cripchick's blog

As an event planner and a member of communities that are often excluded, I have learned a lot about what people need to participate and wanted to share (and learn) with you. This is a page on all the things people forget about accessibility [basic things to make it easy for people to be a part of something]. Can folks add to this list in the comment sections? When are times you have been excluded? What do you need to participate? Are there things (movements! organizations! listservs!) you are not involved with because of access or a feeling of being unwelcome? If so, I would be sooo thankful if you could share that experience so we could learn from it. xoxo– cripchick

Accessibility is:

do you have childcare so parents can come? will kids be safe and have programming so parents don’t have to worry about them?

do you have different payment options? if people can’t afford your event, can they volunteer their time or services instead?

how do people hear about your events? is it just email and facebook or do you use mailings and phone trees too?

with a long history of trans and genderqueer people being harrassed and in danger when they go into bathrooms, do you have bathrooms where gender does not matter? a lot of times gender-neutral bathrooms are single-room bathrooms where disabled people can also go in with their personal attendants or parents can take their kids. this is helpful for everyone.

do you ask about people’s allergies or if they need vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, etc?

is Point A far from Point B for folks that walk? what physical barriers are there?, if you’re going to close meeting room doors, are they heavy?, are there chairs for people? are the chairs wide enough that everyone can be comfortable? it’s cool to be creative about making things work but know that if basic access requires a lot of energy, people may not come.

always be aware of time. if you are planning an event, it’s important that people know the schedule and you try your hardest to stick to it. many autistic people cannot participate if you don’t do this. for disabled people who have to schedule out transportation, bathroom trips with personal attendants, etc, a schedule that is always changing means they will miss programming (don’t assume people can stay a hour later if you’re late on schedule!) if there must be schedule changes, be clear about them so people know.

if people request it, are your documents available in large print, braille, on a cd, or in another language? did you set aside money for ASL (or other languages) interpreters so people can request them? do people know that they can ask for these things?

is everyone saying their name before they speak? if you giving directions, do you know how to explain it to a person with a visual impairment? if you are watching a movie, does it have audio description or are you prepared to describe what is happening visually? if it is a multi-day event, can you arrange a time where people can go on a tour of the buildings so they know where everything is?

does everyone know what you are saying? are you using word everyone knows and if not, can you explain those terms? do your documents and presentations have pictures that explain what is happening?

are you using a variety of different formats? (e.g. media wise— documents, videos, audio, pictures. Presentation styles—large group, small group, interactive activities, art-making, etc?) are your rooms big enough that people can walk around or stand during your presentation if they want to?

if you are hosting an event, do you have a space where people can go if they need to be alone? do you have flexibility so people can step back if they are getting overstimulated or tired? (for safety at youth events, this works well with a “buddy system” so people can tell someone they are taking a break). it is also helpful to have another lounge where people can go take a mental break and socialize. (this also helps clears up congestions in hallways)

are you committed to creating an environment where people feel safe? allowing people to make comments that are racist, sexist, heterosexist, ableist, classist and more make it hard for people in these groups to participate. try to understand the historical context behind what you say

if you are about to use a really graphic image, phrase, or story, do you let people know? are there kids there? people in your audience may be survivors of abuse or have PTSD, better safe than sorry.

can you arrange for a message board system so people looking for rides can share?

are you respectful of people’s preferred gender pronoun, disabilities (not all disabilities are visible, go by what folks say instead of assumptions), and backgrounds? remember that no one ever owes you an explanation for who they are.

What else is missing yall??

everyday people brush us off  ’cause we talk a little differently, think a little differently, move a little differently or because we are from group homes, in the foster care system, etc. they just don’t know. i love how creative you are.  give you thirty minutes, markers, poster paper, and you come up with hot shit like this:

we get painted as consumers, objectives of charity and service. when we’re quiet, they think we don’t have something to say. i love your activist heart and how fiercely it beats when we come together.

while debates around language are storming around us, here you are unashamed and carrying disability pride posters, naming our tables the “disabled and proud team”, and wearing hot crip gear. i love how subversive i feel when were populating the room with resistant bodies!

the other night when we were doing check-in, you all said you were doing great because you loved being with each other. i wasn’t sure if you were just telling me what i wanted to hear. it’s easy to get sucked up into the non-profit industrial complex and even easier for this to be just another disability conference on the calendar. i love how much this means to you. i love that, like me, you were so excited about seeing each other this week you couldn’t sleep. i love that you drove 3 hours to get here. i love that even though we were in the middle of this spontaneous, unorganized group meeting, you said we were more organized than everyone else because we had tshirts. : )

i love the way that every time there was a time to speak, it was our crew picking up the mic! (how did this even happen?)

i love the way that you are leaders. it’s funny to me, we moved away from a “youth leadership model” into one of community building and ironically, we have more leaders than before.

i love the way you are not afraid to speak your mind. you know how to kick it with legislators, other disabled people, allies, the cop coming to check our permit—everyone!

i love the way you look out for each other. i love the way we know each other’s access needs and the interdependence that happens when we are together.

i love the way you create safe space for each other.

i love the way you know how to party.

i love the potential we have. i love how beautiful you are!

total Disabled Young People’s Collective fangirl here. isn’t my crew amazing, yall??

birds are cursed little creatures
aerial view, they see both the mess of man and the horizon
of what the world could be
wings itchin’ they always want to fly

little sparrow you are a phoenix
flying out of ashes
soaring into new

fly, fly, fly
take us with you
carry us to new places

nobody said this would be easy
when you’re blue, just call me up
we’ll talk about Jesus, your favorite anti-authoritarian community organizer
there is no “should we use anger? can hate be a tool?”
movements rooted in love are indestructible
it’s 1st Corinthians 13, baby

fly, fly, fly
take us with you
carry us to new places

nobody said this would be easy
when you can’t believe anymore, just call me up
i’ll speak in a collective we and remind you
everyday is a hustle but we believe in you.
they are not the movement, we are.
we love you, we trust you, we got you.

fly, fly fly
take us with you
carry us to new places

little bird, be brave
we need you

Click on images for link to the event websites. Please email me if you have an event you think should be promoted here.
 

If you’re in the South, students at UNC are hosting the Southeast Regional Unity Conference, April 3-5th. This year’s theme is “Sweet T”: Transgressing, Transforming, and Transcending Gender and Sexuality in the South.

From the website:

This conference is about honoring the radical possibilities we all have to enact a multitude of gendered or non-gendered selves. It is about creating a community of people who respect each other’s chosen identities from moment to moment and who value difference and deviance as a challenge to the corporate homogenization of global heteronormative culture. This conference will celebrate the many intersecting identities that make us layered humans, too deep to examine through a lens of gender and sexuality alone. We will collectively struggle with issues of power, examining ourselves and our movement first and foremost, as we address race, ethnicity, class, ability, faith, citizenship, culture, and more.

Friends and I are giving a workshop titled “That’s So Queer: The Disabled Body And Ways to Crip Up Your Queer Politics” that Saturday. 

This session will explore identity politics and queer theory as it relates to disability organizing and the inclusion of anti-ableism work in intersectional anti-oppression analyses. We’ll start things out with an introduction to disability organizing by looking at models of disability organizing, the disability language debate, and an overview of the Disability Rights Movement. We will then discuss ways that the disability community and queer community have come together and why this work is so vital. We will end by discussing ways that people can be strong disability allies and the need for promoting self-determination and accessibility (including the importance of accessible language.)

I realize that we talk about accessible language in a workshop description that is completely inaccessible… * lowers head *

Other things that are happening around the country:

 
The second annual ColorFEST for Deaf LGBTQ youth and allies is taking place at Gallaudet University (Washington, DC) from April 10-12, 2009!

From Kriston Pumphrey, a RAD Youth Coordinator:

We very much hope that ColorFEST will become a tradition to be upheld by deaf colleges or those with deaf programs across the nation for years to come. Because time is changing, we sincerely hope that ColorFEST, taking place annually, may become the cornerstone in providing deaf LGBTIQQ youths opportunities to flourish, to network and develop leadership skills that our community is in dire need of.

Above all else, to celebrate and demonstrate our pride!

We ask that you take the time to check out the website at the link below, register, support, and/or pass this information onto others
who may be interested.

h/t to deafqueer.org for the announcement

And last but not least, I posted about this event already but the poster was so beautiful, I had to post again.

Diversifying Hip Hop: Krip Hop and Homo Hop is occuring on April 11th on the UC Berkeley campus:

“Diversifying Hip-Hop: Krip-Hop & Homo Hop” will consist of a showing/discussion of two documentary films, Kathleen Kiley’s “Halfasoulja” and Alex Hinton’s “Pick Up The Mic: The Revolution of Homohop”; live performances; and a panel of speakers.

Artists and speakers will be coming from as far as Atlanta, GA., New Mexico, Houston, TX, and Los Vegas and as close to home as the San Francisco Bay Area. Performers include George “Tragic” Doman, the King of Handicap-Hop; King Montana, who is the first quadriplegic Hip-Hop artist to secure a global distribution deal with DEKA Records and his song, and video, “Freedom Fighter” will appear in an upcoming documentary, “Cycle of Life” with Carlos Santana, Miss Money, who is in the documentary “Pick Up The Mike: The Revolution of Homohop” and who has a radio show in Houston; NaR, a queer Arab hip hop crew of Oakland, CA; Deadlee of LA., who was recently featured in the LA Times, talking about the rise of Homo-Hop; Juba Kalamka, who served as curator/director of PeaceOUT World HomoHop Festival from 2002-2007, an event featured heavily in Hinton’s “Pick Up the Mic”; and more leading voices of both movements.

Tell me you aren’t excited to see these things! (I won’t believe you)