Disability Justice

Youth Organizing X

Alice and Alex explore their journeys in the disability community, what they've learned from their disability justice work, and what we can all learn from applying a disability justice lens to organizing. They focus on the power of finding community and the importance of interrogating the popular culture of activism and organizing. Alice shares her journey in activism - her grappling with the label itself, its implications, and what activism as a disabled person looks like for her given her work with the Disability Visibility Project and #CripTheVote. Alex shares how her work as an activist grew from her current role in leading work at ADA25 Advancing leadership and her lessons about the true range of forms that organizing and activism can take. She also reflects on her family, being a first generation American, and the intersections of racism, white supremacy, and ableism in current organizing culture. Together, Alex and Alice explore the realities of intersectional organizing as two disabled women of color, the ableism ingrained in organizing culture traditional mindsets and practices, and how we can all learn from disabled activists and organizers to imagine new forms of organizing toward liberation.

Note: Transcripts for every podcast episode can be found on the podcast's website under 'Episodes.'

Resources Referenced:

• The Disability Visibility Project
• "Disability Visibility: First-person Stories for the 21st Century" edited by Alice Wong
• #CripTheVote Blog post, Alice Wong
• ADA25 Advancing Leadership
• ADA25 A.L. Fellow Keidra Chaney's The Learned Fangirl
• ADA25 A.L. Fellow Whitney Hill's Spork!
• ADA25 A.L. Fellow Michelle Johnson's "Fighting Fiercely"

Bios:

Alex Perez-Garcia is a social impact leader who believes in the power of personal narrative, civic engagement, and working together to build capacity and infuse equity in our systems. As Associate Director of Development and Communications at ADA25 Advancing Leadership, she is growing this startup nonprofit organization through strategic high-quality fundraising, community outreach, and internal and external content management.

Alice Wong (she/her) is a disabled activist, media maker, and consultant. She is the Founder and Director of the Disability Visibility Project® (DVP), an online community dedicated to creating, sharing and amplifying disability media and culture created in 2014. Currently, Alice is the Editor of "Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century," an anthology of essays by disabled people, available now by Vintage Books (2020).