CripCreate has been gathering since 2020 as a weekly online co-working and socializing space grounded in Disability Justice. Every Wednesday from 1:00–3:00 PM PDT and Saturday from 4:00–6:00 PM PDT, Disabled people meet in a room designed to hold our brilliance, our labor, and our rest. The practice is currently co-organized by Calling Up Justice, The Curiosity Paradox, Catalyst Consulting Associates, and Crip Create Rising. It is guided by the principles of Open Space Technology, which offer us a set of rules simple enough to adapt but profound enough to keep us accountable to one another.
One of the most important lessons from those rules is humility: this space cannot meet all needs.
Access Frictions
Every Disabled person carries a constellation of access needs that shift over time. Sometimes the friction is technological: the platform isn’t compatible with a screen reader, or someone’s bandwidth can’t hold a steady video stream. Sometimes the friction is embodied: a flare-up of pain, fatigue, or sensory overwhelm makes participation hard or impossible. Sometimes the friction is structural: caregiving demands, financial precarity, or medical appointments pull us away.
We are committed to reducing barriers wherever we can, but to pretend that a single space could anticipate and fulfill every need would be dishonest. That is why we center flexibility rather than rigidity, honesty rather than perfection.
The Law of Mobility
Open Space Technology gives us one law: the law of two feet. At CripCreate we interpret this expansively as the law of mobility aka freedom of movement. If you are in a space where you are neither serving nor being served, you must move on. In a world that often denies Disabled people mobility, we claim it as a radical act. Mobility is not only physical—it is cognitive, emotional, and communal. You can leave the Zoom room, mute the chat, or simply rest. You can go where you need to be, because your bodymind is the authority.
This mobility protects the collective. It prevents stagnation, resentment, or obligation from replacing joy, curiosity, and solidarity. It reminds us that the health of the group depends on the freedom of each member to come and go without guilt.
Movement Work Requires Freedom to Move
Disability Justice teaches us that care is collective, but collective work is not static. Movement work requires mobility. We shift roles, we shift tasks, we shift spaces. Sometimes we are holding the room, sometimes we are being held, and sometimes we are elsewhere entirely. CripCreate is not a container that fixes anyone in place; it is a staging ground where we practice showing up, bowing out, and moving with integrity.
By honoring the fact that CripCreate cannot meet all needs, we affirm that our movements must always be larger than a single gathering. The power lies in our ability to circulate—across spaces, across communities, across time zones and embodiments—without apology.
This law of mobility allows us all to be the agentic creatures we must be for collective liberation. Through, around, and across access frictions we practice Freedom of Movement.