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Publication Note: This document was written in May 2016, in response to the “Ruderman White Paper on the Media Coverage of Use of Force and Disability.” The intent of this Response is to keep the community informed and accountable. The authors delayed publication of this Response for numerous reasons: First, the authors were looking to garner community feedback and support; and to find an outlet for publication. A good amount of time elapsed between the publication of the aforementioned white paper and this Response as a result of our collective processing. Further, some of the concerns with one of the authors of this paper seemed to have subsided. As such, the authors decided to hold off on publishing this Response. Over the years, however, David Perry’s behavior, in particular, has not only continued, but become increasingly problematic. In response to this unmitigated exploitation of the [heart]work, free labor & suffering of Black/Indigenous/racialized Disabled people and communities, the Community decided to make this post public two years after the release of the white paper, on June 1, 2018. Finally, please note that while this Response was written two years ago and remains largely in its original form, the resource list at the end of this Response has been updated to include resources, organizations, collectives, podcasts, etc. that may have not been available at the time of the drafting of this Response. Over the past couple of months, disabled activists have witnessed a flurry of media coverage of a recent “white paper” on police violence against disabled people. The white paper opened by stating that it would take an “intersectional approach” to discussing police violence and disability. Instead, despite using the narratives of Black and Indigenous people of color with disabilities killed or harmed by police, the white paper fails to apply a critically intersectional analysis to its topic. This paper was prepared by Lawrence Carter-Long and David Perry, two white men, one disabled and one not, on behalf of the Ruderman Foundation. As a result, white gaze predominates and the authors make elementary errors in describing the genesis and chronology of a centuries-long struggle against police violence by multiply-marginalized people. Even still, white-dominant news media have presented their work as “ innovative and new.” This is a centuries-old pattern of erasing the toil and involvement of racialized people while simultaneously repackaging their work as new and praiseworthy when presented by white people. This white paper is disappointing on multiple fronts: First, the white paper gallingly begins by incorrectly describing the murders of Eric Garner and Mike Brown as that which “primed Black America to respond...with public and sustained outrage, demanding change” and as what “start[ed] of the national conversation on police violence.” (Carter-Long & Perry, 4). Since neither of these men are part of multiply marginalized communities and since they also are not practicing meaningful allyship with these communities, they highlight high-profile cases as the genesis of a struggle that has existed longer than they have been alive. Neither was anything at all demanded of white people to bring an end to the violence that marginalized people have been literally dying to end for generations. (See Carter-Long & Perry, 5, “. . . primed Black America to respond . . .”). White (male) gaze also means that white (patriarchal) supremacy is never mentioned or implicated in the violence stemming from the system of policing. Ironically, in a 45-page report on police violence, “racism” is only mentioned twice--both in the “Methodology” section of the paper where the authors provide a three-sentence note about intersectionality, namely, that Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw once released an article about intersectionality in 1989. (Carter-Long & Perry, 5). The paper also describes the January 2013 police killing of Robert Ethan Saylor, a young white man with Down syndrome, as a starting point for disability advocacy against police brutality: “[t]he Ethan Saylor case [...] galvanized a movement” within disability advocacy on the issue of police violence (Carter-Long & Perry, 10). The report continues, “For many people in the disability community, especially those from otherwise privileged backgrounds, Saylor’s death was a turning point in their awareness of police violence issues.” (Carter-Long & Perry, 13). Yet despite hinting at the privilege embedded in the disability community response to Saylor’s death, the report never once discusses the factors that allowed Saylor's death to become a pivotal event (for white disability rights communities), such as his whiteness and class privilege, which are endemic among leadership in the disability rights community--and which Ethan’s mother, Patty Saylor, always emphasizes in conversations about her son’s death. Similarly, the report never explicitly describes Saylor as white although it identified the race of the seven others (all BIPOC- Black, Indigenous, People of Color) featured who were killed by police. White supremacy expects whiteness to be the default so that only those who diverge from whiteness must be identified (e.g., a person with Down syndrome as opposed to a Black person with Down syndrome – we are meant to infer the whiteness of the first person and to recognize the second person as “other than”). The paper does name Kristiana Coignard as a “17-year-old white girl,’, but only did so to applaud media coverage of her case because it “humanizes her and indicates her blamelessness to the reader.” (Carter-Long & Perry, 21). This same media coverage also was wholly lacking in intersectional analysis--never once mentioning race, racism or the whiteness of this “blameless” victim’s skin. We would be hard-pressed to find media coverage using “blameless” to describe any of the thousands of melanated victims of police violence who had done far less than Kristiana Coignard. It is no small wonder then that this paper is quite properly called a white paper. Second, this white paper directly takes from the work of Black, Indigenous and People of Color already working on these issues without giving any credit to that work, let alone building off of this work. Disturbingly, the white paper does not mention or acknowledge the work of countless disabled and disability-adjacent activists of color on police violence, even though those most affected and most engaged in this work are Disabled/Deaf Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. Specifically, the white paper does not mention, even in a footnote, the work of any one of the many people of color working to integrate disability and racial justice, although the authors had ample opportunity to honor the work of such activists, scholars, attorneys, organizers, artists and cultural workers, journalists, bloggers, philosophers, community builders and advocates as:
The paper does mention Talila A. Lewis, but does not come close to doing justice to the path-breaking cross-community building, anti-racism and truly intersectional anti-oppression and anti-violence work that Talila has been engaged in for a decade. Additionally, in the one brief mention of Talila’s work, the paper incorrectly describes that work. White supremacy allows these authors to present themselves as experts on this issue without them ever having engaged in movement work or having been directly affected. White supremacy also means that those around them accept that they are “experts” without question. The true work of disabled and disability adjacent people of color has long preceded the publication of this paper. White privilege and class privilege allows two unaffected white men to be knighted as experts for a month-long paid research project while affected, unpaid, marginalized people who have generations of stories and layered critical analysis are perpetually asked for “sources” and “credentials.” Those same marginalized people are accountable to their communities in ways that don’t allow them the time, space, and opportunity to complete the privileged work of taking time off from unpaid anti-violence work to write. Further, accountability for these marginalized people means that they would never compile others’ ideas for their own monetary or reputational gain. Third, the authors of the white paper fail to even minimally analyze the impact of race in the cases of the disabled people of color discussed. This notwithstanding, this paper has been continually praised both in the disability community and by the public as “ground-breaking,” which again, completely erases and undermines the revolutionary and truly intersectional work of Black, Indigenous and people of color, especially those with disabilities, on issues of police violence. Other papers, like the 2012 report issued by the Malcolm X Grassroots Center in New York on police terrorism targeting poor Black communities, were grounded in the work of Black and other people of color organizing on multiple fronts to track and respond to racist police violence. That report did include an analysis of mental health disability, and while its disability analysis could be improved, it nevertheless serves as a significantly better example of a community report on the issue of police violence than the Carter-Long/Perry white paper. Even further, in the past, Leroy Moore’s leadership helped the Protection and Advocacy Inc.’s (now Disability Rights California) board release a white paper on police brutality and disability in the early 2000’s. The Carter-Long/Perry white paper is once again a missed opportunity for real intersectionality when it comes to the Black Indigenous and people of color and disability communities working together on an issue that largely targets us. Furthermore, the Carter-Long/Perry white paper not only largely failed to mention disabled people of color but organizations of disabled people of color like the National Black Disability Coalition, Sins Invalid, the People’s Assemblies in New York which has a committee of disabled activists who organized a protest on police brutality against Black and Brown people with disabilities, The Worker’s World Party that has a disability committee which has been outspoken on this issue, and Poor Magazine which co-sponsored the first Bay Area open forum back in 2002 on the issue of police brutality against Black/Brown people with disabilities. Despite the ongoing work over several decades of Black Indigenous and people of color with disabilities to address police violence, the prison-industrial complex, and related issues at the intersection of racism, classism, ableism and other marginalities, the discourse around this paper completely erases the work of those most impacted by framing the paper as the first major time that anyone has discussed disability and police violence. That type of erasure, perpetuated both by news media and disability organizations, is not helpful for anyone, and especially not for those most likely to be targeted by ableist and racist police violence. In fact, in contrast to the stated intent of this type of report, that erasure is itself a form of racism because it situates white people as the authoritative experts over the lives and experiences of Black Indigenous and people of color, who cannot be believed or trusted until white people repeat the exact same things we have been saying for decades. This pattern of exploitation of our labor and ideas also prevents those who have been directly impacted from making their voices heard, by ensuring that race enters disability conversations only when convenient for white dis/abled people and only in comfortable minimizations where the white authors can control the narrative and analysis. In the case of this paper, as articulated by community activist/educator G.S. Potter, “the content analysis research methodology ensures that those conducting the analysis maintain a monopoly on authority to interpret and restate the ideas already put forth through thoughtful analysis and on the ground work by those most directly impacted.” Fourth, there is no in-depth treatment of the impact of intersectional identities of folks with disabilities or mention of previous encounters with police officers, which by their very nature, require discussion of racism and classism, among other oppressions intersected with ableism – for example they discuss Freddie Gray and John T. Williams without mentioning that both of these individuals (in one case a person with multiple disabilities) were already known by and also often harassed by law enforcement. Steven Eugene Washington, Kajieme Powell, John Williams, Mohamed Usman Chaudhry, and Natasha McKenna (among many, many others) died because of the pernicious impact of intersected racism and ableism. For the same reasons, their names and full stories as multiply impacted people are constantly erased throughout not only disability-exclusive racial justice movements but more prominently in white-dominant disability spaces. DISABILITY ADVOCACY COMMUNITIES HAVE A WHITE SUPREMACY PROBLEM Disability advocacy communities have an ongoing white supremacy problem. From all-white (or supermajority white) boards of directors, senior management, and staff/volunteers, to the names of those routinely honored by the movement as our pioneers while others are omitted, disabled people of color are constantly excluded from disability spaces that ironically purport to fight for inclusion and equality of opportunity. We build our own organizations and campaigns, and systematically find less support throughout the community than when our white peers engaged in the same or similar projects (with much less knowledge and experience, to boot). This white paper on police violence and disability is no exception. Indeed, in the months following the publication of this white paper, yet more funding was directed toward these well-positioned white men instead of to those affected and on the ground continuing the fight against injustices that were not even touched upon by this white paper. Additionally, misinformation and erasure has quickly spread by and through white-dominant media and disability rights organizations. To add insult to injury, these authors continue to hold themselves out as experts, accepting paid speaking engagements, interviews, writing and other opportunities stemming from the publication of this flawed white paper (for which they also received payment). The white non-disabled author, David Perry, has been invited to present on this topic by race-based and disability-based civil rights organizations when he is neither directly affected by police violence nor “in community” with those engaged in anti-violence work within our communities. He has also exploited those engaged in on-the-ground work by quoting them (sometimes out of context) to add validity to his work or “give voice” to theirs. And so the cycle continues unabated: white authors and foundations benefit from our narratives and suffering while Disabled writers, advocates, community builders of color are interrogated and rarely offered access to publiopportunitiescation or funding . It must be stated that most marginalized people who are actually engaged in anti-police violence work have never been paid for their labor. The Ruderman Foundation’s power and resources means that this report has such a far-reach that cleaning up the mess of it creates yet more work for affected persons and causes more violence to those who are most affected and doing the heavy lifting on combating police violence and supporting affected communities. Most importantly, this half-baked white paper has the potential to lead to yet more death of multiply marginalized people because the authors failed to speak to these issues with the depth and range required to bring an end to the violence. (see Honoring Arnaldo Rios & Charles Kinsey: Achieving Liberation through Disability Solidarity, Talila A. Lewis; see also The De-Voiced Black Disabled Activist, Kerima Çevik). It would have been far more responsible for the Ruderman Foundation to hire Deaf/Disabled Black, Indigenous people of color to write this report. In the absence of this just approach, the contracted authors should at least have publicly acknowledge the extreme limitations of their own perspectives and the paper itself, while working to encourage both the sponsoring foundation and other interested parties to support the ongoing efforts of people of color focused on the issue. That would do little to reverse the damage already done by this white paper but it would at least be honest. Unfortunately, but rather unsurprisingly, the Carter-Long/Perry white paper is only part of a new pattern of white disability organizations attempting to capitalize on the name recognition of Black and Indigenous people of color activists to endorse their own whitewashed work by name dropping or asking Black and Indigenous people of color to “support” the white-led project or paper after the fact, once white people and often white people without disabilities, have already done the bulk of the work without an intersectional analysis. The trend is not collaboration; it is tokenism, exploitation, and theft of intellect and labor. This makes it difficult, if not impossible for the most affected people and advocates to continue their work (see Fighting for Free[dom] & the Expense of Erasure, Talila A. Lewis). CONCLUSION We urge those concerned with the complex intersection of racism and ableism, especially in the context of police violence, to fund and support the disabled people of color working to address this issue through community organizing, cultural activism, community education, public policy advocacy, and other means – not white people profiting at our expense while claiming to speak for us or as the authoritative voice on police violence. Below are just a handful of examples of the struggles Disabled (mostly Low Income) Black, Indigenous, people of color have faced in finding and securing funding for some of the most fundamentally necessary and critical work in this realm:
These are clear examples of a pattern of inequity in funding and resource distribution that always has been borne by those doing actual work to end police violence and other inequities at the intersections of marginalities. If foundations and organizations are genuinely interested in addressing ableism intersected with racism, whether in the context of police violence or related issues, they must start by learning and building from existing work, deferring to the expertise of those with lived experience who are already working on these issues. This is the only path that allows for the implementation of community-based research models where Black Indigenous and people of color with disabilities take the lead in research design and interpretation and analysis that supports our political and cultural projects. This is the only path that is in line with our vision for a just world. About the Authors: This letter was collectively drafted by Talila A. Lewis and Lydia X. Z. Brown with review and feedback from Leroy Moore, Jr., and was reviewed and recived supported of over twenty Disabled Black/Indigenous people, the vast majority of whom are part of the Harriet Tubman Collective. Further Reading
RESOURCES Annual African American Conference on Disabilities www.facebook.com/AnnualAfricanAmericanSymposiumOnDisabilities/ The Annual Conference is a one-day conference in Arizona providing culturally relevant information and resources to self-advocates, families and professionals. APIDC (Asians and Pacific Islanders with Disabilities of California) www.apidisabilities.net Asians and Pacific Islanders with Disabilities of California (APIDC) gives a voice and a face to Asians and Pacific Islanders (APIs) with physical, mental, and developmental disabilities. We seek to help break down the service and cultural barriers faced by APIs with disabilities, to provide knowledge to APIs with disabilities and their families, and to create a community network for empowerment and independence. Autism and Race (All the Weight of Our Dreams: On Living Racialized Autism) www.autismandrace.com In summer 2014, we announced a new project to compile the first ever anthology of art and writings by autistics of color about our lives, our experiences, our histories, our communities, our struggles, our passions, and our resilience. Our stories deserve to be told both for us and for future generations that will come after us. They are stories of segregation in education; police brutality; families of birth, adoption, and choosing; ableism connected to racism; finding community, making home, survival, and resilience. They are stories of being autistic in a neurotypical world and stories of being racialized in a white-dominant world. Now, we are ready to shake up some foundations. Our stories matter and must be told. We hope that this collection will not only speak sharply against our constant erasure and invisibility as (at least) doubly impacted, but will also provide solace and familiarity for our own out there waiting for stories like theirs to be told. Black, Disabled, and Proud: College Students with Disabilities www.blackdisabledandproud.org We are a group of colleagues working in disability services at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Predominantly Black Colleges and Universities (PBCUs). The project was set up as a partnership between the University of the District of Columbia, Howard University, and Syracuse University, and the Association on Higher Education And Disability (AHEAD). The project is now permanently based at AHEAD. Coalición Nacional para Latinxs con Discapacidades / National Coalition for Latinxs with Disabilities http://www.latinxdisabilitycoalition.com We imagine a society in which the human rights of Latinxs with disabilities are upheld and all their intersecting identities are embraced. *** Mission: We work in solidarity to affirm, celebrate, and collectively uplift Latinxs with disabilities through community building, advocacy, protection of rights, resources, and education. Deaf In Prison Documentary (HEARD and Al Jazeera America) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AstF5kMaH_w (captioned video) Disability & Intersectionality Summit https://sandyhoma.wixsite.com/disummit (website is for second summit in 2018) 5 November 2016 in Boston, MA This Summit grew out of a desire to broaden the narrative around disability by engaging in a discussion of intersectionality within the disability community. The primary goal of this Summit is to feature a range of individuals with disabilities to present their own experiences, ideas, and solutions to an audience that will include the greater disability community, and general public. The Disability & Intersectionality Summit is supported by the Disability Policy Consortium, with an all-disabled & all-volunteer steering committee of: Lydia X.Z. Brown, Zach Garafalo, Adrianna Mallozzi, Beth Haller, Karin Hitselberger, Emily Ladau, Alice Wong, Kristin Duquette, Finn Gardiner, and Sandy Ho. Disability Solidarity www.twitter.com/dissol Co-created by Ki’tay D. Davidson, Allie Cannington & Talila A. Lewis in 2014 as a direct response to disability and deaf communities’ lack of solidarity with and for marginalized communities generally, and their failure to respond to police violence against racialized people, specifically, #DisabilitySolidarity holds the disability community accountable for intersectional justice and holds all communities accountable for disability justice. Disability Advocates for Rights and Transition (DART) Co-founded by Dustin P. Gibson and other Disabled activists and advocates to help transition people with disabilities from carceral settings back into their communities. Divas with Disabilities Project www.divaswithdisabilities.com Vision: To see more women of color with disabilities reflected in mass media. Our Mission: To showcase the talent and abilities of women of color with disabilities through various media platforms to help shape the perception of what “disability” looks like. We interpret the meaning of “look” not only as the outer beauty, but also the achievements and accomplishments of women with disabilities. The Empowered Fe Fes & DIVAS http://empoweredfefesanddivas.blogspot.com/ The Empowered Fe Fes (slang for female) & DIVAS is a project of Access Living, a Chicago-based disability rights agency run by and for people with disabilities. The young women of the Empowered Fe Fes and DIVAS use artistic forms such as dance, spoken word performance, and the media arts to examine and express issues of violence, abuse and disability rights with an eye on empowerment, creativity and independence. Harriet Tubman Collective www.facebook.com/HTCollective/ Harriettubmancollective.tumblr.com www.twitter.com/HTCSolidarity A Collective of Black Deaf & Black Disabled organizers, community builders, activists, dreamers, lovers striving for radical inclusion and collective liberation. HEARD (Helping Educate to Advance the Rights of Deaf Communities) www.facebook.com/HEARDDC www.twitter.com/behearddc www.behearddc.org Helping Educate to Advance the Rights of Deaf Communities (HEARD), is a volunteer-dependent nonprofit organization that promotes access to justice for people who are deaf/disabled. HEARD primarily focuses on correcting and preventing deaf wrongful convictions, ending abuse of imprisoned people with disabilities, decreasing recidivism rates for deaf returned people, and on increasing representation of deaf/disabled people in professions and trades that can combat mass incarceration. HEARD created and maintains the only national database of imprisoned Deaf, DeafBlind, DeafDisabled & Hard of Hearing people. HEARD facilitates collaboration among deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing individuals because we view access to the justice system as a fundamental human right that we all should be working to make a reality. Idriss Stelley Foundation Armstrong Place 5600 3rd Street, Suite #429 San Francisco, CA 94124 Hotline (bilingual Spanish): 415-595-8251 Direct services for victims and survivors of law enforcement brutality in the Bay Area, and for families and friends of Loved ones killed by law enforcement. Counseling, support group, pro bono attys referrals, court accompaniment, Information & Referrals, help with staging rallies and protests. For an appointment, please call our hotline. We are wheelchair accessible. Co-Directors: Jeremy Miller, 415-595-2894, [email protected]; La Mesha Monge-Irizarry, 415-595-8251, [email protected]. Intersected http://intersecteddisability.blogspot.com There is an assumption that any racial minority is a de facto authority on race, race relations and racism; this is a standard myth. Most of us don't want to spend our lives discussing race or reliving the painful history of racism from the perspective of the victim. But I found myself getting increasingly frustrated with the racist attitudes and behaviors I saw around me, even in those who cried loudly for equality in marriage or marched against ableism. You expect racism from your enemies, you don't expect it from your colleagues and friends. So this is an experiment in education. This virtual space is going to host some friends and people I respect a great deal, and we are all going to try and leave a body of work that will hopefully help our readers understand what damage racism and ableism can do, what impact it has on groups of people navigating in the worlds of both disability and minority, and how each and every person reading this can do one thing a day to change the equation from hate and ignorance to educated intelligence and love. Krip-Hop Nation www.kriphopnation.com Krip-Hop Nation’s Mission is to educate the music, media industries and general public about the talents, history, rights and marketability of Hip-Hop artists and other musicians with disabilities. Krip-Hop Nation’s main objective is to get the musical talents of hip-hop artists with disabilities into the hands of media outlets, educators, and hip-hop, disabled and race scholars, youth, journalists and hip-hop conference coordinators. Krip-Hop Nation & DJ Quad of 5th Battalion from L.A. produced PBP: Police Brutality Profiling Mixtape recorded by Black Indigenous and people of color artists with disabilities. National Black Deaf Advocates www.nbda.org The National Black Deaf Advocates (NBDA) is the official advocacy organization for thousands of Black Deaf and hard of hearing people in the United States. Black deaf leaders were concerned that Black Deaf and hard of hearing Americans are not adequately represented in leadership and policy decision-making activities affecting their lives so they established NBDA in 1982. The Mission of the National Black Deaf Advocates is to promote the leadership development, economic and educational opportunities, social equality, and to safeguard the general health and welfare of Black deaf and hard of hearing people. National Black Disability Coalition www.blackdisability.org The National Black Disability Coalition (NBDC) is a response to the need for Blacks with Disabilities in America to organize around issues of mutual concern and use our collective strength to address disability issues with an emphasis on people who live in poverty. The goals of the NBDC are: to promote UNITY among Black people with disabilities, our families and our communities; to advance EQUITY within the disability movement and our communities; to foster OPPORTUNITY for Black people with disabilities. We believe that Black people with disabilities must unite to obtain and secure the rights and privileges of full participation in our communities. Using strategies from the civil rights movement, NBDC seeks to achieve collective power and inclusion for Black people with disabilities within our families, faith organizations and the greater disability community. National Coalition to Empower Latinos with Disabilities www.facebook.com/LatinosWithDisabilities The purpose of this Facebook community is to create a network of individuals, orgs, academia, & service providers of Latinos with disabilities. The purpose of the conference is to create a network of community organizations, individuals, academics, & service providers for Latinos with disabilities. There is currently a general lack of community organizing and a lack of communication and unity among different organizations and centers that serve Latinos with disabilities. We are excited to say that we will be holding this conference on May 25, 2016. Our hope is that this conference will bring together a national awareness of the need for nationwide community organizing in order to better provide for the Latino community and to promote social change. Because there are many obstacles that latinos with disabilities face in receiving the support they need, some of the topics that will be discussed at this conference are immigration, lack of access to healthcare, employment, housing, education and knowledge of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). People of Color and Mental Illness Project http://diorvargas.com/poc-mental-illness/ This photo project stems from the lack of media representation of POC (people of color) and mental illness. There are tons of articles that list people with depression and other mental illnesses but you rarely see someone who looks like you. We need to change the way this is represented. This is not something to be ashamed about. We need to confront and end the stigma. This is a NOT a white person's disease. This is a reality for so many people in our community. Ramp Your Voice! www.rampyourvoice.com Ramp Your Voice!, LLC is an organization that promotes self-advocacy and empowerment among disabled people. Its mission is to be the space where disability issues are discussed from an intersectional, personal lens; and shed light on the experiences and perspectives of Black disabled women and femmes. Sins Invalid www.sinsinvalid.org Sins Invalid is a performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and queer and gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalized. Our performance work explores the themes of sexuality, embodiment and the disabled body. Conceived and led by disabled people of color, we develop and present cutting-edge work where normative paradigms of "normal" and "sexy" are challenged, offering instead a vision of beauty and sexuality inclusive of all individuals and communities. Sins Invalid recognizes that we will be liberated as whole beings—as disabled, as queer, as brown, as black, as gender non-conforming, as trans, as women, as men, as non-binary gendered— we are far greater whole than partitioned. We recognize that our allies emerge from many communities and that demographic identity alone does not determine one's commitment to liberation. Sins Invalid is committed to social and economic justice for all people with disabilities – in lockdowns, in shelters, on the streets, visibly disabled, invisibly disabled, sensory minority, environmentally injured, psychiatric survivors – moving beyond individual legal rights to collective human rights. Our stories, embedded in analysis, offer paths from identity politics to unity amongst all oppressed people, laying a foundation for a collective claim of liberation and beauty. Washington Metro Disabled Students Collective www.disabledstudentsdc.org The Washington Metro Disabled Students Collective (WMDSC, pronounced “whim-disk”) seeks to unite disabled students/students with disabilities throughout the Washington Metro area, including Maryland and Northern Virginia, to collaborate in organizing for disability access, equality, and inclusion on our campuses. We strive to work intersectionally across queer, trans*, gender, race, class, immigration, and faith issues through organizing for disability rights. Where Is Hope: The Art of Murder http://whereishope.webs.com Where Is Hope: The Art of Murder, an online film, chronicles disabled victims murdered by police as well as the activists/artists who have fought and are fighting against police brutality against people with disabilities. Many have lost disabled love ones and friends from police injustice. The online film is Produced by Emmitt Thrower and co-Produce by Leroy F Moore Jr. The film also highlights the companion CD, Broken Bodies, PBP, Police Brutality Profiling Mixtape project by Krip-Hop Nation founder, Leroy Moore out of Berkeley, CA and and 5Th Battalion founder, DJ Quad out of LA.. Two main stories of police brutality emerges in the film, that resulted in the victim's loved ones becoming disabled as a result of the tragedy in addition to their personal loss. The work of many disabled activists and artists/activists like Leroy Moore, Keith Jones , Mesha Irizarry, Lisa “Tiny”Gray- Garcia, Lethea Warren and more are explored around this issue, especially involving disabled people of color.
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