244 – Disability Justice (w/ Lateef McLeod) – Transcript

Warning: We can't have true liberation of all people without disability justice. We should realize the intrinsic value of everyone no matter how their body or mind is constructed to imagine a world that is accessible and welcoming for everyone. So we all will get free together.

SRSLY WRONG Episode 244 Disability Justice (W/ Lateef McLeod) Available in audio in Mp3 or on Youtube Subscribe to SRSLY WRONG on RSS or PatreonDonate to the SRSLY WRONG Transcript fund for more wonderful beautiful transcripts.

Today's episode of SRSLY WRONG is brought to you by... changing people to fit the inhospitable society that they’re a part of.

Hi, I'm a villain. And I think that our society is perfect the way that it is right now. And I think that people who don't fit into it should be medicalized and blamed for not fitting into it and be forced to change themselves rather than have society change around them. So that people feel like those parts of them are bad and wrong and then it's their personal responsibility to sand off or destroy, whatever doesn't fit. You know, I like to think of as- Imagine society was a triangle shaped hole- because triangle shaped holes... Mm! Beautiful. But there's so many people out there that are square-shaped or round-shape or all different kinds of shapes. And it's like, uh, you can't fit that through a triangle shaped hole, can you? So you need to change. We’re not going to make different shaped holes for different people to fit through. We are going to sand off those edges….

Get him!

Ah- Stop that- Not that- You can't change that. No-

(clears throat) Sorry about that everyone. Just a little- Little revolutionary moment there. This episode is actually, instead of trying to change people to fit in an unjust and inhumane society, which dehumanizes all of us... Instead, this episode of SRSLY WRONG is actually brought to you by changing society to meet the natural variations, differentiations and differences within the human population to respect everyone and treat them as whole and worthy human beings- as a collective- moving together towards universal human emancipation.

That is the sponsor of today's show. That is the path that we should set out on. Because there's so many different variations. You know, there’s not just squares and circles, you know, there's, rhombuses, spiky stars, you know, there's all sorts of different shapes of- y’know, just make the hole nice and big. Nice and open. Uhh… And... welcoming. That it can accommodate all sorts of different block-shapes--A big welcoming hole- (starts laughing)(both start laughing)I guess this hole metaphor... I don't like the hole metaphor I-(both laugh again)Because it’s about people. It's about- it's about communities. It's about humanity. It's about having humanity. It's about insisting and demanding humanity for one another and working together towards a better future and putting people ahead of the systems that dehumanize us all. That's the sponsor of the show. Hole stuff aside, that is the sponsor of the show.

And now back to our show…

Hello everyone. And welcome back to the SRSLY WRONG podcast. The podcast- or one of many podcasts- that is the universe unfolding, speaking to itself with all of the fecundity, diversity, and differentiation natural to the human experience. (laughs) We are your co-hosts Shawn and Aaron. You're the host. We're both Co-hosts.

That's how we like to think about it anyway.

Thanks for inviting us inside your head.

Yeah. And no shade to any podcasts who aren't the full unfolding of the universe, diver- all that stuff-

That’s up to them.

It's part of the diversity for some podcasts not to... Anyway, we value- we value all.

Today on the show. We've got a banger interview with a disability justice advocate, Lateef McLeod, we talk about a variety of subjects around the sphere of disability and disability justice we're excited to share with you, but first, just on a personal level, Aaron, I was just wondering how you’re feeling about all of the roads into Vancouver, where we live, being destroyed by mudslides in the last 48 hours, because I feel good about it. (laughs)

Uh, it's, like, exciting in a way, like. And I've seen pictures of big chunks of the major highway completely torn up, like just gone. It's got kind of that epic feel.

Yeah. Like knowing-

Seeing pictures of empty grocery stores in Kamloops, I believe it was, they were having trouble keeping stocked there.

Yeah. I find I'm not really generally prone to catastrophic thinking, but just this year in BC, we've had a series of unprecedented ecological issues. There was a record setting heat wave. First in the summertime where hundreds of people died of preventable causes due to the heat wave, there was a huge amount of forest fires, one of which burned the town of Lytton to the ground. A tornado touched down at UBC, uh, like a week ago. Caused some damage- it wasn't a serious tornado- but it's a very rare thing in Vancouver history. And, uh, now there was a massive amount of mudslides all across the province, blocking every road that connects Vancouver to the rest of Canada.

Merrit, BC also had to be evacuated for flooding.. and Abbotsford it as well.

Right. A big chunk of Abbotsford.

Oh, and there's also people trapped between the sections of destroyed highways and a lot of indigenous reserves, first nations are cut off from supply lines. So yeah, when you start to think about all that, it's a bit less epic, a bit more horrifying.

Yeah, when I see that kind of stuff and just like, it's like hit after hit from the climate crisis perspective, it really makes me feel like we need to find ways to come together and start working on thinking about the project of climate survival, because it seems like it could get bad and strangely bad, all of a sudden. And this is all, I mean, we're talking about disability justice today, and this is sort of a tangent from that- It's on my mind because of how- I feel it, but it also is connected... to... disability justice and the need for Interdependence in communities. And a lot of the values that disability justice puts forward about valuing everyone and stuff like that.

Yeah, there’s these 10 principles of disability justice that anti-capitalism and sustainability are both on there. And they're both on there for a reason, because it's all connected to one another. The same systems that are excluding people with disabilities from accessing the things they need in society are the same systems that are rapaciously making their way through our natural environment and destroying the biosphere on which we all depend.

And as we start seeing this stuff more and more, as things get strangely bad, when we find these failure points in our systems and in our infrastructure, the disability community is going to be, in many cases, the first and hardest hit, and the most impacted from it. So, yeah, I definitely think that it's all connected.

We'll pick up more on the strand later, but I also want to give a shout out. We did receive suggestions to cover this topic. It was an anonymous comment, but if you're listening: to the people who requested that I wanted to thank you for drawing our attention to this body of thought, because I found doing research for this episode and reading disability justice primer, watching speeches and presentations from people in the disability justice sphere, It's been a really enriching experience, deepening my understanding of how a lot of these things connect. And I feel like the project of disability justice, valuing the wholeness of everyone and valuing accessibility and wholeness as a community, I feel like all of these principles have strong contributions to make in the way that we think about all of the myriad crises we face

Absolutely taking the time to read and absorb some of this material. Having this interview with Lateef, doing sketches with him, it's been really mind expanding. I haven't focused on these issues. So much. And just like you're saying, learning this stuff has really made a lot of different things click together.

Before we get into this fascinating broadening interview, I would be remiss if I didn't say as one must that seriously wrong is a podcast that is funded entirely by our listeners on Patreon donations or on PayPal. We couldn't do the show without you, and we greatly, greatly appreciate your support, whether that's financial, telling your friends about the show or otherwise so we can continue to do this work. Patreon.com/srslywrong. If you donate $6 a month, you'll get access to bonus episodes, our entire back catalogue, our private Facebook group and Discord server. We put a lot of time and attention into making the show as good as it can be. And we appreciate your support. So, yeah, sit back, relax. Uh, without further ado, let's move on to the interview.

Welcome back to the SRSLY WRONG podcast. Today on the show we’re joined by writer, poet, and activist Lateef McLeod. He’s the author of a brilliant article “Social Ecology and Disability Justice” in the ISE’s online magazine Harbinger, the author of two poetry books, as well as one of the hosts of the Black Disabled Men Talk Podcast. Thanks for coming on the show, Lateef, it’s great to have you here with us.

Yes, thank you. I have been a fan of the podcast for years and I am really excited to be on.

I wanted to start with a big question on the subject of Disability Justice. How does society let down people with disabilities? What sort of society are we looking to build? What is the Utopian vision of disability justice?

Well, we must first acknowledge that for a long time western society and culture did not want anything to do with people with disabilities. We see this when in the nineteenth century many American cities passed a series of Ugly Laws that barred people with disabilities from many public streets and places. You can read more about these laws in the book entitled Ugly Laws by Susan Schweik. It was also the time when the Eugenics movement was in full swing and doctors were actively sterilizing people with disabilities because they wanted to eradicate them from the gene pool. Finally, it was a time when people with disabilities were locked away in institutions where they were neglected and abused. It took the Disability Rights movement starting in the sixties and seventies to change these trends. The Disability Rights movement led to the passing of the American Disabilities Act, that made public places accessible, and the Olmstead Supreme Court, which gave people with disabilities the right to live in the public and not in institutions.

We need to build a society that is fully accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities. An Utopian vision we can strive towards is where people with disabilities are getting their needs met reliably, like their personal care needs, their medical needs, public accessibility needs, and transportations needs, so as result they can more easily integrate in the communities that they live in. We need to build societies that fully embrace people with disabilities fully for who they are instead of ostracizing and isolating them. People with disabilities should lead the way in envisioning that more accessible future and should be the ones to come up with the key strategies to make that happen. We also need to critique, dismantle, abolish, and eradicate all forms of Ableism we see in society and in ourselves. This will be a great challenge because Ableism is so ingrained in society, but we need to have an anti-ableist stance and say firmly this is not acceptable behavior in society.

How can radical left politics be strengthened by the integration of disability justice ideas? In addition to the ethical drive to include everyone, is there a pragmatic benefit to trying to integrate these ideas?

Disability Justice ideas are already being used in disability justice organizing. I was recently at a comrade resiliency workshop put on by the Autonomous University of Political Education and during the workshop they referenced the work of disability justice scholars Mia Mingus and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Mia Mingus’s article, “Pods and Pod Mapping Worksheet”, was the main document we used to learn how to create community pods in our own lives of people we are accountable to and rely on. This skill is important when we live in capitalist modernity which isolates and alienates most of us in our little silos, especially those of us with disabilities. So it makes sense that people with disabilities will develop new ways to build community. Also as Piepnza-Samarasinha explains in her book, Care Work, we in the disability community need to develop novel ways to care for each other too. This will be more important as we go through more ecological crises. We have been talking about precisely this in the theatre collective I am a part of called Sins Invalid. We produced a theatre production addressing people with disabilities’ concerns with the climate crisis called “We Love Like Barnacles: Crip Lives in Climate Chaos.” I think you can still see the performance online. Check the Sins Invalid website. We are expressing ideas that liberatory movements need to think about and address. So the radical left can definitely benefit by the integration of disability justice ideas.

The process of increasing accessibility for people with disabilities can feel sort of- complex and open-ended, because needs are so variable. There’s not a one-size-fit all way to do accessibility for everyone, it requires an ongoing process. What processes can able-bodied people who want to be good accomplices to disabled comrades and neighbours participate in to make spaces and groups more accessible for everyone?

The first thing an able-bodied ally needs to do to be good comrades to the disability community is to listen to us as we explain our access needs and our visions as we strategize and organize for a better future. Left organizations can learn from organizations like Sins Invalid and other disability justice activists on how to make their organizing more accessible and welcoming to people with disabilities. If people follow the lead of people with disabilities.

And the other side of this, I think- Privilege, has an incredible effect of making oppressors a bit oblivious and sometimes brutal as a result of their privilege. So I wanted to ask, what sort of things do people outside of disabled communities sometimes do that maybe comes from a place of meaning well, but is cringey, patronizing, or unwelcome? What should allies not do?

Well, people outside the disability community have a tendency to patronize people with disabilities and underestimate their capabilities. That happens across disabilities identities. I have been in many instances where people have seen me and underestimated my intelligence and capabilities until they talked to me and learn I have multiple degrees. Then there is the other side of the spectrum when people get to know me they think they know what my life is like, but still have a lot of misconceptions. The best thing for allies to do is to be in constant conversation with people with disabilities and what is the best way to treat and relate to each other. If people follow the lead of people with disabilities, we can do it together and do it right.

We now go to an activist meeting…

Alright, time to get started on our socially-justice-oriented meeting to organize for a better world. Everybody here?

Sorry, my- my friend is here but she can’t get up the staircase up front. She uses a wheelchair. This location isn’t very accessible.

Oh no! We didn’t prepare for this! I should have thought ahead! I’m so bad at social justice… I can’t believe we didn’t think of this, what’s wrong with us?

It’s not my fault! It’s not my job to do that.

No, no, gu- We’re steeped in ableism in a capitalist society. Let’s not beat ourselves up or get defensive. Even if we do think ahead, we will not always get it right. We just need to have a bit of humility. Most spaces aren’t accessible by default, but if we put in the work, we can prepare better for the next meeting. We can learn from this experience. But now, we have a problem to solve together to make sure that everyone can participate. If we brainstorm, we can create a solution to make sure that your friend can participate so we don’t miss out on her participation.

You’re right. Right now, I have an idea. There’s a courtyard outside that everyone should be able to access, and the weather is nice today. Maybe we can do it out there. And then next time we can prepare ahead so this doesn’t happen again.

We now go to the next week’s activist meeting, which has prepared a wheelchair ramp to make sure that everyone can participate

Alright! Look at that beautiful ramp! Now EVERYONE will be able to get into the space. Our accessibility work here is done.

Finally! We can move on to the work of constructing a better world together. Let the social justice meeting begin!

Folks. I think we have a problem. We have a new member, and they have an accessibility need. They’re deaf and we don’t have any ASL interpreters here.

Oh my g- I couldn’t do enough! I’m a good organizer but I failed! (sigh) I don’t deserve to be an organizer!

It’s not my fault! I did everything I could!

Please, please. Look let’s not defensive or beat ourselves up. We need to start from where we are, right? So we just need to improve our practices to meet the needs of our membership, right? Brainstorm a way to make sure that everyone’s voice is welcome, and that our new members can participate to the highest degree possible.

We now go to the next week’s activist meeting, which has prepared a ramp, and has booked and hired an ASL interpreter ahead of time

Whew!

We’re killin it’, look.

Now that’s access! Now everyone is welcome!

Now we can really all come together to do this important work!

Sorry guys, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But our organization is growing quickly, and we have a number of new members whose accessibility needs are not being met. We have a new blind member and no materials in Braille for them. We have a member with a scent sensitivity and one of our other members is wearing a strong perfume. And we have a few new members whose first language isn’t English, it would be great to have an interpreter for them. And we have a new member who needs a restricted diet, and our food this week has gluten in it. And our comrades who uses a wheelchair just told me that even though she is able to get up the steps, she was embarrassed to let us know last week that the washroom’s doorway is too small for her chair. A member with small children told me they couldn’t make it because they don’t have childcare. Another member asked if they could stream into the meeting from home.

Ok. That’s a lot. To hear all at once, but- Let’s not be defensive about these needs. This is actually a good problem to have. It means we’re successfully reaching a lot of people, and we’re going to be a stronger organization for their participation. But I’m starting to think we can’t just do this on the fly. We need to get a stronger practice for this in the future to make sure we’re not always running around trying to fill these gaps at the last minute.

Maybe we can have someone be an access coordinator, y’know, who can focus their energy on this. Really make it a priority.

Right, and we can let people know ahead of time what access provisions we have prepared, and be straightforward about the limitations of the space so no one who is caught off guard.

We now go to the next week’s activist meeting, which is at a new location with accessible bathrooms, and has an ASL interpreter, braille materials, child care, vegan and gluten-free food, translators, A livestream so people can participate from home, organized carpools and ridesharing for people who want to come but couldn’t get there otherwise, and soft lighting which isn’t abrasive to people with sensitivities

Wow, you did a really great job as the access coordinator on this week’s meeting. I think we may have succeeded in making sure every access need we know of is met.

Thanks. Well, I hope so. But there’s always a possibility that we’ll find more. We’re making it a priority to request feedback on access needs actively. We ask people to state their access needs at the start of our meetings as part of the way to introduce themselves, creating a culture where people think actively about how to make sure that everybody can be included. I think it is a good way to familiarize ourselves with new members that join.

Yes. I mean, it is great we have a lot of new members showing up. My access needs have been met from the start I guess, but seeing all these new people here, I realize that their access needs are tied up in my own because we were missing out on all these voices and we can’t really get free unless we all get free together.

Y’know, I didn’t even realize until we put in the soft lighting and the fragrance-free requirements but I actually prefer things like that. Sometimes being around those things gives me a headache. And y’know, it sounds like a lot when you put it all in a list, but when you remember each of these needs isn’t something abstract, it represents a real person who has things to contribute, and people who is often left out of spaces like this, you really realize how important it is.

Yeah, and you learn to think about it. Learn to pay attention to it. And each piece feels smaller and smaller when it becomes normalized. It’s work, but it’s not that much work, especially when you plan for it. And the more we make our work accessible, the better off we all are.

Um, I- Sorry- I just got a text from our ASL interpreter. His kid is sick. He has to cancel at the last minute… I’m worried all of our deaf and hard of hearing comrades are going to be left in a lurch. Damn, I really thought we had the hang of this. I mean, it’s not my fault- I’ve been- Wait- Why am I getting defensive? We actually have a problem to solve here.

Yeah, maybe we can see if there’s someone here who can do ASL interpretation we don’t know about. Or maybe we could have someone do a live transcription of what’s being said for our comrades to so they can read it?

Live transcription? That might do it- let’s see what we can do…

And so, it wasn’t always easy, and there were always hiccups along the way, but the organizers found ways to make their political project accessible for more and more people over time by making it a priority. Sometimes that involved going the extra mile at the last minute, sometimes preparing ahead of time for circumstances that didn’t arise. But as a result, their organization was more resilient, reached more people, and had greater insight and power. They were able to take on the work of getting free together, achieved more victories, and eventually, win.

So, this is a bit of a basic question I guess, but I think it might be helpful to people who are very new to these ideas. What is Accessibility? Like, what makes accessibility- or lack thereof- a political issue?

Accessibility is the process of making sure everyone is able to participate in the social activities of a community regardless of whether or not they have a disability. For example, for this interview an access need I had was that I had you send me the interview questions a few days before we recorded the interview. The reason why we did this is because I communicate with an AAC device and have to type everything out when I talk. So this makes more sense then having me type everything out during the interview. Accessibility is a political issue because if things are not accessible then people are essentially silenced from participating in societal activities. We see this now as some U.S. States are passing laws that make it harder for people with disabilities and people of color to vote. So accessibility is a pertinent and relevant issue.

It is not only just the disabled who have access needs. We found out this during the covid pandemic when everyone had to do everything remotely on Zoom because no one wanted the Coronavirus. We made that access need happen instantly, but people with chemical sensitivities and autoimmune disorders were asking for remote access to meetings and events before the pandemic and they were not getting heard until the pandemic. It goes back to our able bodied and mind fetish that we do not worry about an issue until it affects the normative body. We need to get away from that and see our access needs as an opportunity to build a stronger community by meeting our access needs for each other.

Yeah, that makes so much sense. Just thinking about the broader comparisons here, thinking about what parallels or comparisons could we make between the accessibility needs of disabled communities, and also the political struggles for access to things like healthcare, and housing? How do these things intersect?

We should see housing and health care as the access needs that everyone has. Everyone needs housing and health care, no matter who they are. It is a fiction that the capitalist system forces us to accept that those without money are not deserving of housing and health care. When you think about it this is both wrong and cruel. Especially when you think about that many people with disabilities are also low income and they are the ones that need health care and housing the most. So we need to think beyond the capitalist paradigm and find out how to meet everyone’s access needs in these areas.

I really like the voice that you use. You speak with something called AAC- Augmented and Alternative Communication. I understand that you’ve spoken with devices like this since you were quite young. I was wondering- from your experience over this time period- how the AAC technology has developed since you first started using it, what you think about the future of this sort of technology, and I guess if you have any thoughts more broadly on technology and disability?

Yes, I started using AAC devices when I was six and my first AAC device was a Touch Talker. It was the Touch Talker that allowed me to be mainstreamed in regular classes starting in the first grade. The Touch Talker was a big and bulky box-like thing with a really robotic voice. It was really cumbersome to carry around. Since then I have used many different AAC devices and programs as a communication aid. Now I use the programs Proloquo2go and Proloquo4text on my phone, iPad, and laptop and they definitely meet my communication needs. Since AAC programs can now be apps that you can purchase on your iPhone and iPad it decreased the price of AAC technology considerably. Also I appreciate that Acapella, the synthesize voice company that both Proloquo2go and Proloquo4text uses, developed African American voices. I appreciate that now my synthesized voice sounds more like people in my community. Since the uprisings last year Acapella made it a point to develop more African American voices. I think AAC manufacturers are slowly realizing that people who use complex communication needs don’t want to sound the same and want to sound like other members of their community. Hopefully with AAC being further integrated into more mass-produced technology that will make it accessible for a wider section of the population. Also technology has the potential to integrate more people with disabilities in all aspects of society, however all development for this technology should be led by the direction of people with disabilities, since they are the ones who are going to be using the technology

(typing noises) Too many leftists today are leaving disability justice out of their organizing. When are people going to understand that this is an important priority that matters for everybody?

(typing noises) Let me explain something to you. Leftists are out here fighting the real battles against capitalism, racism, transphobia, climate change. We need to focus on issues that matter to everyone. I support everyone with disabilities getting the medical care they need, I support medicare for all. Disabled people may have some issues, but I don’t think it has to do with systematic change. We need to focus on issues that matter to everyone.

(typing noises) On the contrary, my friend. What you just described is the medical model of disability, which says that the person with the disability has to be fixed by the medical care industry to fully participate in society. However, there is another model of disability called the social model of disability that says that the society around us need to be made accessible, so that disabled people can live and thrive more freely in their communities. Instead of pathologizing the experiences of disabled people and forcing them to find individual medicalized ways to cope with a society that isn’t designed for them, maybe we should just design society in a way where we take everyone into account. We can create the systems that we all need to guarantee that all people have access. The left needs to get behind the social model of disability:

(typing noises) That is great and I am happy that exists and all. But we are very far away from that and I think that regular leftists still need to focus on broader more immediate concerns than advocating for the social model. It seems like an issue that disabled activists rightly have an interest in, but they can’t expect the entire left to just drop everything and focus on them. They need to advocate for it themselves, in their own community.

(typing noises) No, it’s not about dropping anything to focus on anything else. It’s all part of one struggle for justice. And it will benefit everyone to have a more accessible world. Making sub-title options available in theatres for example doesn’t just help deaf people, it also just helps people who sometimes have trouble hearing the dialogue. Automatic doors can help people with disabilities, but also just if your hands are full of groceries. Improving accessibility improves it for everyone. So we need to have solidarity with disability justice activists and the disability community and take their leadership on these issues. In the same way we’d turn to our trans comrades for guidance on transphobia, women comrades for guidance on misogyny, or racialized comrades on racism, we need to do the same here. But we can’t put all of the work onto disability activists to do this by themselves, because none of us can do any of this by ourselves. We have to work together. And especially because our society doesn’t value people with disabilities, and they get invisibilized and forgotten, even by our left comrades.

(typing noises) I didn’t know any of that. Thank you for telling me this, it makes me think of things in a new way. But tell me this, how would social justice organizations get in contact with disability justice organizations that they would be willing to work with?

(typing noises) (laughs) Now that is a good question, and I am glad you asked it. You can find many of them by searching them on the Internet. But some examples are organizations like Sins Invalid, Disability Justice Culture Club, Disability Justice League, Bay Area, Autistic Women and Non Binary Network, and Krip Hop Nation to name a few. They are all out there.

(typing noises) I will make sure to check all these organizations out! I truly appreciate you schooling me on this.

(typing noises) Anytime, my friend. Anytime. What a pleasant keyboard interaction.

We now go to two friends hiking and discussing the 10 principles of disability justice...

It's nice out here, hey, the sun is shining, birds.

Yeah, absolutely beautiful.

Calms the anxiety, the anxiety of... everything.

Yeah, I find just being around trees calming - these living things that aren't asking anything of you, they're not looking at you, but you know, it’s nice.

That fresh air, I just--I'm pretty sure there are some, like, studies and stuff, on time in nature, time around trees and green spaces having beneficial mental health effects. And the COVID pandemic has been, sort of, anxiety inducing.

Absolutely. Yeah. Say, did you ever read those 10 principles of disability justice? I sent you that link. Ever since I read it, it's been on my mind.

I did read it, and I thought it was really interesting how they don't just correspond directly to the importance of dignity and emancipation for people with disability, but they also have a lot to say, I thought, philosophically about the sort of movements for emancipation more broadly that it'll take to all get free together. So, you know, usually we keep our conversations a little more free form out on the trails, but do you want to just sort of like systematically go through them one by one together and talk about what they mean?

Oh, yeah. I would love that. A bit of a numbered list on this walk? Why not? Who says we can't? So yeah, number one, intersectionality. It's a good one to put at the start and I feel like really drives home that everyone with a disability is also someone coming from a particular place of race, or class, or different gender identities, or sexual orientation. It’s always important to keep that kind of stuff in mind. Right?

Right. Everyone's made up of intersections of different things that they have experienced, and identity and context and the way that we relate to each other, through that difference, that's something that can be generative. The kaleidoscope of difference and how these things connect to one another is something that I think is, like, a good place to root our analysis. So we're not flattening differences and sort of forgetting the things that make us what we are.

And, yeah. And when I was thinking about intersectionality and disabilities specifically, it occurred to me, I had never thought about it this way before, but a lot of the ways in which people express bigoted thoughts against people of all kinds of different groups have these underlying abelist assumptions to them. Like, if you think about basic sexism--men have these certain capabilities, you know, “men are naturally better at this, men are naturally better at that” - so therefore should rule over them, to them that justifies it like, “oh, it's not just that I dislike women, it's that women have less ability”. Or you see similar things in the way that, like, IQ gets used to disparage people of certain groups. Even the way that they'll say, like, certain gender identities are mental illnesses. The ways in which people are denigrated for belonging to all these various different groups have intersections with the way that the general public is already conceptualizing differences of abilities as that kind of hierarchy.

Right. So, yeah, it's not just that disability is another intersection on the way that we think about all these intersecting oppressions, but that these hierarchical ways of thinking about ability, sort of, in fact, the way that other hierarchical modes of thought propagate themselves are based on these premises of there being a continuum of ability where people who are less able are then less worthy of time, attention, respect, and so on - these hateful sort of hierarchical modes of thought get framed as being matters of ability.

Yeah, it relies on ableist assumptions to argue in favor of these other injustices.

Yeah, that's fascinating. So, I think the second one is the leadership of the most impacted.

Yeah. Because you would want to look to those people. Because like, when I think about disability justice, it can sometimes feel a bit overwhelming. There's so many variations in what people's access needs are, what people can or can't do or what they need in order to do things, that it feels overwhelming. And it's like, oh, how can I account for all of this? And it's like, well, you know, I don't necessarily have to account for all of it. I just have to listen to and take leadership from the people who are the most impacted by it.

It reminds me too of - I've got friends who are on the autism spectrum and I'd heard of organizations that their whole spiel is like, they need to cure autism or something like that. I didn't really get this impression of them being, like, this bad organization. It seemed like they were interested in helping autistic people, but it was actually my friends who are autistic, who are like, no, this is a fucked up organization. They're saying that neurodiversity, that people with different modes of thought, and different ways of relating to the world, need to be cured medically of the things that make them who they are. Hearing that direct perspective of people who have autism, and how they were affected by the way that this organization talked about them - it really opened up a space in me to sort of recognize neurodiversity in a new way, that sort of like, medical gaze of trying to fix people instead of asking whether it's the people who should be fixed or it's the society around them that should be fixed, to make room for all the difference of humanity. That's something that I've gotten personally through that process of leadership with the most impacted. And it's the same principle that applies anywhere within movements for justice. Who knows better the inhumanity of landlords than renters, who knows better the structural issues with the housing system than people who are unhoused. I feel like leadership of the impacted reminds us as a principle to look towards those sorts of voices who have that direct firsthand experience.

Yeah, absolutely. And what you're just saying about landlords and people being housed, it reminded me of number three on the disability justice principles - anti-capitalist politics. Capitalism expects people to be good workers who can show up 40 hours a week in all kinds of different situations, and it's not very flexible for people who have different access needs, but it's also based on this idea of working people as much as possible, and measuring them up to this impossible standard of the most possible work you can squeeze out of an individual. By putting that lens on people and that sort of value system on people, the whole capitalist system creates this systematic devaluing of people who have differences in what they're able to do and how much they're able to produce.

Even with, like, regulations saying people with disabilities need to be offered jobs and stuff, workplaces are always finding ways to sneakily remove people from the work pool. I was reading on Twitter about libraries saying that, you know, everyone needs to be able to carry 50 pound boxes. It’s not that actually the workplace requires everyone in this job to constantly be carrying 50 pound boxes, but it's used as a way to basically filter out people who might be in a wheelchair or have other access, when it's totally possible to have enough people with an organization capable of doing that, to carry that part of the work for everyone and have those other people specialized on other tasks.

Even things like three strike policies... on like... oh, if you miss three shifts, you're fired. Like having inflexible schedules--certain people aren't able to make every shift because they have different disabilities that might flare up on certain days and not on other days, so they need a bit more flexibility with their schedule. These things that affect everyone in capitalism negatively, this pushing of people, squeezing the most out of them possible, pushing even the most able-bodied people beyond what would be a reasonable amount of work to ask from them ends up affecting people with disabilities the most and first. And just excluding them in a lot of instances from being able to participate in institutions or in, like, productive, creative fields of all kinds.

Right. That comes most noticeably and most cruelly, first for people with disabilities, but it also sort of comes for everyone - as long as we are cogs within a machine of profit, rather than people with passions, families, desires, and so on, no person is valid to the system. Everyone is a replaceable piece. And this framework really helps contextualize the interconnectedness of the struggles of people with disabilities, including invisible disabilities and people who are neurodiverse, to the struggles of people not in those categories under capitalism.

What was number four again?

Cross-movement solidarity.

Oh, right, right, right. Cross-movement solidarity.

So you have the basic idea behind this - I mean, from the disability justice perspective - is that the movement for disability justice will be strengthened by working together and integrating with movements for queer liberation, movements that challenge racism, environmental justice, opposition to police violence, support for prison abolition, and the whole spectrum of these movements for human emancipation and all their different forms. They're strengthened by being able to work together in ethical solidarity to challenge the systems that oppress all of us.

Yeah, understanding intersectionality, and even understanding the anticapitalist politics of disability justice gives us more of an understanding of how all these things are connected, but then cross-movement solidarity is about saying, because they're all connected, we should all work together. Our various movements for various types of justice will be stronger if there's a united front and then, oh yeah - number five. One of my favorite principles of disability justice. Recognizing wholeness.

Yeah. It's a bit of a passion of mine also to think about wholeness in this way. There's the concept that people aren't reducible to single aspects of themselves, or they're not reducible to how they fit within a capitalist profit framework, or are not reducible to how they fit in any particular context, but people are actually people. Every person has that depth and wholeness that we can all very easily recognize in ourselves, that same wholeness exists in everyone. We're the product of all the experiences of our life, and everyone has both basic needs and non basic needs and desires and passions, and there's so many ways that different types of wholeness, reflecting the differences, not just between people, but within people, is denied. And from that we lose ways to understand and love each other and ourselves.

And when you look at the way that disability has been talked about throughout history, and I think the way that a lot of, like, ableist assumptions lead us to sometimes think about disability, this idea that people aren't whole, or they're missing something, you know. When you think about it, if you lost one of your kidneys, would you no longer be a full, complete human being anymore? Because there's some physical bit of you “missing”. You're not any less of a person for any of these reasons. We're all full people and we're all fuller people when we're conceptualizing of ourselves as part of a complete whole society together, a complimentary whole where we can rely on one another and depend on one another to meet each other's needs. Yeah, it's just a, it's a really, like, profound concept to think through the different layers of the implications of what that means - to recognize the wholeness of people.

Hey, before we systematically go through the second half of this list, do you want to take a break for lunch? I brought a couple vegan gluten-free sandwiches. I wasn't sure what your dietary needs were.

That’s so thoughtful! Yeah, no, thanks.

It’s very good too.

I love that idea. Gettin’ through half of them and then just taking a break, you know. We can pace ourselves. There's no reason to rush through all 10 of these in a row. We can go through them at a pace that makes sense for us. So let's, yeah, have some lunch.

In the article you wrote for Harbinger- which, when I read I was honestly kind of blown away by it- how much these disability justice ideas connect to ideas in social ecology that I value. I was wondering what attracted you to social ecology as a political program, as opposed to anarchism, marxism, and other potentials? How can we synthesize the wisdom of social ecology, and the wisdom of the disability justice movement?

I think social ecology meshes well with disability justice because of their shared principles of being anti-capitalist, focused on mutual aid, and being concerned about sustainability. I wrote a grad school paper and also did a presentation about the shared values between the two political programs. I was attracted to social ecology because I agreed with the idea that our unhealthy domination of the world around us was intrinsically linked to our unhealthy domination of our fellow human beings. The existence of unhealthy hierarchy as you know was one of the impetus of Murray Bookchin to begin developing the political program of social ecology. According to Bookchin, hierarchy developed when the elderly had started setting themselves as a higher group above the young. Well, how did these social phenomena come about? Well according to Bookchin, the elderly in hunter and gathering communities were afraid that if they got weak and frail with age they would be less valuable to their communities because of that. However, wouldn't that frailty be considered a disability if you think about it? So Bookchin is saying elderly people in hunter gathering societies instituted hierarchy in their communities because they were afraid of being discarded from their communities because of their disabilities. To take it a step further, why did they know that they were going to get discarded? It must be a tradition to discard anyone with an infirmity out of the hunter gathering community and the elderly in those communities invented their revered status to not become like other disabled people that were born in the tribe. So Bookchin was slightly incorrect, hierarchy didn’t exactly start with the elderly acquiring an exalted status themselves, but when hunter and gathering communities started discarding those born with infirmities from their group.

So I think to wrap up both Disability Justice and social ecology advocate for us to build communities that are more ecological, sustainable and egalitarian and I am ideologically aligned with those values. Libertarian municipalism can have the potential to empower people with disabilities to organize more effectively on the local level and activate for change that could spread across a confederation of cities and regions. It’s worth a try because as you know we’re more effective making political changes if we start advocating for those changes in our local level.

The point that you raise about how the gerontocracy theory of hierarchy connects to people’s fear- potentially grounded fears of being discarded because of their lack of “productivity” is such a brilliant point. I really, really appreciate you raising that, ‘cause it’s such an interesting twist on that theory to point out the institutionalization of theory in that context could be a response to the hierarchies of valuing or not valuing people based on their productivity…

Yes, thank you.

Disability Justice poses this really interesting tension between the logic of capitalism, which considers people useful commodities based on their ability to generate profit, and wholeness, which recognizes people as whole beings, who are not defined by their productivity, but instead by their community, personhood, passion, love, and all the many things which make us human. How does capitalism reject the wholeness of human beings, and how does disability justice critique capitalism?

Capitalism desires everyone in the laboring class to work to be productive for those that have capital. As a result those that cannot labor and produce in a satisfactory way to the capitalist will get labeled as ‘less worthy.’ This is the predicament that many people with disabilities find themselves. The disability community still has a high unemployment rate even with the ADA that should have officially ended employment discrimination for people with disabilities. This is at a time when our society has the assistive technology and the accommodations to allow people with disabilities to do many jobs. So we need to ask ourselves why that is. In Marta Russell and Ravi Malhorta’s 2002 article entitled, “Capitalism and Disability”, in the Socialist Register it states that employers are not willing to take on the non-standard costs to hire people with disabilities and do not want to deviate from the normal mode of production. It also says later in the article that corporations find it more profitable to have people with disabilities in nursing homes than living independently in the community. Disability Justice critiques this systematic devaluing of disabled people by specifically stating with the fifth principle of disability justice of recognizing wholeness that every disabled person is a whole human being and should be treated and respected as such. Of course, the third principle of disability justice is having an anti-capitalist politics that actively rejects the normative levels of productivity that capitalism requires. So as it stands now true liberation for disabled people will necessitate the abolishment of capitalism.

Ooh. Yes. hahaha. I can't wait to make maximum capitalist profit...hahaha... at all costs!

You know, my favorite way to make profit is to squeeze every little bit of work out of everyone that I possibly can. You know, I really, I really treat people as means to an end. They're kind of like tools that I use up..

Yes! I like using people, and squeezing every bit of profit from them I can.

(evil laughter) I mean, after all, at our individual moral failing, it’s the system that--

You know, what plots do you all have in the works to make sure that none of your workers aren't maximally productive? You know, one of my favorite work requirements to put in is: “Must be able to lift 50 pound boxes.” You know.. heh..

Think of all the people that excludes!

Oh yeah. And you can evade those pesky regulations.

Yes. And you can never slow the rate of production or modify it so a person with a disability can join the workforce. The rate of production is like Divine Law: It can’t be changed for anything, even the climate.

Oh, yeah, couldn't have said it better myself. It's like a Divine Law. No, I can't lose those precious profits.

If we had a workplace that mutually supported people with differences of ability to speak to their various strengths. Well, that wouldn't be very profit maximizing at all! We need homogenous worker drones.

Yes, definitely. I am all for drones. Humans have the unfortunate disposition of needing time off to care for themselves and their families and friends. And they have the gall to want to have fun, and do recreation. I don't have time for any of that! Cuts into my profit margins!

Yeah, that! That's what life’s about. Life is about maximizing those little numbers. (Sarcastic scoff) Recreation?! It's like, uh, excuse me, I've got profit to make. Sleep at night? Ha! What are you talking about? That has nothing to do with me and my rapacious collection of capital. So just keep that to yourself; not welcome in my workplace.

And what I always say to workers who ask for time off for their family and friends, I say, “do you not see how much worse you're making yourself look compared to a machine right now?” Come on! Like you're a worker machine to me. Go generate some profit!

You know what I tell my workers who asked for time off? Uh, “You're fired!”(all capitalists laugh)

... Just kidding....I mean, I'll often let them stay for awhile, but I give them a series of warnings.

It is their fault for not working hard enough!

Yeah. I mean, in the business community, we talk about if someone gets injured on the job, cut them loose as soon as possible because they are not going to be generating profit at that same level anymore. Replace them with another person like a cog. (laughs) But I think that doesn't even go far enough. I think the long game is to replace all human beings. With robots.

Yes! Automate everything!

Oh, Yeah! That would be the dream. Having some real robot drones to do all the work. And we could just…

Mhmm

..dispose of everyone.

Yes, absolutely. Robotics are superior to humans in every way. I don't have to worry about making accommodations for a drone. They don't need access needs, or paid sick leave. They just work 24/7, such a dream!

Oh, that's mine too! When I have a dream like that, I'm a sound little capitalist, sleeping with a big smile on my face. Wonderful, restful sleep.

And I'm sure this is all of our dream too, but I just want to clarify: when we implement these robots to do all the work, we're still going to keep all the profit for us. This isn't about, you know, spreading that out to everybody at that point or anything... you know... some people have that dream, and that's a weird, wrong dream.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's also important to say that there's going to be a long period that, you know, having partial automation and partial workers and the..and we can really use that opportunity to squeeze every little, last bit of profit out of every person. Make sure that they know they have to compete with inhuman 24/7 machines, and they need to drop every aspect of their own humanity (giggles), all their wholeness, and just completely make that subservient to my needs as a profit-generating capitalist. But I mean, we all know that I don't need to-

Absolutely, I couldn't agree more! Not everyone has that strong work ethic, but “to the most productive goes the spoils,” I always say.

Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. We're so productive.

Commanding people around. Not everyone can do it. And you know, I know us profit-seeking capitalists, don't open up a lot to each other. We're more “brag about our spoils and our victories and our domination of others,” but I just have a bit of a personal question for everyone. If you had to pick between, say your own children, your own family, the people that you love and care about... your parents who raised you, the community you're a part of, and even the biosphere in which we all live. And just keeping up this sort of rapacious, addictive search for profit. I mean, which do you think you would choose?

I choose the profit. Absolutely. I have so much more billions to make!

Like you said, we don't share our inner feelings a lot. And to let you both in on a little secret, I've already made this choice. In my pursuit of profit, I've already discarded everyone to the side, over and over again. That's actually how I got here in the first place, so... who cares about them, right? I got those numbers in the bank account.

Yes, a man after my own heart! You made the right decisions that put you on top. Who needs family and friends, anyway?

You guys ever see other people having, like rich, familial connections, friends who support them... recognizing sort of the indisposability of everyone and the wholeness of others and just... feel absolutely no...jealousy for that at all, because you're so confident that you've made the right choices? (Uncertain laughter)

Yeah I-

I know I am...I feel that a lot. Spending through human beings as if they're just completely disposable machines. That's what brings me joy. Definitely not personal connections with my children, especially not my son, who I don't miss…(confused chuckle).. at all.

I relate so much. I feel so much non jealousy and so much non loneliness. And I don't feel any sadness. I don't feel any pain, nothing bad. The only thing I feel is disgust at everyone who doesn't agree with me.

Numbness of my heart is something I truly embrace as my wealth skyrockets.

(pure admiration) Ah, it's beautiful. It's just beautiful.

It's poetry.

All right. Well, I'm off to go issue some orders. Thanks for this chat. It's great to commiserate with like-minded friends. Or not--I wouldn't really call you friends. I'd call you… ‘acquaintances... with whom I share some... agreeable thoughts’, maybe.

I was going to say, yeah, I'm going to go to go ruthlessly compete with you both on the marketplace and.. may the best ruthless leader win and completely crush the other two of us (laughs) as per the incentives.

Yes, I will enjoy crushing both of you with my superior companies and business dealings.

You think, you think you' re going to crush me? (scoffs) That's just-- cause I almost said friends! Don't think I've gone soft. I'm going to crush both of you!

Oh, you’ve gone soft!

no--

You’ve gone soft. He thinks he has a friend in the world. Not like me!

I don't have friends, I'm the crusher. I crush.

Well, you will be crushed, in my opinion. And I will be the crusher, and it will be nothing but me and this barren planet that was once a fertile place, and my sweet, sweet profits. (laughs)

Actually, it will be me as the sole survivor, languishing on this barren planet, counting my trillions.

Oh, it's still counting your own money? (patronizing laughter) Just kidding, just kidding.

I'm going to get to that barren planet before any of you! Race you there!

Until then! Stay well, my distant acquaintances

Disability Justice, as a movement, was founded as a rejection of some more mainstream currents of the disability rights movement. What do you see as the problem with the mainstream disability rights movement and how did the disability justice movement come into being?

So disability justice was formed by disability activists who saw issues not being addressed by the mainstreamed disability rights movement because of issues of racism, sexism, and homophobia and wanted to create a movement that would be more inclusive of all disabled people. Because as you see from history the leaders of the original disabled rights movement was mostly white. History also does not adequately highlight the contributions of people of color to the disability rights movement. Like people do not know about Brad Lomax, who was a Black Panther, and got the party to support the 504 sit-in demonstrations in San Francisco with food and supplies.

So the activists who originally started the disability justice praxis wanted a more intersectional analysis when it came to the movement. So this original collective hatched out the original framework of disability justice in the Bay Area during the mid-2000s and they included some renowned thinkers such as Patty Berne, Leroy Moore, Stacey Milbern-Park, Eli Claire, Mia Mingus, and Sebastian Margaret. They saw disability justice as the next step of disability rights and developed the ten disability justice principles. Later the artist collective of Sins Invalid organized the first Disability Justice primer which explained in concise language the political project.

Something that is interesting to me about disability justice in particular, is how there’s so much diversity within disability. A person who is unable to walk and a person who cannot see have really experiences of disability, for example. So there’s many different iterations of disability. How do you think these differences shape disability justice as a political theory and practice? It seems to me that the logic of navigating differences within disability types is connected to some of the 10 principles of disability justice.

Yes, of course, absolutely. Even the original disability rights movement had to collaborate with a diverse amount of people with disabilities with many different forms of impairments and negotiate on a set of demands on society that will benefit the whole community. The diverseness of the disability community was also central to the formation of the disability justice movement as well. We see with the seventh disability justice principle of being committed to cross-disability solidarity it is core to the praxis to be inclusive of every facet of the disability community in building this movement. It is really a mentality of none of us are free until we all are free.

This makes me think too- I mean, based on my experiences on the left more broadly, I can imagine disputes arising out of, sort of, who is more or less disabled than one another, who is more authentically disabled, and so on. It seems almost inevitable to me that this sort of thing would come up, knowing what I know about people and seeing other left spaces. How does disability justice navigate these sorts of issues?

Well I think disability justice does a good job not using the able-bodied lens to evaluate people within the disability community. With disability justice principles like leadership of the most impacted and recognizing the wholeness in everyone, it moves us from seeing people through the gaze of able-bodied normativity to seeing people as the whole valuable humans they actually are. So, we shouldn’t be arguing about who is more disabled because that is an argument that gets us nowhere. But we should be doing that cross-disability organizing and networking so we all will get free together.

We now go to two non-debate bros having a difficult discussion…

Bro, look- I am all for intersectionality. All for social justice, bro. You know me. I’m a brocialist. I like to crush brews and seize the means of production, bro. But ableism? Disability justice bro? Isn’t that just like a minor issue bro? Doesn’t that affect just a small group of people bro? Shouldn’t we focus on broader issues bro?

No Bro, you got it all wrong. Disability Justice should be at the core of any social justice project. Getting all people access to what they need is a universal struggle bro, and not even able-bodied or neurotypical people in this society get access to everything they need.

And don’t forget that people with disabilities are 15% of the world’s population. Almost everyone experiences some kind of disability--whether temporary or permanent--over the course of their lifetime bro, and just because someone isn’t disabled now doesn’t mean they will never have a disability in the future. Not to mention how many people have disabilities they don’t even think of as disabilities, bro.

So no, it’s not a minor issue bro, and even if it was less common than it is, that wouldn’t justify leaving them out in our organizing strategies. Also, Capitalism has a long history of marginalizing people with disabilities bro. They barred people with disabilities from public streets in cities in the U.S. And then people with disabilities were locked away in institutions, which were horrible to be in and denied them agency.

I hear all that bro, but what about all this about the leadership of the most impacted and recognizing wholeness, bro. It sounds like some mumbo to me.

No it isn’t Bro! You got it all wrong! Only by listening to those that are most impacted by those that are most impacted by systems of oppression like Ableism and fatphobia will we learn the strategies and tactics to dismantle them. People who are impacted by injustice get the clearest, starkest view of just how that injustice functions, and are the most motivated to seek real answers for how to overcome these injustices. Leadership of the most impacted is just another way of saying that we should follow the lead of the people who’ve put the most thought into these issues and have the most experience with them.

And we need to recognize the wholeness of every human being no matter what their disabilities or abilities are. Bro, silly example, but like, I can’t sing as well as you can, but that doesn’t make me any less whole as a person, bro. We all have different abilities, and different needs - and acting like variations on that spectrum make some people any less full, whole, people is whack bro. Everyone should be validated in their humanity and should have their voice and expressions heard.

Ok, you make good points. I got to hand it to you there, bro. But what about cross-movement solidarity? Why does disability Justice have to be connected to other social movements? What is the connection with disability justice and sustainability, bro?

Bro, are you serious right now. Disability Justice has to have cross-movement solidarity because disability is an issue in every movement. We all have multiple identities inside us bro, and people’s disabled identities intersect with their racial identity, their gender identity, their sexuality, their class, and their religion. And they have to deal with the oppression that comes from those identities, bro. We can’t talk about racial justice without discussing how people of color with disabilities, especially black, brown, and indigenous disabled people are disproportionately abused and murdered by police. We can’t talk about environmental justice without talking about how people with disabilities will be adversely affected by the coming ecological collapse. We all need to talk about sustainability because we need to work and live at a pace that works for everyone and for the ecological system, in which we all live. Capitalism demands constant production and growth, and this demand stresses not just our bodies but our planet. We can’t disentangle this struggle from the others, bro, disability justice is really just justice in the end, bro. It is all connected.

Isee. That is true, you are right, bro. But tell me this, how can there even be a disability justice movement when each disability is so unique and have completely different needs, bro? If people are focused on their own individual disabilities, and not the needs of most people, won’t that just cause, like, a lot of infighting and fracturing, bro?

That’s why you have to have cross disability solidarity and interdependence to have a real disability justice movement, bro. It would not work unless you have different sections of the disability community who have different impairments working together moving towards collective liberation. Think about how much more work the LGBTQ community has been able to accomplish by fighting for the rights of all gender and sexual minorities in solidarity rather than merely the rights of one segment or another. Cross-disability solidarity is necessary for us all to get our needs met together bro, including everyone, no matter their specific abilities or needs. We got to rely on each other to survive. No non-gender conforming person, woman, or man is an island!

Bro I gotta admit- I’m just- I’m getting schooled right now. I appreciate you taking the time bro, this is really helping me get this for the first time. One more question, bro? You just mentioned collective liberation before, how do you define that and how do you explain collective access as well.

Bro let me tell you. Collective access is making sure the needs of our community members are met so we can have a more harmonious relationship. We all have access needs bro, we just need to learn how to express them. Also, collective liberation is when we all get free. Freedom to live as we desire as our intersectional, whole, complete selves!

Wow this is amazing bro, I didn’t know all this stuff about disability justice! Thank you for telling me about this, you’re a real bro.

Anytime man! Glad I could be of help!

And that was two non-debate bros having a productive discussion about disability.

We now go to the Wrongtown poetry cafe…

Alright, how is everyone doin’ tonight? Alright, hold on to your cups of tea everyone, and your biscuits. Next up we’ve got a special guest poet, Lateef McLeod who will be sharing some of his poetry with us.

(typing on Proloquo2go) Ready… With… My… First… Poem. Ready with my first poem.I am too pretty for some Ugly Laws

I am not suppose to be here in this body, here speaking to you. My mere presence of erratic moving limbs and drooling smile used to be scrubbed off the public pavement. Ugly laws used to be on many U.S. cities’ law books, beginning in Chicago in 1867, stating that “any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, or an improper person to be allowed in or on the streets, highways, thoroughfares, or public places in this city, shall not therein or thereon expose himself to public view, under the penalty of $1 for each offense.” Any person who looked like me was deemed disgusting and was locked away from the eyes of the upstanding citizens.I am too pretty for some Ugly Laws, Too smooth to be shut in. Too smart and eclectic for any box you put me in. My swagger is too bold to be swept up in these public streets. You can stare at me all you want. No cop will buss in my head and carry me away to an institution. No doctor will diagnose me a helpless invalid with an incurable disease. No angry mob with clubs and torches will try to run me out of town.

Whatever you do, my roots are rigid like a hundred-year-old tree. I will stay right here to glare at your ugly face too.

(typing on Proloquo2go) Now… I… Will…. Read… The… Second… Poem. Now I will read the second poem.

Why are you scared of me?

As a child I knew I was good, adorable, and safe. Because that was what my parents told me, that was what my grandma told me, that was what my physical therapist told me, that was what my teachers told me. So I believed it. I rolled around in my power wheelchair with my head held high and knew I was God’s child, blessed with promise.

But the vision that I had of myself was not always reflected back in the eyes of others. From an early age people used to stare at me and bore their eyes in the back of my skull, like I was some freak, some monster whose face is too grotesque to look at.I grew up with kids who gawked at my gangly limbs squirming in my chair with an unease that never went away. The kids’ taunts taught lessons of how I was out of place in their space. Malicious words sprung off their tongues and crashed into my eardrums, along with their hate and indifference.

Why you fear me? Why you freak out whenever I am around? What is it about the sight of me that makes you cringe? Is it because when you look at me you see a reminder of your own fragility? The fact that one day your body will go weak and die decomposing into dust.Or do you fear me for my skin? The smooth maroon encasing of my body, illicit fears that I might kick you, hit you, roll over you in my wheelchair. Am I that nappy-headed criminal that makes you clutch your purse as you walk past me?

Do you secretly wish that a police officer come and bust in my head and take me to jail, or better yet, put a bullet in my heart to stop the enraged monster you see me as?

Or do you see me as a freak? A monster whose body medicine cannot fix. Whose body cannot be loved, cannot be sexually desired. Cannot provide a woman with her physical, emotional, spiritual, and sexual needs. Why does a woman emasculate me with her gaze?

Do you see my body as only acceptable if rehabilitated? If I work on a surgical or therapeutic way to fix me, then you will embrace me with open arms, because then I will be just like you? That may look like a happy ending to you, but you will never know why you are really scared of me.

That was Lateef McLeod, everyone. He has two books of poetry: A Declaration of a Body of Love, and Whispers of Krip Love, Shouts of Krip Revolution, both available online.

Well that’s all for this week, but join us next time for the Wrongtown poetry cafe...

Yummy yummy. Those sandwiches really hit the spot.

Yeah, that was a great lunch.

So, I guess let's keep moving. You know, it's good to get a little exercise when you’ve got a full belly, get that body moving.

Just don't make me run with a full stomach. I like to let it settle, but a nice little walk I feel like helps get things moving.

Y’know, come as you are. Whatever pace you want.

Oh, yeah, pace. That's a great point - leads right into, if you want to get back to the list, number six is Sustainability. And if you look at the Sins Invalid description of all these, the first thing it says under sustainability, is “we learn to pace ourselves, individually and collectively, to be sustained long-term”. That idea of pacing ourselves, it ties back into capitalism pushing people to go faster and harder and faster and harder. Whereas disability justice is saying no, we can pace ourselves individually to what our own capabilities are, and also as a society, we should pace ourselves, because all of this production, it has negative effects on the environment, to be constantly growing the economy, needing more. The demands of capitalist society are against that sort of reasonable pace.

The connection between the unreasonably harsh demands being placed on our biosphere, leading to collapse, and the way that we, as activists, can put on reasonable demands on ourselves, being our own private little manager, to the point where we push ourselves to collapse. That's something that I value deeply and that I see it articulated unfortunately rarely. The premise that we need to take care of ourselves by pacing ourselves. I think that's an invaluable lesson.

Absolutely. I think a lot of the time in activist spaces, those kinds of expectations are us unconsciously replicating that capitalist demand for doing too much, demanding too much of ourselves - and it ends up burning us out.

Yeah, and they use this phrase “a deep, slow, transformative, unstoppable way of justice and liberation”. You know, I'm often really beating myself up over needing to take time to relax and not always being able to just work at this breakneck speed. So, just the thought that the movement of justice and liberation could be something that's deliberate and slow, and as a result, unstoppable, is something that speaks to me.

Uh, yeah me too.

The seventh principle, a commitment to cross-disability solidarity.

When you think about cross movement solidarity between people organizing for other types of justice, on a bigger scale, but also within the disability justice movement, there should be solidarity between all the variations that you find within that, because there is a very big spectrum of what disability can mean and what different disability identities can mean for people's lives, and-

This connects also a little bit into, I mean, they all sort of interconnect, but the next one, number eight is interdependence. And the way that cross-disability solidarity and interdependence interconnect is sort of interesting.

If you had a very siloed disability justice movement, smaller pods of more specified disabilities, all working individually, versus the power that can be unlocked by coming together, to work with each other and for each other and advocating for each other, and that sense of ethical solidarity across those differences, it unlocks all of this complementarity between different perspectives and then there's insights that come from being in different places on the spectrum, all working together as a cohesive whole, to be something again that generates more capacity to have a greater effect with less effort being forced on individual people. But also, interdependence applies on an even larger level in society in the way that we, in communities, through most of human history, as far as I can tell - it's been the norm that people would be able to work together as a more cohesive whole, you know, to make sure that no one's cup metaphorically gets too empty by all filling in for each other. And when someone needs to take the day off, there's someone else that's going to be able to take their space.

Yeah, the sort of fantasies of right-wing libertarians aside, no individual person can exist on their own without being in relation to others, without the help of society. You know, in the end, we all depend on us, in order to get by. A lot of the time the sort of individualist capitalist mentality can obscure that, but it's all an illusion because again, we all rely on us. Nobody is completely independent from anyone else. We're all whole people as individuals, but we all require other whole people, other individuals, to get our needs met. And that's beautiful.

It also connects to sustainability because one of the really material ways in which we're all interdependent on one another is that we share a biosphere together and we all rely on the health of ecological systems for our own health.

Right yeah. The liberation of people within communities to help each other is tied up in the liberation of all living systems on the planet, the interdependence between people and environment, the interconnections between the social crisis and the ecological crisis, are brought to the forefront by thinking about this type of interdependence.

Absolutely. Yeah, I don't want to skip number nine - collective access, but what you just said really, uh, hits too on number 10 - collective liberation, and that our liberations are connected.

Yeah. And collective access as a principle, the sort of idea that access needs aren't something that is shameful to talk about. It's not a compromise to your dignity or your autonomy to ask for the needs that you have, and to have a community that you know is going to try to make sure that you can be part of processes that desire and focus being put to make sure that no one is left behind. So one of the ways that this is done, sometimes, is going around the circle and having everyone in the circle say what their access needs are. If there are any access needs that aren't met, but also if all of their access needs are met to say, “my access needs are met”. And it might seem like a little thing, but the difference between making needs being met an invisible and unspoken thing that's happening underneath the surface, where people whose access needs are met are sort of like, oh, “I don't have any accessibility needs”. And it's like, well, actually, everyone has access needs. Everyone has barriers to participation. If we were having this meeting in a room with no oxygen, you wouldn't be doing well, it's just that your access needs are already met.

Yeah. Like you're in a room on the second floor of a building, but there's no stairs to it… you know... (laughs) You know, for me having stairs up to there, that meets my access needs. I can walk up the stairs, but some people need a ramp or an elevator. Pretty much every building with two floors is going to have stairs, but that doesn't mean that someone didn't have to build those stairs, that someone didn't have to create the thing that lets me access the second floor, that was a need that existed. It just tends to get met by default in society.

So putting it in the context where people whose access needs are met are made part of a process where they say out loud, my access needs are met, not as a shame or stigma or something, and we want everyone's access needs. But to, to--

--acknowledge that they exist in the first place; that you have them.

Yeah. And it just, I haven't been placed in a position where I've had to say that before, but even just thinking about what it means to say that it's, I don't know, it opened up a space in me to see things in a different way.

You mentioned collective liberation...

What does liberation even mean? Or what does freedom mean in a context where you have it, but others don't. If you don't have a broad based movement of all power to all the people, liberation for everyone, it's not really liberation. It's just domination of some over others.

I think the general principle, if we move together and we think about the interconnectedness, the interdependence of all of us, with cross-ability organizing, cross-organizational solidarity, in respect of that sort of flourishing of differentiation, with all the varieties of humanness that comes out of the process of natural history, people have mixed abilities, across different genders, sexualities, races, and ethnicity. To create a vision that doesn't leave anyone behind, embodying all the principles that we've discussed. Collective liberation is another way to say universal human emancipation. That's what real liberation would look like.

Absolutely. Thank you for going through all 10 of these with me, because I feel like my understanding of them has been deepened just by talking with you about it.

And likewise, you've helped me think about it in some new ways, on our little stroll and chat here, surrounded by the beautiful big trees in the Pacific Northwest.

Ooh, look at that. The sun's starting to set and the sky is turning orange. It's beautiful.

I'm actually colorblind.

Oh yeah, (quietly) ...shit.

It's totally fine. No, it's really fine. I'm not, I'm not trying to like- I can sort of see it.

But is the sunset beautiful to you, would you say?

Yeah. Yeah. It's-- it's beautiful. I don't mind you asking, but yeah, it's, it's always been part of who I am, I guess. There's like video games I play and stuff. I go into the menu and I click the color blind option and it makes it easier to tell the good guys from the bad guys and stuff like that. But, I don't think I've ever thought of it as a disability, but I think, I mean, it is.

Yeah, absolutely. It seems like, especially in cases where people are using color to convey information, if they're not careful to do so in ways that people who are color blind can still make out the difference, it's going to limit your ability to access that information that they're trying to convey.

Feels silly talking about video games a lot but there's an increasing norm within video games to increase accessibility and to make sure that more people are able to participate in the fun of the games, and not just people with colorblindness, but other disabilities as well. And I think that's just awesome because yeah, it's just, what's the point if we can’t have fun?

When I look at disability justice resources and ideas as a whole- I see some big themes. One is a commitment to care for one another, to accommodate the needs of a variety of positions- with measures like ensuring accessibility information about events, ASL interpreters, and other similar accessibility concerns. And the other is to celebrate ourselves and celebrate humanity in all of it’s diversity. To see our differences- including limitations- as part of what makes us beautiful and whole as people and as a species and as communities. Why do you think these principles of access, and the celebration of these differences, is so fundamental to the future of the left?

Because we need to imagine a world that is accessible and welcoming for everyone. It has been said before and it’s true that the disability group is the only minority group that anyone can enter through injury or sickness at any time. Also, as we saw in the commercials associated with the Paralympics, about fifteen percent of the total human population has some sort of disability. That is one billion people. We can build a whole that is more accessible and welcoming to everyone if we get away from this unhealthy fetish we have with the able body and mind and if we realize the intrinsic value of everyone no matter how their body or mind is constructed. We should naturally want to include everyone and addressing accessible needs is a key in part in making that happen. Everyone has access needs. Everyone might be a little tired or have to go to the bathroom in the middle of a meeting, or might have to take a call to check on a sick loved one. So it makes perfect sense for the left to include disabled people and politics in their organizing and analysis.

This has been an awesome, super thought-provoking conversation today. I really appreciate you taking the time to join us. Before we wrap up, what is the big thing you’d like people to take away about Disability Justice?

We can’t have true liberation of all people without disability justice. The left really needs to pay attention to disabled revolutionaries and intellectuals who are doing the work of educating the populace. We are out here and now it is time to build with us the library socialism disability justice future that we all desire and deserve. Also I encourage everyone to check out my podcast Black Disabled Men Talk, where I discuss topics like this with my co-hosts Leroy Moore, Keith Jones, and Ottis Smith.

Awesome, well, thanks again. This has been such a great conversation.

Thank you for the opportunity. I am excited to hear how it turns out.

As we enter this era, that will probably be defined as a time of climate crisis, a time where the things-- the systems that we've known throughout our lives-- to sort of quietly function in the background without major incident...

May become unmoored, may become less reliable. And it's clear that, unfortunately, political leadership--anywhere in the world that I can tell-- is not up to the task of tackling this climate crisis that we face. And it seems to me that the principles of disability justice are going to become increasingly relevant as we need to find ways to come together in interdependence to take care of one another and create new ways of forming communities that are capable of surviving and thriving in turbulent and uncertain times.

We'll have links in the description to further readings on this topic, to some of the places you can read Lateef’s writing. And as always, thank you for your time and attention today, thinking about the issues that we're thinking about. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, well, and I guess, uh, without much further ado, we're going to end this one. Close it down for the day, for the week. I mean, there's one more sketch, but after that, that's it.

If it were only possible to make infinitely long podcasts, that would just never end, no matter how long you listened to them, god knows we’d try! (both laugh)

Infinite ado. You could just have so much ado. You'd never have to say no more further ado. There would just be, there would always be more ado, but--

Sometimes the further ado must come to an end and--

You know, we need to take breaks sometimes too. We can't just constantly be recording and editing, at the same time, for an infinite length podcast.

Yeah. And just sort of a behind the scenes thing: For like every hour of content you hear, there was multiple hours, sometimes many multiples of hours of work that went into it between research and editing and so on. So... in order to keep it up on an infinite scale, we would need to have, at the very least, have the ability to time travel. Or have parallel universes working alongside each other, somehow feeding research information in real time and editing in real time.

When you think about the demands of infinity, it just doesn't make good sense. And thus, it must come to an end, but we'll be back.

Yeah, we'll definitely be back. At most points in history, if you scroll down in your podcast app right now there will be another episode after this one already. And if there isn't right now, just hold on, it's coming.

And then in that case, you can scroll in the opposite direction. We've done hundreds of episodes--

Absolutely, yeah

--Um, easily, more than half of them are great. You know, earlier on we’re still learning stuff... or ...I didn't need to get self-conscious about it now

We’re still learning about stuff now--we just learned about disability justice. We're always learning stuff!

Like everyone, we're in the process of learning in public and doing as best as we can to share the ideas that we think are important and valuable to as many people as possible.

As always thanks to our generous Patreon community. Your donation of $6 a month, that “sweet six”, is what allows the show to happen. Without you, we wouldn't be able to do it. Everyone who contributes to that is helping us to do the show that we do, with the sketches, in-depth research, the editing, and so on. It takes a lot of time and energy. We think it's worth it. We're glad that you think it's worth it too. And with your support and with the support of listeners, you know, maybe on the fence or have thought about donating and decide that the time is right-- with your continued support, we can continue to make the show that we do. Make more episodes, find more great guests, and do this educational comedy utopian podcasts that we love doing.

We now go to the person whose job it is to smell people at the door...

(Jauntily) Make way! I'm here and I'm ready to smell up the place. (Sniff, sniff). Ooh, ooohhh! that is a nice scent. Wildflower?! I smell amazing!

Whoa, whoa! You can’t come in here, this is a scent-free area, man!

Jealousy of my great scent? Ha! I wish I could say it was the first time I've run into it. Ooh, I just smell so irresistible.

You have too much cologne. And there are people with chemical sensitivities in here that will get sick if they take a whiff of you. Come another day without your cologne.

I mean, if you're feeling jealous, you can just say so. You don't need to make up this stuff about sensitivities or whatever. Do you want a spritz? I can give you a spritz. There's enough to go around. Hey, I'll spritz everyone.

I don’t want you to spray your cologne at me, sir. It will hamper me from doing my job. I have many people with chemical sensitivities in this venue. And if some of them smell you, they can have a seizure. That is not going to happen under my watch! Go home and come another day, not scented.

(whiny) Oh, come on. I think once everyone gets a whiff of me, they're going to be begging for you to let me in because I'm just going to make everything smell so good around me...

Just in several feet in every direction. I'm an asset!

No. In this situation you are more of a liability. Now, I am asking you politely. Please move from the premises. I don't want an altercation this evening.

I'll just... I'll just spritz a little of my cologne past the barrier. And that is just going to clear things up--

You are not going to spritz anything past this barrier!

That way everyone will get a whiff of it. And they'll say, “let them in, let them in. It smells so good!”

It is my job to keep all chemicals scents from this venue, and I take my job seriously. So you are definitely not going in there tonight if I have anything to say about it.

I'm feeling a lot of negativity here. I'm feeling a lot of judgment. Just one little tiny, itsy-bitsy, baby spritz has got you talking to me like this?! You know what? Maybe I'll find a venue that appreciates a cool, ocean-flower-scented person. I won't be coming back. You just lost a participant. So, hope you're happy.

Okay, have fun finding another event! Just don't come back here with that strong cologne.

(Angry) You know what the messed up thing is? It's that I smell good. I smell really good. And you're depriving all of these people of the joy of smelling something good. So that's on your conscience.

Actually, knowing people who won't get sick smelling your cologne will make me sleep like a baby.

Do you have any more ado, or..?

Um, I think, I think I'm out of ado… Bye everybody!

Bye! Just imagine, like, the camera, pulling out, but we're all on stage, like waving at the end of SNL.

Curtains closing, fading to black, all different types of, yeah.. Damn it. That was more ado.(Both laugh)

You can’t stop. Just can't stop with that sweet, sweet, ado.

It's over. I'm hitting stop on the recording right now.