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"how do you two feel about gay people?" "would you ever date a disabled person?" this weekend, friends and i organized a planning retreat for the disabled youth collective we are involved with. it's always a trip to do this kind of thing---things are so fast-paced with social justice work that moving at that all-encompassing, all-consuming level becomes the norm. but then you go out into the woods with a crew of people who are completely new to organizing and well... it just doesn't work that way. you realize there is language you take for granted, connections people have to make for themselves, and strategies for planting all these new seeds. a lot of waiting is involved. it's so dreadfully slow. people ask you questions like the ones above and you have to sit for a second in disbelief 'cause you can't remember the last time someone asked you that.. but this kind of thing--- it's beautiful at the same time, you know? seeing someone experience that "lightbulb moment" and knowing you were a part of it is the most amazing thing in the world. for example, one of my favorite guys (a high schooler w/ a learning disability, affectionately known as preacher), showed up late. he explained that his mother's car wouldn't start and when they said he had to call and cancel, he told them that he loved them but there were some things only other disabled people could get (!). his family drove a rental car two hours there and two hours back so he could come. unbelievable, huh? the training part of the weekend was three-fold: we started out by talking about eugenics and how folks doing neurodiversity and repro justice work were combating these ideas around worth. after talking about the CRACK campaign, ashley x treatment, ransom notes campaign, and amanda bagg's in my language video, we followed that up with an activity on intersectionality where folks split up into groups, took up a community, and talked about stereotypes, discrimination, and issues that lgbt/queer, people of color, women, and disabled people faced (h/t to amber for the idea.) the third part of the training was to talk about how social movements often reflect themes of dominant culture through assimilation and internalized oppression. the third part was the portion that really worried me... i wasn't sure how to explain the need for the disability rights movement and how the advancement of our people that has come through it while also talking about how everyone at this particular table has been ignored, silenced, forgotten by its leadership and the models it utilizes. it's a needed conversation--- how can you create anew without addressing history--- but i was worried about making new activists jaded. folks were hot though. we passed out disability publications/disability in the media and they immediately called out the fact that the readership was geared at white, rich, presumably-straight, wheelchair users. they even picked up on things i didn't realize, like the fact that the bodies were not reflective of real people or that any time a person of color was pictured, it was in a subservient role (holy shit!). then they talked about how the exclusion of issues like aversives was an another example of marginalization (again, holy shit!). i think folks realized that every time we talked about disability rights they only brought up issues that affected "wheelchair people" and connected that to what we were talking about. it was amazing. so good. i'm going to write more about our collective in the future (we're going to be fundraising to go to an ADAPT action and the AMC soon) but for now, just wanted to put our old and new mission statements next to each other: Old: The North Carolina Youth Leadership Network is a youth-directed organization that aims to empower North Carolinian youth with disabilities so that all youth can achieve independence and reach their full potential. New: The Disabled Young People's Collective is a collective of disabled youth working to build power and community together in North Carolina. We are activists, advocates, artists, students, leaders and friends between the ages of 15 and 28 years old. We are determined to combat ableism [the belief that only non-disabled people are valuable to society] and discrimination against disabled people. We believe in youth development and intergenerational [many ages] movement-building as a strategy for liberation. Our members have a variety of passions and we work to make sure that we all have the tools to explore and maximize our potential in all of these areas, whether it is advocacy, policy work, direct action, media-making, activism, or other forms of community-building.

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. Let my final actions thunder of love, solidarity, protest - of empowerment. I adamantly protest the richest culture in the history of the world, a culture which has the obvious potential to create a golden age of science and democracy dedicated to maximizing the quality of life of every person, but which still squanders the majority of its human and physical capital on modern versions of primitive symbols of power and prestige. I adamantly protest the richest culture in the history of the world which still incarcerates millions of humans with and without disabilities in barbaric institutions, backrooms and worse, windowless cells of oppressive perceptions, for the lack of the most elementary empowerment supports. I call for solidarity among all who love justice, all who love life, to create a revolution that will empower every single human being to govern his or her life, to govern the society and to be fully productive of life quality for self and for all. I do so love all the patriots of this and every nation who have fought and sacrificed to bring us to the threshold of this beautiful human dream. I do so love America the beautiful and our wild, creative, beautiful people. I do so love you, my beautiful colleagues in the disability and civil rights movement. My relationship with Yoshiko Dart includes, but also transcends, love as the word is normally defined. She is my wife, my partner, my mentor, my leader and my inspiration to believe that the human dream can live. She is the greatest human being I have ever known. Yoshiko, beloved colleagues, I am the luckiest man in the world to have been associated with you. Thanks to you, I die free. Thanks to you, I die in the joy of struggle. Thanks to you, I die in the beautiful belief that the revolution of empowerment will go on. I love you so much. I'm with you always. Lead on! Lead on! Justin Dart

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?  after much deliberation, my sister has been adopted by a group of desi friends at her schools. maybe this is messed up---you can tell me--- but i ask if calling herself brown (they gave her a dogtag that says "brown team") is true to her experience. i say this doesn't mean they can't be your family, but normally the word brown is used by our native, south east asian, arab, and latino brothers and sisters. she screams "you said biracial people can be whatever they want! how do you know i'm not white? why do you assume i am corean? do you think if you go to visit emo in seoul that people will see you as corean?"   i say "yeah you can be white if you want. but back to brown--- i don't know that saying you're brown is good for coalition or community building. you don't know what it means to be brown do you? you and i, we don't have that experience." she gives me a look and asks me how that is any different from calling myself a woman of color. she tells me that people laugh when they heard i told her that she was a "woman of color," that's she's not black..  and i am confused because i don't even know why they would think that or why a gay API friend asked me the same thing last week. yes we have june jordan, audre lorde, barbara smith and so many beautiful black foremothers but when i hear radical women of color i also think of you, cherrie moraga, gloria anzaldua, mari matsuda, nadine naber, andy smith, so many others. i do not mean to idealize our community but when i think of radical women of color, i think of poetry circles and organizing spaces where the room is so diverse with bodies, skin tones, languages, fragrances, hair styles, niqaabs, keffiyehs, piercings and hijabs. spaces where people tell stories that are different but made of the same threads.  i run to my shelf and pull out make/shift magazine. i read her lex's piece about radical women of color not being an structured identity, but a group of diverse people coming together on a promise, a commitment to each other. i flip to an earlier issue and read her mia's piece about being a disabled queer corean transracial adoptee. i tell her, no i don't believe our experiences are all the same but i understand how the colonization of asian bodies is connected to latina immigrants being raped on the border, to black women being sterilized in the united states, to arab sisters being silenced by western lies, to all mothers of color being told they are not good enough, to the hate we are all supposed to feel for ourselves. i say that the connection i feel with these folks is so more than solidarity, it is my body, my heart.  she laughs and tells me make/shift is my bible  my love for you is so big it doesn't even fit into a poem. my love for you is so deep i can't even explain it rationally to my sister. you do a good job of it though.