Hello again! 13 Disabled people walked into a coffee shop. Nope, not trying to make yet another tasteless disability joke. This past Sunday, 13 of us met up at the Café Coffee Day in Green Park to chat, share crip stories, and experience something of Disability Pride together before Disability Pride Month came to an end. Talk naturally turned to people’s first moments of disability pride – some people identified their first contact with collectivities of disabled people as the germinal moment for disability pride, others pointed to moments when as disabled people they experienced feeling and being recognised as competent human beings at university or at work. Still others identified “coming out of the closet” as a disabled person as being empowering. Interestingly, “coming out” and the experience of pride in marginal identity seem to be mutually reinforcing factors, in that “coming out” is a declaration of pride, and pride makes it possible to “come out”.
So much of the disability stuff we read came alive that day: we saw Crip Technoscience <https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/article/view/29607>in action in the self-designed cane tips <https://blind2visionary.org/content/rolling-marshmallow-tip-dr-t-k-bansal>and telescoping white cane that blind physics professor Dr. T.K. Bansal had brought, another person wrote shayari about his frequent experiences of being unceremoniously grabbed and helped as a blind person regardless of whether he wanted it, a crip artistic rendering of #JustAskDon’tGrab <https://twitter.com/hashtag/JustAskDontGrab?src=hashtag_click>. However, we collectively acknowledge that the group this time was largely blind people, and resolved that the Access Collective venues from hereon would be picked to be accessible to wheelchair-using folks. Our sincere apologies for not being able to ensure access for all for the first meet. The short notice (and our limited spoons) prevented us from carrying out an extensive accessibility recce of multiple venues. We would love for people to contribute with information, ideas, suggestions etc, because the Access Collective is envisaged as a decentralised endeavour where everyone has ownership of the group and its functioning. You can write to us at [email protected]. The next meet is scheduled for Sunday, August 27th, venue yet to be decided. Okay, logistics aside, we’ve been very excited about something for the past week or so. Lachi, a legally blind black singer and founder of RAMPD released Lift me Up <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmr4H9NpTKk>, a song written in honour of Judy Heumann, recognised as the “Mother of the US Disability Rights movement”, who passed away earlier this year. We can’t stop listening to it on repeat, it’s that incredibly good. Aptly released in the middle of Disability Pride Month, Lift me up is a tribute to the interdependence, care and community that exists and thrives among disabled people everywhere. Give it a listen! Wishing everyone a happy friendship day! Cheers, The Access Collective Team Sandeep R. Singh and Aparna Sachdev -- Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list.. Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "AccessIndia" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/accessindia.org.in/d/msgid/accessindia/CAKtXTdXVK4MX-3ijMW1wMD7mZZcbLQeV1LLyKdrPmyvY6KR0rw%40mail.gmail.com.
