“I don’t just want technical and logistical access. I don’t just want inclusion, I want liberatory access and access intimacy. I want us to not only be able to be part of spaces, but for us to be able to fully engage in spaces. I don’t just want us to get a seat at someone else’s table, I want us to be able to build something more magnificent than a table, together with our accomplices. I want us to be able to be understood and to be able to take part in principled struggle together—to be able to be human together. Not just placated or politely listened to.
“I want this for us and I also want this from us. Because the moment we acknowledge intersectionality, it also means we must acknowledge and face ourselves. Because even within this room and out there on the live stream, there are many, many differences between us and between those that aren’t able to join us here. Some of us are immigrants, some of us are not; some of us are survivors of sexual violence, some of us are not. Some of us benefit from light skinned privilege and/or white passing privilege, some of us do not. Some of us benefit from anti-black racism, or hearing supremacy or a world built for cis people. I want us to do our work so that when people whose oppression benefits us, share their truths or their questions, we can meet them in those conversations. We can join them in principled struggle in conversations about activism, strategy, action, accountability and justice.“
Mia Mingus Quote from: “Disability Justice” is Simply Another Term for Love
Accessibility creates the conditions for us to take care of each other, something that often falls on disabled people to do for other disabled people. As a result, it’s disability mutual aid and care work that can often teach us the most about how accessibility can be made truly useful.
This is why accessibility is deeply connected with the political struggles for disabled people’s rights, autonomy, and leadership. While the Disability Rights Movement has focused on generating laws and policies to protect disabled people from harm, the Disability Justice Movement has been focused instead on the intersecting forms of oppression that disabled BIPOC, queer, and trans experience, sometimes as a result of the overriding whiteness and heteropatriarchy of disability legislation and regulation.
An access need is something a person needs to communicate, learn, and take part in an activity. Everybody has access needs. When your access needs are being met, you’re able to engage on your own terms.
Access needs are the interaction between specific bodyminds and specific physical locations. As such, every venue, site, and space will generate its own unique access needs according to who is using the environment and how.
Questions
- What are ways in which you have cultivated community care in your space?
- What are ways in which you can expand on generating community care amongst the facility & Disabled Artists?
- Crafting an access statement is a way to begin cultivating community care within your organization.