cripchick's blog

hey joe,

it blew my mind when you referenced something that happened 3 or 4 years ago while we were talking last night. besides the fact that 4 years can feel like eternity to a 21 year old kid, the path towards community has been filled with such growth it feels funny to look back a time when we were so…new, with so…much to learn.

do you know that every day, every single day, i am bursting with pride in you? not many people can say that in the last year alone, they’ve made huge strides in bringing a disability rights perspective to the bioethics field, have led take over of their senator’s office until she agreed to cosponsor a bill, organize book clubs that folks have traveled hours to be in attendance, and agreed to facilitate sessions on sexuality at their friends’ youth disability conferences. (…don’t you think it says something about you that when you came to NC, i asked you to lead our sex discussion, a bioethics talk around the movie x-men3, and a workshop on disability culture? smile.).

however, what i take most pride in is who you are as a person— that we’ve been able to grow so much together. i think this happens a lot with cross-cultural friendships but a huge aspect of our friendship has always been examining the world, whether this is our relationships with the academy, activism, privilege, the disability community, feminism, each other. i love that we can sit in the dark and hash out why we had a fight over something like the academy and didn’t talk for months because of it. i love that when i’m freaking out about whether i’m too crip to date someone, you assure me i am worthy. i love that when i am saying things like “we don’t have a community, just suits” you call me out and say, no. no, we are here, we are growing in numbers, we are the movement, believe.

from you i have learned the importance of using all the tools we have, of tapping into people’s strengths and passions. from you i have also learned that everyone is open for growth, that we are all unlimited in the potential for what we can become.

thank you for your friendship. i love you.

affectionately,

cripchick

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Habit Forming Love Challenge, 30 Days of Intentional Love. Check out She Speaks for more details and join us!

do you know how annoying it is to see groups with tons of money putting together things that you and all your friends did (and do) for free, but it’s not even close to what it could be? (heard someone refer to this as the “dis biz”, how fitting.) people see you as some disability support youth group and you have to remember to keep it hush and let them think that because if they really knew what you’re doing…well, with parents/funders/everybody in our biz, it wouldn’t be so easy anymore.

what does it mean to be queer when queer to you is this radical way of understanding your body and how people have been otherized but to everyone else it just means you like girls? the same with disabled. and radical women of color (i know my friends think i’m just this weird identity-crisising asian girl going off on shit all the time).

and how is it possible for a person (my mom) to bring back every story, every situation to the importance of not being cheap w/ conference food? you serve salad appetizers for dinner one year b/c you don’t have $ for expensive hotel food and they never let you forget…. (okay, and to be fair the whole bread& cheese sandwich fiasco last year…)

when i tell people my harabeoji was an underground freedom fighter, i didn’t know it was him and uhh, 2,000,000 others (talk about people power!). today i came across a series of articles on the joongahn daily website that commemorates the march first movement, a korean uprising against colonial rule in 1919 that began with a declaration of independence and lasted a year. even though japanese occupation did not end until much later, the mansei demonstrations and its heroes (like Yu Gwansun, 16 year old freedom fighter considered to be a “korean joan of arc”) are a source of pride for all koreans. the pictures below link to two great articles.

illustration of koreans coming together to protest japanese occupation. picture links to an article about how the march first movement can be understood in a larger context of anti-colonist resistance.

another illustration of protestors. the picture links to an article about how the samil movement was one of the first people's movement to be truly inclusive (scholars, students, gisaeng, farmers, everyone!)