#it's discussing intersectionality and the roots of the justice system in racism towards black and native people

[carpathxanridge]

it doesnt matter the intent of inclusive language when its practical function is to obfuscate the root issue of female oppression.

nothing has demonstrated that more clearly and grimly than the aclu’s statement on the texas abortion ban. labelling this a “racial and economic justice” issue while refusing to name “misogyny” or “female reproductive rights” shows that something has gone wrong. you’ve failed. you are not an ally to or advocate for women.

intersectionality requires NAMING the interdependent systems of discrimination you are attempting to analyze. implying that misogyny is in itself not an axis of oppression—never mind the OPERATIVE system of oppression perpetuated by abortion bans—is not intersectionality.

implying that racial or class privilege can erase this law’s impact on ALL WOMEN is not intersectionality. it is the antithesis of intersectionality because it erases the very root of the oppression that women of color will face under this law, and instead uses them as props to signal a surface level inclusivity.

there’s a reason why the qrts and replies on the aclu’s tweet are overwhelmingly white and/or male people using appeals against racial eugenics to justify taking away women’s reproductive autonomy.

the conversation is now steered to “killing minority babies,” rather than toward recognizing increased risk of death in childbirth, etc. women of color face, because women of color or poor women or disabled women do not have a name when no woman has a name.

when abortion bans are a gender neutral issue impacting “people”/“texans” and women’s oppression is assigned no meaning, the attempt at recognizing racism’s intersection with the issue of abortion will of course fall into the typical pro-life script—the only minorities being discussed will of course be the potential “black babies” being “killed”

males are males. regardless of race or socioeconomic status, they see a woman’s reproductive freedom as a threat to their own egos and existence. andrea dworkin was right when she said that they see all abortion as their own mother aborting them, killing them in utero.

i would wish to have a more nuanced in-depth discussion of this (in terms of addressing the claims of abortion being rooted in eugenics, the limits of abortion advocacy in addressing the conditions needed for women’s true reproductive freedom as it intersects with race and class, and perhaps why this is not the conversation to be having when women’s most fundamental autonomy is being threatened, when it is proven that access to safe abortion saves lives first and foremost and is prerequisite to expanding our reproductive autonomy)

but the conversation does not matter and can’t be had when it becomes taboo to say, in the first place, that women exist. only women are impacted by abortion bans. abortion bans are specifically rooted in patriarchal control of women’s reproductive labor—the treatment of women as vessels to fulfill a man’s will for propagation, the fetus as symbol for the male ego on which to project fear of female power, and the birth as punishment for women’s original sin.

[harthouseuoft]

Hancock Lecture 2019: Interview with Sarah Jama

Although regular seats are sold out, you can still listen to and watch the 2019 Hancock Lecture in Hart House’s Reading Room, where the event will be projected on a screen. Or you can watch our Facebook Live video broadcast the day of the event. 

On February 6, during the 2019 Hancock Lecture, Sarah Jama, community organizer and co-founder of the Disability Justice Network of Ontario (DJNO), will discuss the ways the “disabled body” and “disabled mind” are treated through consumerist understandings in order to uphold existing oppressive structures in our society. 

Sarah will also discuss the history of the disability justice movement in Canada and the U.S., the historical links between colonialism and ableism, global capitalism, and ways to build a world that truly uplifts the rights of people with disabilities. Lastly, she’ll walk you through her journey as an organizer and the steps she has taken towards building inclusive movements.

We sat down with Sarah to discuss the Hancock Lecture and the topics she intends to address. 

Q: You’re a co-founder of the Disability Justice Network of Ontario (DJNO). Can you share with us why and how you co-founded this organization? What do you hope to achieve?

A: Co-founders Shanthiya Baheerathan, Eminet Dagnachew, and I all met at McMaster University through working with the McMaster Student Union (MSU). Eminet was working with me to run programming for people with disabilities, and Shanthiya was managing a service called the Women and Gender Equity Network. Throughout our time engaging in this work, we were each, in our own way, frustrated with a number of issues. What stood out to me was how many silos existed in the student union, particularly around the equity seeking services. The student union was structured to conduct issues-based work using a service user framework instead of a community organizing framework. To me, this looked like the different services operating in their corners of the world, without any crossover. Disability issues were separate from queer issues, were separate from women’s issues, and were separate from food justice issues. It wasn’t until people of colour got involved more intentionally in the student union that crossover began to exist more frequently. As black and brown women with various intersections of class and disability, we often talked about how disability issues, in particular, were treated as existing on an island.

This, to me, was a testament to larger issues at play in the disability community. Our rhetoric around disability is stuck in the nineties, still focused heavily on service user language and charities and not focused on the structural root causes that people with disabilities face. I don’t want to talk about access to public institutions for the sake of exerting my economic purchasing power or to talk about equality or people with disabilities being valued and loved the way they are. I know we have value. I don’t need to participate in capitalist structures in order to feel this. I want to challenge the way the prison industrial complex in Canada thrives upon the criminalization of people with disabilities who are people of colour. I don’t want to sit here and argue that people with disabilities are employable. I want to challenge the way the bodies of people with disabilities are seen as disposable or treated as unworthy because a lot of us don’t fit common and often exploitative understandings of productivity.

As three black/ women of colour with disabilities, we created this organization as a way to address all of these issues using a framework of Disability Justice. Disability Justice is a term created by Sins Invalid in Oakland, an epic organizing group and arts collective of black and queer disabled artists who sought to change the way people talked about disabilities. The ten principles they consider disability justice frameworks to adhere to the following: intersectionality, anti-capitalist politic, a commitment to cross-movement organizing, recognizing wholeness, sustainability, cross-disability solidarity, interdependence, collective access, and collective liberation. Through adhering to these principles, our vision at the Disability Justice Network of Ontario is to create a world where people with disabilities are free to be. Our Mission is to build a just and accessible Ontario, wherein people with disabilities: have personal and political agency, can thrive and foster community, build the power, capacity, and skills needed to hold people, communities, and institutions responsible for the spaces they create. Our values are:

Accountability: Our work is community-led and accountable to people with disabilities.

Building Community Capacity: We work collaboratively with local community members, movements and organizations to seek equity and justice for people with disabilities.

Justice: We work beyond current legislation to prioritize access, empowerment, and liberation for people with disabilities, including the creation of sustainable support systems.

Open Door: Our door is always open. We welcome all people who support DJNO’s vision, mission, and values regardless of ability, race, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender or economic status.

Resource Sharing: We are committed to supporting those with the least resources first, and addressing the dynamic needs of our communities equitably. 

Self-Determination: We respect and support people with disabilities and the choices they make to build better futures for themselves and their collectives. This includes the choice to disclose, discuss and manage their disability.  

You’re working with the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board to create curriculum around combating anti-black racism. What are some of the challenges and opportunities that in your opinion exist in our current school system?

One of the major challenges that I see with school boards across the province, which [is] being rectified in many cities, is the lack of race-based data collection across Ontario. If we don’t have a way to quantitatively discuss who is in our school systems we can’t properly create a curriculum that speaks to the experiences of all students.

I am super excited to be working through the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion and in partnership with the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board to create programming specific to teaching black youth in our city about civic engagement, in group mentorship settings. We have speakers such as Desmond Cole, Robyn Maynard, and Sandy Hudson coming to share a sleuth of experiences and advice with black young adults to prepare them for what it means to navigate various spaces and institutions in their skin as they transition out of high school.

What do you hope Hancock 2019 guests will take out of attending the event?

I want people to understand the history of disability justice, why it is important, and how we can move forward. Fundamentally, I want to create an environment where we can discuss issues facing the way we address issues in the disability community, and challenge people to imagine a new world. There is a way forward; we just need to find it. I also want them to understand and unpack the ways in which we view movement building, which often times, especially in disability circles, centres itself around whiteness. Nothing about us without us needs to include our indigenous, black, and people of colour comrades with disabilities as well. I’m excited to map out ways forward using a disability justice framework.

You only graduated in 2017, but you already have quite an extensive resume. You’ve also received awards and recognitions like the Evelyn Myrie Political Action Award (March 2017) and a nomination for Women of Distinction Award (Feb. 2017). You were also dubbed CBC Hamilton's Top 5 Most Interesting People of 2016 (December 2016). What drives you to work so hard? What tips can you offer a student or recent grad?

I work hard for many reasons. Mainly, it’s because I believe in whole-heartedly what I’m doing. 

I credit a lot of my success to my friend and mentor, Matthew Green, the first black City Councillor in Hamilton Ontario. He has and continues to push me to take on leadership opportunities and challenges that are traditionally taken up by able-bodied cis-gendered white men. I would say go out and find mentors you can relate to, who believe in your leadership, and who can use their experiences to build on or support your work.

December 3rd marked International Day of Persons with Disabilities, a day when we commit to creating a more inclusive and accessible society for people of all abilities. This year, it coincided with the conclusion of the House of Commons hearings on Bill C-81—the Accessible Canada Act. Introduced last June, this piece of legislation has been decades in the making and marks what’s been hailed a significant victory for the disability community. Do you agree? What’s your take on this Bill? What else should the federal government do?

There have been many concerns with the framing of the new bill, spearheaded by David Lepofsky and signed onto by many disability organizations, including the Disability Justice Network of Ontario. It follows a complaint based model that places the onus on people with disabilities to file complaints repetitively in order to have enforcement of accessibility regulations in place. If the institution being complained against has access to funds, they can delay the process by paying fines that are issued due to accessibility violations. I think that there should be a way for this legislation to be more proactive versus reactive.

Lastly, for people who have no disabilities or know anyone with a disability, and are thus removed from that reality, do you have any messages?

I hope people without disabilities who attend the lecture come in with open minds and open hearts. One of the leading causes of disability is old age. If folks don’t know anyone with a disability, it’s still likely to affect you over time. Disability Justice is about creating a world where we all fit, with structures that uphold and protect those who are often pushed out of spaces and of society. We all have a part to play in the solutions.

What: Hancock Lecture 2019 When: Wed. Feb. 6, 2019, 6 pm, Reception to follow Where: Great Hall

[photogracyblog]

A Space That Wasn’t Made for Me (My Op-Ed for the Tufts Observer)

I am solely speaking about my experience as a queer, Persian man. I do not claim to understand or hope to speak for anybody else but myself. My experiences have been socialized by the immediate environment in which I was raised, and I fully realize how I have historically been complicit and involved in some of the systems and organizations that I criticize in this piece. My effort to improve as a person and to hold myself accountable for my actions is one that is not devoid of mistakes.

During recess one day in middle school, one of the coolest kids in my class, an attractive White male, asked me who some of my favorite singers were. Anxious to make a good impression, I thought of the Whitest shit I could come up with to please him: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kurt Cobain, and Dave Matthews Band. I think I threw in Lil Wayne as well, because I have found that many White boys love reaffirming their “hipness” by admiring and “identifying” with Black rappers.

I grew up in a predominantly White, affluent neighborhood and attended a “prestigious” prep school in the greater Boston area. I quickly learned to value White activities like theater and tennis, both of which I really enjoyed, but all the while felt excluded from socially. I began to consider White, muscular men with rigid jawlines and blue eyes to be the epitome of attraction and beauty, shaping the way I began to look at myself in the mirror, and later contributing to the ways that I would begin to modify my body.

At the same time, my experiences assimilating to various aspects of White culture seemed to juxtapose with my identity as an Iranian-American. My parents emigrated from Iran to France and finally settled in Brookline, MA. I grew up in a house with Persian art, poetry, and music. I ate home-cooked Persian food every night, spoke Farsi with my family, and celebrated being Iranian by attempting to recognize the social implications that I thought being Iranian would mean.

Growing up, I always imagined that I would experience a universal bond with other Persians. I believed that the experiences we seemed to face as a community would transcend our often divisive, intersectional identities; however, I didn’t recognize how difficult it would be to navigate my Persian-ness as a queer man. I didn’t want to acknowledge the deeply rooted masculinity and patriarchal structure embedded within Persian culture that doesn’t give space to those with divergent and non-normative identities—specifically, queerness.

Identifying as gay, then eventually developing my sexuality to fit my own definition of queer, became an aspect of my identity that began to deteriorate the bond that I had tried to sustain between the Iranian community and myself. Once I began to realize how difficult it would be to find any space where my queerness and race could interact, I began to feel a deep sense of resentment towards myself. Never feeling quite Persian enough became a recurring sentiment at events, vacations, and dinners with my extended family. I found that my queerness seemed to dissuade my desire to “feel” Iranian by participating in the hyper-masculine activities and homophobic discourse that is rampant within many Persian social contexts that I have experienced.

As I sought to develop my identity further in college, something about associating myself as brown and not specifically as Persian began to muddle my identity and prevent me from characterizing my experiences as separate or unique. I don’t know what it feels like to be Latino. I do not identify as South Asian, nor do I consider myself an Arab—and so to experience struggle through the lens of an identity that cannot be located has made me feel that my brownness will not, and cannot, find a space to exist freely. Whether it is being misidentified or having my racial identity questioned, I have developed an uncomfortable relationship with claiming, accepting, and embracing being Iranian.

Whenever people used to ask about my ethnicity, I always responded by saying, “I’m Iranian.” Recently, however, I have begun to use the ethnic origin of my identity as a signifier of the unique culture that I ascribe myself with. Identifying and introducing myself as Persian marks an important and unique ethnic exclamation that has reaffirmed my desire to separate myself from other Middle Eastern and Arab cultures. (Contrary to popular belief, Persians are not ethnically Arab.)

Growing up and hearing Iran described as a threatening or evil country also made me uncomfortable publically identifying as Iranian. The inability for people in this country to disassociate Iran’s government from its people created this self-destructive pattern for me to constantly prove myself as a good Iranian, or disassociate from my racial background altogether. Today, I still find it terribly difficult navigating being Iranian given the current immigration ban that Trump’s administration has brought forth. Beyond the fallacy that the nations listed in the ban have contributed to acts of terror in the US (not a single one has), I also find it disheartening to hear Iran constantly being referred to under a false pretense of danger, terror, and otherness.

Despite the many “diverse” spaces at Tufts that foster important discussions for people of color, queer and trans folk, and women of color, I have found that, in order to join or feel welcomed into these dialogues or spaces, I have had to compromise aspects of my Persian-ness or succumb to adopting a generalized Middle Eastern identity in order to engage in discussions. I think that the socially conscious and active community at Tufts, which claims to create an inclusive space for marginalized individuals, tends to fall short in understanding or acknowledging the nuances of certain intersectional identities that exist on this campus, mine being one of many.

I grew up speaking Farsi, and the food that I have always eaten at home is so specific to Iran that I’m disheartened when our culture is generalized and placed within the socio-cultural landscape of others within the Middle Eastern region. Obviously, I am not angry or even shocked that people don’t know much about Iranian culture. It is rather the disregard or almost a sense of entitlement that many people on this campus feel when trying to locate my identity that puts me off. Surprisingly, people who major in American Studies, Sociology, and Anthropology have been among those who have asked me things like how spicy I like my food or if I know how to make homemade hummus. Iranian food is not spicy at all, and we don’t make or eat hummus unless we go out to restaurants.

Many times when White social justice activists on this campus ask me how to create more inclusive spaces for POC, I find that I want to respond by saying, “Stop trying to speak on behalf of identities that you don’t understand. Stop trying to locate us to fit into your social justice narrative or use us as a token to investigate intersectionality when you’re blindly unaware of the fundamental differences among our cultures.” For example, not identifying as a Middle Eastern gay man but rather as a Persian queer man is often read as commendable or “interesting” by socially active folks at Tufts, but rarely incorporated into important discussions or dialogues about queer POC on campus.

The socially unaware, uninvolved, and generally conservative White population at Tufts is truly, however, the largest demographic of individuals who have contributed to my anxieties, anger, and frustration. Whether it’s the toxic White gays at previous Rainbow House parties who have commented on and fetishized my “exotic” appearance, or White girls who love to tokenize my foreign queerness, you have all failed to recognize your internalized racism and homophobia. From the one frat brother who spat on me and my friend outside of a frat house window next to Moe’s my freshman year, to the multiple athletes who have physically pushed and verbally assaulted me at campus events, you have reminded me that regardless of how hard I try to make myself palatable to you, I am still a Persian faggot.

Despite all of this, however, I am constantly reminded of how privileged and lucky I truly am. My parents worked hard to put me through private school and then a liberal arts education, and I am forever grateful to them for the sacrifices they have made for me. My family has given me the space to explore my identities and embrace me for wanting to hold onto or discard certain aspects of both. Many queer Persians, however, do not experience the same socio-economic security, access to education, and support that I have, and I recognize how fortunate I am to even be able to speak up and feel safe to talk about this on a platform where my thoughts can hopefully be validated.

Luckily, I have been able to surround myself by some incredible Persian individuals on this campus who strive to include the intersections of my queerness and Iranian identity into a dialogue, giving me a platform to exist comfortably. Given the current socio-political climate of this country, I have found an immense amount of strength and desire to make our identities as Persian known. My unequivocal love for Persians is the strongest it has ever been. No ban on earth could prevent us from succeeding wherever we go, and I hope that people at Tufts and those within my close circle of friends will seek to learn more about Iran’s immensely influential history, culture, and society before calling themselves allies.

For me to not speak up after three and a half years of having people speak for me would further detract from the importance of celebrating my overlapping, yet individually valid, identities. Tufts, especially in its attempts to create or foster a space for inclusiveness, does not incorporate the nuances of socio-cultural and ethnic identities into a space that unidentifiable individuals can claim.

To the handful of professors and sociology majors that see my identities as unique and different, I’m appreciative of you. To the greater socially “active” and “progressive” White activists, women, and queer folk on campus, practice what you preach. Don’t think that individuals like me are not constantly trying to make ourselves palatable to you either. And finally, to the ex-lovers, friends, and professors who have pushed me into a space where self-hatred and discomfort have permeated the past 15 years of my life, I look back on my experiences with you not as moments when I wasn’t strong enough to speak up against you, but rather as a time when I just didn’t know where to locate that strength.