Welcome to the second meeting of the Disability Justice Initiative!
Today, Marvia will share a presentation about Sins Invalid’s “10 Principles of Disability Justice,” as we discuss how we might incorporate their framework in CODE’s redesign and beyond.
Zoom Space Guidelines
CODE’s Mission: To empower students of the disability community, and establish a platform for our self-advocacy and community-building efforts.
Current Mission Statement
“CODE is dedicated to improving the status of students with temporary or permanent disabilities on campus and in the community. CODE is also committed to advocating for students with disabilities and educating the campus community on the importance of equal access by raising disability issues, interests, and awareness on a local, state, and national level.”
Moving away from the charity model
“The Charity approach to disability viewed as being in the ‘best interests’ of disabled people but it does not consider disabled people’s experiences and knowledge as necessarily valuable or essential. This approach is about well meaning ‘do-gooders’ acting on our behalf without us. Because we aren’t in control of the process little good, or even harm, is often the result.
The entire charity approach is designed to ensure that no real change ever occurs. It is about people doing good for others, it is not about change, it is not about liberation, it is about the agents of charity – the do-gooders feeling better about themselves and the world they live in.
Charities, however, identify our disabilities as the things that oppress us...” instead of social barriers or systemic issues
The 10 Principles of Disability Justice
Developed by Sins Invalid,
a disability justice based performance project led by disabled people of color
Sins Invalid is a disability justice based performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and LGBTQ / gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalized.
Led by disabled people of color, Sins Invalid’s performance work explores the themes of sexuality, embodiment and the disabled body, developing provocative work where paradigms of “normal” and “sexy” are challenged, offering instead a vision of beauty and sexuality inclusive of all bodies and communities.
The 10 Principles of Disability Justice
Solidarity
Simply put, this principle says that we are many things, and they all impact us.
The Commission must make space for the way that our “disabled” life experience interacts with all other parts of ourselves, centering the needs of multiply marginalized people.
when we think about the disabled community, we must consider the ways ableism interlocks with other forms of oppression.
2. Leadership of the Most Impacted
“We are led by those who most know these systems”
— Aurora Levins Morales
As we redesign our Commission, we must pay special attention to the ways that leadership positions may be specifically designed to accommodate various access needs, using community-building strategies to provide disabled students opportunities to be at the forefront of our own self-advocacy efforts.
3. Anti-Capitalist Politic
In an economy that sees land and humans as components of profit, we are anti-capitalist by nature of having non-conforming body/minds.
Our labor is often invisible to a system that defines labor by able-bodied, white supremacist, gender normative standards. Our worth is not dependent on what and how much we can produce.
We move together as a community, replacing quotas with a vision for our collective liberation.
4. Commitment to Cross-Movement Solidarity
Through cross-movement solidarity, we create a united front. Shifting how social justice movements understand disability and contextualize ableism, disability justice lends itself to politics of alliance.
We hope that by implementing a Racial Justice Outreach Coordinator and a Gender and Sexual Equity Outreach Coordinator, we can build lasting coalitions with other communities.
5. Recognizing Wholeness
People have inherent worth outside of commodity relations and capitalist notions of productivity. Each person is full of history and life experiences.
Disabled people are whole people. In addition to the need to address “accessibility issues” on campus, we envision a campus with…
“disability” is not oppressive. ableist discrimination is.
6. Sustainability
Our embodied experiences guide us toward ongoing justice.
We learn to pace ourselves, individually and collectively, to be sustained long-term. We value the teachings of our bodies and experiences, and use them as a critical guide and reference point…
Our leadership positions must be “accessible” in the sense that they are designed with principles of patience and care, that consider the ways that our capacities may fluctuate over time as we protect our bodymind health.
With the way the pandemic has stalled work towards creating physical access, + our own anxieties about the return to campus in mind, we hope to build a resilient, sustainable, self-advocacy community.
Disability Awareness Projects -> Disability Justice Program
REVISED Duties and Responsibilities of CODE:
1) Meet regularly once (1) per week
2) Organize a campus-wide program that collaborates with other campus entities to promote disability justice
3) Advocates with the disabled community to establish a disabled students’ cultural space
4) Act as a referral source for students on any matter concerning disability issues
5) Advise the Senate on issues pertaining to disabled students.
6) Provide student representation for Associated Students on ad hoc administrative Committees concerning disabled students’ interests
1) Meet regularly once (1) per week.
2) Organize at least one (1) disability awareness week program each year, which shall be open to all students.
3) Organize at least one (1) joint social event per quarter for members of the Commission and members of the Disabled Students Program.
4) Address all accessibility issues for disabled students on campus and in the community to the Committee on Campus Planning, the Student Fee Advisory Committee, and any other relevant campus entities at least once (1) per year.
5) Organize a campus-wide program that addresses specific accessibility issues for disabled students at least once (1) per year.
7. Commitment to Cross-Disability Solidarity
We honor the insights and participation of all our community members, knowing that isolation undermines collective liberation.
Our Commission can check in with each other, seeking to understand before assuming malintention or apathy, and listening to each others’ struggles and dreams.
8. Interdependence
We meet each others’ needs as we build toward liberation, knowing that state solutions inevitably extend into further control over our lives.
For the liberation of our community, we offer care and support for each other. The Commission would like to organize a Disability Community Care Space, a community space for disabled students to talk openly about their experiences and connect with each other.
9. Collective Access
As brown, black and queer-bodied disabled people we bring flexibility and creative nuance that go beyond able-bodied/minded normativity, to be in community with each other.
We create and explore ways of doing things that go beyond able-bodied and neurotypical norms as we offer what we can to support one another’s different access needs.
10. Collective Liberation
No body or mind can be left behind — only moving together can we accomplish the revolution we require.
We move together as people with mixed abilities, multiracial, multi-gendered, mixed class, across the sexual spectrum, with a vision that leaves no bodymind behind.
Since our Commission budget is limited and our campus does not have a disability resource center to help support this effort, we need the support of existing campus entities to co-sponsor speakers of the disability justice movement.
Using the framework of disability justice, CODE envisions a campus entity with the capacity to address both…
Accessibility Issues...
and Community Needs.
accessibility issues and community needs go hand-in-hand
Discussion:
How can we transform the way disabled students are represented on campus?
Meeting Times, Links, and Contact Information
“CODE Bylaw Changes Proposal” document:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19Y2idUp-qUeT24VcI_e40bVdxdsxvoc7ciPgRk3DuNA/edit?usp=sharing
Disability Justice Initiative Meeting:
https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/88361021869?pwd=eWkyb3kwK29obkVDMFdsaFZsYXM3UT09
Meeting ID: 883 6102 1869
Passcode: 307548
CODE Meetings:
https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/84344087996?pwd=N21teTVsRHh1UFNIOUYwZjRHOVZ5Zz09
Meeting ID: 843 4408 7996
Passcode: 423643
Contact Us!
Sophia (Co-Chair) - slee-park@ucsb.edu
Marvia (Event Programming Officer) - marvia@ucsb.edu
Next Friday: Continuing to discuss what “Disability Justice” means to us!
Future plans include “Ableism 101” workshop and a workshop on invisible disabilities, and we are open to collabs!
Discussion:
What does “disability justice” mean to you? What might it look like in your life?
Upcoming Events
More Than Organs: A Night of Poetry with Kay Ulanday Barrett
TONIGHT, Friday, April 23, 2021 at 6:00pm
"Diabetes is Just a Struggle": Stress and Type 2 Diabetes Self-Management Behaviors Among African Americans
Thursday, April 22, 2021, 6:00 PM on Zoom
Upcoming Event
Universal Design for Learning
Monday, May 10, 5:00-6:00pm