We attended Cafe Crip produced by The Longmore Institute with around 40 other participants. At the Longmore Institute, their mission is to study and showcase disabled people’s experiences in order to revolutionize social views. Through public education, scholarship and cultural events, the Institute shares disability history and theory, promotes critical thinking, and builds a broader community. Their work is guided and informed by thier beliefs and commitments to the common good, scholar-activism, knowledge, community, intersectionality, joy and integrity. It was a great conversation and exchange with the disability community.

today’s readings

• Readings: You Are Not Entitled To Our Deaths: COVID, Abled Supremacy, and Interdependence by Mia Mingus https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2022/01/16/you-are-not-entitled-to-our-deaths-covid-abled-supremacy-interdependence/ 
• Where do we go from here? A roundtable from some disability justice organizers in this the only moment in time Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2023/05/21/where-do-we-go-from-here-a-roundtable-from-some-disability-justice-organizers-in-this-the-only-moment-in-time/
• COVID Isn’t Going Anywhere. Masking Up Could Save My Life. by Alice Wong https://www.teenvogue.com/story/covid-isnt-going-anywhere-masking-up-could-save-my-life 
• Community Support for Long COVID by Body Politic https://www.wearebodypolitic.com/covid-19

facilitator

Bianca I Laureano is an award-wining educator, curriculum writer, facilitator, and sexologist. She is a Foundress of the Women of Color Sexual Health Network (WOCSHN), The LatiNegrxs Project, ANTE UP! Virtual Freedom Professional Development School for Justice Workers, and hosts LatinoSexuality.com. She has written several curricula that focus on communities of color: What’s the REAL DEAL about Love and Solidarity? (2015) and Communication MixTape: Speak On It Vol 1. (2017) and wrote the sexual and reproductive justice discussion guide for the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene published in 2018. Bianca has been on the board of CLAGS, the LGBTQ Center at CUNY, The Black Girl Project, and  SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. She resides in Oakland, CA. She is the Lead Educator for the Netflix film Crip Camp (2020) and led the efforts to create a curriculum that is rooted in disability justice practice, self-determination, and social-emotional learning competences! She will receive an honorary PhD for her work of justice, equity, and inclusion in the US sexuality field May 2020.

QUOTES from reading

• READING 1: You Are Not Entitled To Our Deaths: COVID, Abled Supremacy, and Interdependence by Mia Mingus

• We will not trade disabled deaths for abled life. We will not allow disabled people to be disposable or the necessary collateral damage for the status quo. We will not look away from the mass illness and death that surrounds us or from a state machine that is more committed to churning out profit and privileged comfort with eugenic abandonment.
• There are many things we cannot control or change right now, even as we desperately wish we could. As we fight for systemic changes, we can also try to change what is happening inside of our communities. We can learn from our mistakes and try to, at the very least, not make things worse than they already are.
• I need you to care about disabled people’s lives more than you care about a vacation, a party or a celebration. A cornerstone of being disabled in an ableist world is isolation. This is part of the trauma of ableism. Disabled people are marked over and over by isolation through material, social and cultural inaccessibility, stigma, fear, violence and shame. We live with various forms of social distancing our entire lives. During this pandemic, many disabled people, particularly those who are high risk, have not left their house or seen anyone for years, save the people they live with. You take the luxury of in-person connection for granted and feel entitled to it, even as thousands around you die and suffer, even as you may risk prolonging and worsening the pandemic.
• We should be framing this pandemic in terms of interdependence. This is the right political framing because it is the only moral and humane framing. Interdependence acknowledges that our survival is bound up together, that we are interconnected and what you do impacts others. If this pandemic has done nothing else, it has illuminated how horrible our society is at valuing and practicing interdependence. Interdependence is the only way out of most of the most pressing issues we face today. If we do not understand that we are interdependent with the planet we as a species will not survive.

• READING 2: where do we go from here? a roundtable from some disability justice organizers in this the only moment in time Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

• Disabled life often feels like living in the Twilight Zone, if you don’t give in to the overwhelming pressure to “forget” the pandemic. As of this writing, we are a week post the World Health Organization and the White House declaring the global and US pandemic emergencies “over”–even though a thousand people continue to die in the US every week from COVID and the head of WHO admits that one person dies every three minutes from COVID globally (that we know of). Many people refer to “back when COVID was happening,” erasing the millions of people who have died and the millions of people with Long COVID who are, in the words of activist group ME Action, “still sick, still fighting.”
• To continue to live, be awake and resist as disabled people in these conditions is difficult, to put it mildly. Most of us are also holding a shit ton of unprocessed grief which makes everyone’s energy pretty flatlined. Skyrocketing prices make it hard to just get by, not to mention the recent decrease in SNAP benefits since the federal public health emergency orders are “over.”

• READING 3 COVID Isn’t Going Anywhere. Masking Up Could Save My Life. by Alice Wong

• Do disabled people count? Have we ever mattered except when it’s an election year? Disabled people may literally be undercounted if a proposed change to the US Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey is approved with an estimated 20 million erased, resulting in a decrease in the allocation and funding of critical services and programs they rely on. Being counted and visible is a threat because with numbers comes power.
• I don’t know how to convince everyone that we can’t give up. So many people consider COVID to be endemic, or accept that everyone will eventually become infected, thinking nothing more can be done. We can take action to strengthen infrastructure and improve policies if we work together, hold leaders accountable, and shift toward a culture of collectivity that recognizes interdependence, leaving no one behind. It is exhausting to constantly have to defend my humanity, but I know a better world is possible and we will move forward together.

• READING 4: Community Support for Long COVID by Body Politic
• Below are support group options for Long COVID that was prepared and vetted by our team. Every group listed below is patient-led or a strong ally of patient-led groups, and was vetted personally by our team for appropriate moderation practices and group policies, as well as quality Long COVID information access. We recommend downloading and viewing the PDF, as the title and QR code of each organization listed links directly to their support group sign-up page for ease of access.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• How are you doing as we enter this new year during a pandemic?
• In what ways has COVID impacted your life?
• What are some hopes you have for our disabled future?
• How do you extend compassion and appreciation for yourself?
• Are there any celebrations or new things to enjoy you’ve found during this pandemic?
• What are some tools or techniques you have used to stay connected with others during the pandemic?
•  How do you talk about covid precautions with your friends, family, and others?

Gallery of Resources