Hello, DTTS community!
Welcome to our new followers and subscribers. I hope everyone is enjoying Season 7 of the podcast. If you need to catch up, be sure to check out our latest episodes with Bri Joy Moore and Diana Pastora Carson.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a leader. Increasingly, I find myself in spaces where I am part of a group that is being looked to for guidance, that is being held accountable to ensure the welfare, enjoyment, or safety of others. This is very new to me—the idea that others are looking to me for advice, a point of view, or a way of thinking. Some people have a natural proclivity to leadership, or have greater opportunities to practice leadership skills starting in childhood.
Often though, because of segregation in schools, barriers to higher education, and lack of access to employment, disabled people who may have great potential for leadership do not have the opportunity to share those skills in service of causes that matter to them.
As a child, ableist assumptions so often prevented others from thinking of me as a leader. There were few instances where I was afforded the opportunity to test my leadership abilities. It was not until I came into my disability identity and began to share in community with other disabled people that I realized how much I love organizing with people in common cause, and that I might be somewhat good at it.
Because members of my community asked me to step up by taking on positions like service on the board of the Metro Washington Association of Blind Athletes, and others encouraged me to launch Down to the Struts, I have begun to see myself as a leader. The vision of the kind of leader I strive to be has started to take shape.
In an age of social media, with its influencers and powerful personalities, its easy to get caught up in the numbers game. Being on the leader board when it comes to followers and impressions starts to become an end in itself. Those who post the most and speak the loudest are the voices that rise to the top. Though I believe in social media as a critical tool that has strengthened our disability communities around the world, I’ve also always been a deeply reluctant user. I am loathe to put so much of myself out in the public square for the judgment and scrutiny of others, and I am even more loathe to make pronouncements that might suggest that I’m an expert on any given topic, when the reality is that I am a forever work in progress when it comes to learning.
Influencer status aside, leadership is a role that I cherish. It is also one that has very particular meaning for me. I hold these three principles the closest:
1. Collective leadership
This disability justice principle is critical to being an effective leader. This should never be a lonely role. Leadership is best when it is shared—birthed from the energy and contributions of many bodyminds and crafted into its best form through debate and deliberation.
2. Sowing seeds
Mentorship is part of leadership. When we lift each other up, one person’s success is everyone’s success. We sow the seeds for the future by empowering those who will come after us to forge their own paths.
3. Humility
This tenet of leadership is perhaps most important to me. Humility allows us to recognize both our strengths and the areas where we need to grow. It reminds us to listen to others and value the wisdom they bring into the world. It also allows us space and grace to make mistakes and acknowledge that we are imperfect and fallible.
Ultimately, for me, leadership is about action, and in some cases, knowing when not to act. It is in the doing, and not just the saying. This podcast, for me, is about lifting up the stories of disabled people and elevating their vision for a more just, inclusive, and accessible world.
Of course, having you, my dear readers and listeners, experience those stories to the greatest extent possible is critical to this project, but stockpiling tens of thousands of followers is not the end goal. Instead, I measure my impact by the experiences of listeners who are exposed to disability stories and feel seen and validated in ways they never have before, and by those who learn about disability, design, and intersectionality, and who are compelled to push for access, inclusion, and justice in their own community.
Each and every one of us has the capacity to lead in one way or another. The leadership qualities we all bring to the table are valuable, and the key is understanding how to harness the inherent value of each and every person for the good of all.
With that in mind, here are just a few people in my disability community whose leadership I admire and look up to as exemplars for myself.
Stephanie Deluca and the Disabled Congressional Staff Association are fighting tirelessly to make the people’s house more accessible to all. They have called out the cruel and casual ableism of the media in its coverage of members and staffers who navigate access barriers every day as they work to serve the American people.
Lisa Iezzoni’s ground-breaking research on physicians’ attitudes towards disabled patients was cited in a Department of Health and Human Services announcement that it has allocated $8 million in grant funding to train physicians so they can more effectively care for disabled patients and people with limited English proficiency.
Peter Torres Fremlin of the Disability Debrief has refreshed a vast library of disability resources from 150 countries around the world, including a brand new hub on climate and disability curated by disability, migration, and climate activist, Áine Kelly-Costello.
Kevin Gotkin published the 100th edition of Crip News, bringing together 2,473 readers across 50 countries to celebrate and uplift disability arts, culture, and politics.
Set Hernandez and the team behind Unseen are bringing a powerful story of disability, immigration, struggle, joy, and community to audiences around the globe. The film will screen in five cities in two countries in the coming weeks.
From filmmakers, to journalists, to researchers, to public servants—each of these beautiful humans embody leadership that is generative, inclusive, and represents the very best of humanity. Hats off to every one of them, and all of the unsung leaders who make this world better by their very existence!
Thanks for reading our newsletter this month. We’ll be back in your inboxes next month with more updates from the podcast and the disability community!
In solidarity,
Qudsiya