cripchick's blog

for queer disabled people of color craving community with each other:

the azolla is a southeast asian plant used in growing rice. azolla plants carry the ability to grow quickly, suppress weeds, and give nutrients to other plants in a symbiotic fashion. the azolla has millions of small, overlapping leaves and lives on the surface of water with its roots hanging under the surface.

we, as disabled queer people of color, are the azolla. we are everywhere. we have the power to grow and build community (the azolla can double its biomass in 2 days!) we are beautiful. we give nutrient to those around us but either are invisible or called weeds. although we sustain community, the focus is never on us. we are working on creating a space, the Azolla Story, that changes this.

we want this online home to be a space where we can connect with each other; build knowledge and community; share stories and histories; reflect, support and transform our love for and with each other. we are a part of many communities and seek to build a community where we can claim our whole selves. we recognize that queerness, gender expression and identity, trans politics and sexuality are an important part of our lives because of the many ways that queer disabled people of color’s gender, sexuality and relationships are policed, deamonized, ignored, exterminated and exploited.

we hope you will grow with us and join us in the telling of our transformation(s). this is the azolla story.

if you are interested in joining the azolla story online community, pls leave a comment and i will send you a link.

hi all!

putting my need out into the internet since it has been working lately! (love to you all)

do any of yall have information on liberation schools organized by the black panthers, community-led classes, popular education programs, organizing schools, or anything of that nature?

i am in the process of organizing a “campus” locally for the school of our lorde. where i live, this will mean people of color coming together every saturday to study the poetry, pedagogy [study of teaching], and politics of audre lorde

and the youth crew i am is also sketching out the framework we want to use for the event we are holding this summer for disabled youth to come together for a week and return home as revolutionaries

if you have access to online libraries, books you can rec, stories you know, stuff you’ve seen in your communities, models you’ve used, please let me know. told a friend today i was excited to learn that things in my head and in the collective are not new— being accessible is called “popular education”, events where youth come together to learn power analysis, activism, poetry is called “liberation schools”… just have to do the homework!

excited for 2010!!!

cripchick

in 2009 i got to be involved in some really awesome skill shares organized by the cyberquilting crew, a group of genderqueer and women of color who are using technology to thread movements together. i fell in love with both cyberquilters and skills shares.

["skill shares" or "skill sharing" is when people teach other people things that they know. they do it for free or in a trade for being taught a skill. to me this is more than just telling someone how to do something because it is like a transfer of power or knowledge. think superheroes joining forces.]

photo taken at the cyberquilting skills share in detroit at the allied media conference. credit to quirky black girls photography.

every day we are told that a.) we do not have skills and b.) that the things we know are not valuable. this lie exists so that we will try to hoard our skills from others and so that the the system can dangle our need for skill development over our head and sell it back to us.

there are a lot of things i am interested in learning in 2010. i have skills that i can exchange, too, mostly in the area of organizing and media making. i can teach these via webcam, email, or conference call. if you are interested in skill sharing w/ me and others, leave a comment with what you’d like to learn and what you could teach.

things i can teach:

how activists and organizations can use google wave to make the work they have to do together much easier. (some examples: how to use google wave to work with others to host an event, throw a party, write a document, create a plan, etc.)

how to make your event, blog, organization, or space more accessible in terms of disability.

basic html skills or how to create and maintain a website.

basic video editing

how to do mass mailings, webinars, web meetings or conference calls on the cheap/free

how to make your writing 8th grade level

graphic design (photoshop)

how to make your workshop interactive

tshirt reconstruction (cutting up a tee and making a new outfit out of it)

(will add to this list as i think of more)

things i would like to learn:

a vegan dish or two that is easy to cook, cheap, and can be done without special food stores. okay… better eating in general. not only for myself but in hosting events on the cheap. (e.g. there has to be healthier (again, cheap!) food option than beanies and weanies at our youth events)

mediation/energy work techniques that are accessible to me as someone with a physical disability and chronic lung issues. (most ones i see people doing don’t do anything for me).

zine layouts. i’ve worked on 3 zines now but have a hard time wrapping my head around the layout part.

general facilitation skill development

more popular education techniques

how to mix music with opensource technology

budget stuff. i do okay with organizational budgets (aka money that ain’t mine) but don’t have personal budgeting down. see myself drowning in debt if things don’t change soon.

let’s see if we can do some skill sharing with each other.

xo,
cripchick