Hi all! I hope you are doing well. I am sending good thoughts to all my friends and mentors at Davidson; they went back to school this week!
Summer has officially ended in Sweden. I find myself grabbing my sweatshirt every time I leave the apartment! The past few days, it has been grey and cold (which is expected this time of year). I might have to invest in a few more pairs of long pants or a jacket!
My work with the Independent Living Institute is going well. I am currently helping on a project called “Right to Work.” There are two aspects of this project: the first is to support disabled migrants and refugees in their job search. Each case is individualized, and we help connect people to education, training, and professional networks so they can eventually get he job they want. Others want to start their own business! I have recently been reading a lot about student loan eligibility and business law here in Sweden. The other part of this project is to help develop a community amongst the migrants we work with. Since I have been here, we have gone mini-golfing and had Swedish fika (basically coffee time to catch up with each other). This month, we hope to attend some events at the Nobel Prize Museum and go to a petting farm!
I am also starting to prepare for the 2022 Freedom Drive, which is happening at the end of September in Brussels, Belgium. It is a huge networking and disability advocacy event where I will get to hear from some amazing educators and researchers. More about this to come!
My post today is going to be talking about how my own disabled identity can impact my work within disability advocacy. The disabled community is so far-reaching and dynamic. Someone can be nondisabled today and wake up disabled tomorrow, or vice versa. That’s one reason why universal accessibility benefits everyone, not just those who are currently disabled.
In my experience as a disabled disability advocate, I have to be really confident in validating my own experiences and communicating my limits. I need to know what is possible for my body mind to accomplish at all times. For example, I was late to a meeting a few weeks ago because my blood sugar was low. I couldn’t leave my apartment until it was back in range. My coworker was (understandably) annoyed that I was ten minutes late. I apologized for being late and the extra work that caused them, but I also explained that the situation was out of my control. My body was incapable of leaving my apartment. For my own safety, I was late to the meeting. I communicated in advance that I would be late, calling them and messaging them about 30 minutes before the meeting started. Even in a disability-minded space, you still sometimes have to advocate for yourself.
Being “disabled” is such a unique experience for each person, with commonalities and connections between many of us. I started working in this field thinking that everyone would understand the accommodations I need sometimes without explanation, but because accommodations look different for each person, I continue to stand up for myself every day. Only you know your limits and what your body mind needs. I hope each of you can validate your own needs instead of looking to others for confirmation that asking for help is ok. It is ok, even if it impacts others.
I mentioned the medical and social models of disability in an earlier post. The medical model has been around longer than the social model and argues that the “disability” lies in the individual; their mind must change in appearance, behavior, and performance to conform to externally-imposed normative standards. The social model, however, highlights the need to focus on challenging structural barriers within society that block disabled body minds from being present. There is a blend of these two models. No matter how many elevators and accommodations I have access to, I will still feel terrible if my blood sugar is too high. My body sometimes hurts due to my disability, but I still deserve access to every space that I should be in, regardless of my disability status (again, universal design benefits everyone).
I also want to be clear on my own positionality within disability activism. There are accommodations, experiences, and disabilities that I will never understand, live through, or can effectively describe. In those times, I turn to individuals who are openly talking about their personal experiences. I hope to use the education that I have and the networks I am creating to push for a more accessible and universally-designed society, listening and learning to other disabled voices along the way.
You might find that disability advocacy might downplay discussion of personal experience of disablist oppression in favor of addressing wider structural barriers to inclusion. I tend to adopt the feminist approach that the personal is political. I think that it is equally important to give public voice to individual disabled experiences. It can show how disability oppression negatively affects lives, and therefore shows the interconnectedness of personal, social, and political worlds. From my perspective, personal stories have a clear political and impactful dimension.
If you want to read more, I recommend “Identity, Positionality, and Power: Issues for Disabled Researchers. A Response Paper to Broun and Heshusius” by Claire Tregaskis. It was published in Volume 24, No. 2 of Disability Studies Quarterly.
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