Hi again!

Long time no see! I've been busy with schoolwork and getting to know myself more and more each day. I've been journaling and pulling tarot a lot lately and really leaning into my newly discovered clairvoyant and witchy side. (I always knew but the validation has arrived this year)

I wanted to continue to share some of my writing from my Turtle Island Visual Art class as well as my Queer Theories class. One of my Queer Theories assignments was to write a response to one of our assigned readings, while also using a recent cultural moment to include. I chose to write about this piece by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha titled Cripping the Resistance: No Revolution Without Us. Let me know what you think and don't forget: take no shit/do no harm.

Reading Cripping The Resistance really reminded me of the mixed emotions of 2020 advocacy. On one hand, everything felt dangerous and unknown at that time, but also, for the first time ever, we were having a global conversation about how to protect one another from harm. From what I gathered, the central claim of this piece was that there is no one way to advocate for each other’s well being. What’s crucial to disability justice is the multitude of ways abled and disabled people can show up for each other depending on their own experiences and skill sets. 

In recent years, I’ve had conversations with other Covid-informed people who stress that shame is an important tool in creating change. Others like myself have questioned whether it’s actually conducive to direct action. Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s piece validated what I know to be true now - that there are so many routes and avenues advocacy can take and look like. Instead of trying to fit into a certain box that you feel you must fulfill to “better” contribute, using your own unique experiences and skills strengthens the common goal overall. Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha writes “I took it to mean, use what you’ve got. Make crip resistance soup out of whatever skills, resources, tactics and brilliant wild crip ideas you possess.”

Considering Saturday’s Hands Off protests across the United States this weekend, I’m thinking about the ways that brought about the very fascism being protested. From what I’ve seen, it took some increasingly chaotic decisions of Trump to finally, really upset White, middle-class America. Naomi Klein recently posted to her Instagram a text that reads “Make America Healthy Again: The mass culling of the labor force of the Department of Health and Human Services began on Tuesday morning. And early indications are that it’s a bloodbath.” Klein writes in the caption “This is, in large part, pandemic revenge. As far as these oligarchs are concerned, all science does is tell them stuff they cannot do.”

Over the last 3 years of the pandemic where Covid is largely ignored, minimized or blatantly denied, I’ve noticed the shift from abled allyship to abled abandonment of our disabled comrades. It’s been disheartening to witness people I thought progressive abandon precautions that not only protect themselves and their loved ones, but also our immunocompromised community members. This passive or active choice, wherever on the spectrum folks may be, “allowed” eugenic mindsets to filter into our culture and permeate it wholly. Images of the protests this Saturday showed mostly maskless faces, at a time where not only Covid spread is still prevalent, but most recently measles have made an alarming comeback. People have adapted and pandered to the anti-vaccine ideology of every man for himself. “You do you” has been a common defensive statement in the face of very reasonable and doable requests to protect yourself and those around you. 

This process of disconnecting cause and effect and dehumanizing vulnerable people has led to more and more hatred, apathy and fascism. History shows us that when a government abandons those who need the most protection and care, it doesn’t take much reason or justification to further discriminate beyond that group. The slippery slope that ignores one group’s suffering slides right into the painful truth that the path has now been cleared for any and all other groups deemed “different” to be mistreated as well. Queer people are already well aware of their unsturdy safety in western culture, but as the pandemic apathy has increased over the last three years, so has the violence and persecution they’ve received. Not only are more people misdirecting anger at the marginalized, they’re also putting them more at risk by not taking Covid precautions and masking. Numerous studies have shown that queer and trans people are at a much higher risk of being disabled by Long Covid.

Queer people have had a long history of being “othered”. Them living authentically inherently opposes fascism just by way of existing, as their very presence is proof that oppressive binaries of gender and sexuality are incredibly wrong, untrue and dangerous. Due to all these oppressive forces, it’s imperative that those who are at more risk for death and disability - specifically trans people - stay within their limits and allow those with less to lose to step in for more dangerous versions of advocacy, such as protests with a heavy police presence. Advocating for yours and others rights within your limits and capacity is a compassionate reminder that we aren’t all able to do the things we wish to see and do ourselves. But ability is irrelevant when it comes to your inherent worthiness and power within - the roads just look different. More importantly, these roads lead to a more accessible world where disabled people are not only included in culture and society, but thriving within it.

All my love,
Al