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vimeo.com/.../433458154

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    My name is Lydia X. Z. Brown,
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    and I'm an attorney, advocate,
    community organizer, educator, strategist,
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    and thinker and writer
    on disability rights and disability justice.
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    For over 10 years, my work has focused
    on interpersonal and state violence
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    targeting disabled people
    at the margins of the margins,
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    especially disabled people living
    at the intersections of disability, race,
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    class, gender, sexuality,
    language, and nation.
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    Like all disabled people, it's impossible
    to say that there was one instance
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    in which I suddenly became aware of
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    inaccessibility or exclusionary practices
    in social life,
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    because my entire life has been shaped
    by the forces of ableism.
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    Like most other autistic people,
    I experienced bullying
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    throughout my childhood and in schools,
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    and I experienced a disconnect between
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    the ways that I moved through the world
    and the ways that people around me,
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    who were largely not autistic,
    moved through the world.
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    But I will say that one of the times
    that I became most aware
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    of grave injustices targeting
    other disabled people
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    were a series of incidents
    that were widely publicized
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    when I was in high school.
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    And, in all of those instances,
    young autistic people were criminalized,
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    taken out of their schools,
    often charged in adult criminal court
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    for simply existing while autistic.
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    In many of those cases,
    the autistic students in question
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    had been subjected to prolonged restraint
    and seclusion, sometimes for hours,
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    before they were the ones who were charged
    with assaulting the teachers
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    in the schools in the first place.
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    Some of those students were white.
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    Others were Black, brown,
    or other people of color.
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    And, in all of those cases,
    the sentiment that came most strongly
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    and clearly through public reporting
    on the incidents,
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    was that these were kids
    who had to be managed or controlled,
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    instead of, here are kids who have
    been targeted on the basis
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    of disability discrimination.
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    That, to me, was a very clear indicator
    of just the beginning
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    of how pervasive and how awful
    violence against disabled people is,
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    especially those who are
    multiply marginalized.
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    In the cases of many of the white students,
    if they were unlucky,
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    they might have been forced
    out of their school.
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    But in the cases of the Black and brown
    disabled students,
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    some of them were sentenced
    to prison terms of years.
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    Others were killed outright.
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    Although the ADA was passed
    and signed into law three decades ago,
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    government agencies, individual
    organizations, and even and especially
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    disability advocacy organizations,
    flagrantly and violate-
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    flagrantly and blatantly violate
    the ADA's most basic provisions.
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    Government agencies that are required
    to support disabled people
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    and provide and enable access
    for disabled people
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    routinely disregard those obligations.
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    Private corporations and nonprofit
    organizations do much the same.
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    Colleges and universities do not
    respect their disabled students.
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    Corporations do not respect
    their disabled employees.
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    Writ large, in society,
    although the law has changed,
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    the values that we hold
    and the beliefs that we have
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    as an entire society
    have not changed at all,
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    because you can't legislate morality.
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    You could pass the best laws on the books,
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    and even if you somehow monitor
    and enforce them,
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    it doesn't mean that you've actually
    changed the ways that people think
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    and talk about and understand
    and react toward and act
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    about disabled people
    and disability in society.
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    So, when I think about ways
    that the ADA has fallen short,
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    it's not necessarily just
    what is the language of the ADA,
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    but it is how individual advocates,
    it is how courts,
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    and it is how those with positions
    of power and access to privilege
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    and resources choose to act
    or not act upon the ADA.
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    And you see that everywhere.
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    The disability organizations
    that have the most access
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    to power, privilege, and resources
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    generally advocate only for the interests
    and the issues that affect those
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    who already hold the most privilege
    in disabled communities.
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    That is, they care deeply about issues
    that primarily, or only,
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    affect disabled people who are white,
    who are monied, who are degreed,
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    who are otherwise considered palatable.
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    But for disabled people who are
    at the margins of the margins,
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    for disabled people of color,
    for disabled people that are
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    generationally low income,
    for disabled people who are undocumented
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    or have other immigration status
    other than citizenship,
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    for disabled people who belong
    to minority religions,
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    for disabled people who are queer or trans,
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    for disabled people who cannot work
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    in the ways that are
    expected under capitalism,
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    those issue areas of inclusion
    in the corporate workplace
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    or the ability to access
    swimming pools in a hotel
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    or the ability to bring
    your service animal on a plane
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    can be important,
    but are often not affecting our lives
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    in the same daily ways as they do
    those who have infinitely more privilege.
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    And so, where I see the gaps are
    where are the folks
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    who have power, privilege, and resources
    in talking about the right
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    to Black and brown
    disabled students to AAC?
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    Where are those folks in thinking about
    the horrific violence inflicted
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    on largely Black and Native disabled
    people in carceral systems?
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    Where are those same people
    in looking at the ways in which police
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    destroy the lives of sex workers and
    people who are using criminalized drugs
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    who are not white, who do not come
    from upper middle class
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    or upper class families and neighborhoods
    and communities?
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    Where are those folks when thinking about
    the ways in which universities
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    not only prevent disabled students
    in general from accessing supports
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    and accommodations,
    but put the brunt of that violence
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    most predominantly on queer and trans
    disabled people of color
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    and even force disabled students,
    especially those that are multiply marginalized,
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    out of the university altogether,
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    or prevent them from ever getting to ask
    the university in the first place?
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    Where are those same advocates
    when thinking about not just,
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    how are disabled people in the U.S.
    represented or not represented in media
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    or in electoral politics,
    but what about the ways in which
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    the United States inflicts
    and causes disability globally
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    through our wars, through our imperialism,
    through our colonization?
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    We need to be pushing as hard
    as we possibly can for money to go
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    directly back into the hands
    of directly impacted community members
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    and out of harmful systems
    like the foster system, police, prisons,
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    coercive mental health care.
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    We need to be demanding
    a return of resources
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    and a return of power,
    and that is a ceding of power
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    by nondisabled people, by white people,
    by those who have hoarded and controlled
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    the most amount of power
    and privilege and resources,
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    and done so at the direct expense
    of disabled people
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    at the margins of the margins,
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    and that has to start
    within our own organizations.
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    Disability nonprofits are notorious
    for being so often white-led
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    or predominantly white-led,
    and sometimes only white-led,
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    for being male-led,
    for being led by people who are either
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    not disabled at all or have what
    are considered palatable disabilities,
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    and that needs to change.
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    And the only way that will change
    is if those people
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    who occupy those positions of power
    agree to give up that power.
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    Not to be told, "You don't have a voice,"
    to be very clear.
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    To be told, "Your voice doesn't have to
    be the one that's in charge
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    and holds all the power."
Title:
vimeo.com/.../433458154
Video Language:
English
Team:
ABILITY Magazine
Duration:
07:42

English subtitles

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