{"id":1674,"date":"2020-07-23T11:45:22","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T11:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitalfeministcollective.net\/?p=1674"},"modified":"2020-07-27T18:57:22","modified_gmt":"2020-07-27T18:57:22","slug":"crip-currencies-resources-on-care-community-networks-in-the-age-of-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalfeministcollective.net\/index.php\/2020\/07\/23\/crip-currencies-resources-on-care-community-networks-in-the-age-of-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Crip Currencies: Resources on Care Community Networks in the Age of COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by David Loner<\/a> and Maggie Rosenau<\/a>, 27 July 2020<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this post we want to share some thoughts on how and why the disabled community is suddenly receiving greater attention. We would like, in specific, to talk about the value of disabled knowledge, and how the story of disability justice connects to two separate however interrelated events happening now: the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter uprisings. By sharing sources that amplify disabled voices and collectives doing important social justice work, we hope to encourage involvement as we navigate together through these uncertain times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The effects of COVID-19 are devastating. As the number of cases continues to grow at an alarming rate, several of the developed world\u2019s governments have chosen to default on their responsibility to safeguard their citizens. Gross and intentional mismanagement of the pandemic in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Brazil have resulted in mass outbreak, unemployment, and death, all leading to dramatic economic downturn and a world-wide recession which threatens to undo the alleged benefits of the neoliberal order outright. More than this, the already debilitating effects of a corrupt and predatory insurance-based \u201chealthcare\u201d system in the US have been accelerated, leading to the confirmed infection of an estimated 4 million individuals and the death of some one hundred and forty five thousand (Worldometer). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that \u201clong-standing systemic health and social inequities have put members of racial and ethnic minority groups at increased risk of getting COVID-19 or experiencing severe illness, regardless of age\u201d (CDC Website). Because structural conditions inform pre-existing health issues, Black and brown communities have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. To be sure, the recent BLM uprisings<\/a> are not coincidental to the issue of COVID-19. Rather, they are part of the same story: the end-effect of state-coordinated violence and racism, instigated at the behest of capitalist excess and exploitation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the midst of these global events, greater attention<\/a> is being paid to the disabled community. This is, in part, because everyday, middle-class, able-bodied\/minded white people are themselves beginning to experience, perhaps for the first time, the debilitating effects of social inequity and impairment. Only a few examples need be given: the isolation<\/a> of lock-down and social distancing, sudden passing of family and friends, job loss\u2014and with it, the loss of health insurance, fiscal precarity, plus now housing insecurity. Despite this precarity, race plus bodymind capacity is not yet a factor for many of these individuals<\/a>. Caring about other people continues to be a uniquely polarizing political issue for many in the US. At the same time, the old refrain \u2018give me liberty or give me death\u2019 has become entirely outmoded by the fact that for many the absence of social-democratic statecraft is a prescription for death. As the crisis deepens, a broad narrative is beginning to form around the reality that neoliberalism commodifies individuals based on metrics of production\u2014ultimately discarding what life is left after it has successfully expropriated our bodyminds for short-term wealth accumulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of today\u2019s most vocal and uncompromising figures in the disability justice movement are BIPOC and LGBTQ+ anti-capitalists. In their collective political action, these activists build on the legacy of those coalitions which first took root in the US during the civil rights movements of the late-1960s. Their story is one based not on free enterprise or personal liberty but instead community-oriented interest and initiatives, much of which speaks to the self-determination of Black and brown Americans, First Nation Peoples, queer people, and crucially, disabled people. Crip Camp<\/em>, a 2019 film produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, tells the story of how the US disability movement of the late-twentieth century led to significant gains for persons with non-normative bodyminds. Through the political agitation of groups like Judith Heumann\u2019s New York-based Disabled In Action (DIA<\/a>), disability rights activists advocated for radical legislation and the toppling of ableist social policy, the worst of which had previously left thousands deprived of basic human rights in abusive asylums like New York\u2019s Willowbrook<\/a>. The crowning achievement of this movement was the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), which this month celebrates its thirtieth anniversary. The ADA mandates equal access for abled and disabled citizens while also prohibiting discrimination against the disabled. This act was the result of decades of nonviolent protest, the most notable event being the 504 Sit-in<\/a> at the San Francisco Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) headquarters in 1977. This saw the disabled community coalesce with members of the Black Panther Party<\/a> and the San Francisco\u2019s LGBTQ+ community, both who offered mutual aid to their brothers- and sisters-in-arms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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