On Community: How We Survive, and I Do Mean We
I have been in disability justice for a long time. Since the first term of this shitshow, in fact. I have done a lot of sugarcoating truths for nondisabled people who want to be called allies.
Yeah, I’m not doing that here.
People familiar with surviving fascism are urging everyone to find their offline communities. But for disabled people, there are no offline communities. You shut us out in the past four-ish years or so.
What? You’d never.
Yeah. You did. By acquiescing to the siren song of normalcy and uncovering your germ-laden faces. You justified it by saying “if you’re so high risk, you shouldn’t leave your house anyway.” You gave into peer pressure. You reasoned that COVID is only a problem for the sick and elderly.
Who gives it to the sick and elderly? Also that’s categorically untrue. Lots of stories about “young and healthy” people dropping dead lately. Some people who just fell off your radar. Don’t you think that’s weird?
Okay, so suppose I have a point, you, good-spirited community member that you are, say. What can disabled people do to help, anyway?
The fact that this hypothetical is not the first time I have dealt with this ignorance — nor the second, nor the tenth — is an indictment of our society. Did you know Frida Kahlo had the same spinal injury I do? Had she been alive today, she would be high risk. Would you call her not a contributor?
Quite frankly, the organizing left’s obsession with physical work holds you back. I have met and argued with Leninists who parrot his line about not working equaling not eating, and honestly, screw you. That’s eugenics. The pseudoscience arm of white supremacy. The same threat facing the American people right now. Why are you helping them?
Work can be many things. The logistics, the watchfulness, the communication. Holding the hand of someone facing loss, or the emboldening of someone ready to risk. Physical labor and front line resistance aren’t everything. You can’t do those without those first forms of lift. And I think, should you pull on your big kid pants and mask up, you’ll find disabled people can be really fucking good at those things.
When the country locked down, it was us telling you how to cope with risk. It was our art you enjoyed. It was our comfort you sought. All that fair play and good humor is still there. Also, to be honest, nobody protests more hardcore than disabled people. You ever occupy a HEW building for twenty plus days and force Congress to do a hearing then and there? Drag your bodies up the capitol steps to show the world what it’s been cutting you out of? Get dragged off by cops in the halls of Congress with no control over your own movement or senses to save the ACA for all Americans?
Yeah. Didn’t think so.
But let’s be real. All I am asking you to do is honor the values you profess. The dignity of every human being, deserving of care and self-determination. You think everyone should be included, right? Nobody locked away and stigmatized? Or do you only mean people who can physically hammer and scythe their way through the enemy?
And if so, what made you decide to sympathize with that same enemy? Because that is what we’re up against. That fucking “first they came for” poem conveniently leaves off that the Nazis tested their extermination machines on disabled people before going wide. Today’s human monsters think we should “just die” or be turned into biodiesel for the good of nondisabled people. “Nonproductive,” they call us.
Why are you using their terms?
Get with it. Because we know where this is headed if you don’t.