Disability Justice - Tumblr Posts

10 children a day lose their limbs in Gaza. All hospitals in Gaza are basically barely functioning and the amputations are done in unsanitary conditions and without anesthesia

Disability Justice Reading List

Hey everyone! Here’s a list of some interesting Disability Justice readings. Here’s a link to a Google Drive with all of these files, but I will also list them out here for easier finding. If you have any requests, let me know and I will try to find a pdf to add it to the list! I’ll update this post as I add more books and essays, as this was just what I could easily find tonight.

Intro to Disability Justice:

A Disability Justice Primer by Sins Invalid

Spoon Theory by Christine Miserandino

Access Intimacy by Mia Mingus

Medical Industrial Complex Infographic by Mia Mingus

Sick Woman Theory by Johanna Hedva

Designing Collective Access: A Feminist Disability Theory of Universal Design 

Neurodiversity: Terms and Definitions by Nick Walker

Autism FAQ by Lydia X.Z. Brown

Psychiatry Critical/Abolitionist perspectives on Psychiatry:

Defining Mental Disability by Margaret Price

The Myth Of Mental Health by Kai Cheng Thom

Reframing Psychotherapy by Kai Cheng Thom

Harm Reducation Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs

Race and Madness by Nadia Kanani

Disability Incarcerated

Care Work by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Helping Your Friends Who Sometimes Want to Die Maybe Not Die by Carly Boyce

The Protest Psychosis by Johnathan M. Metzl

The Race of Hysteria by Laura Briggs

Miscellaneous: 

The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde

Feminist, Queer, Crip by Alison Kafer

Work In The Intersections: A Black Feminist Disability Framework by Moya Bailey

Disability and Difference in Global Contexts: Enabling a Transformative Body Politic by Nirmala Ervelles

Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington Ch. 1 (If anyone can get the whole book please let me know!)

Fugitive Science by Britt Rusert

10 children a day lose their limbs in Gaza. All hospitals in Gaza are basically barely functioning and the amputations are done in unsanitary conditions and without anesthesia

People seem to think this is fake because it's written in English. Apart from the racism in believing that Arab doctors and nurses aren't fluent in English (a second or official language for half of Asia), Palestinians have deliberately been addressing their audience in English on every social media, from journalists to children, because they know speaking English to Westerners immediately makes people more human in their eyes. Because language is one of the ways the imperial cultural hegemony conditions us (yes, everyone in the world) to see who qualifies as "people" and who are simply a mass of bodies who were always made to suffer and die. Gazans know this deeply, which is why they have been using English to beg and plead through social media, "We're not numbers! We're not numbers! We're people like you, we speak your language, we deserve to live!" all the while they're systematically slaughtered.

Israeli forces also encircled Al Shifa Hospital yesterday and bombed it for several hours while shooting dead anyone trying to flee including medical staff moving between buildings. Not sure whether it's still continuing because WHO lost all communications with its staff there a few hours after. The last new report said that thirty-nine babies had been removed from the incubators before the power went out. It's extremely unlikely they will survive.

Please understand that these atrocities depend on the war of attrition between governments and public attention. The momentum of public outcry is difficult to sustain through repeated stonewalling and bureaucratic intractability. When we're flooded with these reports and a sense of futility and despair replaces the anger, it allows compassion fatigue to set in and the violence to become normalized. Massacring hospitals, killing sick children and openly targeting humanitarian aid workers (Netanyahu just declared the UNRWA is in league with Hamas) will become simply more news articles that fade into the background, and open genocides will soon become part of the "lesser evil".

Take care of yourselves how you can, take distance where needed, but please never tune out and give up on the two million people for whom we are the only witness and hope. Never stop boosting and sharing the news and posts you find, never stop getting out there and joining every protest you can, however small. Anger burns out, which is why activism must depend on an immovable sense of justice and uncompromising value for human life. It's not just about Gaza, it's about the kind of evil our generation will be coerced into accepting as unchangeable and inevitable hereafter.

The New Yorker

The Children Who Lost Limbs in Gaza

More than a thousand children who were injured in the war are now amputees. What do their futures hold?

Gazal was wounded on November 10th, when, as her family fled Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, shrapnel pierced her left calf. To stop the bleeding, a doctor, who had no access to antiseptic or anesthesia, heated the blade of a kitchen knife and cauterized the wound. Within days, the gash ran with pus and began to smell. By mid-December, when Gazal’s family arrived at Nasser Medical Center—then Gaza’s largest functioning health-care facility—gangrene had set in, necessitating amputation at the hip. On December 17th, a projectile hit the children’s ward of Nasser. Gazal and her mother watched it enter their room, decapitating Gazal’s twelve-year-old roommate and causing the ceiling to collapse.

UNICEF estimates that a thousand children in Gaza have become amputees since the conflict began in October. “This is the biggest cohort of pediatric amputees in history,” Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a London-based plastic-and-reconstructive surgeon who specializes in pediatric trauma, told me recently.

Twitter Thread

Unrolled Version

[ID: Screenshots of a Twitter thread by Charlie Knight [they/them], @CKnightWrites, posted around 4:18pm, July 3rd, 2021:

Since it’s Disability Pride Month, I’d love to address something I see many issues with out in the wild:

Wheelchair etiquette

There are appropriate and inappropriate ways to interact with someone who is in a wheelchair. Knowing them benefits all involved.

A non exhaustive 🧵 [thread]

1. Outside of emergencies, there is no reason for you to touch someone’s wheelchair unless asked. If we’re in the way, treat us like you would anyone else and say “excuse me.” If it looks like we’re stuck, treat us like you would anyone else and ask if we need help. Don’t touch.

1. (Cont) [continued] l can’t emphasize how important this is.

A wheelchair is an extension of our bodies. If you wouldn’t lift and move an abled person without asking, don’t push a wheelchair.

Grabbing my chair = grabbing me. It’s assault.

3. Don’t speak over or about us. Meaning, don’t look at my husband and ask “do they need help getting in?” when l’m right there. This is another infantilizing move and it’s horribly disrespectful.

4. Do not assume that someone in a wheelchair isn’t ambulatory (mobile). Sometimes, a person using a wheelchair can walk and will. This should not be a shock and is not an opportunity for questions about our disability.

5. Unless we’re in a setting where it would be appropriate (you’re our doctor and we’re in the office/hospital, or you’re paying us at an event to speak about it) there is no opportunity for you to ask questions about our disability. That’s just rude.

6. The above goes for your children, too. Disabled people are not a learning opportunity - do not turn us into one by telling kids that staring/pointing is bad but they can ask us questions. No, they cant. It’s still rude, and it’s not our responsibility to educate your kids.

7. Don’t move our wheelchairs after we’ve transferred out either, not until we say it’s okay and know where it’s going. If I transfer out of my chair at a restaurant and the waitstaff whisks my chair away, they’ve effectively taken my legs and hidden them. No, thank you.

8. Don’t go out of your way to avoid saying things like “talk [take] a walk.” We’re pretty likely to express things that way too, and “take a roll” as a cutesy alternative is not as funny as you think.

9. Use the word “disabled.” It’s not a dirty word. Alternatives like “differently abled” are infantalizing and gross, and terms like “handicapped” and “crippled” are both outdated and (often) offensive.

Disabled. Get comfy with it.

10. Don’t say things like “wheelchair bound” or “confined to a wheelchair.” Mobility aids like wheelchairs give us our freedom; they’re a good thing, not a trap.

All of these are general rules of thumb, esp w/ strangers or ppl you don’t know well. You may know someone in a wheelchair who is fine answering a kid’s questions, you may hear a disabled person using “cripple” for themself. Obviously, that’s okay. This is a starting point.

The big takeaway from this should be to treat us like you would anyone else - not as a broken, not as a freak show, not as a child. All it really takes is basic respect and acknowledging that we’re people too.

Thanks for trying to do better and Happy Disability Pride Month! 💜

Sidenote: I personally am open to questions about this, about disability etiquette here. My DMs are open, comments welcome.

Please do not assume that every disabled person wants to be an advocate or an educator. Someone RTing this thread is not an invitation to ask to them ?s [questions].

/end ID]

If you want to call yourself "madpunk", "cripplepunk", "neuropunk", etc, your activism better not stop at the things you find "bad". People with no empathy. People with personality disorders. People who need their aids in daily life. People who have extreme fluctuating emotions. People with paraphilias. People with dissociative disorders. Psychotic people. People who have different modes of eating, excreting, having sex, etc. Homeless people. People who wear diapers. People who have violent urges/thoughts. People who you think are "dangerous". People who use drugs. People who need medication to survive and live. People with physical deformities. People who have delusions. People who struggle with feeding themselves, cleaning, working, etc.

If you think any of these factors make someone "abusive", you are ableist. Abusers are abusive. None of the above things make someone an abuser.

Madpunk and cripplepunk aren't just "adhd and autism punk". Or "mobility aid user punk". Keep that in mind.

Hello,

I am Ahmed, 31 years old, with my wife Asmaa and our children: Mohammed (9 years old), Kareem (6 years old), Namer (4 years old), and Sahad (1.5 years old). We have faced many challenges in this war, starting from the destruction of our home to the famine we continue to endure in northern Gaza.

My son Mohammed suffers from motor and

hearing disabilities, among other health

issues. I used to have a workshop for windows, kitchens, and all aluminum work, but due to the war, my livelihood was completely destroyed, and I can no longer meet our basic needs.

This is our home that was destroyed in this terrible war.

My goal is to leave Gaza to save my family's lives. The cost of travel is $5000 per adult and $2500 per child, plus travel and accommodation expenses.

Together, we can support Ahmed and his family during this ordeal. Your donation, regardless of its size, can make a difference in the lives of these children who need a fresh start.

If you're looking to support Ahmed and his family, please consider providing assistance directly or through relevant charitable organizations.

gofundme.com

Donate to Urgent Help Needed to Evacuate My Family from Gaza, organized by Ahmed Alanqar

Hello, I am Ahmed, 31 years old, with my wife Asmaa and our child… Ahmed Alanqar needs your support for Urgent Help Needed to Evacuate M

I hope everyone is safe

Ahmed Alanqar

💖🧡💙

Art by Liberal Jane

Counter argument: what if the angels are disabled/neurodivergent

i do not have any disorders . these r symptoms of being an angel

10 children a day lose their limbs in Gaza. All hospitals in Gaza are basically barely functioning and the amputations are done in unsanitary conditions and without anesthesia

Gaza has a large disabled population. Wissam is just one of tens of thousands, who need medication and care, facing the devastating choice of being slaughtered at home or out on the streets. All districts in Gaza but one have been declared combat zones.