The Protest Toolkit

By Anna Maria Joseph — Revival Disability Magazine

Nothing about us without us is a popular slogan that is used by disabled people all over the world to voice our demand for participation in society as equals and to be actively involved in developing any policies that govern us. Disability Pride Month in July offers us a specific time to reflect on the history of the disability rights movement and to reinstate the message that we will continue to fight for our rights, no matter what.

An integral part of celebrating disabled pride is highlighting the disabled community in itself. While it may seem commonplace to most people, with our existence itself being a form of rebellion, our emotions and our community become our tools of protest.

To capture the use of our tools of protest in the disability community and our ideas about them, I spoke to other disabled people from Revival Disability India.

The Tool of Disabled Pride

Illustration: Against a background with pink and light blue flowers. there is the hand of a person holding a mirror. In it, we see the face of a person who is smiling. Three blue butterflies are flying over their left eyebrow. Credit: Ritika Gupta

How does disabled pride extend to a form of protest?

River: To exist and take up space in a world that is actively hostile towards us, wants to exclude us and invisibilize us, and to do so without the shame that is taught to us as disabled people since childhood, is a form of resistance.

My clothing choices used to be extremely controlled so as to ensure that I do not “look abnormal”. I was allowed to only wear shapeless, loose fitting clothes so that my bent and inflamed joints wouldn’t show. I was shamed for “depending” on my mobility aid and could rarely go outdoors. So for me, existing and taking up space unapologetically in different ways, like wearing shorts and going outside with my walker, is a form of protest. It’s my way of confronting ableist ideals and proudly putting across the message that “Yes, I am here right next to you, in the same space. And I have the right to be.”

River (he/him) is a 24-year-old, lesbian, non-binary person with a progressive disability.

Would you say that disability pride is empowering? What are some things that help you feel disabled pride?

Rhea: As a community that is oppressed and minoritized, it is important for the disabled community to not lose their self-worth, so we can continue to survive in a world that’s not designed for us. Disability pride plays an important role in empowering people with different disabilities, all over the world.

As a disabled person, I have learnt that showing vulnerabilities shouldn’t involve shame and guilt. I try my best to understand what others are going through and be patient with them, because I know how it feels like to be infantilized and not taken seriously. Despite being discriminated against and going through so much trauma, I’m still here, breathing and fighting for my basic rights and for other people like me. My experiences as a disabled person have also taught me that it’s perfectly okay to get tired and to rest. These are some of the things that help me feel disabled pride.

Rhea Laskar (she/they), a queer disabled person from Assam, is a writer and content creator.

The Tool of Disabled Anger

Illustration: A person in a pink wheelchair is looking up, angrily. They are holding a book and hold ripped pages in their hands. These pages read “Medical history”, “Story of my life”, “Life events”, “Personal info”, and “details of past traumatic event”. There are two hands that seem to want to get hold of the pages. Credit: Ritika Gupta

How does anger facilitate the disabled movement?

Swara: Disabled anger helps us to create awareness, be part of movements, and share our voices. Even if we don’t get what we want, I believe our anger helps us in accepting ourselves and sharing our feelings. When we express disabled anger, it can also help other disabled people who are having trouble understanding or accepting themselves, and contribute to a sense of solidarity in the disabled community.

Swara (she/her) is an autistic music therapist and singer.

Darshan: Anger plays a key role in the disabled movement. It helps us feel validated about our experiences and the pain caused by the ableist society that we live in. This allows us to direct the blame away from ourselves and instead, point it toward the real issue, which is inaccessibility. Disabled anger motivates the community to fiercely advocate for itself and without anger, any kind of resistance and revolution is not possible.

Darshan (he/him) is an engineer living with cerebral palsy.

The Tool of Disabled Grief

Illustration: Against an orange background, there is a person laying down with a relaxed expression. They have pink band-aids in their legs and arms, and purple flowers are coming out of them. At the top of the illustration, there are green leaves with pink flowers. Credit: Ritika Gupta

How do we honour our individual and collective grief?

Serenace: For those of us in the disabled community who are able to be visible in our existence in the public sphere, every act as an individual or as a community creates new possibilities. Coming together to recognise the shared sense of disenfranchisement and the accompanying pain, grief and sorrow that we share amongst ourselves is probably the first step towards honouring our grief. The comfort provided from strangers on online communities is one of the many spaces that we inadvertently yet intentionally create and hone to express and share our grief. The black colour in the disability pride flag, is a reminder for us to mourn with anger, love, pain and hope, the shared loss that we experience every single day of our disabled lives.

Serenace (they/them) is a queer, neurodivergent and sick knowledge worker/“cognitariat” interested in crip and queer epistemologies in architecture, art and design.

The Tool of Disabled Community

Illustration: Against a background with golden, pink, and white flowers, two people are laying down, smiling and looking up. Their chests are connected. Credit: Ritika Gupta

How has being part of a disabled community changed your life?

Shreyus: Being part of a disabled community has helped me realise how I belong to a community that is marginalised and faces disadvantages in daily life. I have also learnt about intersectionality and how even within the disabled community, there are socio-economic factors that distinguish our experiences as disabled people. For example, I think that I am more privileged than people with physical or “visible” difficulties because I do not have any physical disabilities and do not go through the challenges of having a physical disability. In our society, people tend to make very quick judgments about people with physical disabilities, which they are able to observe. Most people also talk as if our lives are doomed if we have a disability. However, being part of the disabled community and observing other people in the community enjoy success has helped me learn that I can pursue success as well. When I am able to relate with the early life experiences and past accounts of other disabled people, it makes me feel a sense of solidarity.

Shreyus (he/him) is a gay person with OCD and ADHD. He is an intern at Sangath, working on the iHEAR VaccinEquity project to understand vaccine access and uptake in trans and disability communities.

How do you see RDI as a space of protest?

Nu: Protest is necessary for our collective and re-imagining disabled dissent is part of our core values. We protest from our beds, from our phone screens and whatever ways that are accessible to us. Just because our protest is not “out there” or on the streets, does not make it invalid. At RDI, we protest by starting conversations on putting our own needs first and demanding for un-resilience, and rest for our weary, disabled bodies.

Nu (they/them) is a gender studies student, author, and founder of Revival Disability India.

Identifying and recognising our tools of protest helps us as disabled people to reclaim our voices and take control of our narratives. Different tools of protest may resonate with us at different times.

I myself have been spending time understanding my relationship with disabled grief and how I can honour it. Giving myself the space to do this, by having conversations about it with my therapist, reflecting on my identity as a disabled person, and connecting with the disabled community to gather perspectives and resources are some ways that I have been able to empower myself as an advocate of the disability movement and use my disabled grief as a tool of protest.

As always, I’m grateful for collectives like Revival Disability India and others and hope to see our voices being paid more attention during Disability Pride Month and beyond.

About the author

Anna Maria Joseph (she/they) is a psychologist and freelance writer, who explores the intersections of disability, gender, and climate crisis.

The illustrations featured in this piece are by Ritika Gupta (she/her), an autistic queer artist.