cripchick's blog

My sister, who knows more of my secrets than anyone else, doesn’t know I’m queer yet. I’m not sure why I haven’t told her yet since I am safe to do so. She essentially knows I’m queer (homo friends, polyamory, etc) but I haven’t given her political language to understand it. Took care of that today. Deep sigh of relief.

Hi Sis,

Your email about people not being real about who they are made me want to tell you that I identify as queer. A lot of my friends are coming to the Reap conference and I’m excited to tell you that I’m queer because it means I won’t have to try to dance around it, quieting conversations into secrets and protecting your ears from something you probably already know and are down with.

To be specific, by queer I mean,

I date guys girls transgender folks genderqueer ppl;
I try to practice polyamory in all my relationships (not owning the other person, understanding that no friend/partner can fill all your needs, being honest); and
I am critical of the way that society polices and otherizes non-normative bodies (gender variant bodies, disabled bodies, fat bodies, poor bodies)

Ok. So now you know. We can talk more about it when you come home. I love you.

cripchick

in one month, i will be taking a hiatus from organizing*. as i organize my last event with the disabled young people’s collective, i am thinking about all of the things i plan to do once this (important) (massive headache) event is over.

in this next year, i plan to:
take my time with everything.
focus on building relationships.
go on southern crip camping trips.
go to corea with other disabled and queer corean americans.
make media.
write for anthologies and zines.
buy a house.
have a mortgage.
find more queer PAs.
learn to cook.
maybe take some classes at the local community college to build skills i want.
tell all the stories and histories i don’t even tell myself.

having a list feels really important… a few months ago, i could not even imagine what my life might look like if i wasn’t a Community Organizer (c). i have carved a life/identity/purpose out of this work. now i am noticing all the ways that my life has become about creating a response, logistics, event planning. there are so many events i can’t even be good at what i’m organizing at anymore: everything is a rushed, half-said logistical nightmare. intergenerational frictions come up at events but there is not enough energy post-event to address them in a direct, loving way so relationships with mentors break. everything with comrades feels like drama because we are too busy to really be thorough with our processes so the issues stay there, never going away, just sitting at the bottom of every interaction. the timeline does not allow for people to be held accountable or skills to be really be shared so the same people end up doing everything. half of the low income/poor people of color drop off because they aren’t supported in way that allows them to really contribute. soon, most people with developmental disabilities have left too.

while in detroit last week, i lived with the creating collective access crew, a group of disability justice-hearted people taking care of each other during the amc and social forum. the way we came together felt like something i haven’t experienced in a long time. access looks like such a different thing from a disability justice model. part of my readiness to hang up my organizer hat is wanting the time to build deep, intentional relationships. this is rooted in disability justice.

these are the things i’m really feelin’ right now:

disability rights:
+ access gets simplified into a pre- approved accommodation check-list 1-2 people bottomline. checklist is good because this is often the first time people have basic access needs met.
+ general understanding is that people are entitled to access. it is a right. there are good things about this but it also often means we are only doing shallow/absolute basic access for each other.
+ people come from a place of wanting to change something concrete.
+ focus is in changing the minds of able-bodied people, whether that is awareness, laws, acknowledgment.
+ even if every goal of the disability rights movement was achieved, most of us still wouldn’t be free. the disability rights movement’s refusal to name ableism as a system of power has also been a way to maintain white supremacy, classism, heterosexism as what is right…

disability justice:
+ access is something that is a collective responsibility. it is a constant process. it is rooted in the multiplicity of our selves.
+ access is love. access is believing we need each other and interdependence is how we will survive.
+ people come from a place of longing for each other. each time we reach towards each other, we are cutting across isolation.
+ the work is in building relationships and changing ourselves. we know we will never find solution in the system.
+ DJ rests on the leadership of disabled people who have been pushed out to the margins of what is “right” “good” “clean” “acceptable” by mainstream society.

i am so excited to make room in my life to live disability justice.

* there are a lot of definitions for “community organizer”. here i mean organizer as a person who brings people together in one place for a specific purpose. i am referring to work i do unpaid and outside of my 40+ hour job.

hmmm it seems like everything always comes down to :

how do you know what is real and what is a poem whirling out of control, swallowing you?

friends and co-creators say i am “unrealistic” in my practice/thoughts but most of the time, i am thankful to live with an air of fantasy— what we have now is not the reality i want for myself and i think, to some degree, you have to be able to disregard reality to create space where we can move past organizing and reactionary responses to building a world where we can be free. so yeah, i’m okay with being a little too sci fi, a little too dreamy, a little too lost in thoughts and engaged with ideas

but lately it feels like i am fighting for a little piece of reality to hold on to. i hate how easily i get taken down paths, sucked into things that are not real. i can’t tell what is real, what is something i want/hope for, and what is illusion.

in korea i visited a lot of temples, places tucked away where scholars and poets would go to write. focus. study. i am trying to invoke that energy and create that for myself. i am working hard on my job and other things i am organizing this summer and investing the rest of my time (evenings, weekends) to studying. every day i am writing down things i am learning, putting poems together, and making lists about plans i want to put in place this year. it feels very korean (?) and my 80 year old halmoni and i are essentially on the same grind: she gets up at 6 am to pray, works hard all day, spends her evening reading the bible, and then goes to bed early so she can do the same the next day. i get up and work til 8. read books or write poems til 10. talk on the phone til 12, sorting out projects or just talking about ideas. go to bed and do the same the next day.

not tryna get lost in thought, not tryna be abt pursuing sweeties, just saving money, keeping my head low, and staying focused.

(trust that next month summer will come and i will be all about reinvention)