cripchick's blog

hey lady brown,

last week i heard someone say that our childhoods make us who we are. as you and i message back and forth on facebook talking about post-graduation plans i wonder about our paths, how we both became women of color (here i use women of color as a political label we take up as a banner of solidarity and commonality, not our non-whiteness). who introduced you to for colored girls…, D? how the hell did i stumble upon the RWOC blogosphere and this bridge?

in middle school, we had every white lady wrapped around our fingers. amazing what a quirky black girl & a sweet asian girl in a wheelchair can do to win the hearts of white people everywhere. their open fascination with us made it so easy. smart colored girls they could give love to, even if they never said it out loud. i don’t know how this worked for you but this is how i got the accommodations i needed, never had any problems at IEP meetings because i had every person in power feeling like they had adopted me (spanglish is so my movie). mixed girl with second generation immigrant roots, i’ve been speaking dominant culture language since i first learned how to talk. with case managers, teacher’s assistants, school nurses, and guidance counselors, i had so many white women intimately involved in my life, shaping who i was.

in high school i went to a conference for disabled youth leaders. shy girl and overwhelmed by so much disability, i didn’t talk to anyone, but the event changed my life. i talk a lot about community and that’s why— once you experience being in community, going back to shields, walls, and the isolation that comes from denying yourself parts of you is not an option. after that conference, i jumped into the youth arm of the disability rights movement. white people everywhere, i had a gubernatorial appointment at age 16, started an organization at 17, and by 18, was persuading various state agencies to let me be responsible for thousands of unmarked dollars. catapulted into a beautiful community, i devoted my life to this and was still lonely. tongue still tailored to them, unspoken racism and unchecked privilege had me unable to completely claim this home.

after doing that for three years, i completely retreated from that scene and submerged myself in radical oganizing and local work that put us at the center. co-organized an anti-racism and economics forum last fall attended by people of color looking for the analysis to speak to collective experience. worked with SPEAK! women of color media collective to create and distribute a spoken word CD that is being used in classrooms, bookstores, and learning circles. other young disabled people and i created our own youth leadership model and then hosted our first youth leadership forum. helped youth leadership org be rebirthed into the disabled young people’s collective. worked to get a disability history bill passed in NC leg. am leading a group in starting a center for independent living since our area is so underserved. serving as prez for the org. that created me. somewhere along the way, i started writing poetry. people like us are my life and i can’t even pretend like things that aren’t relevant to us are important. too tiring to go back to that old way of being. i can’t do politics, don’t have time the energy to act like i care.

so now i am balancing all of this and a lot of days, (like yesterday) i feel like the world is crumbling. the work is so connected to personal relationships and i am so emotionally-dependent on the people i am in community with. it’s all so high stakes now too, if something doesn’t come through it can mean us not coming together this summer or someone moving into an institution. when i fail at something, it is hard because the people i love most are counting on me and i have let them down.

but today i am setting my own pace and even though i am overdue on 5 or 6 things and have not responded to email in two weeks, i think everything is going to be okay.

how are you, girl? congratulations on graduating, everyday i tell my sister to be like you. i know you are doing amazing things. hit me up when you’re free.

love always,
cripchick