We are so grateful to our organizing team. These individuals attend meetings twice a week, maintain the books, and communication systems, and design and fundraise to keep it all going. This is an amazing think tank informed by justice values. We consider all of our audience and collaborators to be members of the justice team but we wanted to make an extra effort to honor the contributions of these individuals.
2024 End-of-Year Reflection on Maiamama
As we close out another year, it’s important to celebrate the exceptional contributions of Maiamama, who has been an integral part of Calling Up Justice as a Digital Media Producer. Her creativity, technical expertise, and unwavering dedication have elevated every project she touched in 2024.
Maiamama has brought her unique vision to personal projects like MakeUp Monday, Gaming4Justice, and Trek Talk, showcasing her ability to create meaningful and engaging content. She is on-screen talent in projects like Trek Table produced with De La Projects and the Geekish Network. Her expertise extended to academic and cultural spaces, supporting university lectures and gallery talks, including “Access and Artistic Research: A Dialogue Between Lucy Cotter and The Curiosity Paradox” and Dis/Rep—a six-week series of dialogues on Disability, accessibility, and culture co-produced with The Curiosity Paradox and Catalyst Consulting. In addition to these, she designs video games and, on February 29, 2024, presented ‘100K Praises,‘ a video game/artistic experience, at LaMama Theater.
Maiamama also traveled to Portland to help produce ‘Why Mask Portland,‘ a pop-up art gallery exhibition and hybrid open mic with and by the disability community. This event was co-produced by The Curiosity Paradox, Portland Art Museum, Portland Playhouse, Black & Beyond the Binary Collective, Ori Gallery, and Elbow Room.
Her work didn’t stop there. Maiamama designed compelling assets for virtual protests, built a vibrant GatherTown environment with conference rooms, a dance studio, and vendor booths for Accessible Virtual Pride, and captured classes for the rapid response tech team. She even taught classes, generously sharing her knowledge and skills.
At the end of the year, she captured our digital reading of ‘Istwa: A Two Long Reading.’. Her work ensured the session was professional and impactful. Across every endeavor, she showed herself to be a thoughtful and consistent collaborator, always working to ensure our events and projects reflected our values and reached new heights of quality.
Thank you, Maiamama, for your incredible contributions to Calling Up Justice and beyond. Your dedication inspires us all. Here’s to another year of creativity, collaboration, and justice production!
2024 Ry end-of-year reflection
As we reflect on 2024, we want to celebrate and deeply appreciate Ry’s incredible contributions to our Calling Up Justice practice. Ry has been the backbone of our administrative operations, skillfully managing our inbox, processing invoices, balancing multiple calendars, and keeping communication seamless with clients. Their work ensures that our projects and initiatives run smoothly, and their facilitation of our weekly meetings keeps us grounded and connected.
Ry brings more than organizational prowess to our practice—they bring heart. Their thoughtful presence and emotional intelligence make them an anchor for our team. As a caregiver in their personal life, Ry naturally extends this care to our professional practice, fostering a supportive and collaborative environment.
Beyond their administrative expertise, Ry has immersed themselves in our creative and justice-oriented projects. From editing videos to co-producing theater watch parties, their contributions have amplified our work’s impact and reach. Ry’s adaptability, creativity, and commitment make them an indispensable part of our team.
As we look ahead to 2025, we are grateful for Ry’s continued partnership and the many ways they help Calling Up Justice thrive. Thank you, Ry, for being such a vital part of our mission and for your unwavering dedication to justice, equity, and care.
2024 End-of-Year Reflection for Jesenia
Jesenia has been an essential part of Calling Up Justice this year, providing critical support and leadership across numerous projects. As Communications Producer, she ensured our newsletters were consistently formatted and published, keeping our community informed. She also ran the digital community center, One Free Community, creating a vital space for connection and collaboration.
This year, Jesenia completed a quarantine residency and participated in the Emerge fellowship with the Longmore Institute, focusing on scholar-activism in Disability Justice. These experiences enriched her work and our practice. She also took on multiple roles as an on-camera host, producer, graphic designer, stage manager, and even modeled for the Disabled and Here stock photo shoot.
Jesenia co-produced major projects like Accessible Virtual Pride and Why Mask Portland and led the production of virtual protests. She contributed essays and archival materials to our website, traveled to Guatemala to produce Divergent for Community with collaborators from the Justice Producers Collaborative, and worked as a production manager for a multivenue disability burlesque festival in Seattle. Additionally, she played a significant role in filling out grant applications and navigating transformative justice processes.
This year brought significant transitions, and Jesenia consistently demonstrated resilience and adaptability. Her ability to pivot creatively and effectively has been invaluable. We deeply appreciate her contributions and look forward to continuing our work together in the coming year.
2024 End-of-Year Reflection on Luticha Doucette
As we close out 2024, we take a moment to celebrate the invaluable contributions of Luticha Doucette, a brilliant leader, strategist, and advocate who has been an essential force within our shared justice work. As the head of Catalyst Consulting, Luticha continues to champion evidence-based, intersectional equity and inclusion, ensuring that organizations rethink their ethos through a Disability Justice framework.
This year, Luticha played a critical role in shaping and sustaining Crip Create, our weekly online co-working and socializing space for Disabled individuals. Her leadership helped ensure that Crip Create remained a consistent, supportive, and adaptive space for our community, holding 97 sessions throughout the year and fostering deep connections among participants. She also played a key role in co-producing Dis/Rep, our annual series of virtual dialogues on Disability, accessibility, and culture, bringing her insight and expertise to these essential conversations.
Beyond these structured programs, Luticha’s presence has been deeply felt in the Justice Producers Collaborative, where her keen strategic mind and generosity have helped strengthen our collective work. She has actively contributed funding opportunities to our weekly Open Development meetings, ensuring that our projects and initiatives have the resources to thrive.
In addition to her consulting and advocacy work, Luticha has brought her love of storytelling and sci-fi analysis to our Trek Talk livestream, joining as a guest host and sharing her sharp and thoughtful reflections on Star Trek through a justice lens. Also she collaborated with Maiamama to innovate in recording her university lectures and packaging them for asychronous accessibility.
This year also held moments of loss, as Luticha said goodbye to her beloved cats, who were cherished members of her life and, by extension, part of our practice. Their presence will be deeply missed, and we honor the joy and companionship they brought.
Luticha’s intelligence, passion, and unwavering commitment to justice continue to inspire us all. We are so grateful for her leadership, collaboration, and friendship. Here’s to another year of transformation, resilience, and community care.
2024 End-of-Year Reflection for Claudia
As we close out 2024, we take a moment to celebrate the extraordinary leadership, artistry, and innovation of Claudia Alick, the visionary force behind Calling Up Justice. Claudia’s work this year has been nothing short of transformative, weaving together cutting-edge technology, justice-driven storytelling, and radical accessibility to create new models of engagement and artistic expression.
The year began with a powerful milestone—Claudia’s video game 100K Praises, co-designed with Maiamama, was featured at LaMama Theater in NYC. From there, she continued to break boundaries, directing groundbreaking digital and in-person works, culminating in the Digital Encampment, an immersive international experience that redefined online storytelling and community building. Her work was recognized on a national scale, with a feature in the National Endowment for the Arts tech blog, affirming her status as a leader in digital justice and artistic innovation.
Claudia spearheaded an impressive array of projects with Calling Up Justice, from producing rapid response tech trainings and accessibility workshops to curating transformative performances and virtual protests. She facilitated Disability Justice trainings with institutions like Long Wharf Theatre, University of Rochester, and MOMSRising, ensuring that accessibility and justice remain central to every space she enters. Whether hosting TikTok peer exchanges, managing livestream productions, or speaking at global convenings like Leonardo 57.2 Criptech & the Art of Access, Claudia consistently created spaces for collective learning and liberation.
Her directorial work thrived in 2024, with highlights including Why Mask Portland, All My Pretty Fictions I Left Neither My Bed Nor My Room by Terri Hudson and the afrofuturist Haitian play ISTWA. She co-produced and performed in innovative live and digital events, from Why Mask performances at SF MoMA and StaceyFest to co-producing the Mouthwater Dance Festival and CripDance Gallery Launch. Her leadership extended into movement-building through Virtual Protests, Accessible Virtual Pride, Dis/Rep and numerous collaborative justice initiatives.
Her leadership in consulting and advising on various governance and advising boards has national impact. Her work with Network of Ensemble Theaters and Howlround Theater Commons has kept us connected and increased our power.
Through it all, Claudia remained a guiding force—coding, production managing, modeling, writing, directing, hosting, designing, and ensuring that accessibility, joy, and justice were at the core of every endeavor. Her work this year not only pushed boundaries but also set new standards for what justice-driven art and technology can achieve.
Thank you, Claudia, for your brilliance, generosity, and unwavering commitment to justice. Your work this year has been a masterclass in visionary leadership. Here’s to another year of breaking barriers and building liberatory futures!
Retired Organizing Team Members
Serving on our Organizing Team is a labor of love and we welcome folks to flow in and out of this commitment. In the past Dani Bae, Karina Ithier, Sabina Unni, Deanna Yadollahi, Khoulod Sawaf, Mami Takahashi, and Kali Grau served the practice in this more concentrated fashion. This year Chelsea House and Skully step down as active organizing team members. We are iterative and balanced. We invite any of our collaborating contributors to join us in the labor of organizing in knowledge that they can set it down whenever they need to.