Category: Human Rights
Anything and everything about humans and fighting for their rights. Especially marginalized groups.
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NADSP Conference
Tomorrow, I will have the amazing opportunity to present at the NADSP conference in Buffalo, NY. I have never been to the East Coast before and we are excited to visit Niagara Falls! -
Wise words from a Wise woman…
“Choose your leaders
with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward
is to be controlled
by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool
is to be led
by the opportunists
who control the fool.
To be led by a thief
is to offer up
your most precious treasures
to be stolen.
To be led by a liar
is to ask
to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant
is to sell yourself
and those you love
into slavery.”― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents
Octavia is hands down my favorite author of all time and she predicated the future we are now living. She had a brilliant mind and wasn’t appreciated like she should have been when she was living. I am trying to introduce as many people as possible to her books because she is amazing. She writes speculative fiction, but also Afrofuturism. She was one of the pioneers who established the genre!
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Make America Love Again
When injustice becomes more important than love for our fellow humans, we have lost our humanity. That humanity is what makes us critical thinkers and creators. We have to get back to this somehow.
All we can do is go through life with love. I am going to practice this daily, with a spoonful of gratitude. I will continue to fight injustice. Always remember “when I justice becomes law, resistance becomes duty”.
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#DisabilityPrideMonth
Today marks the start of Disability Pride Month! To my fellow disabled humans, we are going to make it through this if we keep fighting- like we always have.
Try to do something to celebrate this month even though it feels difficult to do so right now.
Here are some reminders from our Mother of Disability Rights- Judy Heumann:
“Change never happens at the pace we think it should. It happens over years of people joining together, strategizing, sharing, and pulling all the levers they possibly can.”
“Part of the problem is that we tend to think that equality is about treating everyone the same, when it’s not. It’s about fairness. It’s about equity of access.”
#Bethechange
#disabilitypridemonth
#disability
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A Modest Proposal
Maybe this one will make you understand. In 1729 Jonathon Swift (Yes, that guy) wrote an essay called “A Modest Proposal” where he suggested that the Irish could solve their problem with the famine by selling the Irish children to the elite and they could eat them. Obviously this was a crude wake up call and not serious.
Consider if I wrote the same story today- Would I suggest we eat the immigrants when we run out of food because of tariffs? Would I suggest we sell them to the highest bidder (oh wait, that’s basically what the nazi is doing).
Get it now? What the dictator is doing is equivalent, no worse, than a suggestion made during another epic fail by humans. However, haven’t we evolved more by now than in the 18th century? Guess not all of us.
Being WOKE is being against eating Irish children in the 18th century to solve a famine.
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State of Humanity…
How have so many humans fallen so far from grace? The word grace means:
- Simple elegance or refinement of movement
- Courteous goodwill
- Do honor or credit to (someone or something) by one’s presence
There are certain groups in the United States that claim to live and breathe these concepts and yet those same people are doing the EXACT opposite. For those of you who dig Jesus, he would be absolutely appalled by your actions. Jesus preached about love, acceptance, and charity. Jesus washed the feet of someone considered to be the lowest form of human you can be, and he did it with love, compassion, and grace. When the idiots still weren’t understanding his message, he went into the temples and turned over tables in anger. Yes, even Jesus got angry and upset and threw fits. Jesus was pissed because he was like my dudes did you not hear me? I want you to love everyone and not be a terrible religion like the Romans who are slaughtering the humans I love.
Personally, I believe the Bible is half history book and half guidebook full of metaphor. There is nothing Holy about it anymore than me claiming Lord of the Rings or Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is Holy. See, it is either all true or it’s all just stories. You can’t pick and choose which books have purpose and meaning and matter. Norse gods are real, Egyptian, African, and every other culture that is OLDER than yours. Why? Because you are just a little tiny human and it’s arrogant to claim you know for sure where every human is going. The concept of hell was stolen from a much more ancient belief system that belongs to Pagans. However, it wasn’t anything like what you claim. In fact, almost every single aspect of your belief is stolen from others.
You can’t claim to be a Christian if you choose not to be “Christ” like because that is literally the meaning of the word. If you support Trump, you are against Jesus and everything he taught you. That means you are ignorant about your own belief and that makes me so sad for you. If you would just pick up some books, you too could understand your own belief system and then maybe you can be a good human that Jesus would be proud of instead of shaking his head.
Also, Elaine… I don’t have grace, I don’t need grace, I don’t even say grace. I had to reference this otherwise I wouldn’t be me. 😆
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#Advocacy, #NoKings, #NoMasters
I was getting ready for the day and this idea for a graphic came to me. What do you think? I might use this in a cultural awareness and disability training I am currently creating. This shows my journey over the last decade! I love the person I have become. THIS is what my Mom and my Grammy and people with disabilities and mental health struggle just like ME, taught me. We won’t ever be silenced again! Trump, we are coming for you, ***hole.
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No Kings, No Masters
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of participating in the 2025 NO KINGS Protest. Eugene, OR had thousands of people. This is just the beginning but we made history.
NO KINGS NO MASTERS
Impeach Trump
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Pills…
A beautiful tree with red, orange, and black with a tree border. The logo has the initials LD I wrote this many years ago for a creative writing class in college. Almost 20 years ago, in fact. Now I feel old. Anyway, this is about a time my Mom had a severe manic episode with psychosis. She was hospitalized for 14 days and she was never the same. She ended up getting a rare, but potentially fatal reaction to an anti-psychotic, called neuroleptic malignant syndrome. I often wonder if that contributed to early onset dementia in her 50’s. That’s pretty young. Between often being over medicated, or incorrectly? she had to sleep a lot when I was a kid. She also dealt with mania and depression even thought she was consistent about taking medication.
When I was really young, maybe 3 or 4, my Mom had a severe manic episode and she took me in her bathrobe and walked down the street trying to get to my Grammy’s house. I am not sure if I remember or have formulated a memory from hearing about it.
I do remember visiting my mom in a half-way house. This was a transition home before retuning to your own home, after being hospitalized.
Here is the poem or short story…
Pills to help her sleep. That’s all she needed. That’s what they told us. Pills to make her drowsy so she will sleep through the night.
“Once she gets a good night sleep, she will be fine,” the doctor said.
He didn’t know anything. He didn’t have to watch her shake herself into a seizure. He didn’t have to tell her everything was going to be okay when it clearly wasn’t. Just a good night sleep. How does one sleep when they shake like 37 shivers running through their bones all at once? He doesn’t have to look into the face covered with anxiety. Covered with fear. I am the one who has to see that face. And I can barely stand to look. I want to hold her arms and keep them from shaking. I want to make it stop. Do everything to be back to normal. A concept I don’t quite understand anymore. I sat there and watched. Completely helpless. It doesn’t seem real but exaggerated.
I look at the papers. The ones that come in the bag for each pill bottle. There are so many. In 5-minutes, I know more than the doctor.
It is very serious.
Not something chased away by a nights rest. These side effects are rare. But they are serious. And she has them.
There’s a spot for every day of the week. Sunday through Saturday. Four different times each day of the week. So many pills to keep track of. I was no pharmacist. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I focused my energy on it. Day after day. Four different times. Overnight I became a full-time nurse.
It was one of these pills that caused it all. The uncontrollable shaking. The pills made her so drowsy I had to stop her from falling asleep in her dinner. She lived like a zombie. I woke her up to take more pills. Ironic. To be woken up to take sleeping pills.
This was the alternative. The other end of the ultimate high. Mania, they call it. This was the other end of the spectrum. There was no middle ground. I lived with the high and I lived with the low. I have been there and back. Been the hero and the enemy.
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AuDHD and Change
Four season tree, photo manipulation, magical, nature Have you ever seen a child or adult with autism stand at the door with their bags packed even though it might be hours or days before the trip is happening?
Here is how that translates into adulthood with AuDHD. My logical brain knows that we are moving in the middle of July. However, my emotional brain kicks in combined with executive functioning differences. So, I have nights like tonight where I am struggling to get to sleep because I am ready to pack my bags and boxes and put them by the front door, so everyone knows I am ready to move. It’s hilarious and sad at the same time because trauma plays into this a lot, but the humor comes from how silly it can seem from the outside.
My brain is ready to close one chapter and start another. While my logical brain says ok slow down, we have to plan and do tasks to get there. My emotional brain says this situation has been traumatic and I want to leave it behind.
When I was a kid and I was excited about someone coming to visit, I would stand with my face against the glass waiting for them to turn around the corner into the cul-de-sac I lived in, and if the plan changed, I was devastated, and my day was ruined.
Some of our “behaviors” can seem strange or concerning to people because they don’t understand the reason for it, but that can lead to a lot of stigma. If you are human, you have “behaviors”. That is normal. When you have a disability these “behaviors” suddenly get labeled as difficult or unusual. When humans have “behaviors” they are communicating a need that isn’t being met. For people who don’t use words to communicate this becomes dangerous. If you would like to see how dangerous, I encourage you to watch the documentary “This is Not about Me” by Jordyn Zimmerman.
We need to remember that if it harms nobody then let people be- stop judging and worry about your own life. If you have time for judgment, then you need to get a life or use that time productively.
Final thoughts- I have been thinking about the 10 Principles of Disability Justice today and how important they are now more than ever. Really it should just be a guide on how to be the best human possible. Here they are from the Sins Invalid website:
- INTERSECTIONALITY “We do not live single issue lives” –Audre Lorde. Ableism, coupled with white supremacy, supported by capitalism, underscored by heteropatriarchy, has rendered the vast majority of the world “invalid.”
- LEADERSHIP OF THOSE MOST IMPACTED “We are led by those who most know these systems.” –Aurora Levins Morales
- ANTI-CAPITALIST POLITIC In an economy that sees land and humans as components of profit, we are anti-capitalist by the nature of having non-conforming body/minds.
- COMMITMENT TO CROSS-MOVEMENT ORGANIZING Shifting how social justice movements understand disability and contextualize ableism, disability justice lends itself to politics of alliance.
- RECOGNIZING WHOLENESS People have inherent worth outside of commodity relations and capitalist notions of productivity. Each person is full of history and life experience.
- SUSTAINABILITY We pace ourselves, individually and collectively, to be sustained long term. Our embodied experiences guide us toward ongoing justice and liberation.
- COMMITMENT TO CROSS-DISABILITY SOLIDARITY We honor the insights and participation of all of our community members, knowing that isolation undermines collective liberation.
- INTERDEPENDENCE We meet each others’ needs as we build toward liberation, knowing that state solutions inevitably extend into further control over lives.
- COLLECTIVE ACCESS As brown, black and queer-bodied disabled people we bring flexibility and creative nuance that go beyond able-bodied/minded normativity, to be in community with each other.
- COLLECTIVE LIBERATION No body or mind can be left behind – only moving together can we accomplish the revolution we require.
My personal thoughts on anti-capitalism are that it’s based on how capitalism has and continues to work in the US. It’s important to note that we don’t practice true capitalism in the US. That is a bigger and different conversation, but I agree with the anti-capitalist sentiment in relation to the social model of disability and the disability justice movement. My good friend reminded me of this today, in fact.
Regardless of any of this- human rights matter and we need to work together to achieve equity. Equity harms nobody! Nothing About Us Without Us 🫶