[Ohio-talk] Fwd: A Disability Valentine: Wherever You Are Is Where We Want To Be

Fri Feb 14 16:54:54 UTC 2014

Good morning!
This was sent to me today and it is a wonderful Valentines gift! I wanted to share it with you all.
Happy Valentine's Day!
Suzanne
Please read and share!

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

From: <dcm.aware at gmail.com<mailto:dcm.aware at gmail.com>>
Date: February 14, 2014, 11:49:50 AM EST
To: Suzanne Turner <sturner at ClevelandSightCenter.org<mailto:sturner at ClevelandSightCenter.org>>
Subject: Fwd: A Disability Valentine: Wherever You Are Is Where We Want To Be

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

From: Amber Smock <asmock at accessliving.org<mailto:asmock at accessliving.org>>
Date: February 14, 2014, 11:31:55 AM EST
To: "ndla-general-list- at googlegroups.com<mailto:ndla-general-list- at googlegroups.com>" <ndla-general-list- at googlegroups.com<mailto:ndla-general-list- at googlegroups.com>>
Subject: FW: A Disability Valentine: Wherever You Are Is Where We Want To Be
Reply-To: ndla-general-list- at googlegroups.com<mailto:ndla-general-list- at googlegroups.com>

Thought I would share with folks on this list as well.
Amber

From: Amber Smock [mailto:asmock at accessliving.org]
Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 10:30 AM
To: Amber Smock
Subject: A Disability Valentine: Wherever You Are Is Where We Want To Be

Dear Access Living friends and allies,

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day today, I wanted to share an amazing piece of writing about disability solidarity. Mia Mingus wrote “Wherever You Are Is Where I Want to Be” back in 2010, but it continues to ring true at the same time as it challenges.

One word the piece uses is “crip”: a word that is short for “cripple,” long a negative word, but that people with disabilities have reclaimed as a word that is positive, shows community, is OUR word and no one else’s. Another word is “ableism”: the discrimination against people with disabilities through attitudes, assumptions and barriers.

Mia writes from the standpoint of a person with a physical disability who is also a person of color, identifies as queer and is a nationally recognized activist. Her standpoint is that of disability justice: going to what disability rights alone cannot address, such as putting intersectional identities front and center, affirming that many of us are not simply one identity, recognizing the communities that have been hidden or oppressed to date.

What is it like when we people with disabilities are together? Why is cross-disability space so important? How do we love each other? This is what she is saying. Read on. Happy Valentine’s Day.

Amber Smock
Director of Advocacy, Access Living
PS: Thank you to AL staffer Aziza Nassar for reminding me of this piece!

Wherever You Are Is Where I Want To Be: Crip Solidarity<http://capwiz.com/accessliving/utr/1/CAGSTQTSDH/OGPATQTSJR/10174020431>

By Mia Mingus

I want to be with you.  If you can’t go, then I don’t want to go.  If we are traveling together, sharing political space together, building political family together, then I want to be with you.  I want us to be together.

We resist ableism dividing us.  I resist my disability being pitted against your disability.   We will not be divided.

What does crip solidarity look like?  Between crips?

We are traveling, trying to track down food.  My chair can’t go into this restaurant, your dog isn’t allowed in that restaurant; so we will order in.  You can’t fly to the meeting, so we will come to you—all of us.  They won’t let you go to the bathroom because they say you’re “too slow”, so we will demand they do—and make them wait for you—together.  Sometimes we are comrades, sometimes we are strangers, but we will stay together.  We move together.

I know what it is like to be left behind, left out, forgotten about.  I know you know as well.  We vow to not do that together, to each other.

I am not “giving-up” an evening out with able bodied friends.  This is a glorious evening in with crip love as opposed to a night out without you (and without parts of me).  Loving you more helps me to love me more.  Loving me means loving you.

Because the truth is, I am continually giving-up the able-bodied-washed version of myself that people have come to know.  What I came to know as a disabled child because I never knew things could be any other way.  For most of my life it has been easier to perform a survival able-bodied-friendly version of myself, rather than nurturing the harder to live disabled-self-loving version of who I ache, desire and need to be.  Because it has often meant the difference between a-little-bit-more-connection and a-little-less-isolation.  But what is the point of connection, if you still feel isolated and alienated from your self?  And what is that connection built upon and from?  How do I want to be connected?

And it is not easy.  But being together helps.

And when taxis won’t take us because of one of us, or both of us.  And I can’t use mass transit, but you can.  Then we will use our crip super community powers and do what we do best: make shit happen; make something out of nothing; and survive, one ride, one pill, one stop to rest at a time.  Together.

We will find other ways (create our own ways) and talk liberation and access and interdependency with our comrades.  We will weave need into our relationships like golden, shimmering glimmers of hope—opportunities to build deeper, more whole and practice what our world could look like.  We will practice what loving each other could look like every day.

Courageously.  And we will help each other to do it, in the face of seductive ableism; in the face of isolation as queer people of color, again; in the face of isolation from political community and movements, again.  We will help each other love each other and, in doing so, love ourselves.

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Suzanne Turner, BSW, MPA
Employment Coordinator and Benefit Specialist

Cleveland Sight Center
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sturner at ClevelandSightCenter.org <mailto:sturner at ClevelandSightCenter.org>

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