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

Thank you. Susan Burch