Moderated by Xavier Ramey (Justice Informed), and featuring Leroy Moore (Krip-Hop Nation), Benji Hart (author, artist, and educator), Jae Jin Pak (social justice advocate), and Dior Vargas (queer Latina feminist mental health activist), the second session of our Disability Justice in the Fight For Racial Equity forum explores the disability justice and racial equity movements and how a cross-justice framework liberates all of us.
Conversation Highlights
Powerful Poetry
Leroy kicked off the session with a reading of some of his original work: “Ramp the White House,” “Black Disabled Art History 101,” and “When Can We Come Home (from Black disabled people in the Black community).” Told through a Black, disabled lens and centered on disability and racial justice, these three brilliant poems were the perfect way to set the tone for the entire session. An excerpt from “Ramp the White House.”
“Snatching chairs up from the Senate and the House
Lobbyists scattering around like mouse
But their tails are under wheelchair’s wheels
This is for real signed and sealed
Finally funding disability laws
44 years time to correct the two party’s flaws
Ramp the White House.”
Mirror Moments
Rather than asking everyone to introduce themselves in the traditional manner, Xavier asked the panelists to share their mirror moments. A mirror moment, he says, is “a point in your life, your work history, your personal life, etc, where […] you saw something in the world or you saw something in you that was disruptive, and it served to shape your identity and what you’re doing today.”
Benji’s mirror moment was the first time he saw vogueing. “[That] was the first time that I saw people, individuals being Black, being queer, and being femme, all unapologetically, all loudly and all at the same time. And I think as a young, Black, queer, gender-nonconforming person, I had up to that moment seen those things as at odds with each other and realizing not only that they weren’t at odds with each other but that they informed each other and that they were powerful and they were dangerous when they were practiced and celebrated simultaneously.”
[trigger warning: suicide] Dior’s mirror moment happened when she was in a psychiatric ward following a suicide attempt. She remembers watching an Oprah episode featuring a former concentration camp and her roommate pointed at the screen and said, “I was there.” Dior muses, “I think that really just made me question everything that I had done in terms of trying to cope.”
Jae Jin’s mirror moment occurred in 2004 when he was invited to a community leadership program for young American Asian-Americans. “Walking into that space of being in a room of 40 Asian-American peers— talking about our names and sharing stories and experiences and just in that space, seeing people that looked like me, that could relate to me, I didn’t have to explain it, was one of the most powerful experiences that I will never forget.”
Xavier shares his own mirror moment. As a teenager, he moved to a housing project in Chicago smack dab in the middle of a white, affluential area. Along with that move came a higher rate of police interaction. “I would have many, many experiences with Chicago Police Department on the hood of a car, inside the car, laid out on the ground, pressed up against the wall, gun to the back, handcuffs on the sidewalk. […] My white neighbors never said a word […] and that taught me a lot about what I need out of allyship versus what I think about allyship.”
Language has Power
Dior impresses that “people really need to be more aware of the language they use because language has power.” The term “committed suicide,” for example, needs to be phrased in a less stigmatic way—like “completed suicide” or “died by suicide.” She says we should avoid words negatively associated with mental health in everyday conversation (like “crazy” or “insane”) and suggests “ridiculous” or “wild” as possible alternatives. Or instead of calling someone an addict, say that person lives with a substance use disorder. If someone is a former alcoholic, refer to them as someone who’s in recovery.
Finding Hope in 2020
Though 2020 has brought a lot of fear, pain, and frustration, it has also seen some positive shifts. “I genuinely believe that the most marginalized voices are making the most radical demands, and if we listen to those demands, we’re actually in a watershed moment to reshape our society in some of the most just ways—some of the most radical ways that have ever been imagined,” Benji says. “And in my hopeful moments, I think that’s very exciting.”
Expanding Inclusion
Jae Jin urges policymakers to be “very intentional and proactive in including the disability communities and all the diversity of disability.” He talks in particular about how language access tends to be limited to English and Spanish. “I am all in for the fight for language access of anything, but I’m Korean. I have friends that have other languages. So please be intentional and fair in including multilingual options.”
Disrupting the Future
Benji ends the conversation with a captivating vision for change. “The simplest framework that I think folks should be universally operating from is an invest/divest model,” he says. “I want to see a divestment from police, prisons, detention centers, ICE, border patrol, any institution that is about caging, surveilling, and killing oppressed communities, […] and an investment in green space, arts programs, affordable housing, free healthcare, free public transportation, all the things that actually make our cities and our communities more accessible and that provide actual support to oppressed communities.”
…And More!
Police and prison reform, inclusion, inequitable government funding: just a few of the topics covered in the conversation. Watch the video in full right here to get the full experience.
Next Up In Our Disability Justice and Racial Equity Forum
- Session 1 — From Access to Liberation
- Session 3 — Setting an Equity Agenda
- Session 4 — Mapping Our Paths Towards Liberation