Calling Up Justice practice member Jesenia (@neurospicynetworking) gave a speech at the Bed-In: STOP RFK Jr’s Autism Registry Virtual Rally hosted by Disability Community for Democracy, Inc. on Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Virtual Rally
Calling Up Justice has been producing Virtual Protests in collaboration with Jesenia and One Free Community since Oct. 2023, and has always been fighting against genocide with projects like We Charge Genocide and Gaza Monologues.
At Calling Up Justice, we believe that civic engagement should be accessible to everyone. As a collective led by disabled organizers, we know firsthand the challenges many face when trying to participate in traditional forms of protest. That’s why we’re dedicated to creating inclusive, accessible virtual protest spaces—platforms where people can gather, grieve, learn, and take action together, even if they cannot physically attend in-person demonstrations.
As part of that practice, we join and collaborate with many organizations to fight for liberation. Due to Jesenia’s (@neurospicynetworking) exceptional work in disability justice, they were asked to offer their perspective and speak at the Bed-In alongside Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, PA State Rep Abigail Salisbury (@repsalisbury), hosts of Othering Podcast (@otheringpodcast) Dory and Mike, Cat Contillo, Steven Campbell (@stevendavidcampbellrobb) , writer and researcher Timotheus “TJ” Gordon (@timotheusgordon) of BlackAutist, Disability Rights Activist Jeff Person (@jeffpersonva), and Scientist and Author of Everyday Black: Disability Alexis Toliver (@a8.union).
The Bed-In: STOP RFK Jr’s Autism Registry virtual rally was a success. [https://www.instagram.com/p/DL7SDuiRFD3]
Watch Replay
Link on YouTube [https://youtu.be/Qxlp078m0lY?si=bAuaVSo7WhH-TdWJ&t=9158]
Jesenia’s Speech
Hi I am Jesenia. I use any and all pronouns. I am currently in the unceded lands of the Waco & Jumanos people, Colonially known as Dallas, TX.
A visual description of me: I am a native brown skinned cis-woman with black hair and pink glasses, laying in my bed surrounded by squishies to hold my disabled body!
Now I am going to say something that is so radical, it could still get us killed. Yes, in 2025 we are still living in a society that can’t stand to hear and know this: Disabled people deserve to exist.
Shocking I know Right!
As a matter of fact, all people deserve to exist, to be fed, housed, and cared for. The truth is we have existed in reciprocal, gifting economies with each other and the earth, that didn’t tie our worth to productivity for thousands of years – long before capitalism and colonization. Our worth is not a commodity that needs to be profitable to have value. Just existing is, in-and-of-itself, a thing of value. No transactions required! We took care of each other because we cared for each other. Every being on this planet is a gift, and what we each offer to the world is a gift, not a requirement.
For some of us that gift we give is creating: art, music, or designing a bridge. Those are tangible examples, but the truth is we are all a gift to each other. The gift we give to each other is existing and co-existing. Disabled people existing is a gift to our communities. Yes, existing and having others know us, is a gift.
People existing with disabilities in our communities bring with it compassion and understanding, crip ingenuity, and even the curb cut effect, where something intended to support the disabled community enhances and supports everyone in the community!
Our disabilities are not superpowers, but working to accommodate our needs, solves problems for ourselves and each other in an inaccessible world. From adaptive clothing, and utensils, to community networks helping each other source masks during the start of the ongoing pandemic, our culture is one of mutual aid. We move in crip-time, and by honoring our body-minds, we make space for all types, all body, all minds, to come with us, together! That includes you!
We need you to care about us. We need you to fight with us!
Look, I travel across the country and world, connecting amazing disabled people and organizations together to share skills, knowledge, and to dream of more inclusive futures together! I produce covid-safer events online and in-person and they have all been sold-out events! But as I lay here recovering from my last production, doing a speech from my bed, I want to acknowledge all our disabled community who didn’t make it through the pandemic. For whom, the end times came now. We are all grieving. Yet we are still here, fighting for our very right to exist!
The lack of mask-mandates and covid precautions are keeping us from being part of our communities right now! We don’t want to be going back to the days of the Ugly laws, where we are kept out of sight, out of mind. We need accessible infrastructure, and people willing to speak up to get it. The loss of having us in your community is a loss for everyone!
The 10 principles of Disability Justice include cross-movement solidarity. We need to unite our causes, because as the saying goes, becoming disabled is not a matter of if, but when. Our fight for collective liberation is tied together.
Listen, Disability is not a bad word. We want to connect and find ways to do something about it now. With cuts to our healthcare and subminimum wages, work requirements and lack of accessible services as it is, we are barely surviving now. And ours is one of the largest and fastest growing minorities. We need everyone, including you, to include us in your planning, not offer access as an afterthought.
I am autistic, but that is only one of the many of my multiple identities and disabilities that make up a part of the complex human that I am. I am late realized autiHD, with physical disabilities like EDS. But getting diagnosed was really hard before now with the current attack on us as part of the growing number of Late in life diagnosed and realized Autists, I will continue to be a loud unrelenting autist, because I will not let their lack of understanding of the kaleidoscope of autism presentations speak for us or over us!
As you have heard throughout the day today, Nothing for us, without us!
I fight with queer liberation, anti-racisist, disability justice values and mindset at the core of how I move. In my community building, and event producing, I am asking, who isn’t here and how can we include them? We are all interconnected and it is beneficial for all of us not to throw anyone under the bus.
Everyone’s humanity is what we are working to hold on to right now.
It is easy for them to tear down disability support when it is normalized to see us as less than human. Speak up against the dehumanization of queer people, trans people, disabled people, indigenous people. The minute we remove humanity for some, is the moment we all lose the fight for all.
So What? What can I do? I’m just one person?
We all have a part to play, even if that part is surviving. As a disabled person your survival is needed for us to be able to collectively speak about our experiences and our lives! We are here, and we will not be erased because it makes some cowards uncomfortable! Each action has an effect. Look at what words you use that might be ableist, which is based in anti-blackness, like crazy, and insane, or speak up about buildings with no ramps or accessible buttons on their doors.
Start to wear your KN-95 masks again and demand them in all the spaces and events you go to include us in the community again. If you make art, imagine and dream of the future you want to see and share it with everyone! If you make music, let us hear your truth! If you call a friend to check in on them or volunteer in a peer-support chat, it all makes a difference in each other’s lives. Let’s celebrate our crip-joy!
We are all exhausted and we replenish ourselves with joy. Joy is how we nurture our hope. And if you can make collective action even better by joining a group! Join an advocacy group, a union, a mutual aid organization. Share stories, make zines, skill share, barter and gift what abundance you do have. organize a local knitting event to make scarves to give away in the winter, call your elected officials or encourage your friends to vote, it all matters.
I run a digital community space, One Free Community that hosts Virtual Protests. Come learn how to participate and host your own! I’ll drop links here shortly. Whatever you choose to do, do it sustainably, find others who will support you and share in what you do, and continue to connect to each other. Relationship and community building Is an ever abundant resource!
We are more powerful together than we are alone.
Thank you.
About the Author
Jesenia, a collaborator with Calling Up Justice and cofounder of One Free Community, is working to build a more equitable and inclusive world via collective action & connecting communities. Learn more on at NeuroSpicy Networking.com