#disabilityjustice — Public Fediverse posts

I stand in my kitchen wanting to use an appliance I have already paid for. Its smooth touchscreen gives me no tactile information. I use a camera app to find the controls, place markers where I think buttons may appear, and hope the layout has not changed. One accidental tap can take me somewhere I cannot identify or exit without sighted help. A task that should take moments becomes a process requiring concentration, technology, and luck.

Many disabled people know this experience. We become skilled at adapting. We label buttons, memorise layouts, ask friends or family to help with setup, search for accessible workarounds, and learn to make do with only part of what a product offers. Those strategies can be useful, and they can protect our independence in the moment.

Yet the effort is rarely recognised as work. It takes time, money, energy, confidence, and sometimes privacy. Products then appear “accessible” because a disabled person has managed to force a way through, even where the design itself has excluded us from using the product fully and reliably.

The barriers differ across disability experiences. A device that communicates only through sound can leave Deaf and hard of hearing users without vital information. Controls requiring fine precision, force, or repeated physical effort can be inaccessible for people living with pain, fatigue, mobility limitations, or reduced dexterity. Busy, inflexible interfaces can overwhelm or exclude people with cognitive disabilities and neurodivergent people. Voice assistants cannot serve everyone, especially people whose speech is not reliably recognised.

Manufacturers have choices. A touchscreen appliance can include tactile controls and meaningful feedback. Digital instructions can be made accessible. Settings can be simplified and personalised. Disabled people can be included while products are being researched, designed, tested, and supported. These approaches recognise that disabled people are customers, experts in our own access needs, and members of every household.

Sharing adaptations with each other remains important because people need solutions today. We also need to expect more from society, from businesses, and from the institutions responsible for consumer access. When access barriers are treated as individual problems for disabled people to solve, exclusion becomes routine. Naming the barrier, reporting it, supporting disability led advocacy, and insisting on inclusive design can help shift that expectation.

#AccessibleDesign #DisabilityJustice #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs

I stand in my kitchen wanting to use an appliance I have already paid for. Its smooth touchscreen gives me no tactile information. I use a camera app to find the controls, place markers where I think buttons may appear, and hope the layout has not changed. One accidental tap can take me somewhere I cannot identify or exit without sighted help. A task that should take moments becomes a process requiring concentration, technology, and luck.

Many disabled people know this experience. We become skilled at adapting. We label buttons, memorise layouts, ask friends or family to help with setup, search for accessible workarounds, and learn to make do with only part of what a product offers. Those strategies can be useful, and they can protect our independence in the moment.

Yet the effort is rarely recognised as work. It takes time, money, energy, confidence, and sometimes privacy. Products then appear “accessible” because a disabled person has managed to force a way through, even where the design itself has excluded us from using the product fully and reliably.

The barriers differ across disability experiences. A device that communicates only through sound can leave Deaf and hard of hearing users without vital information. Controls requiring fine precision, force, or repeated physical effort can be inaccessible for people living with pain, fatigue, mobility limitations, or reduced dexterity. Busy, inflexible interfaces can overwhelm or exclude people with cognitive disabilities and neurodivergent people. Voice assistants cannot serve everyone, especially people whose speech is not reliably recognised.

Manufacturers have choices. A touchscreen appliance can include tactile controls and meaningful feedback. Digital instructions can be made accessible. Settings can be simplified and personalised. Disabled people can be included while products are being researched, designed, tested, and supported. These approaches recognise that disabled people are customers, experts in our own access needs, and members of every household.

Sharing adaptations with each other remains important because people need solutions today. We also need to expect more from society, from businesses, and from the institutions responsible for consumer access. When access barriers are treated as individual problems for disabled people to solve, exclusion becomes routine. Naming the barrier, reporting it, supporting disability led advocacy, and insisting on inclusive design can help shift that expectation.

#AccessibleDesign #DisabilityJustice #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs

I stand in my kitchen wanting to use an appliance I have already paid for. Its smooth touchscreen gives me no tactile information. I use a camera app to find the controls, place markers where I think buttons may appear, and hope the layout has not changed. One accidental tap can take me somewhere I cannot identify or exit without sighted help. A task that should take moments becomes a process requiring concentration, technology, and luck.

Many disabled people know this experience. We become skilled at adapting. We label buttons, memorise layouts, ask friends or family to help with setup, search for accessible workarounds, and learn to make do with only part of what a product offers. Those strategies can be useful, and they can protect our independence in the moment.

Yet the effort is rarely recognised as work. It takes time, money, energy, confidence, and sometimes privacy. Products then appear “accessible” because a disabled person has managed to force a way through, even where the design itself has excluded us from using the product fully and reliably.

The barriers differ across disability experiences. A device that communicates only through sound can leave Deaf and hard of hearing users without vital information. Controls requiring fine precision, force, or repeated physical effort can be inaccessible for people living with pain, fatigue, mobility limitations, or reduced dexterity. Busy, inflexible interfaces can overwhelm or exclude people with cognitive disabilities and neurodivergent people. Voice assistants cannot serve everyone, especially people whose speech is not reliably recognised.

Manufacturers have choices. A touchscreen appliance can include tactile controls and meaningful feedback. Digital instructions can be made accessible. Settings can be simplified and personalised. Disabled people can be included while products are being researched, designed, tested, and supported. These approaches recognise that disabled people are customers, experts in our own access needs, and members of every household.

Sharing adaptations with each other remains important because people need solutions today. We also need to expect more from society, from businesses, and from the institutions responsible for consumer access. When access barriers are treated as individual problems for disabled people to solve, exclusion becomes routine. Naming the barrier, reporting it, supporting disability led advocacy, and insisting on inclusive design can help shift that expectation.

#AccessibleDesign #DisabilityJustice #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs

I stand in my kitchen wanting to use an appliance I have already paid for. Its smooth touchscreen gives me no tactile information. I use a camera app to find the controls, place markers where I think buttons may appear, and hope the layout has not changed. One accidental tap can take me somewhere I cannot identify or exit without sighted help. A task that should take moments becomes a process requiring concentration, technology, and luck.

Many disabled people know this experience. We become skilled at adapting. We label buttons, memorise layouts, ask friends or family to help with setup, search for accessible workarounds, and learn to make do with only part of what a product offers. Those strategies can be useful, and they can protect our independence in the moment.

Yet the effort is rarely recognised as work. It takes time, money, energy, confidence, and sometimes privacy. Products then appear “accessible” because a disabled person has managed to force a way through, even where the design itself has excluded us from using the product fully and reliably.

The barriers differ across disability experiences. A device that communicates only through sound can leave Deaf and hard of hearing users without vital information. Controls requiring fine precision, force, or repeated physical effort can be inaccessible for people living with pain, fatigue, mobility limitations, or reduced dexterity. Busy, inflexible interfaces can overwhelm or exclude people with cognitive disabilities and neurodivergent people. Voice assistants cannot serve everyone, especially people whose speech is not reliably recognised.

Manufacturers have choices. A touchscreen appliance can include tactile controls and meaningful feedback. Digital instructions can be made accessible. Settings can be simplified and personalised. Disabled people can be included while products are being researched, designed, tested, and supported. These approaches recognise that disabled people are customers, experts in our own access needs, and members of every household.

Sharing adaptations with each other remains important because people need solutions today. We also need to expect more from society, from businesses, and from the institutions responsible for consumer access. When access barriers are treated as individual problems for disabled people to solve, exclusion becomes routine. Naming the barrier, reporting it, supporting disability led advocacy, and insisting on inclusive design can help shift that expectation.

#AccessibleDesign #DisabilityJustice #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs

I stand in my kitchen wanting to use an appliance I have already paid for. Its smooth touchscreen gives me no tactile information. I use a camera app to find the controls, place markers where I think buttons may appear, and hope the layout has not changed. One accidental tap can take me somewhere I cannot identify or exit without sighted help. A task that should take moments becomes a process requiring concentration, technology, and luck.

Many disabled people know this experience. We become skilled at adapting. We label buttons, memorise layouts, ask friends or family to help with setup, search for accessible workarounds, and learn to make do with only part of what a product offers. Those strategies can be useful, and they can protect our independence in the moment.

Yet the effort is rarely recognised as work. It takes time, money, energy, confidence, and sometimes privacy. Products then appear “accessible” because a disabled person has managed to force a way through, even where the design itself has excluded us from using the product fully and reliably.

The barriers differ across disability experiences. A device that communicates only through sound can leave Deaf and hard of hearing users without vital information. Controls requiring fine precision, force, or repeated physical effort can be inaccessible for people living with pain, fatigue, mobility limitations, or reduced dexterity. Busy, inflexible interfaces can overwhelm or exclude people with cognitive disabilities and neurodivergent people. Voice assistants cannot serve everyone, especially people whose speech is not reliably recognised.

Manufacturers have choices. A touchscreen appliance can include tactile controls and meaningful feedback. Digital instructions can be made accessible. Settings can be simplified and personalised. Disabled people can be included while products are being researched, designed, tested, and supported. These approaches recognise that disabled people are customers, experts in our own access needs, and members of every household.

Sharing adaptations with each other remains important because people need solutions today. We also need to expect more from society, from businesses, and from the institutions responsible for consumer access. When access barriers are treated as individual problems for disabled people to solve, exclusion becomes routine. Naming the barrier, reporting it, supporting disability led advocacy, and insisting on inclusive design can help shift that expectation.

#AccessibleDesign #DisabilityJustice #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs

🏗️ When coercion in care makes Kilmeade’s “just kill ’em” thinkable

  Shannon Pagdon  Content warnings: coercion, forced treatment, incarceration, institutionalization, eugenics, death,

https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2025/09/26/when-coercion-in-care-makes-kilmeades-just-kill-em-thinkable/

#PrisonAbolition #DisabilityJustice #Disability

#Money, the interesting thing about it is if you #exist in #poverty, you desperately need it for your day to day survival, then if your on the opposite end as in being a multi million or billionaire in reality money means nothing, because everything you own and do is leveraged off of debt that you one don't actually own and second can never actually satisfy, and the rules of the game are very different for those in poverty, and the rules are slightly different if your in the middle, but if your on top, the rules don't apply to you unless somehow your generation and hoarding of wealth imposes upon another top income holder, basically if your in poverty all the way to the bottom end of double digit millions, your beholden to the entire state if it where, and beyond that the entire state apparently is beholden to you and your ability to leverage debt, it is a rigged system of epic inequality and strongly embraces prejudice against the rest of us whom simply would appreciate the basics in life to be readily available without so much turmoil, and stress to our mental and physical wellbeing, money is an illusion of power and has left far to many of us going hungry, literally;

You can encourage my continued useless #poetry, creativity and expression of self, #commentary, random thoughts, #philosophy and ideas, and by doing so your helping to feed, house and clothe a #disabled man living in #poverty, $5-10-15 It All Helps, via #cashapp at $woctxphotog or via #paypal at paypal.com/donate?campaign_id=…

#Austerity #Awareness #BrokenSystem #Capitalism #Change #ChronicPoverty #CorporateGreed #CriticalThinking #DailyStruggle #DebtSlavery #DisabledVoices #DisabilityJustice #EconomicInequality #EconomicJustice #EconomicViolence #Economics #Education #ExistentialThought #Financial #FinancialTrauma #FinanciallyDistressed #FoodInsecurity #Hunger #Homelessness #HumanCost #IllusionOfWealth #Inequality #Justice #LateStageCapitalism #MarginalizedVoices #MentalHealthMatters #MutualAid #Neoliberalism #Oligarchy #PhilosophyOfMoney #Plutocracy #Politics #PovertyAwareness #PowerAndControl #PowerDynamics #RealTalk #Reform #RiggedSystem #SocialCommentary #SocialEconomicWarfare #SocialJustice #Society #Solidarity #SpeakTruth #StatusQuo #SupportDisabled #Survival #SystemicOppression #SystemicPoverty #TaxTheRich #TruthBomb #TruthToPower #WakeUpCall #WealthGap #WealthInequality #WorkingClass #WorkingPoor

Kommunalpolitik bedeutet für mich: Ressourcen dorthin bringen, wo echte Solidarität gelebt wird.

Deshalb gebe ich meine Aufwandsentschädigung aus dem Bezirksausschuss monatlich an Initiativen weiter, deren unermüdlichen Einsatz ich von Herzen schätze.🔽

#DieLinke #Solidaritāt #Umverteilung #Kommunalpolitik #Queer #Community #CommunitySupport #DisabilityJustice #Behinderung #Disability #Inklusion #Feminismus #Antikapitalismus #Antirepression #Armut #München

I drew this after my recent art workshop in partnership with ME Action! I felt so much connection and awe (also, exhaustion and brain fried ofc).

Thank you everyone who participated in the workshop or helped make it happen in any way. It was truly magic.

P.S. I have art in an art exhibition about art for therapy & health, and I think the exhibit is really incredibly curated. I can’t believe 21 views of long covid received an honorable mention amongst so many phenomenal artists’ & powerful pieces!

You can check out the virtual gallery here:

Divulge: A National Exhibition Featuring the Use of Art for Therapy & Mental Health Awareness

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The biggest takeaway: the public still cannot reliably measure what happens in most ONWSIB reconsiderations.

This is an evidence transparency issue, not a basis for broad outcome claims.

Read the update 👇 https://www.3mpwrapp.ca/community-updates/research/workers-compensation/2026/04/26/onwsib-outcome-gap-audit-update/

#WorkersComp #WSIB #DisabilityJustice #OpenData #CivicTech #Accessibility #DataTransparency #Ontario

@PhoenixRizin09

Wes has severe eczema — skin cracking, bleeding, oozing from head to toe. The one medication that works is Dupixent, a biologic costing $2,013/month in Mexico. Insurance won't cover it. He can barely get up to use the restroom. Please boost and donate if you're able.
https://twp.ai/E5BgYn
#MutualAid #MutualAidRequest #ChronicIllness #DisabilityJustice #EczemaAwareness #SkinCondition

Live session: https://twp.ai/4hrCAf

Die fallende Brandmauer. 🧱🔥

Die nackten Zahlen der Jahre 2021 bis 2026 zeigen ein erschreckendes Bild: Über 930 Mal haben CDU und CSU auf kommunaler Ebene bereits inhaltlich mit rechtsextremen Kräften zusammengearbeitet.⬇️

#NoAfD #Intersektionalität #Feminismus #EVP #Brandmauer #WeberLeaks #DisabilityJustice #Antifaschismus #Antifa #Solidarität #Politik #Demokratie #Menschenrechte #Asyl

Symptom: Social Security Disability Rejection

61% of Social Security applicants are denied after their first application. I am now on the second appeal, when 49% of remaining applicants are approved, and have hired a lawyer (disability lawyers are only paid if they win your case).

I set a new goal on ko-fi, in order to get more illmarks pieces into the world. The fundraising would cover framing two Med Art Advocacy pieces, and submission fees + professional scanning for the Mütter Medical Museum, a Senior Living Center, a Health Care Center & 3 other shows.

If you are able to comfortably, please buy me a ko-fi. We’re 1/3 of the way to the goal!

https://www.illmarks.com/symptom-social-security-disability-rejection/

#artmuseum #BetterFutures #bodyHorror #chronicIllness #chronicIllness #chronicPain #crowdfund #disability #disabilityart #disabilityJustice #FederalGovernment #kofi #longcovid #medicalArt #MillionsMissing #pwLC #pwme #redesignSystems #socialSecurity #SocialSecurityReform #SSI #systemsFailing #TransformativeFutures #UniversalBasicIncome #US #usa #ushealthcare

This account, this corner of the fediverse, has become one of the places I let those questions be noisy in public. What does healing mean when the conditions that harmed you are not gone, only rearranged into more respectable shapes? What actually happens inside a counselling relationship when disability or neurodivergence is present but unnamed, or misnamed, or politely ignored? How do we begin to notice the ways power and unspoken norms travel through even the most well-intentioned helping professions? How do we hold culture as something we are constantly creating and being created by, something we may need to grieve and interrogate and occasionally celebrate, often all at once, sometimes in the space of a single conversation?

I keep circling back to the interior labour of this work. The slow, repetitive practice of building emotional regulation when your nervous system's default setting is red alert. The awkwardness of learning self-compassion when sharp self-criticism has been your most reliable survival tool. The moments that feel like failure because you find yourself reacting in an old way, when in reality this is precisely how recovery moves, looping back on itself, revisiting old ground with slightly different eyes. The way trauma and joy can sit shoulder to shoulder in the same hour, the same therapy session, the same breath, and how unnerving and holy that can feel.

Rauch and Ansari suggest that silence can be deliberate and strategic, a form of self-regulation rather than withdrawal, a boundary rather than an absence. I think about this in relation to the freeze response, to the moments in my own history when going quiet was not giving up but holding on. The body stills because there are no safe words yet. Sometimes the silence is the story. And learning to hear it as such, to receive it without rushing to fill or fix it, is one of the things I am still practising, in music and in therapy and in the ordinary, unglamorous dailiness of trying to stay present in a life that sometimes arrives all at once.

I am not arriving anywhere with a finished theory of how any of this is supposed to work. I am coming, again and again, with fragments and questions and a stubborn intention to tell the truth as I understand it in the moment I am writing. That truth is often partial, often shifting. My understanding of myself, of trauma, of disability, of care, keeps moving, and I want it to. I would rather be inconsistent and alive to new information than seamless and rigidly wrong.

If you are still reading, you are already participating in something I care about. A space that treats complexity as ordinary rather than excessive. Where being too much is not an accusation but raw material. Where intense feeling and rigorous thought are both welcome at the same table. Where healing is not a linear journey toward a fixed destination but something more like learning to live inside unresolved chords without pretending they have resolved. Where music is both metaphor and method, both a way of speaking about change and a way of practising it in the body.

True silence does not exist. What we call silence is simply what we have not yet learned to hear. The fullness of life in quieter tones. The heartbeat of thought. The whispered rhythm of resilience. The steady murmur of healing is underway. And when we learn to tune into the music between the notes and into the truth held in breath, we do more than survive. We begin to sing again. This time, in a voice that is entirely our own.

I am not here to introduce myself so much as to keep turning up alongside you. To keep writing from the middle of things, not only from the rare polished moments that look good in hindsight. To keep noticing the small, ordinary, unglamorous ways humans find their way back to themselves, even inside systems that were never set up with them in mind. If any of these threads brush against something in your own story, then you are part of the imagined audience I write towards. And maybe, in a slow, imperfect, occasionally dissonant way, part of the choir that is still learning how to hear itself.

#AuDHD #Neurodivergent #Blind #Deafblind #Disabled #DisabilityJustice #MadStudies #Psychology #Counselling #Therapy #Trauma #TraumaRecovery #Neurodiversity #MentalHealth #ChronicStress #Healing #WindowOfTolerance #LivedExperience #CareWork #Culture #Power #Normality #Access #Inclusion #Ableism #Music #ClassicalMusic #ChoralMusic #Choir #Singing #Writing #PersonalEssay #Silence #LongPost #Fediversea (2/2)

Heute ist der Internationale Tag der Menschen mit Behinderung und ich denke an mein jüngeres Ich. An einen jungen Menschen, dem niemand zutraute, jemals sichtbar zu sein. Der ohne Vorbilder aufwuchs, in einer Welt, die behinderte Leben klein hält.⬇️

#InternationalerTagDerMenschenMitBehinderung #Behinderung #Inklusion #Inkluencer #Disability #FaceSMA #DisabilityJustice #DisabledAndProud #BarrierefreiheitJetzt #CripPride #DisabledVoices #HumanRights #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs #DisabilityPower

Wenn Menschen wie ich politisch Stellung beziehen, kommt sofort der immer gleiche alte ableistische Reflex: Wir seien "missbraucht", "vorgeschoben" oder "manipuliert". Dahinter steckt kein Zufall, es ist eine Strategie.⬇️

#DisabilityJustice #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs #Disability #IntersectionalFeminism #QueerAndDisabled #AntiAbleism #Ableism #AntiRacism #QueerResistance #DisabledAndProud #Solidarity #Solidarität #Inklusion #SolidarityIsPower #MarginalizedVoices #Behinderung #FaceSMA

Für manche bedeuten Seile Begrenzung. Für mich bedeuten sie Befreiung. Mein Körper ist kein Widerspruch zu Lust, Kontrolle oder Hingabe. Bondage gibt mir den Raum, in dem ich bestimmen darf, wie ich gehalten werde und von wem.⬇️

Foto by @fotokunst_razupaltuffsp

#DisabledAndDesirable #Consent #ConsentIsEverything #Kink #Selbstliebe #BDSMCommunity #Bondage #Intimacy #RadikaleZärtlichkeit #DisabilityJustice #Disability #ShibariArt #BDSM #Behinderung #BodyAutonomy #SensualResistance

📢 Werkstätten sind keine Inklusion. Sie sind organisierte Ausgrenzung.

👉 Über 300.000 Menschen arbeiten in Deutschland in Werkstätten. Für 1,35 €/h. Ohne Tariflohn. Ohne Arbeitnehmerrechte.⬇️

#Werkstätten #Mindestlohn #Disability #Inkluencer #Inklusion #Behinderung #AbleismKills #Ableism #DisabilityJustice #UNBRKUmsetzen #Selbstbestimmung #CripTheSystem #InklusionJetzt #EqualRights #DisabledAndProud #StopAbleism #SolidarityIsPolitical #IntersektionaleGerechtigkeit #Menschenrechte

Manchmal braucht der eigene Körper einfach nur die Chance, endlich sein zu dürfen. ✨
⬇️

#TransIsBeautiful #DisabledAndProud #DisabilityPride #Disability #Behinderung #Queer #Trans #TransPride #BodyAutonomy #QueerAndDisabled #DisabilityVisibility #TransHealthcare #HRTworks #TraumaHealing #TransJoy #DisabledJoy #BodyPositivity #TransAktivismus #IntersectionalFeminism #DisabilityJustice #StigmaKills #MentalHealthHealing #QueerActivism #LoveYourself #HealingJourney

Symptom: Coat Hanger Pain

I only learned about this term very recently, from yumpsuit on the Fediverse. Thank you so much for letting me know about it!

I am almost disproportionately thankful to have a handy description for letting people know what I’m feeling, as well as how to look for ways to try to mitigate the pain. Reading about Coat Hanger Pain resonated deeply, in a way similar to how I often feel when I get a diagnosis: a feeling of relief, connection, community, and hope.

Many people who have not been chronically ill see a diagnosis as a negative. Indeed, many disabled people are never told their diagnoses, and are never told they are disabled. This needs to change, because as Granite and Sunlight explained:

Many people are disabled for a long time before they get a diagnosis which explains what is happening to them, and there is a resistance in the medical profession to giving long-term diagnoses, especially for young people and for women with chronic conditions which lack good treatment options, because of an outdated belief that labels are limiting and they don’t want people to ‘see themselves as disabled’. The fact they are already disabled, already struggling, is why disability justice advocates are trying to help medical professionals change their approach to this. Most people just want answers and context for what is happening to them – not having a name for it doesn’t mean it isn’t affecting their lives. Diagnosis gives people access to context, support and community who can help a person manage the condition better, but these are not built into the medical response to disability. Despite these delays, the person is still disabled all that time, and still needs access to the support and adaptations which can help them live good lives managing their conditions.

For more information about this, I recommend Brianne of No End In Sight’s TEDx Talk, Disease Begins Before Diagnosis.

https://www.illmarks.com/symptom-coat-hanger-pain/

#art #bodyHorror #chronicIllness #chronicPain #coatHangerPain #coathangerpain #disabilityArt #disabilityJustice #Dysautonomia #eds #heds #longCovid #longcovid #medicalArt #MillionsMissing #neis #NEISvoid #POTS #pwLC #pwme #spoonie

By my friend Anna Zivarts, "Don’t Forget About Non-Drivers in Rural America". Aging population, housing prices, needs of nondrivers all come together in rural America.
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2024/08/23/dont-forget-about-nondrivers-in-rural-america

I highly recommend Anna's book When Driving Is Not an Option https://islandpress.org/books/when-driving-not-option#desc.

#BikeTooter #transportation #rural #RuralLife #housing #infrastructure #transit #WeekWithoutDriving #nondrivers #disability #MobilityJustice #MoveEquity #AnnaZivarts #DisabilityJustice

Lawmakers Want To End SSI #MarriagePenalty For People With #DevelopmentalDisabilities https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2024/01/26/lawmakers-want-to-end-ssi-marriage-penalty-for-people-with-developmental-disabilities/30716/
#WomenWithDisabilities #DisabilityJustice #DisabilityPolicy #DisabledAndCapable #IntellectualDisabilities

Transportation folk, you'll want to read When Driving Is Not an Option by my nondriving bicycling friend Anna Zivarts when it comes out in May https://islandpress.org/books/when-driving-not-option. She founded #WeekWithoutDriving (now nationwide in the US).

#nondrivers #MoveEquity #MobilityJustice #accessibility #BikeTooter #cycling #EBikes #disability #DisabilityJustice #transportation #driving #infrastructure #BicyclesChangeLives #bikes

@haselbach You'll want to read When Driving Is Not an Option by my nondriving bicycling friend Anna Zivarts when it comes out in May https://islandpress.org/books/when-driving-not-option. She founded #WeekWithoutDriving and it's now going nationwide in the US.
#nondrivers #MoveEquity #MobilityJustice #accessibility #BikeTooter #cycling #EBikes #disability #DisabilityJustice #transportation

"Profiting from Misery: Disability and Migrant justice campaigners protest at the companies profiting from depriving people of essential needs."
https://dpac.uk.net/2023/11/profiting-from-misery-disability-and-migrant-justice-campaigners-protest-at-the-companies-profiting-from-depriving-people-of-essential-needs/

#Disability #DisabilityJustice #RefugeesWelcome #NoBordersNoNationsStopDeportations #NoOneIsIllegal #DPAC #DisabledPeopleAgainstCuts

The #RadicalCommunalCare group who led on the above letter aims to be a network - with it currently connecting people across Europe - for disabled, chronically ill people & their partners where communal care can be discussed from an anarchistic/feminist viewpoint, but also put into practice. We have a Signal chat for exchange of information & support in the day-to-day & we aim to meet every 2-4 weeks via Signal video - with pacing - for thematic discussions (for instance: #MutualAid #AbolishTheFamily) alongside support & solidarity. It is an #AntiAbleist #AntiCapitalist #AntiFascist & #Intersectional space.

Being part of this group has had such a positive impact on me in a very short time. Despite being very introverted & also struggling with intense social anxiety - made worse by my #LongCovid & #OCD - from the first moment I got involved I have felt at ease, safe, welcome & heard. I have seen my confidence increase, my ability to advocate for myself - especially in terms of the #pandemic & my Long-Covid - improve. It's a place of solidarity & comradeship, approached from an intersectional #anarchist perspective.

If this sounds like something you want to be part of, help co-create & grow as a group & space, please get in touch!

#CovidIsNotOver #Anarchism #Disability #DisabilityJustice

An#Introduction for a new instance as I'm fleeing #MastodonLol 's collapse. Hiya I'm a DJ and a scholar (professor/teacher/researcher/writer) into #Djing #abolition #scifi #disabilityjustice #criticalracetheory , #laborjustice #anticolonial (or un- or de- ) moves, and thinking about #quantification #ethics (I am NOT an ethicist or philosopher), (critical) #IPlaw #technology and other structures of power. I try to live my values as best I can, stand up for whats right, build and connect, support and develop structures of #care, (that requires that we) dance and eat good food. I write about #pirateradio #surveillance #soundsystemculture
I'm based in #philly . I learn from, love, and am newly a home-sharer and #caregiver to my elderly and awesome mother. Currently mourning a beloved #dog (I do also love #cats and #capybaras ). I play and listen to many genres, longtime faves include #jungle #dancehall #dub #ukgarage #kuduro #gqom #dembow #soca #rocksteady #breakcore #champeta #cumbia #footwork for djing I lean strongly towards heavy #bass and broken/swung/triplet beats.

International Women’s Day Hero of Invisible Disability Rights – Elaine Wilson:

In celebration of International Women's Day, OutOfExile_IDR honors Elaine Wilson, champion of invisible disability rights and the Olmstead Act.  It seems germane, as March is also Developmental Disabilities Month.

During Martin Luther King week, I posted about Lois Curtis, a champion for Invisible Disability Rights (link below).  Lois, togather with another woman, Elaine Wilson, fought all the way to the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) for the right to live in the community, rather than being institutionalized.  Fighting courageously for their freedom, they won the right to freedom for all people with invisible disabilities.  The case is often refered to as the “Brown v. Board of Education” for people with (Invisible) disabilities.

Excerpt below & image of Elaine from:
https://www.olmsteadrights.org/iamolmstead/history/

[“Elaine Wilson became seriously ill when she was one years old. She was hospitalized with a raging fever and it was unclear whether she would survive... When the fever finally broke and Elaine was …sent home, ….Elaine had lost some of her early motor function abilities, such as crawling or even sitting up by herself. The doctors assured Elaine's mother that (it) was only a lingering effect of the illness…. Elaine eventually did recover, but very slowly”.[]

In school, Elaine lagged behind other students having difficulties with focus and learning , eventually being diagnosed with an Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) attributed to the prolonged high fever as an infant.  Likley, this was the correct diagnosis.

She was reevaluated as a teen upon enrollment at “Gracewood State School and Hospitol” in Georgia.  There, she was diagnosed with an ableist slur containing the “R" word, once used in reference to PEOPLE living with Down Syndrome. Providers believed the only recourse was institutionalization. (I am bitting my tongue and holding back my opinions on the lot of it.)

She would spend about a decade living in institutions (State hospitals) against her will.  Following that, in the 1980s, she would be “ping-ponged" from care homes to hospitals, back and forth for nearly two decades of her life.

“When I was in an institution, I didn't like myself," Elaine says. "I was trapped. . . . I had no hope. I thought, Oh God, Oh God - When am I ever going to leave here?"

Another hero deserving mention on IWD is Sue Jamieson, the Atlanta Legal Aid Society Attorney who brought the case.  Sue and Lois Curtis were joined by co-plaintiff Elaine Wilson, to blaze the path of freedom for countless individuals with disabilities in their wake.

After more than 30 years and 36 psychiatric institutions, at times living homelessness and in varous “care homes", Elaine along with Lois Curtis, were victorious and finally free.

The 1997 ruling by Senior U.S. District Judge Marvin H. Shoob said that “… denying the women a community-based life amounted to segregation of people covered by the Americans With Disabilities Act.”  Judge Shoob later remarked “They were both so articulate” in regard to the testimony of Elaine Wilson and Lois Curitis.

Elaine passed in 2004 at the age of 53 but, will be forever remembered as a Disability Rights Legend for her resilience, strength and courage.  As part of her testimony, she told the court: “When I was in an institution, I felt like I was in a little box and there was no way out”.

Thanks to Elaine Wilson and Lois Curtis, people with invisible disabilities are afforded the right to live in freedom at home, instead of confinement in a “box", cage or institution, merely because of a health issue.  Thanks and honor to Elaine, Lois and Sue on this International Women’s Day.

“The Brave and the Strong” Lois Curitis – OutOfExile_ID:
https://kolektiva.social/@OutOfExile_IDR_Voice/109690867328587920

Elaine’s story continued:
http://www.olmsteadrights.org/iamolmstead/history/item.5405-Elaine_Wilsons_Story_Continued

More on Olmstead and Elaine’s impact:
https://olmsteadrights.wordpress.com/tag/elaine-wilson/

More from disabilityjustice.org:
https://disabilityjustice.org/olmstead-v-lc/

ADA – Community Intergration for Everyone:
https://archive.ada.gov/olmstead/olmstead_about.htm

International Women’s Day Image from:
https://www.desicomments.com/womens-day/international-womens-day-5/

IMAGE CW - (eye contact)
Don't forget the ALT text.

#InternationalWomensDay #ElaineWilson #LoisCurtis #Hero #OlmsteadAct #SueJamieson #SCOTUS #freedom #home #gratitude #CommunityIntergration #DevelopmentalDisabilities #IntellectualDisabilities #BrainInjury #TBI #ABI #AcquiredBrainInjury #MentalHealth #disability #InvisibleDisabilityRights #Hero #DisabilityJustice #EmbraceEquity

@disabilityjustice
@disability

:black_sparkling_heart: #Introduction #Intro

TL:DR: I'm mostly posting this intro to connect with other Black and BIPOC Anarchists or Anti-authoritarians. Hit me up! :Fire_Panafrican:

Hey, everyone

My partner and I are currently working on a docuseries, @Elememts_of_MA, about the origins, structures, healing ways, and logistics of mutual aid-based organizing. The project isn't exclusively profiling anarchist groups, but it is deeply anti-authoritarian - we're especially staying away from charismatic leaders and celeb "activist" types.

The whole thing is independent - no producers; everything is out of pocket. We've been living out of a van we converted so we could make this happen; which has been amazing. We've been on the road since May Day this year, and have already filmed some solid interviews as far north as Montreal and as far south as Puerto Rico.

However, I'm personally struggling to find Black organizations or collectives that aren't MLM, AADOS, authoritarian, Black Capitalist, nonprofit style groups. Reading and theory groups or media collectives are rad, but I'm really looking for groups that're doing interesting work on the ground (*not food distro*) from an anti-state-nationalist analysis.

Lorenzo and JoNina Irvin will appear in the film, among other radical Black people like Jessica Gordon Nembhard, The Northeast Action Collective in Houston, and Arm the Girls in Oakland. So, I'm not at a complete loss.

But, please send me all the rad groups of Black people you know that are creating long-term, democratic, mutual aid projects in their communities. They do not need to identify as anarchist, but they *cannot* be down with the nation state and have to be doing more than food distro.

Thanks a ton, y'all.

Beyond all that, I'm also really interested in connecting with people to write Star Wars analysis and fan-fiction. I think the galaxy far, far away is an interesting canvas to explore the tensions of autonomous world building vs authoritarian revolutionary movements. If I lived in that universe, I'd no doubt be getting into arguments with the Rebel Alliance.

Thanks for reading this long-winded post.

#Solidarity

#Black #BlackMastodon #BlackAnarchism #Anarchism #Anarchy #Antifa #Antifascism #Antiracism #Feminism #DisabilityJustice #BlackLiberation #IndigenousAnarchism #indigenousFedi #BlackFedi #blackfediverse #decolonize #decolonization #TransLiberationNow #transliberation #LGBTQ #queerliberation #QueerLiberationNow #StarWars #Andor #SciFi #Literature #creativewriting #creativewritingsocial #documentary #documentaryfeaturefilm #documentaryfilm #film #antiauthoritarianism #antiauthoritarian #vanlife #anarkata #anticapitalism #antinationalism #AnarchismOfBlackness #AnarchistPeopleOfColor #APOC #democraticconfederalism #MutualAid #collectivism #Zapatismo #Farming #UrbanFarming #Gardening #FoodSovereignty #LandBack #internationalism #JinJiyanAzadi