Disabled people have existed for as long as humanity. They have been
active parts of every society and liberatory movement. Yet when history
is written, disability is often erased or stigmatised. This zine aims to
celebrate the lives of disabled radicals. To frame disability not as an
individual shameful failure that undermines one’s agency, legitimacy
and personhood, but as a neutral characteristic within the natural
variation of humanity.
“Ableism is a system of assigning value to peoples bodies and minds
based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, productivity,
desirability, intelligence, excellence and fitness. These constructed
ideas are deeply rooted in eugenics, anti-blackness, misogyny,
colonialism, imperialism and capitalism. This systemic oppression
leads to people and society determining people’s value based on
their culture, age, language, appearance religion, birth of living place,
“health/wellness”, and/or their ability to satisfactorily re/produce,
“excel” and “behave.” You do not have to be disabled to experience
ableism” (By Talila A. Lewis)
“Ableism must be included in our analysis of oppression and in our
conversations about violence, responses to violence and ending
violence. Ableism cuts across all of our movements because ableism
dictates how bodies should function against a mythical norm—an
able-bodied standard of white supremacy, heterosexism, sexism,
economic exploitation, moral/religious beliefs, age and ability. Ableism
set the stage for queer and trans people to be institutionalized as
mentally disabled; for communities of color to be understood as less
capable, smart and intelligent, therefore “naturally” fit for slave labor;
for women’s bodies to be used to produce children, when, where
and how men needed them; for people with disabilities to be seen
as “disposable” in a capitalist and exploitative culture because we
are not seen as “productive;” for immigrants to be thought of as a
“disease” that we must “cure” because it is “weakening” our country;
for violence, cycles of poverty, lack of resources and war to be used
as systematic tools to construct disability in communities and entire
countries.” (From Moving Toward the Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability
by Mia Mingus)
“Since the political revolutions of the eighteenth century, social and
political thinkers have challenged ostensibly rational justifications for
inequalities based on gender, race, and ethnicity. Disability has been
largely absent from that effort, despite its prominence in debates over
equality. Not only has disability justified the inequality of disabled people
but of other groups as well. In the three great citizenship debates of the
19th century and early 20th centuries: women’s suffrage, African American
freedom, and immigration restriction, disability played a substantive
role. Opponents of equality for women cited their supposed physical,
intellectual, and psychological disabilities: physical frailty, irrationality,
and emotional instability. Supporters of racial inequality and immigration
restriction invoked the supposed disabilities of particular races and ethnic
groups. Thus, while disabled people are one of the minority groups
historically assigned inferior status, disability has functioned for all such
groups as a justification of that status.” (From the Disability and the
Justification of Inequality Essay by Douglas Baynton)
The depoliticization of disability allows capitalism to blame individuals
for the social problems created by capitalism. It defines how the lives of
individuals are to be valued, and those who are less productive for the
owning class are dehumanised to the point where their suffering and
deaths are seen as unavoidable outcomes of a neutral system. But the
existing exclusion of disabled people from society is neither natural nor
inevitable. Disability is fundamentally political and is actively socially
constructed through discrimination and exclusion.
Disabled people are the largest and most diverse political minority group.
Structural, social and medical discrimination makes becoming disabled
more likely if you are black, female, LGBTQIA+, poor, or incarcerated.
When many oppressed groups sought liberation and equality, they denied
the existence of disabilities in their groups, rather than challenging the
notion that disability itself justified unequal treatment. There are about
to be a lot more disabled people, as the unmitigated spread of SARS-
COV-2 continues to make permanent impairments more likely with each
additional infection. Disability politics is becoming increasingly harder to
ignore. Radical disability politics aims to build a new movement founded
on equality, community, and solidarity. Disabled radicals offer a glimpse of
what a unified, intersectional political movement might look like.
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