Introduction: Who We Are and How We Came Together

The Disabled Scholars of Color Collective (DSCC) is a group of disabled scholars of color working in the field of disability studies and beyond. The Collective was created in the context of a gathering of disabled scholars of color in San Francisco, California over Labor Day weekend 2025. This gathering was originally envisioned and proposed by Alice Wong to Dr. Sami Schalk to assess the state of race in the field of disability studies as both research topic and identity. The gathering aimed to bring together disabled scholars of color working in disability studies in an accessible, pleasure-forward space to (re)build community within critical race disability studies as a sub-field. The work was funded by Disability Visibility Project with New Disabled South as the fiscal sponsor. Dr. Sami Schalk served as the central planner and host with the support of graduate student project assistant, Washieka Torres. This white paper is the product of the gathering, intended to share our perspectives on the state of critical race disability studies and to provide a vision for the future of the field that can inform our future work as a collective and the work of critical race disability studies more broadly.

Dr. Schalk’s central aim in planning the gathering was to create an accessible and pleasurable experience for thinking together so that critical race disability studies and disability justice were not just the topics of conversation but also shaped the process of the gathering as well. This included having a very spacious and flexible agenda. Our gathering began on Friday evening with dinner and participants were given the option to fly in the day before to allow for rest and recovery from travel. On Saturday and Sunday, we met at 10am for two hours, then took a two-hour break with lunch provided in the suite, followed by a two-hour afternoon working session, then another two-hour break before dinner. This schedule encouraged rest, choice, and pleasure. We started the first dinner by sharing our disability studies origin stories. Saturday morning, we discussed our personal experiences in the field followed by an afternoon discussion of a literature review of work in critical race disability studies prepared in advance by Washieka. On Sunday, we began envisioning and crafting this white paper.

While we had specific discussion period times, conversations also occurred at meals, in the suite on breaks, at the pool, in individual rooms, over group text, within a shared Google document and so on. The meals, care and pleasure built into this gathering helped us (some of whom had never met in person) build comfort, trust, familiarity, respect, and connection that improved our more formal discussions and co-working. The community building element of the gathering therefore created a fruitful foundation for the more formal work of our time together. Our community building was also strongly supported by our shared identities as disabled scholars of color and our shared politics in disability justice and Black, Asian, and Third World feminisms, especially regarding collective care, radical mothering/parenting, and creating a just ecosystem of labor. These commitments, which shape our personal and collective goals for our research, teaching, writing, and advocacy/activism in the world, connected and bonded us as much as our identity positions, if not more so.

During our Sunday discussions, we decided to name ourselves the Disabled Scholars of Color Collective (DSoCC). We formalized our mission as follows:

The Disabled Scholars of Color Collective is a group of disabled scholars of color working and dreaming in the field of disability studies and beyond. Our commitments are to one another, our students, and our disabled and racialized communities more than any institution or field. We reject a field that is built on and perpetuates extractive relationships, erasure, capitalism, ableism, racism, and other interlocking systems of oppression. Instead, we dream of a future that is based on the ethics of generosity and care, a commitment to transformative pedagogy, and a belief in the value of radical and fugitive knowledges within and outside of the academic industrial complex.

By “scholar” we mean people both inside and outside of the academy who use research and lived experience to create and share new knowledge and understandings of the world. While many of us have formal affiliations with academic institutions, such affiliations are neither privileged nor preferred within our Collective’s work and community building. We use the term “disabled” to refer to a politicized identity not based on medical diagnosis, similarly to how Carrie Sandahl and Robert McRuer define the term “crip.” When we refer to “ableism,” we are drawing from the work of TL Lewis and other disability justice activists who understand ableism to be inextricably tied to all other systems of oppression, including capitalism and colonialism. In what follows, we summarize the conversations from our gathering into three sections: personal narratives and experiences, research in the field, and recommendations for future work.

Personal Experiences as Disabled Scholars of Color in Disability Studies

In discussions about our experiences as disabled scholars of color working in the field of disability studies, we found several common themes as well as a few outliers that we wish to highlight here. First, our work, like our identities, politics, and the oppressions we face, is intersectional. Consequently, many of us find ourselves oscillating among several disciplines and fields. While our published research and teaching may appear to bring seemingly disparate fields together, the labor of trying to get different disciplines to speak to one another involves an often frustrating and exhausting process of maneuvering strategically among different spaces. We engage in a kind of disciplinary-level code-switching, translating methods and approaches in Disability Studies into the idiom of other disciplines while also trying to get Disability Studies to integrate the needed interventions of outside, often racialized fields. As disabled scholars of color, we all feel that this is a required aspect of our work. As such, we are often doing double or triple the work of peers who were solely in one department or field, as we have to master the language and literature of multiple fields, attend a wider of array of conferences, mentor more students (both within and outside of our institutions) and so on. Consistently in our experiences disabled scholars of color have had to search out fields that were open to parts of our work, while finding that these same fields and colleagues within them were erasing or even being openly hostile to other parts of our work. Also consistent was how disabled scholars of color experienced and described the continued overwhelming whiteness of the field of disability studies that has either tokenized or erased us. It was difficult for most of us to name one field where the work of highlighting the experiences of disabled scholars of color, and addressing racism, ableism, and other interlocking oppressions was fully welcomed. Instead, there were specific spaces, scholars, and moments of welcome for us and our work such as individual mentors, affinity groups within larger academic organizations/conferences, and invitations to be on plenaries and keynotes that helped bring attention to our work.

Another common theme across disabled scholars of color was the ways increasing visibility through our scholar-activism put us at additional risk for harassment. That is, the more well-known disabled scholars of color became, the more intimidation and hate they experienced. Scholars described being targeted by the right wing for our scholarship focusing on racism, ableism, and other interlocking oppressions in various cultural locations. Much of this was coordinated, such as being targeted by right-wing groups (e.g., Campus Reform), which subjected disabled scholars of color to months or even years of harassment, while others were random people who sent indirect threats. Importantly, often when this happened, the institutional response was not to support us but instead to leave us unprotected or, in some cases, attempt to dissuade us from doing such public and politicized work, sometimes even suggesting that the nature of our work invites such harassment. As a result, we have had to create our own networks of protection to make up for institutional absence of support.

Additionally, labor justice is something we see as a central part of our collective’s work and concerns. We assert that academic spaces need us to survive and thrive but resent our presence. Many of us work within spaces that suffer from the diminishing value placed on the humanities, which is often exacerbated by stale approaches to teaching and research. Disabled scholars of color attract students into classrooms, new talent to departments, and exciting cross-disciplinary collaborations. We experience increased demands of our labor yet decreased institutional support or outright hostility. As a group, we have shared experiences of not receiving adequate funding for our research, being asked to undertake additional, often uncompensated, administrative labor, microagressions, and not being protected from harassment and attacks. They want what we offer but have no desire to invest in the infrastructure needed to sustain our intellectual and pedagogical production. These institutions exploit our love and political commitment. This is particularly evident in the increasing adjunctification of our institutions and the consequent push out of disabled scholars of color from protected and long-term contract positions either by direct elimination of such positions or indirectly by creating hostile or unsustainable working conditions.

The increasing creation of disability studies programs and classes in universities has been accompanied by an increasing need for disability studies scholars. However, instead of this increase in offering disability studies programs and classes meaning more tenure lines, what we witnessed was the adjunctification in these programs and classes that were often staffed by disabled scholars of color and other multiply marginalized disabled scholars. Regardless of how full the enrollment of classes and programs were, how positive teaching evaluations were, or how many students requested more disability studies classes and programs, institutions generally refuse to add more tenure lines instead inviting other faculty to teach Disability Studies courses with limited prior knowledge or understanding of Disability Studies or Disability Justice, positioning our knowledge as peripheral to university’s core mission. This is how the university co-opts disability studies when it provides the institution positive revenue and reputation, but ignores the disability justice politics that would require sustainable investment in this work. Furthermore, many disabled scholars of color also work as community organizers and consider their activist commitments central to their disability politics and practices. However, those of us who straddle these worlds are often met with a set of contradictory assumptions: some university actors may not consider activist work as rigorous or as part of legitimate scholarly practice, and some community members may mistakenly perceive us as having unlimited access to the university’s largesse or even being complicit in the university’s agenda. In this way, we battle misrecognition on multiple fronts.

Finally, the last common experience we discussed was loss of access and accommodations for us as disabled scholars of color as well as for our students, staff and colleagues. During the time of COVID lockdown, many universities and colleges rolled out extensive access infrastructures to an unprecedented degree such as virtual and hybrid classrooms, events, and meetings as well as free mandated vaccines, testing, and masks/masking. Suddenly, people with disabilities could participate in education in a way that was previously unimaginable. Suddenly, the kinds of accommodations we had been asking to have for years were now widely available. However, with the official declaration of the pandemic’s “end,” institutions by and large dismantled these infrastructures, demonstrating what many of us already knew: that they are committed to revenue over people.  Now we have the bitter knowledge that universities could provide access—they just don’t want to and will not unless legal action is taken. Following the work of people like Margaret Price and Mia Mingus, we are interested in moving beyond a personal and individualized model of access (i.e., accommodations such as extended time) and toward a more structural critique of the ableism embedded in institutions themselves (universities, arts and culture organizations, even grassroots organizations). This approach emphasizes disability as a lens, a mode of critique, and a path towards justice, in addition to an individual identity. We also recognize the importance of strategic ambivalence towards institutions during a time of extreme political repression: holding in tandem the knowledge that all institutions are complicit in oppression and willing to sell out the most vulnerable of its members and that these spaces also can hold some of the things we need: jobs, resources, and spaces where transformative learning can happen.

Perspectives on Research in the Field as Disabled Scholars of Color

In addition to discussing our personal experiences as disabled scholars of color in disability studies, we also discussed the trends we are seeing in research in the field. The field of disability studies has become more legitimated within academia and higher education and there are both gifts and challenges to this incorporation into the academy. Gifts of the institutionalization of disability studies include increased visibility/recognition of our field, more jobs and funding for our work, and the ability to bring what we refer to as fugitive knowledge into spaces we as disabled scholars of color especially may not otherwise have access to such as medical, nursing, and pre-medical school programs. Challenges of the institutionalization of disability studies include the co-optation and misuse of terms and concepts like disability justice, our work being lost within or pitted against medical humanities, health humanities, medical anthropology and similar fields, increased gatekeeping of knowledge, tacit acceptance of institutional ableism in the name of individual survival, and a move away from the disability politics that have long been central and foundational to the field. Further, as most disability studies scholars are not in disability studies departments/programs or are joint appointed with a more traditional department, such scholars may be forced to view disability studies as secondary to their scholarship as their work toward tenure. Furthermore, in the wake of recent attacks on diversity, equity, inclusion and related initiatives, we are increasingly pressured to censor or code our work in order to prevent defunding, harassment, or dismissal. These challenges in particular shape some of the issues and concerns we discussed regarding trends we have observed in research in disability studies today.

Our discussion of the state of research in the field of disability studies, particularly as it pertains to race, drew not only on Washieka Torres’s literature review of articles published in five of the leading disability studies journals in the past five years and disability studies books published in the last ten years, but also our individual experiences as reviewers for journals and presses, as advisors and outside readers for graduate students, and as tenure letter writers. We noted that outside of special issues on race, there are still only a moderate amount of critical race disability studies articles being published in the leading journals and whiteness seems to continually go unnamed in work focused exclusively on white experiences or representations of disability. Although there has been an increase in transnational disability studies which has drawn attention to the ways disability is understood and experienced outside of the global north, not all transnational disability studies publications necessarily address race directly nor take a critical race approach to the work. That said, there has been a substantial increase in the number of critical race disability studies books published in the last ten years, which is exciting and heartening for the growth of our sub-field. Another trend we noted is that we still see many scholars doing research on disabled people as objects of study as opposed to taking what we consider a critical disability studies methodological approach which understands disability/ableism as social and discursive system which can have material impact and resonance even without the presence of disabled people. In terms of citational politics, we often see three things: first, articles which almost exclusively cite early disability studies work from the 1990s and early 2000s, but nothing more recent even when there are directly relevant publications to cite as well; second, articles and student work that almost exclusively cites activist, artistic and other mainstream disability justice writing even when there are relevant academic research publications to cite as well; third, thin or passing citation of critical race disability studies work, such as mentioning the existence of such work in passing without close engagement or placing citations in a footnote only. We are concerned that despite the growth, institutionalization, and visibility of disability studies, the engagement with critical race disability studies scholarship remains limited and superficial.

As a result of some of these concerning trends, we as a collective want to find new and innovative ways to make our work more visible and accessible while still resisting the individualistic, academic “superstar” model of self-promotion and marketing that has become common in academia. Furthermore, we want to expand the ways we disseminate fugitive knowledge to get critical race disability studies and disability studies more generally into more academic and non-academic spaces, particularly through open access publishing, audiobook publishing, and plain/accessible language translations of work. We aim as a collective to also explore fugitive knowledge production and dissemination with one another and our students by experimenting with practices like co-writing, care work, collaborative research, and learning/working spaces that center pleasure and generosity. Along similar lines, we have a collection of additional recommendations and dreams for the future of critical race disability studies.

Conclusion: Dreams for the Future of the Disabled Scholars of Color Collective and Critical Race Disability Studies

To conclude this white paper report on the conversations we had during our first Disabled Scholars of Color Collective gathering, we would like to offer the following dreams for future initiatives and efforts that would support the growth and sustainability of critical race disability studies. We present this list not in any particular order of priority as one, many of these are interconnected and two, our work will occur only under the right conditions. None of us are willing to sacrifice our wellbeing for our fields or institutions.

1. Survey of Critical Race Disability Studies (CRDS) Scholars: We aim to conduct a survey of critical race disability studies scholars (whether or not affiliated with an academic institution) in order to one, build a list of CRDS scholars who may want to participate in future initiatives and two, learn more about the labor conditions and research/career challenges such scholars face.
2. Articulation of CRSC Values and Commitments: We want to work collaboratively toward creating a document that articulates what critical race disability studies is and its values and commitments, including approaches to and best practices for research, publishing, tenure reviews and pedagogy in CRDS.
3. Future DSoCC Gatherings: We hope to host future Disabled Scholar of Color Collective gatherings where we can build community, think and work together. In particular, we would like to expand future gatherings to include more scholars, especially new scholars, unaffiliated scholars, and graduate students seeking mentoring, community and support.
4. CRDS Scholar Mutual Aid Network: We dream of building a CRDS scholar mutual aid network that offers a flexible range of supports across varying strata of the academy. This work would begin with identifying needs, goals, and existing models of scholarly mutual aid networks–such as the Decolonial German Studies mutual aid network. We would ideally grow a CRDS Mutual Aid Network to include:
   1. A means of addressing immediate needs ranging from professional and scholarly supports to practical supports such as transportation, childcare, etc.
   2. A reader/reviewer network to ensure qualified review for CRDS manuscripts, articles, and tenure and promotion cases, as well as qualified editorial support for CRDS scholars. This could extend to arts and community-engaged projects or hybrid projects.
   3. A peer mentoring network to both cultivate new generations of disabled scholars, artists, and activists of color as well as to share information about the often unspoken rules of academia and how to navigate them. Such a network must be cultivated and financially underwritten because of the scarcity of existing mentors and mentoring pipelines. Mentoring would include pre-professional supports, resource- and skill-sharing, connections, sharing of lived experience, advising on institutional navigation, etc.
   4. Support for and guidance on navigating public harassment and/or institutional violence directed toward disabled scholars of color, including scripts for approaching institutional communications and public relations departments, legal resources, and an FAQ about what to expect and do when targeted and how to assess the credibility of threats.
5. CRDS Public Engagement Work: In line with our investment in fugitive knowledge, we hope to expand and strengthen efforts by critical race disability studiers scholars to engage with the general public about our work including making CRDS resources and research freely available across various forms of media, such as open access publishing, a podcast series, social media initiatives, and collaboration with public library systems.
6. Formal Partnerships with Non-Academic Institutions: In order for disabled scholars of color to reduce the power academic institutions have over our work and careers, we hope to develop formal and informal partnerships between the Disabled Scholars of Color Collective and non-academic institutions and organizations which may be able to provide financial, structural, or other forms of support.

The above projects and initiatives are ones we hope to engage in ourselves with appropriate time and support, but we also encourage others in the field to take on similar tasks or join us to make these dreams possible. Those who may be interested in joining some of these future efforts should submit their contact info to this form to be contacted with updates. We will continue to plan, work, and gather as capacity and resources allow, always dreaming of futures where disability justice is the norm.

 Works Cited

Accessible Campus Action Alliance. “Beyond “High-Risk”: Statement on Disability and Campus Re-Openings.” https://sites.google.com/view/accesscampusalliance. Accessed October 8 2025.

Beer, Andreas and Gesa Mackenthun. Fugitive Knowledge: The Loss and Preservation of Knowledge in Cultural Contact Zones. Waxmann, 2015.

Kim, Jina B. “Toward a Crip-of-Color Critique: Thinking with Minich’s ‘Enabling Whom?’.” Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, vol. 6, 2017.

McRuer, Robert. Crip Theory : Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. New York University Press, 2006.

Mingus, Mia. “Access Intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice.” Leaving Evidence, vol. June 12 2018, 2017. Https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2017/04/12/access-intimacy-interdependence-and-disability-justice.

—. “Access Intimacy: The Missing Link.” Leaving Evidence, vol. 2025, 2011. https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/access-intimacy-the-missing-link/.

Minich, Julie Avril. “Enabling Whom? Critical Disability Studies Now.” Lateral, vol. 5, no. 1, 2016, https://csalateral.org/wp/issue/5-1/forum-alt-humanities-critical-disability-studies-now-minich.

Price, Margaret. Crip Spacetime: Access, Failure, and Accountability in Academic Life. Duke University Press, 2024.

—. Mad at School : Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life. University of Michigan Press, 2011. Corporealities.

Sandahl, Carrie. “Queering the Crip or Cripping the Queer?: Intersections of Queer and Crip Identities in Solo Autobiographical Performance.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 9, no. 1-2, 2003, pp. 25–56.

Schalk, Sami. “Critical Disability Studies as Methodology.” Lateral, vol. 6, no. 1, 2017, https://doi.org/10.25158/L6.1.13.

Footnotes

1 See McRuer, Robert. Crip Theory : Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. New York University Press, 2006, Sandahl, Carrie. “Queering the Crip or Cripping the Queer?: Intersections of Queer and Crip Identities in Solo Autobiographical Performance.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 9, no. 1-2, 2003, pp. 25–56.

2 See, for example, how DisCrit has been positioned against mainstream special education in the Special Issue of Exceptionality: A Special Education Journal which included an article titled  “Welcome to the Destruction of Special Education in the Name of Ideology.”

3 For instance, several of us first connected as graduate students at the People of Color Caucus meeting at the Society for Disability Studies annual conference.

4 Adjunctification refers to the decrease of tenure and tenure track positions in favor of hiring short-term adjunct instructors and contingent faculty who are typically paid less and work on renewable, not guaranteed year-to-year contracts, sometimes without benefits.

5 See, for example, Accessible Campus Action Alliance. “Beyond “High-Risk”: Statement on Disability and Campus Re-Openings.” https://sites.google.com/view/accesscampusalliance. Accessed October 8 2025.

6 See Mingus, Mia. “Access Intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice.” Leaving Evidence, vol. June 12 2018, 2017. leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2017/04/12/access-intimacy-interdependence-and-disability-justice, —. “Access Intimacy: The Missing Link.” Leaving Evidence, vol. 2025, 2011. https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/access-intimacy-the-missing-link/, Price, Margaret. Crip Spacetime: Access, Failure, and Accountability in Academic Life. Duke University Press, 2024, —. Mad at School : Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life. University of Michigan Press, 2011. Corporealities.

7 See Beer, Andreas and Gesa Mackenthun. Fugitive Knowledge: The Loss and Preservation of Knowledge in Cultural Contact Zones. Waxmann, 2015.

8 The journals were: Disability Studies Quarterly, Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Disability & Society, Review of Disability Studies, and Sexuality and Disability.

9 For more on this, see the conversation between Julie Avril Minich, Jina B. Kim and Sami Schalk in Lateral. Kim, Jina B. “Toward a Crip-of-Color Critique: Thinking with Minich’s ‘Enabling Whom?’.” Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, vol. 6, 2017, Minich, Julie Avril. “Enabling Whom? Critical Disability Studies Now.” Lateral, vol. 5, no. 1, 2016, https://csalateral.org/wp/issue/5-1/forum-alt-humanities-critical-disability-studies-now-minich, Schalk, Sami. “Critical Disability Studies as Methodology.” Ibid.vol. 6, 2017, https://doi.org/10.25158/L6.1.13.

Two years, what the fuck. It really has been two years to the day since Israel’s heightened and prolonged genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. According to UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, Israel has killed–directly and indirectly–more than 680,000 people in Gaza since October 7th, 2023.

Every life taken in this genocide is the destruction of an entire universe. As we mourn this catastrophe alongside the many other genocides around the world, and alongside the fascism growing and fomenting in our own countries, we refuse to live as if business can continue as normal. Instead, we live dreaming of a free Palestine where people can roam without being bombed, starved, humiliated, displaced, tortured, and forced to film the destruction of their homelands for an uncaring and unmoving world.

We live our disabled lives imagining a free Palestine where orange groves and olive trees and poppies grow; where children, families, villages, and sacred sites flourish from interdependent relationships with the land. And we act dreaming of disability justice futures in solidarity with oppressed people everywhere, from Coast Salish territories to Sudan, from Ohlone to Congo, from Lenapehoking to the West Bank, and so on.

Nearly two years ago, we began raising funds for eSIMs, calling on fellow disabled people around the world to throw sand into the gears of genocide. Palestinian poet Rasha Abdulhadi’s words have resonated with us deeply because the act of throwing sand–small and multiple–into giant gears reminds us of what disabled people can do with our collective power. We do this understanding this genocide is also a mass disabling event and that disabled Gazans face incredible challenges surviving displacement and getting their needs met. As if this needs reminding, there is no disability justice without Palestinian liberation. And yet, here we are with people in our disability communities who support the military industrial complex and Zionism. The work continues, and we keep throwing sand into the machinery of imperialism’ until Palestine is free.

For nearly two years, together with all of you, we have used our collective power to send over 57,000 eSIMs and top ups, providing thousands of Palestinian families, journalists, students, professors, healthcare workers, and everyday peopleso on with the bare minimum they need to communicate with one another. Some of our eSims have been continuously used since last summer.

Despite the repeated attacks on telecommunication networks and the intermittent dips in public attention on the atrocities in Gaza–funded directly by our respective governments in the United States and Canada, Crips for eSims for Gaza has been holding steady. In the last few months, we have raised enough funds to regularly reimburse our volunteers, support Gaza Online, Watermelon Warriors, Najungi, and of course, Connecting Humanity.

In less than two years, we raised over $3M CAD ($2.18M USD) and spent roughly 99% of it. We watched as usage of our eSims dipped and increased. We continued to find hacks to reduce costs and save time. We worked on incredible community fundraising efforts mobilizing authors, game developers (raising over $100K USD from our Itch Bundle!), artists, and had a booth at the SF Zine Fest where Barabones debuted Jane Shi and Barabones’ zine, long live itsy bee: an adaptation of Mummy Joe’s “itsy bee and the royal flea” that imagines the titular dog aboard a Gaza freedom flotilla.

Our efforts are a small portion of the real needs on the ground, a need directly proportional to the violence Israel is inflicting on Palestinian people. This is especially true with reports of Israel’s plans to destroy Gaza City. The more we learn about the devastating situation on the ground, the more we realize our efforts have saved lives, and have helped people graduate university, work, and promote their own survival funds. We also learn, with immense pain, that there are countless more we can support, hoping that against all odds, people in Gaza can survive with the connections from our eSIMs, alongside many other crucial mutual aid efforts that fight against forced starvation, elimination, and genocide. If you are able, please support our efforts or share the link to our crowdfunding page.

What’s next? Will we be doing this forever? How long can we keep this going?

If nothing else, the last two years have given us an opportunity to learn from Palestinian persistence and to marry it with our own Crip persistence that sometimes slugs forward like a snail, slow but steady, and sometimes leaps in a wild disabled network of people plugging in and going fast to get eSIMs out every time the IOF causes a communications blackout again. We learned a lot and continue to be committed to the goal of a free Palestine.

Thank you so much for trusting in us and believing in us. This work is not over. Palestinians in Gaza have not given up, and neither will we.

In solidarity,

Jane Shi, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Alice Wong

Shannon Pagdon 

Content warnings: coercion, forced treatment, incarceration, institutionalization, eugenics, death, lethal injections, state violence, homelessness

On September 13, 2025, I returned from a trip to Berlin. On my first day there, I visited the Tiergartenstraße 4 memorial, the site where Nazi doctors planned Aktion T4, the forced sterilization and mass killing of people with psychiatric diagnoses and disabilities. The memorial’s stone panels, filled with archival documents, personal stories, art, and poems, are a powerful reminder of how far the rhetoric of dehumanization can go.

Back home, I read Brian Kilmeade’s words on Fox News: “Why not just give them involuntary lethal injections? Just kill ’em.” He has since apologized. But the damage is in the saying, and in the way his “apology” treated it as a slip of the tongue, as if suggesting state-sanctioned execution of homeless people were simply a bad joke. What was missing was recognition of the history he touched, the fear such words ignite, and the responsibility that comes with a national platform.

Kilmeade’s comment was meant as provocation. Yet it lands in a country where, every day, psychiatric patients are forcibly injected with medication against their will in the name of “treatment.” One is labeled execution, the other care. Both rest on the same premise: that some lives require force rather than consent. When we accept coercion as medicine, should we be surprised when the concept of lethal injection creeps into public imagination? How much of an extension of state power is this, really?

In most of medicine, refusal is respected. A cancer patient can deny chemotherapy, a person with kidney failure can forgo dialysis. Only in psychiatry is refusal rebranded as “lack of insight,” turning dissent into a symptom, autonomy into pathology. That logic not only makes coercion appear therapeutic, it fuels stigma and drives people away from care. It exists nowhere else in healthcare.

The danger is not only in the extremity of Kilmeade’s words. It is in the continuum they expose, from the increasingly normalized use of involuntary treatment, to the casual proposal of euthanasia, to the historical reality of Aktion T4. The memorial I walked through last week exists as a sobering reminder as to where such thinking and reasoning can lead.

Kilmeade’s words may sound extreme, but they grow from a soil we already live in. Every day in the United States, people labeled with psychiatric diagnoses are forced into hospitals, injected against their will, or placed under court orders that strip them of choice. These policies are framed as compassion, but their message is the same as Kilmeade’s “joke”: that some people’s lives can only be managed through force.

Politicians call these programs reforms. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has directed police and EMTs to sweep unhoused people into psychiatric wards, regardless of consent. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom’s CARE Courts threaten people with legal sanction if they resist treatment. These measures drain resources away from housing and voluntary supports, while deepening mistrust. They expand surveillance and control instead of dignity and care. Both frame these policies as compassionate. Both, in practice, normalize force over consent. Funding that could sustain voluntary supports is instead redirected to systems that deepen mistrust and reinforce the idea that people in distress are problems to be managed, not human beings in need of compassion and support. When even the Government Accountability Office admits that years of federal assessments have yielded “inconclusive results.” It should force all of us to ask why coercion remains the tool of choice in mental health policy. Mandates keep expanding, evidence does not.

And when commentators in mainstream outlets argue that the solution is more involuntary treatment, it shows just how normalized coercion has become. The evidence is weak. The outcomes are poor. What grows stronger is the stigma, and the idea that disabled people must be managed, not supported.

This push is not limited to politicians. In a recent New York Times opinion piece, a commentator went further, arguing that the answer to addiction and mental illness is to expand involuntary treatment. Essentially, to scale up the coercive strategies that already fail to build trust or long term well-being. When elite voices present force as a solution, it signals how deeply the logic of enforcement has entered mainstream debate.

Kilmeade’s words matter because they show how quickly rhetorical violence becomes thinkable. History teaches us that atrocities do not begin with action; they begin with imagination, with the suggestion that some lives are worth less, that their removal might even be merciful. That logic killed tens of thousands of disabled people in Germany. It should not be tolerated on American airwaves.

So what is to be done? First, media figures must be held accountable. A public platform is not a free pass to float genocide as a punchline. Networks must treat words like these not as ratings fodder but as ethical failures with real-world consequences. Second, we must invest deeply in supports that decades of disinvestment denied: permanent housing, robust voluntary services, peer-run alternatives, community care. These are proven to reduce homelessness and help people find support with dignity.

The plaques at Tiergartenstraße 4 are not just about history. They’re warnings for all of us. When a man on national television says “just kill ’em,” we can’t shrug it off as a bad joke. For those of us who have lived through psychiatric coercion, we know how easily words turn into practices, how quickly “care” becomes control. The answer is not more mandates or more force. The answer is solidarity: housing without conditions, peer-run spaces, communities that honor our autonomy. We survive by insisting that our lives have value, that our consent matters, and that history will not repeat if we refuse to let it.

ABOUT

Shannon Pagdon is a PhD student in social work at the University of Pittsburgh committed to advancing disability justice and rethinking coercion in mental health care. Shannon’s research and advocacy focuses on mental health policy, experiences labeled as psychosis, and the leadership of people with lived experience.

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Jess Whatcott

For the staff at the Peer Self-Advocacy Program of Disability Rights California, experiences with hospitalization and the stigma around having a mental health diagnosis motivates them to bring attention to the plight of their peers trapped in institutions. As the organizers of California Memorial Project Remembrance Day (held every third Monday of September by state proclamation), the peer advocates work to share the stories of people who are living in California’s state hospitals and developmental centers, as well as other smaller facilities, in some cases for decades with no hope of getting out.

The California Memorial Project was first organized and funded by the California legislature in 2002, with the goal of locating, identifying, and memorializing those who died from the 1880s through the 1960s at state hospitals and what were then called state homes. The state of California estimates that 45,000 people have largely been erased from history and are buried in unmarked, sometimes mass graves. According to Robyn Gantsweg of Disability Rights California, in the early years of the project, any state records of those who died that still existed were passed on to the original project partners, although what was found was limited due to variable record keeping practices. Ground penetrating radar was used to locate graves at Napa and Patton State Hospital, however the latter was unsuccessful due to the location near the San Andreas fault that had shifted the location of the grave sites. Several memorials were erected on the site of current and former institutions. The last was placed at Napa State Hospital, the only monument with the names of some individuals buried there between 1876 to 1964 (see image).

Remembrance Day is the part of the original project that continues. Established in 2010 through proclamation by the California legislature, Remembrance Day consists of ceremonies that are held in person at sites across the state, including at some of the currently operating state hospitals. Since 2020, Remembrance Day has also had an online ceremony. The Peer Self-Advocacy program works with staff at state hospitals to ensure that current patients, family, friends, and community members can attend. According to Jesse Gilbert who works for the PSA program, many people come to the ceremony to share grief over loved ones who have died in state custody, or died due to a mental health disability.

Robyn Gantsweg was instrumental in expanding the focus of Remembrance Day onto the present. As she describes, “The Remembrance Ceremonies started as a way to honor and restore dignity to people with mental health, intellectual, and developmental disabilities who lived and died at state institutions without the recognition they deserved, in life or in death. It wasn’t until several years ago that we started also honoring and acknowledging those who currently live at state institutions.” She adds “The CMP holds so much more meaning for me now that we also acknowledge, respect, honor and provide dignity to those who are still living in these institutions. We can’t change what already happened in the past, but we can make things better today and in the future.”

While many things have changed since the deinstitutionalization, psych survivor, and self-advocacy movements began in the 1960s, peer advocates have many concerns about current conditions, as well as the continued use of locked, involuntary facilities for the treatment of mental health. Gilbert explains, “Institutions disappear people, they don’t disappear problems. So much like incarceration…a person is…taken away from the community to just not have to deal with them and put them somewhere else. That causes damage to an individual, and I think that people largely kind of assume that hospitalizations are there to help people, and that was not my lived experience, and that is not the lived experience of many people who find themselves hospitalized. The push to put someone in a hospital is not necessarily what’s best for them. In fact, it likely is not what is best for them.”

With the exception of Metropolitan State Hospital near Los Angeles, the vast majority of people in state hospitals in California are “forensic patients,” which means they arrive via the criminal legal system or are transferred from a state prison. According to Debi Davis who hosts peer self-advocacy groups inside several facilities, some forensic patients can stay in the state hospital system for 25 years or more. Many non-forensic patients dealing with mental distress and/or substance use disorders end up in smaller facilities that are run by county or municipal governments, non-profits, or for-profit entities now described by the state of California as “behavioral health” facilities.

Davis says that while things have come a long way, due to struggles of disabled people, many of these institutions are “still a locked door.” She remembers changes such as when the state passed a bill that required staff to check on people every 15 minutes if they were in restraints. Prior to the enforcement of this bill, people would be put facedown while in restraints and several died. As in the past, when individuals are first admitted to the institutions, the staff request an inspection of the person’s naked body, however, when Davis asked if a patient could refuse this, she was told they could. This is a far cry from the present “wellness model,” where residents learn about their diagnoses and receive education about informed consent. All residents are supposed to receive a copy of the handbook “Rights for Individuals in Mental Health Facilities.”

However, Jesse Gilbert, who works with the PSA, says that although the handbook and patient rights advocates are required these days to be at institutions, those laws exist because of the history of abuses. And the potential for further abuse is ever present because it is convenient for staff. Gilbert explains: “With staff there are attitudes…sometimes within facilities that kind of vilify patients. Particularly at state hospitals, where people may be there in a forensic capacity. I know that I interacted with people, staff members, who would call the patients ‘criminals’ and things like that.”

Gantsweg adds, “People think they’re receiving ‘treatment,’ but it’s really a way to warehouse people who are the ‘other,’ the undesirables who are locked behind heavy metal doors and 10-feet high barbed wire fences.” Peer advocates shared evidence of “warehousing,” especially in the state hospitals, which includes the fact that most residents spend the majority of their time in day rooms, where the primary recreation is television. There are some groups that residents can attend, including the regular peer self-advocacy groups that DRC organizes. However, beyond these groups, residents have limited access to outdoor time and recreation, and no access to computer technology, cell phones, or the internet which could help prepare them for re-entry and connect them to the outside world. Further, despite laws that restrict the use of solitary confinement and physical restraint, peer advocates still see them being used as forms of punishment, even when it is unclear whether a person is having symptoms of mental distress or actively choosing to disobey rules.

Gantsweg explains, “People forget or don’t realize that many [people] had full lives before they were institutionalized – many were artists, musicians, teachers, scientists, just regular people like you and me. Many had families, jobs, hobbies and life goals they were not able to reach because being institutionalized stole that life from them. They were scooped up one day and put in a place that was completely foreign to them, disorienting. Suddenly, the people they knew and trusted, the things that gave them comfort and joy, were all taken away from them. All of that completely disappeared as they were plunked in a foreign and sterile environment where it was difficult to be themselves and express and experience their identity…their voices are silenced, their existence hidden, they are no longer part of the community from which they came.”

Unfortunately, PSA staff warn of dangerous policy trends in California that seek to expand the state’s capacity to force people with mental health disabilities into locked, involuntary treatment facilities. PSA staff point to Governor Newsom’s CARE Courts, Proposition 1 passed in 2024, and several other “bad bills” proposed or passed by the legislature “that only serve to take away the rights of people with MH disabilities,” according to Gantsweg. While the number of individuals imagined to be eligible for CARE court has not yet manifested, Senate Bill 43 expanded the criteria of those eligible for CARE courts and potential conservatorship. In Gantsweg’s view, this is “Newsom’s way of trying to capture more folks and put them in institutions. And the intent behind this move toward reinstitutionalization and forced treatment is to clear the streets and remove folks who are unhoused.” However, she argues that “Their so-called “solution” to the problem of homelessness is completely devoid of logic and doesn’t even include housing, which makes no sense at all. The Housing First philosophy has been shown to be the most effective way to help folks living outside.” Equally alarming is the reality that there are people held in state, local, and private facilities that have been cleared for discharge, but there is no housing available for them outside, they remain in facilities.

Proposition 1 passed by voters in 2024 undid some of the efforts to shift funding from institutions to community-based programs. Prop 1 made changes to the Mental Health Services Act, messing with programs that in Debi Davis’ view are invaluable. She describes her experiences visiting some of the “wellness and recovery centers” that were opened with MHSA money and run by mental health clients: “I started going there, and I got to meet people. They had a computer center, and I learned some stuff. And then I was able to teach some classes, too, when people were wondering about like patient’s rights…the wellness centers are somewhere to go during the day, to be with their friends…it gives them a sense of community.” Davis laments the funding an energy going into institutionalization rather than these kinds of peer run and community-based support services.

Maria Garcia, who has worked at Disability Rights California for 18 years, persists in trying to challenge the narratives about institutionalized people that the state of California perpetuates with policies like CARE Court. Garcia says of people inside of institutions: “The people who live there are, like any other person, deserving of a second chance. They deserve to be treated with dignity, respect, and humane care. They have dreams and aspirations like anybody else. [Some] of them have someone outside that is waiting for them to come home.”

Davis adds: “One in five people in the US has a mental issue at some point in their life… I’m a mental health client. I’m a folk guitar player. I’m short. I’m a senior citizen. I have nieces and nephews. I like watching crime stories. There’s many pieces and parts of the whole Debi Davis, and it’s the same for everybody out there. We’re not unlike you all. We might not be able to have the monetary success because sometimes it’s really hard to hold a job…but that doesn’t mean we’re worthless.”

As both California state and federal policy undermines self-help programs in favor of carceral solutions, reinforcing narratives about the disposability of people with mental health disabilities, this Remembrance Day on September 15, 2025 is more important than ever. The public is invited to attend a Remembrance Day ceremony that is local to them. For more information visit: California Memorial Project (CMP) | Disability Rights California.

Editor’s Note: For more, read the following guest essays from the DVP

This Remembrance Day, Remember the Dead So We Can Fight for the Living (2024) by Jess Whattcott

Institutionalization About Us Without Us: California’s Proposition 1 (2024) by Katherine Wolf

ABOUT

Jess Whatcott (they/them) is an educator, writer, and abolitionist organizer based in San Diego, California. Their book Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics is available now.

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Jane Shi

On June 12th, 2025, Israel cut off the main fiber route in Gaza, destroying basic Internet infrastructure and continuing to prevent engineers from fixing them. This, what the Palestinian Telecommunications Regulatory Authority called, “escalation in digital isolation” led to a prolonged Internet blackout that impacted the entirety of the Gaza Strip. Whereas local networks worked intermittently since October 2023, eSims in the next 3 days became literally the only way anyone in the region could reach each other and the outside world.

Thanks to community effort and global calls to action–in no small part due to the diligent work of disabled communities around the world, Crips for eSims for Gaza raised several hundred thousand dollars which we were able to use to immediately pay off volunteer spending during this critical week. Between December and June 2024, some of our volunteers were generously helping us foot a significant deficit, ensuring that we did not cut off continuous usage for our eSim superusers–users such as students, journalists, those creating hotspots for their neighbours or families, who require daily top ups that accumulate to hundreds of gigabytes of data over time. In the last nearly two years, Crips for eSims for Gaza have never stopped sending and topping up eSims, only slowing down due to capacity and lack of funds. During the blackout, our volunteers sprang into action and immediately sent out as many eSims as we could while keeping our already active eSims topped up.

During this time, people on social media shared Crips for eSims for Gaza’s fundraising efforts alongside Connecting Humanity, Najungi, Watermelon Warriors, and Gaza Online (who are fiscally sponsored by Watermelon Warriors). On June 4th, 2025, Amira Souilem of Radio France Internationale published an episode and article featuring our efforts alongside Gaza Online. Shortly after, Moaz Mansour of Gaza Online reached out to me, Jane Shi, to learn more about each other and to see if we could collaborate.

In the past nearly two years, Crips for eSims for Gaza has been lucky to have gotten to know many groups that have been helping to send eSims, all focused on ensuring connectivity and survival among Palestinians in Gaza experiencing an ongoing genocide. Each group has their own approach, and we are grateful to be able to learn from each other in service of Gazans and the liberation of the Palestinian people. Such collaboration is more crucial than ever, as Israel continues to wage a genocide of famine and the assasination of journalists who reported on it.

When we invited Moaz to our online community, he immediately clarified a few burning technical questions about our work based on his experience and expertise within telecommunications and tech. Empowering us with this knowledge means that we can collectively make better decisions for Gazans on the ground and organize more sustainable ways for disabled organizers and community members to support Palestinians in Gaza through eSIM mutual aid and beyond. Below is Moaz and I’s interview conversation, where you can learn more about their work.

Donors can receive a U.S. Tax receipt with a donation to Gaza Online.

Support ongoing eSim fundraising:

1. Crips for eSims for Gaza (Chuffed)
2. Gaza Online (Donorbox and In-Kind eSIM donations through LimitFlex)
3. Watermelon Warriors (Stripe and eSIM donations through Andalu)
4. Connecting Humanity (Wise and Wire Transfer)
5. Najungi (Wise, Ko-Fi, PayPal, Indonesian Shopeepay)

The following interview has been generously transcribed by Academic Audio Transcription Ltd. It has been edited for clarity and accuracy. Arabic translation by Moaz Mansour and Hamza Salha, with support from Jane Shi and Nurdoukht Khudonazarova Taghdumbashi.

Jane Shi: What is Gaza Online?

Moaz Mansour: Hi Jane. It’s good to meet you today. So, what is Gaza Online? Gaza Online is an initiative that began in the early days of the ongoing war that started in October of 2023. Like you, we recognized an urgent need for connectivity; we believe that connectivity is a basic human right. Staying connected opens the door to so many essential aspects of life, especially in crisis situations. Whether it’s reaching family, contacting first responders, continuing your education, or working remotely, connectivity becomes a lifeline.

I think many of us experienced this globally during COVID, when nearly everything moved online, right? From work, to school, to even staying in touch with loved ones. So, we can think about it similarly. Gaza is facing a different kind of emergency, but the role of connectivity is just as vital. Realizing the importance of connectivity, we started asking: how can we help keep people in Gaza online? That’s how Gaza Online was born. It’s an initiative focused on enabling and sustaining connectivity for people in Gaza, so that even in the most difficult conditions, they can stay connected to life, to opportunities, and to each other. That’s who we are now, and that’s what we do—and we’re continuing to grow from that foundation.

JS: That’s awesome. How do your eSIMs work? How do Gazans get connected to your eSIMs?

MM: The solution that we’re using right now to connect people in Gaza is mainly through eSIMs, both roaming and local. So, how does that work, technically, on the ground? Gaza’s geography offers a unique advantage: it’s a narrow strip of land bordered by Occupied Palestine on one side, and Egypt on the other side. Cell towers from both regions reach into Gaza. That means people inside Gaza can pick up foreign networks from these neighboring areas.

So, we use the same technology people use for international travel: roaming eSIMs. These are data-only eSIMs designed to connect to networks across borders. We distribute them to people in Gaza so they can connect to cell towers located outside Gaza’s physical boundaries. We’ve built a data-driven, automated eSIMs distribution platform. It connects directly with suppliers, and anyone in Gaza can submit a request at services.gaza.online.

We ask for some basic information, like which foreign networks they see on their phone and which region of Gaza they’re located in. That’s important because we’ve mapped which networks tend to work best in each area.

To clarify a little bit on that: different suppliers provide eSIMs that work with a different set of networks. Some work with Egyptian networks, others with Israeli networks. So, our system takes that input and matches it with the most compatible eSIM and data package for the user’s location and network visibility. All of this happens automatically. Once the request is submitted, the system does its magic and assigns the appropriate eSIM, issues it, and delivers it via WhatsApp. That’s also why we ask for a WhatsApp number—we use it to send the eSIM, provide activation instructions, and continue offering direct support. This way, communication with users remains personal and responsive.

It is important to mention here as well, that, at Gaza Online, we only collect the minimum information necessary to fulfill requests; such as a phone number, general region, and visible networks. We do not collect personal messages, browsing data, passwords, or precise location. Each account is tied to the WhatsApp number used to make the request, and only that number can access subscription details or receive support. Even when someone submits a request on behalf of another person, no personal data is disclosed, only limited status information is shown to avoid duplicates or confusion.

We take data security seriously. All communications are encrypted, access is restricted to authorized personnel, and data is only retained for as long as necessary to provide service. Our goal is to serve users while protecting their privacy and respecting their agency, especially in a region where trust and safety are critical.

So, from submitting a request to receiving a working eSIM, the process is designed to be simple, secure, and as fast as possible, even under extremely challenging conditions.

JS: Awesome! You mentioned Gaza Online beginning in October. How did your team come together?

MM: It’s not a single, specific story. It really started with a call out in different groups. It was, “We have this idea, let’s try to make it happen” posted across various Slack channels and community spaces. The entire team really got to know each other through working on Gaza Online. [chuckles]

There has been ebbs and flows, people joining, others stepping away for personal reasons, but many have been involved since the very beginning. It’s a truly global team, with people from Europe, the UK, the Arab region, Jordan, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, the United States, and Canada. We were all drawn to the cause, and the project grew from there. In many ways, it was word of mouth that brought us together.

JS: That’s amazing. It sounds very similar to our project.

MM: [chuckles]

JS: I was curious, how long did it take you to build your current system automated to WhatsApp?

MM: I would break it down into two parts. When we first started, it was very manual. We had a Google Form where people could submit requests, or they would just message us directly on WhatsApp, and we would try to fulfill those requests one by one. As we went along, we started identifying inefficiencies—things like better matching mechanisms—and gradually improved the system step by step. Then we introduced renewable eSIMs. The difference between renewable and limited eSIMs is that renewable ones are tied to local home networks–similar to purchasing a line in your home country. That introduced a new layer of complexity: we needed to track expiration dates, usage, renewals, and so on.

By November of last year, we realized this was bigger than just buying eSIMs and sending them out. We needed to ensure that the connectivity we were providing was consistent, sustainable, and manageable in an automated fashion. Luckily, most of us happen to come from software engineering or technical backgrounds in some form. So since November 2024, we have been tackling those challenges.

We started by clearly defining the problems. For example, the WhatsApp bottleneck: people in Gaza were reaching out to us over WhatsApp, but sometimes it would take two or three days to respond, which created backlogs and delayed processing. We also wanted to optimize for cost-efficiency: because as demand increases, you can quickly run out of funds, and that limits your ability to serve more people. We needed a system that was efficient in matching people with the right eSIMs for their networks and regions.

So, I would say, it took us about two months—from November to January—to get  the first version of the product out. It was continuous work [chuckles], often overnight, to get something close to a fully automated system, with auto-delivery, a WhatsApp bot that could handle basic support, and eSIM delivery. Then we spent another two months, from January to March, building the recommendation and optimization engine on top of that system. That’s now what orchestrates the entire flow. So, in total:  about four months to get to where we are. But to be fair, a more realistic timeline for doing this kind of work well could easily stretch to a year or more. [laughs] And we are still actively working on it—maintaining, improving, releasing new features, and learning as we go.

JS: That’s really incredible. Which groups and people on the ground have you been mostly serving?

MM: Our service is open to the general public. Literally anyone in Gaza with a Palestinian mobile number can apply for an eSIM. That said, we do have two main categories of recipients: partners and individuals. The first category is our partnership program, which is currently in a soft launch phase. We’re working on building a dedicated partner portal and planning a full launch soon. These pPartners,  are organizations operating on the ground in Gaza who need the people they serve to remain connected.

Right now, we have three official partners listed on our website: Gaza Talents,  a freelancing platform founded and run in Gaza.  They support remote workers and freelancers in continuing their jobs despite the current conditions. We also have the University College of Applied Sciences, a university in Gaza where we’re supporting both staff and students to continue their education online.

Gxza Health, which was our very first partner. They provide telehealth services and professional medical advice to people in Gaza. The partnership program has proven to be extremely valuable – supporting efforts in telemedicine, remote work, and education. And the program is growing. We are in touch with more organizations looking to join and expand their impact through connectivity.

The second category is individuals. After someone submits a request, we connect with them over WhatsApp.From that interaction, we’re often able to identify high-priority users, like journalists, students, medical staff, first responders, scholars, and others. Once a profile is tagged as a high-usage or high-need, the system automatically assigns  that account a higher priority in our distribution queue. This is fully integrated and happens seamlessly. Once the  tag is applied, the system does the rest. For example, Bayan, a journalist who once posted about us on Instagram, is one of many we’ve supported.

JS: Since you rolled out the more customized eSIM packages for people, what kind of feedback are you getting from people about that system?

MM: We have received a range of feedback. I would say that overall, the system is working well. Right now, people can submit a request and receive an eSIM in a matter of minutes – which wasn’t possible before. When we launched the services website, we built it to be extremely lightweight—even lighter than a WhatsApp message—because we know that WhatsApp is where most people in Gaza are connecting with us.  Our goal was to make it as accessible as possible, and we’ve received a lot of positive feedback on that. People have really appreciated how fast the website loads and how quick the response is. The user experience overall has been well received.

That said, we’ve also encountered some resistance, mostly around our cost optimization policies. These are policies we’ve had to put in place to make sure we’re assigning packages that match actual usage. For example, people typically start with a smaller starter package—like 3GB or 5GB—with a limited subscription period, usually four to seven days. The system checks usage at the end of that period. If the eSIM hasn’t been used much, the subscription is extended automatically rather than replaced. This helps avoid waste and ensures we’re allocating resources efficiently.

Sometimes, though, people receive the starter eSIM and feel disappointed—especially when they know we offer packages that go up to 500GB. We try to explain that we’re working with limited resources, and this system allows us to reach as many people as possible without overspending. Of course, we’d love to be able to offer everyone unlimited packages that work perfectly across all of Gaza—but that’s not the reality right now.

The good thing is, when people understand how the system works—and when they see it in action—they come back. They’ll say, “Okay, I’ll use the 3GB now, and then I’ll get a higher package once I’ve used it up.” So we get both kinds of feedback. I’d say most people are happy with how the system works.

The main frustration comes when the process takes longer than expected. People know it usually takes just a few minutes to get an eSIM. So when it takes a week or two to process, that’s when frustration really builds. Unfortunately, that kind of delay can happen when our inventory is low or we’re waiting on funding. But overall, the feedback has been encouraging.

JS: That’s a perfect segue to my next question, which is: what are your funding goal for meeting all of these needs on the ground?

MM: We do have some figures that we refer to as our current funding goals—but because demand keeps growing, those numbers are always shifting. Right now, we have an average of about 7,500 monthly active users. That includes new users, recurring users, and people on renewable subscriptions. If we were to give everyone the full 500GB package, it would cost around $92,000 USD per month. However, thanks to the cost optimization mechanisms we’ve implemented, we’re currently operating at around $40,000 USD per month. So I’d say that maintaining a monthly budget in the $40–50K range would be a realistic goal. That amount helps us keep our current user base connected while leaving a bit of margin for growth and unexpected spikes in demand.

JS: That’s good to know. You mention collaborating with these doctors and journalists on the ground. Who would you say is the majority of the people you have been speaking with and collaborating with?

MM: I would say that the majority are students. After that journalists and medical staff, and then remote workers.

JS: What do you see as the future of your project?

MM: As I mentioned earlier, back in November, we made a strategic shift from purely crisis and emergency response to a more sustainable development model (rather than just focusing on process management and immediate relief). This shift was deeply influenced by our direct interactions with people in Gaza via WhatsApp. Over the past several months, working directly with people this way has given us a clearer, more grounded sense of their reality.  You begin to understand not just the need for connectivity, but the broader needs people have. We’d often get messages like, “Can you help me find an internship?” Or, “I just finished studying  and I’m looking for a scholarship to continue my education.” And when you hear these things, you realize you are not just enabling internet access. You’re tapping into entire lives, full of hope, ambition, and real need.

In capturing this pulse, we started thinking—now that we have enabled connection, and want to expand that further—how can we also serve as a gateway to opportunities beyond connectivity? What we are envisaging as the next step is building a platform that connects people in Gaza with initiatives outside of Gaza that can offer those kinds of opportunities. For example, if there’s an initiative focused on education and enabling students to pursue higher education, they do not have to physically be there. They can support remotely. But to do that effectively you need to ensure that a community is built around it. We want to bring together the people with the need—those using our services, getting connected—and connect them with initiatives and individuals who are eager to support.

It’s really about enabling both sides: we see so many people outside Gaza who are heartbroken and deeply want to help, but feel powerless. The truth is, there are so many ideas out there, ideas that could be implemented if only there were the infrastructure and network to make them happen. We want to be that enabler: to make those ideas real and to make sure the people in Gaza benefit directly from them. That’s where we’re headed. And, we also know that, even if there is a ceasefire soon—which we all hope for—there’s going to be a massive amount  of work ahead, especially in terms of reconstruction. The need for this kind of support is not going away anytime soon. Personally, I believe this can be a foundational starting point–something that grows into a long-term support community that continues for years to come.

JS: How can the public support you?

MM:   I think the first and most important way is, of course, donations and funding. That’s the main source that allows us to keep Gaza connected. People can donate directly through our website, and we operate under a fiscal sponsor that gives 501(c)(3) status in the U.S., so donations are tax deductible, which is nice.

The second way is by spreading the word: sharing the value we are creating for people in Gaza–everything we have talked about today, from connectivity to creating opportunities. It really helps when people amplify that story. And as we move toward launching a broader platform that enables others to support people in Gaza directly, staying connected with us and sharing these updates will be really valuable.

Third, and this is a big one for us, is offering time or skills. We are a very small team, and we often find ourselves juggling a lot–managing different platforms, maintaining our social media, and more. So help in those areas can make a big difference. For example, we’re currently in need of someone with strong UX design skills. But really, any kind of professional support–design, development, communications–can go a long way.

We love when people reach out and say, “Hey, I’d love to help” and we do our best to find ways to make use of that generosity. So those are the three biggest ways I’d say people can support us: donate, spread the word, and pitch in with skills if they can.

JS: That’s awesome. Thinking about our project, something that we at Crips for eSIMS for Gaza have been doing is offering a more sustainable way for disabled people around the world to support Gazans in Palestine. The global call to protest, march, and blockade weapons manufacturing facilities are all really, really important, but they’re also inaccessible for a lot of people, especially those who are bedbound, or homebound, for disabled people who experience long COVID, who can’t leave the home very often for one reason or another or can’t do strenuous physical activity. People have felt empowered to support something that they know is going directly to the people on the ground. So—and you talked about sustainable development as well. How do you imagine or envisage Gaza Online becoming a more sustainable way for Gazans to access the internet and beyond? But also, how do you think about the sustainability of these movements in general, for Palestine and Gaza?

MM:  The sustainability of this movement—I think it really ties back to what I was just talking about. It really comes down to a paradigm shift. What happened in this period of crisis–the initial trigger was immediate response, but when you step back, you see there’s a much deeper problem. And addressing this problem isn’t something you solve in a few months or even a couple of years. It takes time, effort, and reorientation of priorities. To be honest, Gaza Online started out as a side project for me. I have a full-time job. I’m a father with two kids. It is something I was doing in the margins of my life. But what I’ve come to realize is that something like this should be a life-long goal. And once you shift your mindset in that direction, the way forward becomes much clearer. So, at Gaza Online, we started with something very simple: providing eSIMs so people remain connected. So they can message their loved ones on WhatsApp, stay in touch with the outside world—that alone carries a lot of emotional and practical value. But that’s just the beginning.

The question is: how do we take that small, humble effort—and it is humble, especially in the face of such a massive catastrophe—and build on it to create something more sustainable?

One area I think about is education. So many students are now cut off—schools and universities are shut down, their academic paths interrupted. But if you invest in reconnecting them, even with something as simple as internet access, you’re giving them the tools to build their own futures. That’s where the long-term impact starts. You just need to set your mindset on that goal and keep walking in that direction.

Something I often remind myself—and I think it’s worth reminding others too—is that we’ve woken up to the fact that a lot of the world’s problems are not new.

Some of them have been ongoing for 70 or 80 years. And fixing them requires more than just passion—it requires structure.

That’s why I believe the next step is institutionalizing this kind of movement. Taking the energy, the urgency, and the solidarity we’ve seen, and channeling it into systems that last. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do with Gaza Online: to build a sustainable structure that empowers others, and keeps enabling people in Gaza—not just today, but for years to come.

And while right now our focus is on Gaza, this approach of connecting people and sustaining movements has the potential to grow and be applied more broadly.

JS:  Absolutely.

MM:   Another thing to add—since you mentioned people who are homebound or can’t go out—is that this is exactly what we’re trying to enable. Connectivity opens up a world of possibility, and most of the work I do for Gaza Online happens right here, from my desk. I didn’t need to go anywhere. [chuckles] Just me and my laptop. There’s so much we can do without being physically present—no need to be in the streets, or fly across the world.

You can contribute from the comfort of your own home, maybe with your favorite drink next to you, in your own time zone. [laughs] And it still counts. It still makes a difference. I think, globally, we actually learned that lesson during COVID. That distance doesn’t mean disconnection. So let’s carry that forward. Let’s use the tools and knowledge we’ve gained to empower more people—to build movements that are accessible by design. Ultimately, it comes down to setting our direction clearly—knowing what our North Star is—and continuing to build toward it, one step at a time. And when you do that, things do start to happen. Changing the world isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible either. It just takes persistence and focus.

JS: Having a North star, that’s a beautiful image. So to reflect what you just said, eSIM technology access has allowed the world to stay connected to Gazans, Gazans to stay connected to each other. All vital things that they need to do survive and live in these difficult times. It mirrors the way that disabled people experience the internet as well, alongside mobility and assistive devices. And so, your project reminds me of what can happen when the people take tech back into their own hands, building infrastructure to meet their needs and serve their people. So I’m curious: what can developers, tech workers, and engineers–especially those designing for disability and access in the West—learn from Gaza and Palestine?

MM:  When it comes to that, there’s honestly a lot—a lot to learn. I personally find the situation in Gaza deeply sad, but also incredibly inspiring. For the past several months, people have been displaced, constantly on the move, with little to no access to hospitals or even clean water. And yet, they’ve managed not just to survive, but to live. Even in the darkest moments, when you watch the videos, you see endurance, confidence—even joy. They use whatever tools they have to make a cup of tea, to connect with each other, to hold onto some sense of normal life.

That kind of resourcefulness and creativity is something we can all learn from. Especially here in the West, we sometimes lock ourselves into these big systems—we think we need massive infrastructure, layers of regulations, or big corporate solutions to make any kind of impact. But the truth is, you don’t. One of the biggest lessons is: keep it simple. When it comes to technology—my background is technical—it’s tempting to chase complexity: AI, machine learning, all the buzzwords. But solutions don’t need to be high-tech to be effective. It really starts with identifying the need.

Especially when designing for disability or access, the starting point should always be: What is the problem? What do people need? What resources do we already have, and how can we repurpose those resources to meet the need? Start small. Maybe you’re just trying to help one friend, or a small group of people with a specific need. That’s enough. That mindset—focused, grounded, and creative—is what unlocks real solutions. That’s what we’ve seen over and over again in Gaza.

And for those of us who do have access to resources, infrastructure, and global networks—we have even more room to build, recreate, and repurpose. It just takes reframing: you don’t need perfection or scale from the beginning. Just start. Focus on the real need. Repurpose something you already have. And build from there. That’s what I’ve learned watching people in Gaza. Every time I see them, I’m honestly blown away. I think, “If I were in their place, even for a week, I’d probably be in despair.” But they keep going. They keep building. They keep showing up. And I think that spirit—that grounded creativity and refusal to give up—is what we all need more of. It gives us space to move, space to create, and space to fix real problems.

JS: Yes, Gaza is definitely teaching us more about humility, perseverance, and perhaps helping us appreciate the things we are already doing for each other–mutual aid, community care, flexibility–that can help us through crises. And it also reminds me of the principles of disability justice.

I’m curious—in line with that, more and more conversations within these movements in the West and beyond, including through campaigns like No Tech for Apartheid–are happening about the need for Big Tech, and tech in general, to divest from Israel, genocide, and weapons manufacturing. What has it been like working within tech and telecommunications in the diaspora in this kind of context? Do you feel hopeful about the future of tech?

MM: That’s a difficult question to answer—very difficult, to be honest. Especially at a time like this. Generally speaking, what I’ve always loved about tech is its openness. When you look at the world of open-source, there’s so much enthusiasm—people genuinely want to contribute, to build, to share. And the truth is, most of what we rely on, even in private companies, is open-source. From the programming languages we write in, to the frameworks we build on—this whole ecosystem was born out of the idea of making knowledge and tools available to everyone. So in that sense, tech has always felt like a space moving toward democratization. Making things more accessible, breaking down barriers. But at the same time, you have this very powerful opposing force—driven by capitalism—that seeks to consolidate control. That wants to own everything, gatekeep everything.

We’ve seen this play out with AI. It started in open-source communities, but then quickly moved behind closed doors. And yet, what’s interesting is the global pushback. There’s a wave of competition and innovation that challenges those closed models—and that’s what brings hope. You start to see new tools emerge, new models become accessible, and suddenly that same technology is back in people’s hands again. It’s not a clean or easy process. There’s a real tension: on one side, systems of control and exclusion; on the other, people—especially in marginalized communities—finding creative ways to reclaim and repurpose tech for their own needs. But the competition, the creativity, the resilience—that’s what gives me hope.

Another thing I’ve been noticing is the rise of small startups. Individuals with no major backing, just a good idea and the will to solve a problem. And some of these efforts are succeeding—gaining traction, making a difference. So while Big Tech still holds most of the resources, it no longer holds all the power. Not completely. And that’s an important shift. We’re also seeing more people without engineering backgrounds stepping into this space—building tools, launching platforms, creating solutions. That’s powerful. It tells me that the future of tech doesn’t belong only to corporations or experts—it belongs to communities, to people with lived experience, to those who are driven by purpose. So no, I can’t give a definitive answer about where tech is headed. There’s still a lot of struggle, and a lot of harm. But overall, I am hopeful. I see the people around me, I see what we’re building together, and I do believe we’re moving toward a future where more of us have access, agency, and control over the technologies we use. So yeah—let’s remain hopeful. [chuckles]

JS:  That’s awesome and really re-assuring insight (despite my own sense of Black Mirror-esque doom that makes me want to throw my phone away forever, haha). So, I feel like you answered this question, but I’ll ask it anyway.

Ali Abdel-Wahab, in a policy brief in Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, writes, “The Israeli regime exercises extensive control over Gaza’s digital landscape through a multifaceted strategy that limits Palestinians’ ability to stay connected to one another and the outside world. This Israeli reign over Gaza’s digital landscape is achieved by keeping technological advancements to a minimum, systematically destroying telecommunications infrastructure, obstructing repairs, and manipulating connectivity to serve its interest.”

What would it take, and what kind of global pressures, including those in tech and telecommunications, do you feel would challenge this status quo?

MM:  Heh. This is—[chuckles]

JS:   Sorry! [chuckles]

MM: [laughs] Yeah… this question is definitely bigger than me. [chuckles] It’s hard to answer fully from where I stand.

JS:  Yeah, for sure.

MM:  What I can say is: even with all of that—the systematic destruction, the restrictions, the attempts to isolate Gaza digitally—we’ve still found ways to connect people. And to me, that’s where I focus my energy. I don’t spend too much time thinking about the forces trying to cut off access. Instead, I try to solve the problem with whatever resources I have in front of me. On a global level, how to fully dismantle that system of control? I honestly don’t know the complete answer. But I do believe that public pressure matters. The more people raise their voices, especially those in the tech world, and push their governments and institutions to take a stand—to apply pressure, to challenge these injustices—the more possible change becomes. So while I can’t map out the ultimate solution, I believe that consistent, informed pressure—especially from within the industries that enable or resist this control—can begin to shift things. That, at least, is a starting point.

JS: Absolutely. In my article, “When the Poem is a Spreadsheet: Joining Crips for eSIMS for Gaza and Connecting Gaza,” I write, “If poets and engineers have something in common, it’s that we build things out of disparate parts, find the most efficient use of language and machines, or technology, so we can live.” Do you have any favourite Palestinian poems or poets that inspire you, or keep you grounded?

MM:  Yeah, of course. When it comes to poetry—especially in Arabic—my favorite poet is Tamim al-Barghouti. And his father, Mourid al-Barghouti, as well. [chuckles] Both of them are incredible voices.

JS:  Yeah.

MM:     In terms of a specific poem, there’s one by Tamim al-Barghouti that really speaks to the current moment. It begins:

نفسي الفداء لكل منتصر حزين

قتل الذين يحبهم

إذ كان يحمي الآخرين

يحمي بشبر تحت رجليه اتزان العقل

معنى العدل في الدنيا على إطلاقه

يحمي البرايا أجمعين

حتى مماليك البلاد القاعدين

والحرب واعظة تنادينا

لقد سلم المقاتل

والذين بدُورهم قُتلوا

نعم هذا قضاء الله لكن

ربما سلموا إذا كان الجميع مقاتلين

I Give My Life in Devotion

by Tamim Al-Barghouti

I give my life in devotion

to every victor and his burdened cries

who, while shielding the rest of us,

must watch his loved ones die.

With but an inch of earth beneath his feet,

he balances the entire scale,

the very meaning of justice in all possible worlds.

Soul of every soul, he protects them without fail

(even those idle kings on their rotting thrones);

he defends every universe, every breathing creature

in our world, in all possible worlds.

And War, that stern preacher,

calls to us: the fighter was spared,

while Death took those who

in their homes remained. Yes—

God willed it—but perhaps they too

might have lived,

had they lived as fighters.

MM: It’s a beautiful piece that speaks directly to the people of Gaza. It includes lines that reflect their steadfastness, their humanity, and their strength in the face of everything they’re going through. Tamim al-Barghouti is the one who consistently inspires me. Even in my own writing—I write a little, in Arabic, just small pieces—but his work always grounds and moves me. I’ll be sure to share it with you.

JS: Awesome, I’m so excited. Thanks so much for this conversation! Do you have anything else you’d like to share?

MM:  There’s actually one more thing I keep forgetting to mention—and I don’t know why, because it’s really important. [chuckles] It’s our travel storefront. Basically, if someone is traveling and needs data while abroad, they can purchase an eSIM directly from the Gaza Online storefront, which is powered by our partner, Limitflex. What’s great about it is: you get the data you need for your trip, and at the same time, all proceeds go back to Gaza Online. That revenue is then used to fund eSIMs and connectivity solutions for people in Gaza. So, it’s not even a donation in the traditional sense—you’re just buying something you already need, but it ends up supporting the cause.

JS: Cool. And then they can also send in-kind eSIMs to you via the Limitflex Israel option, right?

MM:  And yes, people can also send in-kind eSIMs through Limitflex using the Israel-based option if they want. But again, even just buying for your own travel needs is a meaningful way to help. It’s simple, practical, and makes a real impact.

JS:  Oh, cool. That’s awesome. That’s really good to know. Cool. Thank you so much.

MM:  Thanks again, Jane, for having me. This was a really lovely conversation.

eSIMS that Crips for eSIMs for Gaza has purchased from Gaza Online’s travel front store:

A friend sent me this photo of my comrade Patty Berne. I looked so different then without the tracheostomy and ventilator. In my memory Patty looks  the same, just like in the photo. I had the honor of interviewing Patty for the Disability Visibility oral history project in partnership with StoryCorps about ten years ago. Patty is now on the ancestral plane with my other disabled ancestors.

To learn more about Patty’s work in disability justice, read Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement Is Our People.  Check out the In Memory and Power statement  from Sins Invalid for more.  Here is a remembrance of Patty by Elliot Kukla, “The Late Patty Berne Was a Visionary Leader in the Disability Justice Movement. “The Late Patty Berne Was a Visionary Leader in the Disability Justice Movement.”

On August 9, 2025, I had the privilege of giving some remarks at their celebration of life. Below is an expanded version of what I delivered.

Today is such a beautiful day because all of us are here to honor, cherish, and remember Patty Berne. Many of you here are going to talk about their work in racial and gender justice movements, their work in developing the disability justice framework, their work as an artist, producer, and director at Sins Invalid, and Patty as a friend, lover, and comrade. All of the words that will be said today are inadequate in trying to describe Patty as a life force. I’ve known Patty for a long time and while we were not close friends we were in community with each other. Before the pandemic I remember Patty asking me to be a part of a media campaign for the organization Women Against Rape. We met at the iconic Cliff House restaurant by Ocean Beach and had our photos taken with the ocean as our backdrop. It was a beautiful sunny day and Patty was in their element. Patty was always involved in projects like that and roping in other disabled people. I’m sure many of you have similar stories.

In 2017, Patty was a guest on the eleventh episode of my podcast about crip bodies and aging. Patty turned 50 that year and said at their birthday party she had a banner that read, “still revolutionary, still here.” I went back and read the transcript of our conversation and felt the warmth of our mutual respect and affection. It’s the kind of magic that happens when disabled people get together after a lifetime of being isolated and without community. Here are some of Patty’s thoughts about their crip body and aging that contained so much wisdom for us as we grow, age, and move towards the ancestral plan. When I asked how they eventually loved their body after hating it when they were younger Patty said, quote, “It was really one day just recognizing what a sweet, hard-working body I have. I mean, it has done everything I have asked to the best of its capacity. I couldn’t have asked for more. And for so many years, I didn’t listen to it, and I just would make demands on it. I notice all these cute little quirks about my body and myself now, and yeah, it’s just super cute and sweet, and I love it. I love myself. I believe that when we’re born, we are fully aware of our beauty and power and that our relationships with ourself. Our bodies get severed. Lots of things can do that: Violence–be it family violence or medical violence–messages from the world, from media, and the magazines. Demonstrating to my body, well, I’ll take good care of it. I’m not gonna let it get hurt. I’m not gonna deride it. Just like I would any friend, I would demonstrate that I love them, and I would tell them that I love them. So, I tell my body all the time how beautiful it is. Our bodies, yes, they’re distinct from each other, but we’re also energetic fields. And when I’m around somebody, their energetic field is gonna influence me and vice versa. We’re always in conversation, our bodies. We read each other’s body language all the time, our tones of voice, the ways that we’re moving or not moving. And so, whether or not we wanna acknowledge it, we’re already interdependent.“ End quote. While our words about Patty may be inadequate today, their words are not. I encourage you to do a deep dive on the many interviews they gave and their writings which were prolific.

Patty was a revolutionary, an elder, and an oracle. Their wisdom spanned across space and time and will forever leave a mark on our spirits. They are now on the ancestral plane where they joins other disabled ancestors who left us too early. I think about what Patty would be doing this summer and I can imagine them keeping their neighborhood safe from ICE raids and working with organizers to stop the displacement of unhoused people. No one is perfect at living their values, but Patty was someone who always modeled an anticapitalist politic grounded in movement making focused on liberation for all, not just for disabled people. Their love and belief in the power of disabled people of color guides me to this day. Patty and their comrades truly uplifted the lived experiences of disabled people of color before intersectionality became a buzzword. Without Patty’s thinking and their political analysis my work wouldn’t be what it is and that is probably the same for countless disabled people of color around the world. I wonder what they would think about the future of the disability justice movement as it evolves and I hope they would welcome the changes that are necessary for growth and embrace the young ones who are doing it their own way grounded in the issues that matter to them, not the ones initially raised by the ones who created the disability justice framework.

What are some ways we can honor Patty’s life? Here are three examples. One: have an inclusive, accessible ethos and build in accessibility into your life to welcome as many people as possible with the belief that no one should be left behind. Two: love yourself and your body mind. It doesn’t happen overnight, but try to understand your body mind and make friends with it, praise and thank it for the hard work it does in keeping you alive. Love yourself with the belief that all bodies are whole and perfect as is. Three: speak out when you see injustice and always resist ableism and the oppressive forces that try to extinguish our light. We are currently witnessing so much violence and the decline of democracy under such fascistic leadership at the federal level. Patty never stopped working toward justice and we can too in big and small ways. Everything counts and Patty knew that our issues are intertwined with other movements and that collectively, we are powerful together. Even though everything feels so overwhelming and horrible right now, I have to believe that love will win and that caring for one another is the way forward. While we may feel such a void left by Patty’s absence, they are still with us in our memories and deeds. Today is a hard day as many of us still can’t believe they are gone, but we can tell our stories and immerse ourselves in the deep love and care that comes from knowing Patty. In remembering Patty and naming them and the ancestors that meant something to you, we will keep them alive forever. We were so lucky to know Patty and let’s remember the joy they created in every aspect of their life. Thank you.

Margaret Anne Mary Moore

Content warning: The R word, ableist slur

“If you want to make him an undesirable character, wouldn’t you just give him cerebral palsy? Nobody would want cerebral palsy.”

Sitting in my motorized wheelchair at 25 and hearing my diagnosis denigrated at a writing group meeting where members critiqued peers’ work, I was horrified. The person who said it had heard me read many nonfiction pieces about cerebral palsy (CP) and previously made gibes about disability narratives’ valuelessness—comments I countered by reminding her that writers’ chosen topics should never be ridiculed. The CP remark was more grievous—the first time anyone included my specific diagnosis in a derogatory sentiment—and was a response to a fiction story featuring a man considered an outcast in town because of his “weird” way of walking and talking.

Born with CP after my umbilical cord prolapsed, I cannot stand, walk, or feed myself, and I have a speech impediment preventing those beyond immediate family and close friends from understanding me. Besides my wheelchair, I use a gait trainer and communication device which articulates typed thoughts. I pursued regular education, athletics, and scouting alongside able-bodied peers, earning honors throughout my schooling. Raised to have a positive outlook, I appreciate every keystroke I’ve made on my communication device to become a bestselling author and motivational speaker, every step in my walker leading me to be an award-winning runner and paratriathlete, and every helping hand offered.

Enduring discrimination many times from preschool through adulthood, I was once shy about confronting these issues—being called a retard, excluded from activities, and more—and relied on family and educators to execute grievance procedures. Now, I share my perspective, not out of anger, but in the hopes of increasing tolerance.

For many nights, this CP comment left me restless while tears fell. When I expressed how insulting it was, the perpetrator insisted she hadn’t said anything wrong. Still hurt, I quit the group. Time healed the heartache, but the comment still haunts me. Deeming CP synonymous with “undesirable” wrongfully epitomizes it as life’s disgusting characteristics and inferiorizes the approximately 18 million who have it.

Dismantling ableist language is possible. When characterizing outcasts, for instance, detailing mannerisms without incorporating diagnoses suffices. Unusual speaking or walking patterns don’t always mean someone has CP, and most people are unlikely to assume outcasts with these traits have it.

If we elevate disability narratives’ visibility, making them required school reading and spotlighting them more in media and literary events, individuals can learn invaluable information about respecting disabled people and avoiding ableism. My bestselling memoir Bold, Brave, and Breathless: Reveling in Childhood’s Splendiferous Glories While Facing Disability and Loss, for example, employs step-by-step descriptions and granular detail to depict education, athletic, and scouting endeavors with impairments. This approach is meant to provide an in-depth look at my processes for completing tasks with the help of others and assistive technology. Hopefully, readers can see how, though my body moves unconventionally and requires the support of loved ones and assistive technology, I am a person who deserves as much equity and respect as everyone else while striving to succeed and make positive contributions to the world.

A paramount step for promoting disability-tolerant discourse is opening direct dialogues. Simply asking people to identify appropriate descriptors for their disabilities is effective. Formally, primary and higher education curriculums could incorporate units on inclusive language—the younger we teach non-ableist terminology, the better. Likewise, community functions are instrumental. When I attended Fairfield University, the library hosted Human Library events initiating one-on-one and small-group conversations between patrons and volunteer “human books” about experiences as marginalized or underrepresented persons. As a human book, I explained stereotypes I face and how assumptions should never be made about my abilities or personality based on the assistive equipment surrounding me. Listeners also shared previous and new understandings of disability equity.  

I have cerebral palsy, tight hamstrings, and constantly bent legs. I walk and run on my toes and rely on my gait trainer for support. Its pink aluminum frame surrounds the front and sides of my body. A seat holds me up from underneath. A wraparound cushion keeps my torso upright. My strides propel the four nonmotorized tires. An award-winning athlete on Achilles Connecticut and Gaylord ParaTriathlon adaptive sports teams, I complete 5Ks and triathlons with volunteers clutching my walker, not to push, but to stabilize it. This weird way of walking and running allows me to celebrate my abilities, conquer hills, cross finish lines, and motivate others to persevere through adversity.

I have cerebral palsy and a speech impediment. Sometimes, years pass before people develop the ability to decipher words emerging from my mouth. Each sentiment read by my communication device takes me a while to type. My weird ways of talking make others and me realize the power that words have to improve the world if we patiently listen.

I have cerebral palsy, a disability I did not choose to have, but one with which I choose to thrive. Please don’t judge me based on my impairments. Please take time to understand how I speak and stride toward a more tolerant world.

About 

Margaret Anne Mary Moore is the author of the bestselling disability memoir Bold, Brave, and Breathless: Reveling in Childhood’s Splendiferous Glories While Facing Disability and Loss and is currently writing the sequel. She earned an MFA in creative nonfiction and poetry from Fairfield University. Margaret is an editor and the marketing coordinator at Woodhall Press and an ambassador for her communication device manufacturer, PRC-Saltillo. A featured book on the AWP Bookshelf, Bold, Brave, and Breathless is her debut book and is now available as an audiobook. She is a contributor to Gina Barreca’s book Fast Famous Women: 75 Essays of Flash Nonfiction(Woodhall Press, 2025). Her writing has appeared in America Magazine, Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog, Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, and Independent Catholic News among other publications. Connect with her at margaretannemarymoore.com.

Nelly Bassily

Dying daily—or waking up daily—to colonial violence is NOT normal. It should NEVER be normalized. One gruesome example amongst many is how we have miserably failed the children of Gaza and by extension, the children of the world and our collective future. According to Al Jazeera Plus, Israel has killed an average of 30 children in Gaza every day since October 2023. That is 1 child killed every 45 minutes.

“[March 19, 2025] was one of the deadliest days for Palestinian children in history. Over 170 kids died in their sleep in less than 50 minutes, in a city that already has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world—as 10 children lose a limb every day. Gaza, to those who don’t know it, and who never will, is a city of children. They own the city; they are 50% of its population. They are always in the front lines: a demonstration, a wedding, almost every picture coming out of Gaza has children. One could easily argue that they are the sole reason we continue resisting this historical injustice: to save the children.” — @mqudaih_

One of the most egregious and deliberate forms of violence currently being inflicted on Palestinians is the use of starvation as a weapon of war. Israel’s blockade, bombardment of agricultural infrastructure, and obstruction of humanitarian aid are systemic acts of deprivation intended to break the will of the population and forcibly displace survivors. Right now, 85% of Gaza has been declared a red zone. According to Gazan journalist, Anas Al-Sharif, “85% of Gaza’s population have entered the “fifth stage” of malnutrition — the most critical and dangerous phase, which is often irreversible even if food becomes available in the future.” Israel is slaughtering people coming for aid through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is essentially a death trap. Gaza’s bakeries, farmland, water systems, and food warehouses have been repeatedly bombed. Humanitarian convoys carrying flour and baby formula have been denied entry or attacked. Children are dying not just from missiles but from malnutrition and dehydration.

Bisan Owda, a Palestinian from Gaza who starts most of her updates from Gaza with “It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m still alive…” is now talking about the deadly consequences of starvation on children in one of her latest posts. As Bisan explains it:“For five months of starvation now, people had some food that they stored. Their immune systems and their bodies were able still to hold on. But now, we have nothing more to consume and our bodies are already exhausted. So, over the past five months, over 80 children passed because of starvation. But this number will definitely, definitely double many times just because now, our bodies have been starving for a long time. We are talking about 70,000 children are at risk of death now. Not at risk of famine because they are already starving for months and now, you will just start hearing about mass deaths.”

This strategy is not new. It echoes a long history of settler colonial regimes weaponizing hunger against Indigenous populations. Starvation is not a byproduct of war—it is part of Israel’s war strategy, designed to target the most vulnerable: children, the elderly, and those already wounded or disabled. But now the starvation is so severe that no one is spared. Not only does this violate international humanitarian law, it further exposes the complicity of global powers that fund, arm, and diplomatically shield Israel. The scale and intentionality of this starvation campaign is genocidal not just in consequence, but in design.

As of July 17, 2025, we are at 650 days into Israel’s genocide against Palestinians (some are arguing for calling what is happening the Holocaust of the Palestinian) and more than 77 years into their displacement, aggression, dispossession, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, imprisonment, cultural appropriation, and brutal occupation. It is time to reaffirm that Palestine lays bare the brutality and barbarism of imperialism and the urgency of collective liberation.

I’ve been struggling to write down my thoughts and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why until I read Mohammed El Kurd’s book, Perfect Victim and Politics of Appeal. In the notes, El Kurd writes: “It is not only grief that makes writing in the time of genocide a torturous task: it is, more so, one’s recognition of the written word as shamefully insufficient in the face of 2000-pound bombs.” Reading this helped me understand that the level of Zionist depravity constantly outdoing itself is meant to keep us stuck in a constant loop of terror and shock at the inhumanity of it all. Just when you think the dehumanization, disfiguring, dismemberment, disappearing, displacement can’t possibly get worse, it somehow does. As I write this, I watch and re-watch footage of bodies flung more than 20 meters into the air above a devastating cloud of smoke from a bombing meant to exterminate Palestinians. There is also footage of the decapitated body of yet another child. His name was Hamza Abu Issa. His parent’s entire universe. And through the tears, I keep repeating: It’s not normal. It’s not normal. It’s not normal. None of it is normal.

At the beginning of the year, I wrote to a friend: “2025 is the year of ceasefire, the undoing of the Zionist propaganda and killing machine, and liberation from all tyranny.” ALL tyranny—because as Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa wrote after imperialist bombs fell on Sanaa, Yemen, in January 2024 (and still again in 2025, the US is bombing Yemen):

“The US & UK are bombing Yemen [but] we don’t have to accept living in a world where the richest, most powerful nations get to destroy and murder poor Brown nations because they take a moral stand against genocide of other persecuted Brown nations. Remember, Yemen’s only demand is for the slaughter of Palestinians to stop. Their crime is being human.

Speaking of the “crime” of being human, one video haunts my every waking thought about how we are not able to stop the dehumanization and indescribable suffering of Palestinians. In the video that haunts me, a doctor in northern Gaza is forced to amputate his 14-year-old child’s leg in their kitchen, without anesthesia or sterile equipment, using only a needle and thread to stitch her up after amputation. The Israeli Occupation forces (IOF) had bombed their home and besieged them inside, preventing them from reaching a hospital for fear of being sniped on the way. The horrific story of children being amputated without anesthesia and in many cases dying is unfortunately too common. This video should have brought the world to an absolute standstill before Israel’s barbarism created more victims — and yet, here we are — descending into dystopia.

It is impossible to truly comprehend the magnitude of Zionist cruelty. That’s why empathy and resistance are imperative in order to bring us back to our collective humanity in the face of settler-colonial imperialist abomination. As Karim Kattan writes:

“Gaza is not an abstraction. It is shores and beaches and flowers and markets and streets and it is children, women, and men who have aspirations, who are artists. For those who have disappeared, we will never know their works of art.”

Empathy as Resistance Against Colonial Amnesia

Today and every day, we must talk ad vitam aeternam about empathy in the face of colonial abhorrence. Empathy is the antidote to historical and ongoing denial of Indigenous existence, the violent rewriting of histories, and the silencing of systemic injustices—forced displacement, mass disablement, and genocide. It allows us to see the struggles of the oppressed not as distant tragedies but as interconnected battles for survival, justice, and liberation. Without empathy, colonial violence becomes normalized, erased from mainstream discourse, and framed as inevitable or justified.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca P. Albanese, reminds us that empathy is not passive but an active force binding us in solidarity against oppression. As she stated in an address to a packed audience at McGill University: “Empathy […] is the glue that makes us stand united as humanity.” In her latest report, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide, Albanese exposes the political economy of genocide and how corporate profiteering sustains Israel’s settler-colonial project. For example, Albanese names, among many companies, Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries. She states: “the ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture. The 65 percent surge in Israeli military spending from 2023 to 2024 – amounting to USD 46.5 billion, one of the highest per capita worldwide – generated a sharp surge in their annual profits.” This underscores how deeply the private sector is embedded in enabling the violence.

While governments fail their obligations, private companies have fueled illegal occupation, apartheid, and genocide. Holding these actors—especially corporate executives—accountable under international law is essential. This is a necessary step to end the genocide and dismantle the global system that has allowed it.

As Nishnaabeg scholar and author Leanne Betasamosake Simpson articulates in her work on colonial amnesia, Indigenous resistance movements aim not only to dismantle settler colonialism but to bring forth alternative ways of being rooted in ancestral knowledge and land stewardship.

On Turtle Island, the machinery of settler colonialism has long worked to erase Indigenous presence while extracting wealth from stolen lands. The resistance against this erasure is ongoing. For example, the struggles of the Wet’suwet’en people against natural gas pipelines going through their unceded territory have brought about renewed solidarity with Indigenous struggles for land back. Land back not just as a trending hashtag or theory but as a concrete way to return the unceded lands to their rightful Indigenous owners. When land is returned to Indigenous people, it is maybe then that we will have a fighting chance to decelerate climate chaos and give the earth time to start to heal the rampant abuse it has endured.

As Betasamosake Simpson powerfully observes in her book, As we have always done : indigenous freedom through radical resistance, “Colonizers wanted the land, everything else, whether it is legal or policy or economic or social, whether it was the Indian Act or residential schools or gender violence, was part of the machinery that was designed to create the perfect crime, a crime where the victims were unable to see or name the crime as a crime.” In other words, obscurantism is integral to sustaining the colonial system, yesterday and today.

Fighting Colonial Amnesia Across the Globe

Colonial amnesia is a transnational affliction. To resist it in Palestine is also to resist it in Canada, in the United States, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Sudan, in Yemen, and beyond. Feminist struggles in the Global Majority highlight the shared fight against, as coined by bell hooks, the imperialist white supremacist patriarchal destruction.

Feminist resistance movements in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) also demonstrate the power of confronting colonial amnesia.

In Sudan, women have been at the forefront of resisting military rule and the colonial legacies that shape gender-based oppression. For example, the Sudan Solidarity Collective (SSC) was formed in response to the outbreak of war in Sudan on April 15th, 2023 (that’s over TWO years ago). As SSC explains it:

“Armed conflict erupted between two rival factions [the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)] in Sudan, resulting in heavy fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and other parts of the country. Since the conflict began, the death toll is reported to be over 13,900; thousands of people have been injured, and thousands more are missing or held captive by either of the warring parties. Sudan is currently experiencing the worst refugee crisis of our time. Since the conflict began, there have been over 10.7 million people displaced internally and in nearby Egypt, Ethiopia, Chad, South Sudan, and Uganda. It has been named the worst displacement crisis in the world. The World Health Organization stated that 4 million girls are at risk of sexual violence in Sudan. Hundreds of thousands of children in Sudan are malnourished and at risk of death, with over 70% of healthcare facilities rendered non-functional due to the fighting.”

The Collective has been working tirelessly to fund Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs), resistance committees and labour and farmer unions. It has also helped shed light on the complicity of imperial powers, particularly the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in fueling the current genocide, with external powers trying to control Sudan’s resources and quash the revolution that started in December 2018. The UAE, in particular, has turned Sudan into a battleground for its imperial ambitions, arming militias (the RSF) that terrorize people, displace millions, and subject women to unimaginable violence.

Sudanese feminist activists continue to resist on all fronts the military junta, militia groups and foreign imperialism by emphasizing that the fight for justice must be decolonial and intersectional. And, as Sudanese feminist Reem Abbas emphasizes in the article Sudanese Feminist Sisterhood: At the frontline of radical resistance and solidarity: “Sudanese women’s experiences, needs, and solutions are uniquely shaped by the challenges they have faced on the ground, making them invaluable architects of feminist peace.”

Similarly, feminist resistance in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been vital in confronting the extractive economies that drive the ongoing genocide. In March 2025, UNICEF was reporting “The resurgence of conflict in the province of South Kivu, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has forced more than 850,000 people—nearly half of them children—to flee their homes. Many are living in precarious conditions, taking shelter in schools, churches, or in the open, with limited access to clean water and sanitation, healthcare, and education.”

Congolese women’s movements have long argued that the plunder of natural resources—fueled by multinational corporations and foreign governments—sustains cycles of violence and displacement. The activism of grassroots feminist organizations has been essential in documenting these crimes and pushing for international accountability. Nobel laureate and Congolese gynecologist Dr. Denis Mukwege has exposed how sexual violence is used as a weapon of war in the region, often linked to corporate and state exploitation of the country’s vast mineral resources.

To this day, the ongoing genocide in the DRC highlights how colonial violence continues to shape global economic systems, but also how local resistance movements persist in the face of immense brutality.

For Palestinians, the fight against colonial amnesia is made all the more harrowing by the active erasure of their suffering, even as undeniable and well-documented evidence of genocide mounts. The international community willfully keeps failing to address the death, destruction and dispossession, with mainstream media narratives often obscuring or outright denying the reality of Israel’s crimes. Nada Elia, a Palestinian feminist scholar and activist, reminds us in her book Greater than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Inter/Nationalism, and Palestine, “the importance of discussing Palestine as a decolonial struggle and an anti-apartheid struggle cannot be over-emphasized. And the most distinguishing characteristic of settler colonialism is that it is land theft. As such, decolonization in a settler colonial context simply cannot be achieved without land restitution. Decolonization is not an abstract concept, ‘it is not a metaphor,’ as Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang argue. Instead, as they write, decolonization, ‘as a process, would repatriate land to Indigenous peoples,’ and ‘Decolonizing the Americas means all land is repatriated and all settlers become landless.’”

The genocides in Palestine, Sudan and the DRC highlight the urgency of fighting erasure by all means necessary. And therefore to think through how disability justice can help us understand the path forward.

Thinking through disability justice and collective liberation

With that in mind, here are five key reasons why global solidarity with Palestine, Sudan and the DRC must remain central to our fight for collective liberation and disability justice.

1. The Systematic Disabling of Palestine, Sudan, and the DRC: Genocide as a Disability Justice Issue

The Israeli state is not only killing Palestinians—it is actively disabling them through structural violence. Bombings, sniper fire, and military raids cause mass amputations, traumatic brain injuries, and permanent disfigurement. But disablement in Palestine does not start or end with this genocide.

For decades, Israel has:

• Targeted Palestinian limbs through a “shoot-to-maim” policy, deliberately inflicting life-long disabilities on protestors.
• Imposed medical apartheid, systematically denying Palestinians access to healthcare, mobility aids, and rehabilitation.
• Bombed hospitals and disabled care facilities, ensuring that existing disabilities worsen into life-threatening conditions.
• Used chemical weapons that cause lasting neurological and developmental disabilities in children.

In Sudan, where genocidal violence has displaced millions and rape has been systematically used as a weapon of war, disablement and intergenerational trauma is both a byproduct and a strategy. People are being maimed by airstrikes, cut off from medical infrastructure, and left with untreated injuries that become permanent physically and mentally.

In eastern DRC, entire generations have been disabled by warlords, militias, and multinational corporations fighting over coltan and gold. Sexual violence, mass amputations from landmines, and malnutrition-induced disability are epidemic, and largely invisible to a world that only sees extractable resources instead of seeing a population under brutal imperialist capitalist control.

Disability justice demands that we see these bodies, these survivors, as central to our resistance—not as collateral. These are not isolated atrocities; they are systemic forms of disablement that uphold global capitalism, racism, and imperialism.

2. Erasing Disabled Resistance is Erasing Liberation

The Western gaze sees disabled people only as victims, never as leaders, revolutionaries, caregivers, knowledge keepers or survivors building the infrastructure of liberation. But disability justice shows us that disabled people are not passive victims.

In Palestine, even though there are statistics like every day in Gaza more than 10 children lose a limb, 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza are currently displaced, and 15% have a disability, disabled resistance is a long-standing reality. During the 2018 Great March of Return, disabled Palestinians were on the frontlines of resistance. Organizations like the Palestinian General Union of People with Disabilities have fought for both national liberation and disability justice under occupation.

In Sudan, disabled people joined the 2019 revolution and are facing persecution under the current genocide. In the article, Overcoming Barriers: Disability Rights in Sudan, Asala Salah paints the harrowing reality of war: basic essentials like water, sanitary pads, and diapers for people with disabilities and the elderly being completely unavailable and families forced to make heartbreaking decisions about who could flee for safety and who had to stay behind. But activists like Tarig Abuzaid, who lost mobility while rescuing others from a bombing in Omdurman, shows us that disabled people can lead community kitchens and aid networks, refusing to disappear into the margins.

In the DRC, the widespread use of sexual violence has significantly contributed to the increase in disabilities within the Congolese population. Survivors often suffer from fistulas, sexually transmitted infections, and other debilitating conditions. Furthermore, the stigma associated with rape leads to social exclusion, economic hardship, and barriers to accessing healthcare and rehabilitation services. But survivors of rape and war are building peer networks to support each other, challenge stigma, and demand justice. Despite little international attention, disabled Congolese people are resisting erasure.

To ignore disabled resistance in these places is to erase entire epistemologies of survival and struggle. It is to ignore the possibility of liberation that is being forged by disabled folks under the harshest conditions.

3. Disability Justice Demands Abolition and Decolonization—Everywhere

Disability justice is not reformist—it is abolitionist. There is no accessible version of a settler-colonial state. There is no liberatory version of a war economy.

The same forces that disable Palestinians—militaries, borders, occupation—also brutalize disabled people across Sudan and the DRC. Imperialism functions through proxies, starvation sieges, militarized resource theft, and weaponized displacement.

Canada, the U.S., and the E.U. remain complicit. They arm the Israeli military. They turn a blind eye to Sudanese airstrikes and Congolese massacres as long as their mining profits are protected. They fund the very regimes that manufacture disability through war.

Disability justice means the abolition of the entire system that permits these genocides. It means no more “inclusive” genocide. No more “diverse” war machines. No more colonial extraction dressed up as humanitarianism. Abolition and decolonization or nothing.

4. The Struggles of Disabled People Under Occupation and Colonialism are Interconnected

Palestine is not the only place where colonialism disables. The struggle of disabled Palestinians is intimately linked to:

• Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island, where environmental violence, displacement, and incarceration disable entire generations.
• Black communities fighting against medical racism and state violence.
• Disabled people in Sudan, the DRC, and beyond, resisting war, famine, and neglect with nothing but their communities and will to live.

Disability justice is about refusing isolation. It is about refusing the idea that some bodies are grievable and others are not. It is about linking struggles from Gaza to Khartoum to Goma and saying: we will not let you disappear us!

5. Survivors are Reshaping Disability Justice in Real-Time

Newly disabled survivors are teaching the world what justice means. They are building community amidst rubble, resisting, and refusing to be erased.

For exemple, in Gaza, children who have lost limbs are already learning to care for each other and even cook for themselves and community to sustain themselves during genocide. In Sudan, survivors of RSF attacks are building schools for blind and amputee children in refugee camps and kids find joy and ways of playing.

They are not asking for pity. They are showing us what revolutionary disability justice looks like: interdependence, refusal, resistance, and care that is not performative, but a stubborn and steadfast insistence on existence beyond survival.

That said, I don’t want to romanticize resistance in the face of colonial abhorrence. Above everything, the violence of colonialism and occupation must end. As my friend Samar Alkhdour, a Palestinian feminist activist, says: “Fuck resilience. Stop this madness. We didn’t ask to be heroes.”

Toward Collective Liberation

Palestine is not a distant struggle. Neither is Sudan. Neither is the DRC. They are the mirror reflecting what must be undone everywhere: genocide, imperialism, ableism, reproductive violence, and carceral colonialism.

As decolonial Lebanese feminist, activist, and writer Jessica Jamal Khazrik brings us to think about in an instagram reel: “How come we have become a post-nuclear society and still militarization is what dominates our global economy? Still systems of genocide are what rule the world and have created the nation state system that is still colonial … our bodies are not meant to be melting and flying into the air because of anthropogenic horror…yet we have all been bearing witness not even to genocide at this point but to omnicide for over a year and a half and the world continues running with business as usual.”

But business as usual should never have been possible and certainly can no longer be possible. As Francesca Albanese’s report notes: “Corporate actors are deeply entwined in the system of occupation, apartheid and genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory. For decades, Israel’s repression of Palestinian people has been scaffolded by corporations, fully aware of and yet indifferent to, decades of human rights violations and international crimes.” Palestine, Sudan and the DRC teach us that empathy must move beyond outrage to action. That liberation is incomplete if it leaves anyone behind. That children should never be amputated in kitchens. (read that sentence again because the fact that I’m even writing this sentence should give us all mind-numbing chills)

And finally, that wonder, even in times of horror, is a form of resistance that will bring us back to our shared humanity.

“It can feel foolish to pause to marvel at the stars when the world is burning. Or to find the world beautiful when you’ve known it to betray you. But wonder is a liberation practice. A reminder that we contain more than tragedy. Beauty is our origin and our anchor.” — @BlackLiturgies

“They want us to look away because they understand that the longer we look, the more we will begin to recognize the common face of the oppressor. But we who’ve inherited suffering know that any distance between us is merely an illusion.” — Cole Arthur Riley

So, the question remains: Are we ready to follow the lead of Palestine, Sudan, the DRC and all indigenous struggles that ask us to insist on remembrance, resistance, and reclamation of the most marginalized lives as sacred? Much like Patrice Lumumba, assassinated former president of the post-independence DRC, we need to be uncontrollable and incorruptible. We need to still believe in humanity and that we will change the world in our path to collective liberation!

.mmABOUT

Nelly Bassily is a queer disability justice advocate, intersectional feminist, and anti-racism and sexual rights activist with over 15 years of experience driving transformative change in the non-profit sector. A dynamic media maker, she works at the intersections of disability justice, decolonial feminism, and collective liberation, amplifying the voices of marginalized communities and building movements rooted in care and solidarity.

Born in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal to Egyptian parents with Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian roots, Nelly’s activism is deeply shaped by the realities of immigration, diaspora, and decolonial struggle. She has led groundbreaking initiatives advancing gender and sexual rights, built inclusive frameworks for equity and accessibility, and developed leadership spaces for racialized women, queer, and disabled communities.

In 2021, she was recognized among the Top 25 Women of Influence in Canada for her leadership and advocacy.

Joe Stramondo

In 2019, a White disability rights leader with a national reputation, Bruce Darling, had a spectacular fall from grace because of comments he made about immigrants while meeting with former Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (CA-D). Darling accused Eshoo and other Democrats of not prioritizing funding for home and community-based supports disabled people need to avoid institutionalization and of “caring more about people who are not legally in this country than their own citizens who are disabled.” His words spread across social media like a Californian wild fire. Within days, he was pushed out of his leadership positions within national organizations and became something of a pariah. Darling’s words were so divisive because people rightly pointed out that a true commitment to justice for disabled people must recognize that many undocumented immigrants are themselves disabled and deserving of basic rights, not total erasure from the disability rights discourse. Intersectionality had started to become a priority for the disability movement, but apparently wasn’t among Darling’s basic values and still isn’t valued by most white disabled people.

In this political moment, as masked I.C.E. enforcers raid neighborhood restaurants and worksites, while the Medicaid many disabled people need for basic survival is systematically demolished, we must urgently examine the relationship between immigrant rights and disability rights.  This is not only because many immigrants are disabled. There is also the deeper issue that ableism, racism, and classism are inextricably bound both in how many people think and in how our society has been structured. Immigration is a disability rights issue and needs to be understood as such by the disability movement.

Historical examples abound of how racism, classism, and ableism are entangled within the United States. From the moment Columbus stumbled into the West Indies, European colonists believed they were justified when murdering, robbing, and exploiting the indigenous people living in the Americas because they believed these native peoples, by their nature, did not have the intellectual and emotional capacities granting them equality with Europeans.  In his letters, Columbus himself expressed this attitude, “They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features…. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

When more European settlers arrived with those they kidnapped from Africa and forced into chattel slavery, it was again based on the racist belief that Black people could not be equal members of society because of their supposed deficiencies in intellect and emotional regulation. In other words, the violent racism and classism of the original sins of America’s colonialism and slavery were both premised on the idea that non-white people were not equal in ability to Europeans. The suffering and exploitation of non-white peoples that built the United States was allegedly justified by the assumption that these subordinate classes lacked some crucial capacity or were, in a sense, disabled.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an attempt was made to lend credibility to this entanglement of racism, classism and ableism with the pseudoscience of eugenics. Francis Galton, now infamous for first advancing eugenic ideology, tried to establish a scientific link between race, class, and ability in a way that justified policy interventions to remove disability from society. He described eugenics as, “the study of the agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally.”  In the Unites States, such policies included the forced sterilization of those who were, or were perceived to be, disabled, especially if they were not white In the Unites States, such policies included the forced sterilization of those who were, or were perceived to be, disabled, especially if they were not white,.  However, eugenic policies also included the institutionalization of disabled, queer, and non-white people in an attempt to keep them from reproducing, as highlighted in Jess Whatcott’s book Menace to the Future.  Likewise, starting with the Chinese Exclusion Act, the federal government began restricting immigration of specific racial and ethnic groups on the grounds they had inferior abilities that would make them a threat to the common good.  The very origins of pro-institutionalization and anti-immigration policies were linked by eugenic ideology.

From the launch of his first campaign for president, Trump unapologetically invoked this entanglement of racism, classism, and ableism to motivate the violence toward immigrants we are now seeing with his now infamous, barely coded eugenic dog whistle, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

It is no coincidence that Medicaid and the very same homecare programs Bruce Darling was fighting to expand in 2019 will now be devastated by Trump’s “big beautiful bill,” just as we see the military deployed to American cities to enforce his mass deportation efforts.  Both the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich via social safety net cuts and the rounding up of brown immigrants are justified in the minds of GOP voters by the notion that poor, disabled, people of color are a “drain” on social resources.  If the disability movement and our allies are going to respond effectively, we must recognize that these threats to disabled people and threats to immigrants are one in the same because the ideologies motivating them are one and the same.  Immigration is a disability rights issue.

ABOUT

Dr. Joseph Stramondo is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at San Diego State University, where he also serves as Director of the Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs. He has published over thirty scholarly papers and book chapters in the areas of bioethics and disability studies.  In the past, he has also done disability advocacy work with the Connecticut State Independent Living Council,  Little People of America, Michigan ADAPT, and Disability Rights Texas, among others.

Leah Harris and Liat Ben-Moshe  

Masking as a constitutional matter hit the news cycle once again on June 8 when Trump threatened anti-ICE protesters in Los Angeles for wearing face masks (“MASKS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED to be worn at protests,” he posted) and ordered their arrest. The hypocrisy and absurdity of this demand are clear to all, given that ICE agents themselves cover their faces. But a flurry of bipartisan anti-masking legislative efforts and propaganda aimed at Palestine solidarity protesters since October 7, 2023 has set the stage for the current assault on the mask rights of those trying to stop ICE kidnappings of their loved ones and neighbors.

Anti-masking efforts can be understood as a central facet of theracial criminal pathologization of dissent, a term Liat coined to describe how the state entwines racial criminalization and pathologization, especially sanism, for eugenicist, fascist, white supremacist ends. Racial criminal pathologization constructs both race, especially Blackness or “Arabness,” and disability (especially mental difference) as inextricably dangerous and irrational.

The question in Trump’s post, “What do these people have to hide, and why???” epitomizes this phenomenon in action: Mask-wearing is pathologized, criminalized, and used to justify further criminalization, confinement, and death. Of course, the state’s conflation of political difference, dissent, or resistance with madness/dangerousness is not a new phenomenon.

Last year, as student encampments across the country forced a global reckoning on Palestine, disturbing posts online showed Zionists intimidating students by demanding that they remove their face masks. At the University of Texas encampment, one student reported that members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a designated hate group, were demanding that students remove their masks, calling them “terrorists” and asking if they were on “watch lists.” And last December, a student reportedthat a notorious Columbia University professor who’d been banned from campus for harassing and intimidating students had been standing in the street wearing a bodycam and shouting “SHOW YOUR FACE, UNMASK THE HATE!” as he filmed students passing by.

As mad and disabled anti-Zionist Jews, we write in furious refusal of these ableist, sanist, and cynical efforts at weaponizing masking, whether in the name of “Jewish safety” or other ends. Such policies make no one safe, and only serve to stigmatize and criminalize activists, communities of color, and immunocompromised and disabled people who wear masks to keep themselves and their communities safer from airborne viruses, state surveillance, as well as Zionist and other forms of white supremacist doxxing.

It is no coincidence to see mask bans being pushed in state legislatures and enacted into law after Palestine encampments were so widespread and effective. Mask bans are now on the books in 18 states, various cities, and counties. Since October 7, 2023 16 bills aiming to ban masks at protests were introduced in eight states, an effort which spread to college campuses.

As the world reeled in rage and disbelief last March after ICE kidnapped Mahmoud Khalil from Columbia student housing, the university administration announced that it would comply with Trump’s mask ban and other demands as a condition for receiving federal funding. These egregious concessions prompted over 1000 teachers and academics to call for a boycottof the university. Upon his release, Khalil, who spent 104 days in ICE custody, called out the “hypocrisy” of Columbia University for claiming to protect international students.

Tracing a Hateful Meme

Recent legislation introduced in New York and Maryland reveals a coordinated anti-masking legislative effort. The Unmask Hate Act (HB 1081), introduced into the Maryland General Assembly in February, is among the latest bipartisan legislative efforts designed to criminalize public mask-wearing in the name of “combating antisemitism—” in essence, marking the face mask as synonymous with a threat to public safety, and Jewish safety in particular.

The term “Unmask Hate” in Maryland’s anti-mask bill mirrors the terminology deployed by #UnmaskHateNY, an anti-masking campaign launched by a coalition of organizations including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which has a long history of surveilling left movements, promotes the Deadly Exchangeprogram between US law enforcement and Israel’s military, and in January famously twisted itself into a pretzel to rationalize and defend Elon Musk’s double Hitler salute at Trump’s inauguration rally.

The Unmask Hate NY campaign’s Twitter account dates to June 2024, and calls for a new version of the “masked intimidation” laws. These were first enacted in response to the Ku Klux Klan’s practice of wearing masks and hoods to hide their identities as they committed acts of violence and terror. Notably, these laws were not enacted to protect victims, but because the KKK’s open brutality embarrassed committed segregationists who wanted to project the image of a “progressive” South.

Also in June 2024, New York State lawmakers introduced their first mask ban bill, which would have broadly banned the use of masks in public spaces, unleashing an uproar from the disability community and civil liberties groups. Disabled and long Covid activists described the experience of testifying against the ban in New York as ““traumatic” and “volatile,” with supporters of the bill yelling obscenities at masked immunocompromised people who testified, calling them ”pro-Hamas thugs and terrorists.” That same month, the Manhattan Institute, a right-wing think-tank, debuted their model anti-masking legislation, comparing “modern activists” in keffiyehs to “Ku Klux Klan members.”

NY lawmakers introduced a new version of the anti-mask bill in January that would create a new misdemeanor crime, “masked harassment,” defined in the bill as wearing a mask “for the primary purpose of menacing or threatening another person” and putting them “in reasonable fear for their physical safety.” This new version included a so-called “carve-out” for health or religious reasons, which would leave it up to the NYPD to intervene and enforce.

Maryland’s bill echoes that of New York. As one Redditor pointed out, “If you examine the text of MD HB1081—it mirrors the proposed anti-masking bill introduced in the NY legislature last month almost verbatim (NY Assembly Bill A3133), including the same seven exceptions listed in the same order?”

The sponsors of the Maryland bill, identifying as Black and Jewish, manipulate the history of U.S. Black-Jewish solidarity on civil rights to aim an anti-masking agenda at dissent on Palestine. One of the bill’s co-sponsors, Montgomery County state Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher said the bill “criminalizes utilizing masks to intimidate, menace, or harass folks, and it’s the same laws we had in place in the post-KKK era.” Co-sponsor Del. Adrian Boafo, who represents Prince George’s County, said, “Marylanders in general, not just Black Marylanders, but we turned our backs, even in silence, to our Jewish brothers and sisters [after Oct. 7]. That’s why this bill is so important. This is a law that says we’re trying to protect our communities and Marylanders.”

In The Baltimore Sun, Jewish organizers Rebecca Armendariz, Alison Cannon, and Nikki Morse wrote that the bill’s sponsors “do not speak for us or our allies in the Black community.” The Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), along with a multifaith coalition, issued a letter naming the bill’s intersecting harms, and the long history of the state targeting activists. “The police are not qualified to decide who needs to mask in public,” Morse said in a coalition statement. “This bill will chill free speech and expose people to unnecessary risks of doxxing, harassment, and respiratory illness.” After hearings in the House and Senate, the Maryland bill was referred to committee, and its fate remains uncertain.

Governor Hochul made a last-ditch effort this past spring to push the state’s proposed mask ban through the legislature, which passed in a narrower form. The new measure would make it a misdemeanor “for a person to ‘use a mask to conceal their identity when committing a Class A misdemeanor or higher crime or fleeing the scene immediately after committing such a crime.’”

Viewed through Critical Resistance’s reform vs. abolition lens, on one hand the victory for those disability activists fighting the NY bill is important to acknowledge and celebrate. Yet the victory remains partial, because the bill still legitimizes the criminalization of mask-wearing and leaves an on-ramp for future masking bans on protestors or others.

In an effort to use similar tactics against ICE, in June California legislators introduced SB627, the No Secret Police Act, which seeks to ban ICE agents from wearing masks to conceal their identities. While we agree to the “no secret police” part given that ICE is essentially white supremacy (barely masked), this move still legitimizes anti-masking legislation. And further, such legislation detracts from the aim of actually abolishing ICE, whose relationship with the Israeli military has been well documented by Deadly Exchange, once again connecting the struggle regarding masking bans (and fascism/white supremacy) back to Palestine’s liberation.

New Take, Old Tactic

The June 2024 Manhattan Institute report advocating for anti-masking legislation said: “Someone who wears a mask for health reasons probably should not be congregating in large groups of people.” This is effectively advocating for the disappearance of disabled, immunocompromised, and chronically ill people from public life, and erasing their right to protest.

Disability activist and writer Alice Wong calls anti-masking bills a form of eugenics and a “return to the ugly laws,” 19th-century city ordinances that often centered on begging, effectively preventing disabled and poor people from existing in public—especially those who appeared to be unsightly, physically disabled, or diseased. (In cities like Chicago that have recently attempted to pass anti-masking ordinances, the ugly laws were not repealed until the 1970s. Chicago was the last city in the US to repeal its ugly laws, in 1974.)

As Susan Schweik illustrates in her book The Ugly Laws, these laws targeted and disproportionately impacted people by race, gender, immigration status, and sexuality. The attitudes expressed by the Manhattan Institute above, and conveyed by these anti masking and anti COVID precautions, bills, and policies make the legacy of ugly laws abundantly clear.

As Wong writes, “We’re told such masked individuals threaten the moral order of society, and these bans are meant to keep the public “safe.” This includes New York, where the governor is using the pretext of ‘crime prevention’ to enact this and other forms of banishment or ugly laws, including New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ policy of “involuntary removals” of unhoused people who “appear mentally ill,” and the ultimate privatization and minimization of public space.

But who is the public, who needs to be protected, and from whom?

The first anti-mask law was passed in New York 1845 in the name of “public safety,” after disputes upstate between landlords and tenant farmers led to a revolt. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, over 20 states had anti-masking laws; they were lifted temporarily or repealed in 2020. These laws have been historically used against those expressing dissent—some of the more recent pre-pandemic efforts were leveled againstantifascists and Occupy Wall Street protesters.

The mask ban that passed in Nassau County, New York in August 2024 makes it a misdemeanor offense for someone to wear a mask or face covering. Breaking the law is punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. “The ban has some exceptions for people who mask for medical or religious reasons,” Kaitlyn Costello told STAT News, “But it is up to the police to determine whether someone has a medical reason for masking if they are out in public.”

And if people are engaging in protest and dissent ‘look’ Arab or Latinx or Black, then we need to understand the criminalization of masking as another form of “stop and frisk.” As activist Imani Barbarin warns: “The political climate creates this perfect storm where it’s going to further criminalize Black and Brown people who need masks to survive.”

Resisting Racial Criminal Pathologization

From mask blocs to grassroots mobilizations to statewide legislation, resistance to mask bans continues to mount. Mask blocs, which emerged from the pandemic, ended up on the front lines of opposition to anti-masking legislation. As noted in a three part interview series with mask bloc organizers in The Sick Times, as this wave of legislation came down in various states, “Mask blocs in impacted regions were sometimes the only groups poised or willing to respond — even though they are small mutual aid groups, not political action organizations.”

Everywhere the legislation was introduced, activists fought back. In New York, Jews for Mask Rights published an open letter signed by nearly 3,000. Maryland activists organized and created an action kit that could feasibly be replicated in other states wherever model anti-masking legislation is introduced. And in Nassau County, New York, where a no-mask ban is in effect, several No King’s Day protesters defied the law amidst a heavy police presence.

And in Illinois, a coalition of groups mobilized to develop model legislation to permanently ban mask bans, in an effort to “future-proof the right to mask for all Illinoisans.” While the bill, titled The Protective Medical Equipment Freedom Act, stalled in the most recent legislative session, the group will again try to move the bill this November, and is asking for the community’s help.

As organizing to protect mask rights hopefully continues to grow across movements, we can look for guidance to the principles and praxis of disability justice. For example, disability justice ethics center those most vulnerable to and captured by these systems and oppressions, including susceptibility to COVID and other airborne illnesses, as well as crackdowns on immigrants and political dissent. Dr. Ruth Gilmore’s definition of racism in Golden Gulag as “the state-sanctioned and/or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death” clearly highlights these intersections.

Refusing and resisting racial criminal pathologization in the form of mask bans is also an anti-capitalist practice. As Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant argue in Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto, “There exists a core relation of health to capitalism called extractive abandonment. And in the process of constructing, destroying, and reconstructing health, the state itself is made…” At the root of this praxis is a rejection of the politics of disposability. Writing in Blind Archive, Adler-Bolton notes, “The problem is also that it is impossible for any person under capitalism to be ‘healthy’—not just those already sick, ill, mad, or disabled. None of us are well, none of us are safe.”

And, simultaneously, “we keep us safe.” Pitting people and or campaigns against one another is a tried and true division strategy by state powers, as is the goal of political agendas like Project 2025 and Project Esther. Focusing on carve outs for “health exceptions” risks setting disability praxis and collective care and liberation against Palestine liberation, which is a false dichotomy.

Coalitional organizing against the politics of disposability can embrace interdependence and “recognizing wholeness beyond capitalism,” with the horizon of collective liberation embodied in the disability justice principles articulated by Sins Invalid. Through centering abolition and disability justice, we refuse any moral or legal opening for anti-masking policies, or any discourse that neutralizes the harm for some, and not others.

As disabled writers and activists have long pointed out, the liberation of Palestine is inextricable from disability justice. To resist mask bans is to resist imperialism and racial criminal pathologization through disability justice praxis, from Los Angeles to Gaza.

ABOUT

Liat Ben-Moshe is an activist-scholar working at the intersection of incarceration, abolition and disability/madness. She is an Associate Professor of Criminology, Law and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago, author of DecarceratingDisability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition (2020) and co-editor of Disability Incarcerated (2014). For more of her work: https://www.liatbenmoshe.com/

Leah Harris is a writer and journalist whose work focuses on madness and sanism, mental health law and policy, and psychiatric abolition. Their essays and journalism appear in Passengers Journal, Rooted in Rights, Disability Visibility Project, and the anthologies The Mad Studies Reader and We’ve Been too Patient.

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