if non-Black people refuse to acknowledge Black disabled autonomy. I will continue to say this, as I encounter it frequently.
Outside of all of the ways my labor is exploited and undervalued, I am literally on the front line of a hostile environment that ushered in the Mask Transparency Act, as a Black disabled person navigating medical care in Nassau County. I have barely begun to process all of the ways that white disabled people have turned this into a spectacle, especially those who don’t even live here. I am growing increasingly frustrated with this, and will write more nuanced thoughts in a future post as well. Who knows when I will actually get around to doing that, as I also continue to navigate harm being caused by white disabled people who have “good intentions” and refuse to acknowledge that their lack of disability politic in pandemic justice related organizing work causes further harm. This is honestly is the standard experience related to organizing over the past couple of years, and we are in a great deal of trouble if this dynamic does not shift.
Lastly, I am not an academic. I have ideas and theories and want to make connections. You will not be getting dissertations out of me, unless they come in the form of facilitating *paid* workshops. If you have connections to organizations, leverage your relationships! Some of what I say or think has been stated before and that is perfectly okay. My purpose here is to utilize frameworks of Black autonomy and disability justice to offer a different perspective around the ways that we have been conditioned, with the hope of moving closer towards Black Mad Liberation.
Towards the end of this year, I’ll be posting some older material from a 2022 presentation this. Yes, I sat on this for TWO YEARS because people steal my shit. I’ve facilitated this several times now, so I feel very secure about this being out in the world publicly. Stay tuned!