cripchick's blog

i hope you find comfort in these words.

Dearly Beloved:

Listen to the heart of this old soldier. As with all of us the time comes when body and mind are battered and weary. But I do not go quietly into the night. I do not give up struggling to be a responsible contributor to the sacred continuum of human life. I do not give up struggling to overcome my weakness, to conform my life – and that part of my life called death – to the great values of the human dream.

Death is not a tragedy. It is not an evil from which we must escape. Death is as natural as birth. Like childbirth, death is often a time of fear and pain, but also of profound beauty, of celebration of the mystery and majesty which is life pushing its horizons toward oneness with the truth of mother universe. The days of dying carry a special responsibility. There is a great potential to communicate values in a uniquely powerful way – the person who dies demonstrating for civil rights. Read the rest of this entry »

you do know that everything i write, i dream, i breathe is nothing but an ode to your being, your beauty? the way you move, the way you ask me what audre would say, the way you can be so brilliant all the time, the way you speak to my experiences when we’ve just met, the way you bring warmth and openness into a room, the way you were there for me when i was embarrassed and felt like a burden, the way you connect things together, the way you make people feel like there is no other option but to be real, the way you dream, the way you have changed worlds without even realizing it 

you do know that i do nothing but paste your poems, your pictures, your postcards on my wall right? that i save your words in away messages, dream jars, tweets and more journals than i can count? that every time you publish something, i scramble to find a copy for myself? or that i jump at any invitation you send because it means spending time with you? even those of you i haven’t met in person, you do know this, right?  Read the rest of this entry »

thought i’d process my weekend kameelah-style via a list:

• i’ve had stanley clarke’s i wanna play for you on repeat all day today. hot hot hot. 
• today i tried very hard to step away from the computer and start winter break by doing something creative. the result was this. i think the background may be too hellish (quite unintentional) for the art contest i entered it into. i don’t want to give my vacation to the stack of work i have to do so i’m going to be intentional about journaling, seeing friends, and read these books i bought but have yet to open.
• i went to my high school best friend’s wedding here in town yesterday. she and her partner are in georgia but they came here to get married at the church that raised her, a small pentacostal holiness church out in the country. about 5 other friends showed up from high school.  it was freaaaaky. like, has it been four years already? have we really developed into our own selves? last time i saw you all, high school was life… now you are in the air force going to japan, you’re pregnant and married, you’re a teacher, and this one over here is jumping in the car going on her honeymoon. it seems like the time before was an alternate reality (though i don’t know why i’m surprised, it’s not like i haven’t changed too…hello old teen republican missionettes straight girl self). 
• everything is coming together in my life, like little pieces being woven together. i love it.  my communities, my work, my worlds…i’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of “wearing hats” as a person who has a lot of conflicting identities/relationships and it feels sooo good to take them off.  like i can breathe for the first time. need to not out myself though…
• a woman using a powerchair was hit by a car this weekend. this is the third chair-user in the last three months and is in direct correlation to local paratransit services being cut in low-income neighborhoods. it’s looking like we’re going to have to come up with some kind of response… i’m not sure folks here are really protest-oriented so we’ll have to see what strategies we come up with. 
• i told someone i care about deeply that i needed to step back from our relationship this weekend. we talked about it and i realized [okay he told me] that i was disengaging because i didn’t want to deal. i think when you are always in opposition, knowing when to mentally take yourself out of the equation is so important… we know it’s survival, right? but damn, you can’t disengage from friends, family, people you are committed to everytime you are upset. after nearly destroying two really important friendships in few months because of my avoidance of bubbling conflict and then complete silence, i’ve been trying *really* hard not to do this. i’m really hurt/worried/scared/disappointed that a group of people i really care about it might disengrate because of some kind of similar pattern of dealing with pain, hurt feelings & being completely overwhelmed with life. they have my heart and i don’t know what i’ll do if this happens.
• a professor i admire has a blog! and he said something really nice about me in it. i totally melted saturday morning. : ) 

i’m really really disappointed. and hurt. and feeling betrayed. i’m realizing that sitting in the bathroom of this coffeeshop crying is not productive and know i can’t get back to writing my paper (that’s due in a hour) until i write this letter. 

over the last year, one of our own, micah fialka- feldman, began to fight his university so that he could live on campus. the school accepted his money, gave him a move-in date, and then changed their minds because of an old housing policy that was created before people with cognitive disabilities were allowed to attend through the OPTIONS program. now they are saying they do not have enough space. as you know, students and activists have strongly voiced their support for micah. 

however, many of you have not. in fact, some of you have come out against micah. now i understand disagreeing if it is because you feel that the university is justified in their policy. we can just call that a difference of perspective and understand that while we enjoy bipartisanship, disagreement is a part that comes with it.  living in north carolina where the disability community can be surprisingly republican, i understand that we need each other to advance our people. 

what i do not agree with, and what i am strongly offended by, is when you use ableist rhetoric and take up an assimilationist politic. we, young folk in the disability rights movement, are called the ada generation because we grew up with rights older disabled people fought for. we, for the most part or at least a higher proportion, were allowed in schools and in public. many of us who are labelled as ada generation have also been given opportunities, like congressional internships, activist training, mentorship, and access to youth leadership development programs, to grow within the movement. what we do with these opportunities is going to define the future of our movement and community.

i think every young leader in the movement should read the INCITE! anthology, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded. the book speaks a lot about the professionalization of movements and what happens when the focus is shifted away from community. the conversations become about leadership skills and how to get business cards, not about ableism and what we need to do to mobilize. disability becomes a 9-5 career.

i feel like that is what is happening with micah. we are forgetting our community. instead of asking why shouldn’t he be allowed to live on campus, you instead ask “why can’t he live off campus like i had to?” and use words like “pulling heartstrings,” “asking for handouts,” “bending the rules” and “using his disability”. you then say “now… if X experience i had was happening to micah, then of course i would be outraged!” really? are we only saying we share support if we’ve experienced what they’ve experienced? this doesn’t sound good for cross-disability organizing. and have we really adopted tools and tactics that have been used against us instead of extending solidarity to micah? 

it’s so disgusting. i know this is not new— that the disability rights movement functions with people from all backgrounds contributing different things—but this ada generation scares me because we say we speak for young disabled people everywhere while simultaneously only caring about our careers. we are working from a network model instead of a community model without recognizing what both models offer (and constrict).

as leader of an organization that has bred many of us, i know i must sound like a contradiction. i think there are many cards stacked against us and we do need networks, mentorship and development opportunities to advance our community. i just hope that we can do these things, and grow into ourselves, without hurting our community. our people. folks like my friend and fellow activist, micah.

hanging on,
cripchick.

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