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Disability Justice

Library Display, October 2021

Disability Awareness Month

Washington state celebrates Disability Awareness Month every October per law RCW28A.230.158.  

This celebration provides learning and reflection opportunities that recognize the contributions of disability activists, make calls for equity and access, and promote pride for those who identify as someone with a disability. 

SCC Disability Access Services has collaborated with the SCC Library to provide resources and readings to help all students further engage with Disability Awareness Month. Through these sources and event programming, students and faculty are able to learn more about the intersectionality of disability through the lens of disability justice.

Disability Justice

"Disability Justice was built because the Disability Rights Movement and Disability Studies do not inherently centralize the needs and experiences of folks experiencing intersectional oppression, such as "disabled people of color, immigrants with disabilities, queers with disabilities, trans and gender non-conforming people with disabilities, people with disabilities who are houseless, people with disabilities who are incarcerated, people with disabilities who have had their ancestral lands stolen, amongst others."

Berne, Patty. Disability Justice: A Working Draft. Sins, 9 June 2015, Invalid. https://www.sinsinvalid.org/blog/disability-justice-a-working-draft-by-patty-berne  www.sinsinvalid.org/blog/disability-justice-a-working-draft-by-patty-berne 

 

"The term disability justice was coined out of conversations between disabled queer women of color activists in 2005, including Patty Berne of Sins Invalid, seeking to challenge radical and progressive movements to more fully address ableism (see ‘Principles of Disability Justice’. Disability justice recognizes the intersecting legacies of white supremacy, colonial capitalism, gendered oppression and ableism in understanding how peoples’ bodies and minds are labelled ‘deviant’, ‘unproductive’, ‘disposable’ and/or ‘invalid’" (Exploring Disability Justice).

White Noise Collective. Exploring Disability Justice. 2016. www.conspireforchange.org/exploring-disability-justice