Advancing Disability Justice: A “Both/And” Strategy
This is the ninth post in a series. Click here to start at the beginning.
In their recommendations report, the Disability Justice Leaders Collaborative emphasized that they want a “both/and” strategy: efforts that specifically support disabled leaders of color AND efforts that introduce disability justice principles into existing racial justice work.
As society has taken steps to “mainstream” or integrate communities, we have seen support for community-specific programs and spaces dwindle. We do not want this. We want to have vibrant disability community spaces and better access to mainstream leadership programs.
— “Recommendations for Advancing Disability Justice in Oregon and SW Washington”
Northwest Health Foundation has embraced this both/and strategy for 2019 and 2020.
Support Disabled Leaders
This year Northwest Health Foundation launched Advancing Disability Justice, an initiative supported by the Collins Foundation. It consists of three parts.
(1) Growing Disabled Leadership — Disability justice experts Stacey Milbern and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha are mentoring and coaching some of the leaders from the Disability Justice Leaders Collaborative one-on-one to build their facilitation, curriculum development, access planning, base building, popular education, somatics/wellness/self-care, movement sustainability, fundraising and other skills. The end goal is to create a network of disability justice organizers who feel comfortable taking on deeper levels of organizing in our region.
(2) We’ll actually skip number two for now.
(3) Disability Justice Grants — In 2020, we’ll award five grants of at least $5,000 to organizations or coalitions who want to build disability justice-focused civic engagement infrastructure.
Our region needs more organizations and efforts led by disabled people of color. We hope Growing Disabled Leadership and Disability Justice Grants will support emerging organizations to become established and individual disabled leaders of color to become influencers in our region. We envision these organizations and individuals holding space for and building power with disabled people of color, if that’s what they choose to do.
Introduce Disability Justice Principles to Racial Justice Organizations
Back to number two.
(2) Growing the Circle — We need to grow the number of organizations who understand and want to apply the disability justice framework to their work. We’ve heard from Disability Justice Leaders Collaborative leaders that culturally-specific and racial justice organizations don’t understand disability justice. So, Northwest Health Foundation will invite culturally-specific and racial justice organizations in our region to learn about disability justice so they can operationalize it in their work.
One of the disability justice framework’s ten principles is cross-movement organizing. Most of Northwest Health Foundation’s work isn’t focused on disability justice. For the most part, we support community-of-color-led organizations to develop leadership and advocate for policy and systems change. Think a Latinx-led immigrant rights organization supporting school board candidate campaigns, a tribal government developing parent leadership, a cross-racial environmental justice organization advocating for low-income transit fare.
Moving forward, we want to incorporate disability justice in all our work. Take, for instance, our upcoming five-year initiative Civic Health. Civic Health’s goals are to build the skills and infrastructure in BIPOC communities to elect leaders and change policies at the local and state level so everyone has access to the resources and opportunities they need; develop leaders and talent rooted in, and supportive of, BIPOC communities; and establish a vibrant democratic culture that values, centers and supports BIPOC.
While Civic Health is overtly focused on BIPOC communities, we also want to ensure disabled BIPOC leadership is part of this initiative and that all the organizations participating in Civic Health know and understand the disability justice framework.
We need more disabled leaders of color with decision-making and influencing power, organizations led by disabled BIPOC, and BIPOC-led organizations committed to disability justice. We need all of the above and more.
