Resistance and Hope: Essays by Disabled People

The more invested our communities become in the government as the solution to violence, the less connected we become to each other, and the less we look to our own communities as sources of safety, healing, prevention, and transformation.

also know personally that a function of ableism is that it forces disabled people to navigate systems in isolation, so most people do not actually have a clue about what our lives are like. I

Hope gives us the strength to resist, to take action. With hope, we believe - we know - that we can stop or change things. Hope leads those of us who can, to act.

Stacey Milbern is a disability justice thought leader with twelve years of experience incubating leadership programs, managing services programs, and providing technical assistance to organizations wanting to increase their capacity around disability and diversity. She is a queer, mixed race, disabled woman of color and is passionate about advancin

heteropatriarchal capitalist ableist systems. We

Disavowal tells us that we only get to move ahead or get more rights or be more included or get an opportunity if we do so at somebody else’s expense. It reinforces capitalist scarcity politics by saying that only so many people can be included or have rights, and that in order to include or give rights to some people, somebody else must still be e

We talk about how we can make events more accessible, and we absolutely need to be having that conversation more frequently and seriously than we already do. But aside from events, what does it mean to make your organization, Facebook group, or house accessible? What does that mean for those of us who are on a fixed income or have no income, or if

Resistance must work to transform the conditions that created the need for that resistance in the first place.

is not enough to only be able to articulate what you’re against; you also need to know what you are

The first and most important thing is emphasizing the importance of sticking to values and principles, instead of rigid or overly ideological thinking (the kind that leads to unnecessary political litmus tests, lack of nuance, and no space for people new to movement work). Values and principles help underscore what kind of world we want to live in