telling stories: legacies, imagination, coalitions dr. susan burch middlebury college
TRANSCRIPT
Telling Stories: Legacies, Imagination, Coalitions
Dr. Susan Burch
Middlebury College
ACTIVITY
What’s your first memory of
disability, and what did it teach
you?
Key point
We learn disability
ACTIVITY
Reflect on your position in that
initial memory
Where we are in the story also
matters—our proximity to
disability and disabled people.
“The layers are so tangled: gender folds into disability, disability wraps around class, class strains against race, race snarls into sexuality, sexuality hangs onto gender, all of it finally piling into our bodies”
- Eli Clare
ADA signing, 1990
Key point
Through coalition we tell and make
a different story
ACTIVITY
Take a moment to consider:
What factors shape your/our
relationships to disability and to
disabled people?
Activity: Dyads
What do you hope for in your own
relationship to disability and to
disabled people?
“Disability Justice holds a vision
born out of collective struggle,
drawing upon the legacies of
cultural and spiritual resistance
within a thousand underground
paths, igniting small persistent
fires of rebellion in everyday
life.”
-Patty Berne
“Loving to do” list:
What is ONE THING I CAN DO
NOW
to move myself, my workplace, or
my broader community towards a
more disability-empowered, just
story?
ACTIVITY: Pair and Share
Share your one ‘loving to do’ task with a person nearby
Brainstorm together:
With whom could you join in coalition to expand the impact of
your ‘loving to do’ task?
“We bring legacies of resiliency that
are deep and strong and which we are
a part of. And in all of our work we
have a responsibility to grow and
cultivate resiliency, just as much as
we resist the current systems at
work.
We must not only fight against the
world we currently have, but also be
working to create the kind of world
that is inspired by our deepest desires
for our selves, our families (whom
ever they may be, including chosen
family) and our communities.
And it is from this place, where I
would like us to always start. From
the world we want, the world we
collectively desire.”
- Mia Mingus
