Daily Archives: 17 September, 2010

Signal Boost: Help Mia Mingus & CripChick!

To the Other Side of Dreaming: Finding Housing & Putting Disability Justice Into Practice

We’re reaching out across our bi-coastal networks to move to the Bay, specifically Berkeley because of the level of access that can be found there for disabled folks. This is a huge, complicated and multidimensional decision that we have struggled with and we will be writing more about it to you, our loved ones and family, in the coming months.

But right now we need you. We need help finding a place to live and creating a community careshift collective.

Check for more information about what Mia Mingus & Ms Crip Chick need at Leaving Evidence (mirrored at CripChick’s blog), and also check out the Book Sale at thaura zine distro: Revolutionary Love is More Than a Catch Phrase. There appears also to be an etsy sale in the works, so please keep an eye out for that as well.

CripChick also has a list of books she’s giving away, as their new digs won’t have room for all the books (woe).

For myself, I have only recently become aware of the amazing work that Mia Mingus does, but what I’ve read at her blog, Leaving Evidence, from hearing about her work this year at the Allied Media Conference, I am blown away by her passion, her drive, and her love. CripChick’s work I’m more familiar with, especially her work with young people with disabilities, as a youth organizer and a radical woman of color. Both of their blogs are outstanding, and as well they are also both heavily involved in community organizing and disability solidarity.

I know things are tight all over, but much of the help they need is not just in money, but in support and information. Check out what they need!

Recommended Reading for 17 September, 2010

Gentle reader, be cautioned: comments sections on mainstream media sites tend to not be safe and we here at FWD/Forward don’t necessarily endorse all the opinions in these pieces. Let’s jump right in, shall we?

From BBC’s Ouch, by Charlie Swinbourne, Deaf country life v deaf city life:

I’m soon to become a Dad for the second time, so we’ve started thinking about the long term, and where we want our children to grow up. With houses on the pricey side for anything bigger than a shed in our area of West London, we’re currently wondering whether we’d be better off bringing up a family outside the city. […] The capital is full of opportunities for deaf people, with weekly deaf pub meets, regular events, accessible cinema and theatre performances, and numerous deaf centres and sports clubs.

Badgermama presents Kids and wheelchair manners:

Please stop yelling at your kids just because they’re 20 feet away from a wheelchair! Nothing bad is going to happen. It really pisses me off when someone grabs their kid, yanks them “out of the way” and yells at them, just because I’m in the same grocery aisle or on the same sidewalk. Usually, the kids are nowhere near me. All these people are doing is teaching their children that people in wheelchairs are scary and weird.

Some good news from ysobel of i hear the voices when I’m dreaming in *sags in relief*:

So, there’s been this whole saga with trying to get a ramp to the front entrance of our church, made vastly overcomplicated by the fact that the church is a designated historical site blah blah blah. […] The church appealed to the city council, who had it on the agenda for tonight, after several postponements on their part.

Leah at Cromulent Words writes You Can’t See My Pain:

You don’t see me not talking about disability in class because I’m fraid of being silenced again. You see someone who doesn’t care about the assignment.

At random babble…, our own OYD writes Medical Autonomy Chronicles: The Virgin Pap Smear (do be warned, it’s graphic):

For all the talk of how having sex outside of marriage or whatever message had been pounded on me for however long, and how it would leave me hollow and leave me feeling worthless and damaged, and for all the ways I had been told that casual sex would leave me reeling and feeling depressed and with a hole of missing self-esteem, nothing I did in my consensual sex life has ever compared to the way that pelvic exam and pap smear felt to me, a fourteen year old girl. A person rising on the crest of womanhood, not yet there but ready to fly, and having had myself violated before I took my first steps.

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