Anthropocene Bodies::Disability Justice::Crip Leadership

One of the frameworks that's been absent in our gathering is that of disability justice, and it impacts how we function as a community of inquiry--the questions we do and don't ask, the ways we interpret and digest information, and how we do or don't take our own and each other's physical and emotional needs (which capitalism/all related oppressions have taught us to view as irrelevant) into account.

I'm a survivor of a lot of harmful chemical exposures, including early childhood pesticides, and most recently the toxic orange smoke of the 2017 California wildfires, which left me with injured lungs. Yesterday, Tuesday, I spent the afternoon with my group in Cancer Alley, breathing extremely polluted air. Although I didn't feel sick at the time, I know it taxed my system. Today, when at least three members of our seminar lit up cigarettes within a few feet of me in the first moments of our walking tour, my body reacted with burning lung pain, difficulty breathing, nausea and headache. I had to go home.

Many hours later, my body is still in a flare up of symptoms, a common event for people with environmental illness, so I won't be able to make my group's journey to tribal lands tomorrow. But I will participate from afar. I will follow the field notes threads (pictures, please!) but I think my most useful contribution will be to write about why disability justice is an essential framework to include in our collective work. I will also attempt a crash course on access/inclusion and how ablist assumptions about productivity, efficiency, affordability and the individual right to contaminate shared spaces have made the Campus an uneven playing field. My inability to attend tomorow's field trip is not a personal misfortune. It's an illustration. It's an anthropocenic event. Stay tuned. Aurora

PS. Health is not on the list of keywords!

Some resources:
sinsinvalid.org/curriculum
sinsinvalid.org/disability-justice-primer