(Image from the 1977 504 sit-in.)
Welcome to the first weekly disabled community discussion thread for the week of 10/28/2024 — 11/3/2024.
This community is brand new! Everyone is welcome to post new topics and comments. However, we ask that in order to participate in the weekly megathread, one self-identifies as some form of disabled, which is broadly defined in the community sidebar:
“Disability” is an umbrella term which encompasses physical disabilities, emotional/psychiatric disabilities, neurodivergence, intellectual/developmental disabilities, sensory disabilities, invisible disabilities, and more. You do not have to have an official diagnosis to consider yourself disabled.
Disabled people in the U.S. today experience a poverty rate of approximately 30 percent; comprise 40 percent of the total homeless population; have an active labor market participation rate of less than 20 percent, despite self-reporting a preference to do so at a rate well over 60 percent. Hundreds of thousands of disabled people remain today living in institutional or carceral environments, such as nursing homes or prisons, where conditions tend towards the cruel or barbaric.
Thus, when we ask the question, what is disability, we are not really providing a full answer if we only talk about physiology, biology, or even identity reduced to a cataloging of manifest limitations or functional deficits. In fact, disability – or, to put it perhaps more accurately, disablement – is a dialectical phenomenon arising from existing political, economic, and social relations in society.
While variations in human bodies, minds, and behaviors – up to and including those traits which might be termed ‘impairments’ – have always been an indelible and essential aspect of the human species, disability as we have come to understand it in the modern era is neither eternal nor transhistorical.
The notion that a group of people – with a vast array of completely different traits, capacities, morphologies, and phenotypes – could be lumped together and labeled according to their relative lack of generalized “ability,” in the abstract, is in fact endemic to the particular period of more recent human history signaled by the emergence and dominance of the capitalist mode.
Specifically, what is the relationship between disabled people and the working class, as such?
… we should hold an expansive conception of disability, which understands it both in terms of class location, but also more generally as a phenomenon less immediately relevant to the positions of the classes than to the processes intrinsic to the relations of the classes. In other words, centering the analysis of disability on the processes of labor commodification, exploitation of labor, market competition, and class division.
Put differently, the conditions that reproduce the division of society into separate classes, and in particular, reproduce that class of people whose lives are wholly determined by the commodified value that their labor power can purchase on the capitalist market, are the same conditions that reproduce a subclass of people whose very existence is diminished and devalued according to the relatively diminished and devalued worth of their labor power as measured by the logic of commodified market competition.
Insofar as the value of commodity labor power under capitalism is both a creation and a measure of the rate of exploitation obtaining in the market – that is, the rate at which capitalists can competitively extract surplus value from the productive labors of the working class – then the simple realities of human physiology, let alone the complex realities of biopolitics, mean that there will always be and must necessarily be a constant proportion of the working class whose commodified labor power manifests as a “disability,” with the attendant forms of oppression concomitant thereto.
The struggle against disability oppression should be seen as innately allied with all other struggles born of – and against – capitalist oppression. Specifically, disablement is a form of oppression arising from the system of exploitation of labor, and therefore the historical struggle of the working class against exploitation.
from Keith Rosenthal of Tempest Collective
Mask up, love one another, and stay alive for one more week.
btw mod positions are still open (and probably always will be). if you want to be a mod just dm me with your matrix account and/or leave a comment on the post calling for mods which is pinned to the top of the comm. ofc the only requirement is that you identify as disabled and that you are a socialist.
also i’d be especially stoked if any disabled poc are interested in modding, we’ve got to keep the white people in check
I’m very happy this com exists! I have been disabled since I am 20 and there is only so much I can discuss with my abled friends.
In particular, I am stuck on how much more ensnared I am into work-insurance than a lot of my comrades. My risk tolerance is much lower because people with my condition do not receive adequate care in prison and losing my job due to a night in jail means losing access to vital medication. At the same time, I have so much pain and difficulty feeling impotent as a result.
I was this way with the 2020 BLM demonstrations in my city. My partner went, but I didn’t, because from experience a night in jail/any institution = I do not get medication I need to live, and it ate me up for so long. It still does. This is to say nothing of how negligent everyone — everyone — is about masking for COVID risk in every current movement, a contradiction I still have not quite figured out how to broach with any success.
As for feeling impotent, well, the way I see it is that information has always been my strong point. Information, connections, and assistance. Forgive the cringe Disney reference, but Kim Possible can’t do her thing without Wade; that will be my contribution, and it is as valuable as any other.
I got two lines I’m stuck between. On the one hand, it’s a much bigger risk for myself than a lot of my comrades. On the other, it’s people in the Global South fighting and dying to repel imperialism and I’m not willing to take a %30 to my well-being. I’m not sure where the balance is but it’s got to be a certain point where we must be willing to take risks.
I think it’s very important to recognize that folks have a variety of strengths, and that we can multply each other’s strengths. Like, child care? hugely important for the revolution. If you can keep an eye on kids you’re freeing up other people to use their skills. There’s all kinds of critical rear-area, logistics, education, and so forth stuff that needs doing. Doing dangerous protest stuff is important, but so is proofreading pamplets, or helping people navigate social services, or whatever you can do.
I think “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” is one of the most profound and important moral statements in history because it acknowledges that everyone has different capabilities they can contribute, and that regardless of your ability to contribute you’re a person and you’re part of society and making sure your needs are met is equally as important as ensuring the needs of every other person in society are met without distinction or discrimination.
The list that @Wertheimer@hexbear.net about protest roles is really good bc it shows roles people can take other than being frontliners. Ableism has convinced so many people they can’t help, but so many people can help but their ability to contribute is not recognized or valued. : (
I love your reference to kim possible. Behind every cool action hero person is another person in a remote location feeding them intel via a radio link.
We don’t seem to have metal gear solid codec emojis.
When my partner got home that night she had bruises from where the police beat her, but I was waiting at home to help take care of it and have a space for her to rest and recover. I like the way you put it elsewhere, “an army fights on its stomach”. Someone needs to feed everyone else! There are so many ways to resist that don’t involve fighting on the front lines and that’s where we can shine.
Losing access to medication, even for a day, can be dangerous, and something like a concussion or long Covid could make my condition even worse. Plus I’d lose my Social Security if I were convicted of anything. (I’d also lose my Social Security if I took a volunteer position that they could decide should count as a job.)
At the same time, I have so much pain and difficulty feeling impotent as a result.
I struggle with this a lot. To add to what @Ivysaur@hexbear.net said - here’s a chart from Devon Price’s Unlearning Shame that I’ve been thinking about a good deal lately. (Although I have mixed feelings about the book as a whole, at least it addresses one of the major psychological consequences of my disability - that constant feeling that I’m never doing enough.)
CHANGE-MAKING “CHARACTER CLASSES”
The Protester
Attends public actions
Works with other protestors to disrupt the status quo and draw attention to an issue
Speaks out in the face of injustice
Intervenes to protect the vulnerable from violence
Confronts harassment of the vulnerable directly or provides a barrier between the vulnerable and the police or from another attacker
The Educator
Creates community resources
Studies the available literature and movements from the past
Explains concepts and introduces new ideas
Documents a movement’s history and draws lessons from past experiences
Mentors members of the community and helps expand their views
The Mediator
Helps translate challenging ideas to people who are on the fence or find some ideas too “radical”
Questions unjust policies and assumptions in their organizations
Intercedes during conflicts to help de-escalate or find common ground
Gets people who are “on the fence” or not very politically involved more open to difficult conversations
Advocates for marginalized people to be centered in decision making
The Healer
Provides medical care for people harmed during protests or altercations with the police
Helps ensure people in the community are well fed and have access to resources
Listens supportively as people decompress about frustrations or traumatic experiences
Speaks out when a movement is placing unrealistic demands on its members
The Organizer
Collects and systematizes community resources
Assists in the planning and execution of actions
Maintains records and keeps meeting minutes
Serves as an informal project manager for initiatives as needed
Helps track goals, budgets, resource allocation, etc.
The Artist
Inspires others with uplifting messages
Breaks down complex concepts into memorable messages or symbols
Provides comfort and much-needed distractions to exhausted members
Helps provide movements with markers of belonging and identity
Spreads messages to an audience that might not otherwise find them
The Connector
Introduces people and expands the community
Disseminates event invitations and information
Builds coalitions across organizations or identity groups
Welcomes new members
Plugs isolated individuals into the support networks they need
I feel you on Long Covid. I cannot explain to most people that I’m going to wear a mask for the rest of my life because LC symptoms have so much overlap with Bipolar and ADHD symptoms and I’m barely hanging on as it is. If the two conditions compounded or multiplied each other I wouldn’t be able to function at all. It’s like trying to explain rocket science to a horse.
Whenever folks express dismay that they can’t do cool activism stuff on the front lines i try to remind them that an army marches on it’s stomach and there’s lots of logistics things that need to be done that don’t involve marches and protest camps. Handling phones, making food, taking care of kids, coordinating intelligence, teaching classes and sharing expert knowledge. Many people can fight for a cause in ways that go beyonf the highly visible stereotypes of what protesting looks like but our society makes people think they’re useless if they can’t play tennis with tear gas cannisters.
I feel that. Bipolar Disorder puts hard limits on my activism. Spending months in pre-trial detention would be very bad for me, and even a few days could cause severe problems, and I always have to carry that around when deciding what I can and cannot participate in. It makes cops even more frightening than they would otherwise be.
It also highlights how prison is a threat and a coercion to keep people in line. Knowing that if the pigs decide to come down on you, you’d be subjected to defacto medical torture. : p
I became disabled after getting covid and I recently learned that my condition will probably not go away. It still feels very surreal. Glad I can now post here though.
And now I unveil my grand plan behind creating c/disabled — so I can have a space to chronicillnesspost somewhat on-topic
Word. Events continue to occur when I am not equipped to deal with them, which is very rude.
