Getting Down to Resistance
Thoughts during Disability Pride Month
Hello dear DTTS community!
I hope you enjoyed our season finale with Priti Salian, a journalist, media consultant, and trainer based in Bengaluru, India. I highly encourage you to check out Priti’s fabulous newsletter, Reframing Disability for even more insights on how we can bring disability inclusion and access to newsrooms and media coverage. Priti’s work is more important than ever as global funding for disability advocacy recedes, and amplifying our stories becomes all the more essential to our resistance and survival.
And the season isn’t over yet—we have a few more surprises in store this month, so remember to subscribe and stay tuned!
‘We Are Not Ok…And We Will Keep Resisting’
It’s Disability Pride Month, and in her powerful new essay, disability justice activist, educator, and accessibility champion Conchita Hernandez Legorreta highlights the importance of both pride and resistance as our community faces countless threats to its very existence.
Drastic cuts to our social safety net, vile attacks on the autistic community, a full-on assault on transgender lives, and the terrorizing of immigrant communities, are only a few of the horrors disabled people, especially those who are multiply marginalized, have witnessed and experienced in the past few months. We must continue to push back on the forces that attempt to erase us, now and since time immemorial.
And, as Conchita wisely puts it, community, joy, and purpose have and will continue to light our way:
I have a huge focus on community in all my work, as community is and has been the only thing that sustains us. We know we have each other, in a way that the state will never. Though my story is filled with trauma and state terror, it is also one of joy, community support, and resistance.
In May, the disability community also paid tribute to Patty Berne, co-creator of Sins Invalid and key architect of the ten principles of disability justice, as they passed into the land of the ancestors. Patty and the disability justice activists they worked alongside gave us tools and ideas to manifest the world we want to live in—a world filled with care, empathy, and the deep understanding that our futures are intertwined. Rest in power, Patty.
This Disability Pride Month, and always, I call on all of us to hold fast to our communities. We are the change. We are the resistance.
Community shout-outs
As always, here’s a snapshot of what’s going on in the community.
Please join me and the wonderful Conchita Hernandez Legorreta on August 14 at 7pm ET for an important know your rights session, “Your Right to Access: What You Need to Know as an Immigrant with a Disability.” During this session, we will review your rights as a disabled immigrant, family member, or ally upon encountering immigration enforcement authorities at home or work. We will roleplay scenarios that include disability-specific guidance.
This webinar is not intended to provide legal advice, and we will not offer guidance on individual cases. This space is designed to welcome communities living at the intersection of immigration and disability to learn, share, and pass on vital information. Please distribute this announcement to others in your community, and register for the event here.In honor of Disability Pride Month, Unseen will be available to stream for free on PBS for the entire month of July as part of “Uncharted Visions: Narratives of Disability” curated by POV. This collection of films explores disability and how people create paths toward belonging in systems designed to exclude them. These powerful stories reveal the creativity and interdependence that flourish when people refuse limitations imposed by ableist structures. Through both struggle and joy, they demonstrate that disability isn't just about what bodies can or cannot do—it's about reimagining what's possible when we center the wisdom of those who move through the world differently.
I highly encourage you to check out Peter Torres Fremlin’s powerful interview with Luciana Viega, an anti-racist and anti-ableist activist in Brazil. Luciana founded the group, Vidas Negras Com Deficiência, Black Disabled Lives Matter. I particularly love Luciana’s approach to practicing inclusive intersectionality: “I believe that we often discuss intersectionality in the wrong way, imposing a hierarchy of oppression. Where someone then has more authority to speak because they face more oppression. It’s like we created a monster of intersectionality. So when someone comes down to [us] and says they are suffering more violence we say wait a minute, and we look after the monster.”
It was my honor and privilege to join organizational psychologist, researcher, and creative, Dr. Payal Beri on her fantastic podcast, Reframing Perspectives, to talk about the urgent need to practice disability justice and accessibility for all. Payal and I dug deep into disability as a universal experience, and how disability justice offers critical tools for a more empathetic and interdependent society.
If you’ll be in New York City on August 1, check out Access:Horror film festival, which explores and celebrates the history, impact, and future of disability in the horror genre. The festival is sponsored by the George A. Romero Foundation and hosted by filmmaker, author and activist, Ariel Baska, and is set to take place at DCTV Firehouse Cinema. It will also be featured online at the horror streaming site SHUDDER.
Thanks for reading our newsletter this month. We’ll be back next month with more!
In solidarity,
Qudsiya