Soma Buy - HQ Pharmacy

Dear loved ones, Mia Mingus and I have decided to live together and create/cultivate interdependent queer disabled korean diasporic radical women of color home together. We are embarking on a journey together to put pieces of disability justice into practice, love each other and live on the other side of dreaming. A huge part of this is our need, as crips, as queers, and women of color, as korean (and all) diasporic people; we need each other and we need you. 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. Need One: Affordable Accessible Housing is Not an Oxymoron: We dream about an amazing 2 bedroom wheelchair accessible house/housing filled with love and lots of light in Berkeley, CA... We hope to have a great landlord that understands disability justice, but it is not a requirement since we can use our crip super powers to work through anything and with anyone! Need Two: Growing Collective Interdependent Access and Care Through the Cracks of State Systems: Evidently in this country, disabled people don't move--and we certainly don't move together. Our systems for disabled folks are broken, we know this. And we are trying to leverage what we can to get to a place where we could live outside of them, but until then... We need to create a community careshift collective to support me (Stacey) in the months I will be in Berkeley before my disability/medicaid services get started in California. I am a powerchair user and we need people who could come to our home in shifts to help me do things like get out of bed, use the bathroom, get dressed, etc... We dream of a group of community-minded, interdependent disabled and non-disabled folks to help out with these daily access needs. We dream of moving beyond capitalist notions of "payment" for care/access and instead want to have conversations and inspiration-sessions with those interested in what we can all offer and give. We especially invite folks who are interested in putting disability justice into practice and learning together with us. Do you want to be part of creating collective access with us? Do you want to be part of creating something out of nothing that can hold us outside of the current broken and dignity-stealing systems we are up against? Our first priority is housing. Please let us know of any information, contacts, or leads you have ASAP. Please feel free to pass this note on to loved ones of your own who might be able to help us. Thank you! To the other side of dreaming, Mia and Stacey Mia Mingus miamingus@gmail.com http://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/ Stacey Milbern staceymilbern@gmail.com http://blog.cripchick.com/

i love j. cole. he has flow. he is hella talented. he's from my town and reps the south HARD. in hip hop tradition, he uses the mic to speak to real issues people are facing. he is something i secretly hope drake (who i have a love/hate/but mostly love relationship with) will wake up and become one day. having just signed to roc nation, j.cole is on the up and up. he is putting fayetteville on the map. the problem with cole going so hard for the 'ville is that a lot of folks are up in arms about what it is that he is representing. (most of the voices being heard are white people.  a few black community leaders are thrown in for validation.) my friends & i watch his video and we see youth of color taking over the city. claiming this place. recognizing ritual. understanding that j.cole had to leave fayetteville & the south but unlike everyone else, he came back. others see him emphasizing "blight" and fayetteville negatively. i went to two high school graduations this summer and j.cole got a shout out in both valedictorian speeches. if j. cole comes on anywhere (party, mall, festival, wherever), folks jump up. (young) people (of color), like me, are proud as hell of j. cole. i assume that anti-racist progressives i know will see the video in the same way --- that cole did the right thing by shooting the video here in fayetteville and including cheerleaders and marching bands from the local HBCU & high school next to it --- but they're with the city: outraged and/or disgusted that this is what is being put out about fayetteville. in the video above, j. cole says he understands the outrage as a generational gap in black community: "that's something that happens all the time in the black community. it's a generational gap. they don't get it. they don't see the good in the situation that a kid from fayetteville made it out and made something out of himself and wants to come home and you know, represent to the rest of the world. but they can't see past the curse words. so that's what happened with that. i'm not mad anymore, like i understand where they're coming from and where their mindset is at, but if they had a better understanding and grasp of the situation, they wouldn't feel how they felt." i can't speak to that dynamic. i do know three things for sure: + hip hop is a threat to dominant culture. it is one of the most powerful forms of media and people don't want youth of color to have that power. + our idea around tone and appropriateness is rooted in white supremacy and class hierarchy. +youth of color hardly have any (institutional) power. taking away our language is taking away one of the few things we have control over. most of all, i know this video won't whitewash fayetteville. it refuses to sanitize our history with white supremacy or the impact of being next door to the biggest US Army installation in the world. i am inspired by J. Cole's commitment to fayetteville and hope he keeps doing what he does (while working on the misogyny and sexism of course).

don't feel the way white supremacy creeps into your life and plops itself in the center? in the last wk, white ppl have:

• told me how to rearrange my words as to be more approachable.
• made my need to have ppl of color time about them.
• asked me invasive medical questions about my body.
• dominated conversations.
• engaged in passive aggressive communication.
• told me about long lost family who share ancestry with me.
• not noticed that there were practically no youth of color present.
• said wanting to centralize youth of color comes off as "exclusionary".
• gotten mad when i didn't have time to instantly call or email them back.
• not even known what i was doing this wk, even though the last eight months of my life has been prep for it.
• offered advice when i didn't ask it.
• put me in the asian woman role of taking care of everybody's feelings.

just documenting. for myself. so i remember why i'm so emotionally exhausted. that it wasn't just hosting two back to back conferences or handling access needs or facilitating or being a good hostess 14 hours a day or figuring out who can clean up the shit, puke and pee, it was also whiteness.