today i’m thankful for the black people who saved my life by radicalizing me in disability justice while i was harming myself for not being able bodied.

i come from a line of disabled black women who suffered under and were sometimes killed by ableism and fatphobia (which is closely linked to ableism).

disability justice is the reason im alive to do my little tweets everyday. that’s not an exaggeration.

i’m from a place that disables you. i’m only 32 and a great many people i graduated from high school with are experiencing catastrophic illness.

i was encouraged to think of myself as nondisabled—“having an ailment”
or “different” or not think of it at all—it almost killed me

this is where disability merged with anti-blackness—there was no such thing as a nondisabled enslaved person, because the conditions of enslavement were inherently disabling!

this exists into the present day by rendering black disability “unremarkable” which can translate into “unspeakable”

identifying as a politically disabled person is an act of resistance because *even other disabled people often believe you should be silent and ashamed of your disability instead of politicizing it*

that is the default position about disability

to this day black disabled heroes and thinkers are recoded as non disabled like Fannie Lou Hamer, Audre Lorde, even Stevie Wonder’s disability is minimized and he does disability justice/disability rights work!

i get that from an abled or wishfully abled standpoint disability justice isn’t one of the “cool” and “sexy” liberation movements

but surely after this year of genocide people can try not to be so dismissive, or blatantly inaccurate about who made this, who’s in it, and our aims

just gunna leave this here https://twitter.com/cyreejarelle/status/1374887699593764864