Disability Politics 101 (Online)
With Gabrielle Peters, Sarah Jama, Spring Hawes, Q, Rabbit Richards, Pamela Hope and Iva Cheung
October 3, 2021
Gabrielle Peters has called ableism the rebar of our economic, political, social and cultural system. The histories of ableism and racism are interwoven and as the late Mel Beggs said, “There is ableism somewhere at the heart of your oppression, no matter what your oppression might be.”
This session will begin with an overview of the history of Modern Western Ableism and the history of disability activism. In addition to providing an overview of key concepts such as crip theory, disability justice and radical accessibility, participants will learn what it means to apply an intersectional disability lens to issues they will determine at the time of registration such as housing, environmental policy, urban planning, extreme weather preparation, policing, and carceral care.
This session will feature a range of disabled presenters and facilitators with varied lived experiences and intersecting identities. This process involves unlearning as well as learning.
Poverty, institutionalization, eugenics, and other acts of violence will be discussed but participants will be given the opportunity to opt out by muting and turning captions off during these segments.
Live captioning and ASL interpretation will be available.
“Too many new learnings to count. This was, hands down, my absolute favourite session of the entire conference. The incomparable wisdom and lived experience of Gabrielle, her riveting presentation, and the unbelievably detailed graphics she presented are some of the best lecture work on disability I’ve ever had the privilege of learning from”- Anonymous Participant
Schedule
Sunday, October 3
10:00 – 1:30 PT (including a 20 minute break)
1:30 – 2:30 PT (lunch break)
2:30 – 4:30 PT (including a 20 minute break)
Lead Partner
Ecosystem Partners
Virtual Gathering
This event will take place on Zoom, a video conferencing tool. You may download the application for free. You will also need a device with speakers, microphone, video, and internet connection. You may test your Zoom connection in advance. A short tutorial for Zoom etiquette will be provided at the beginning of the event.
Recordings
A portion of the session will be recorded for registered participants to review content as a tool to deepen their learning. Please note that not all segments will be recorded in order to support a container of trust and sharing.
Terms & Conditions
You may find our terms & conditions here.
Image Descriptions
Currently the platform we use does not have image caption functionality. We are working with our web developer to correct this. Here are descriptions for the images used on this page:
Program Image:
Gabrille Peters Presenter Image: Cross-stitch of wheelchair on blue background.
Sarah Jama Presenter Image: Sarah facing the viewer while sitting in a wheelchair in front of a white background.
Spring Hawes Presenter Image: Close up of Spring Hawes’ face looking away from the viewer, smiling, with a white background in the back.
Q Presenter Image: Q is sitting in a wheelchair with a raised fist in the air and a smile on their face. Q is sitting in front of a brick wall with roadsigns in the background.
Rabbit Richards Presenter Image: Double daylight exposure of Rabbit amidst orange flowers. They are wearing a denim button down and a cowbone necklace, with their short hair twisted and shaved over the ears.
Pamela Hope Presenter Image: Pamela is standing in a brightly lit hallway, wearing thin-rimmed glasses and has long auburn curly hair.
Iva Cheung Presenter Image: A cartoon in black ink on a white background of a stick figure with long, straight, dark hair and glasses, looking straight ahead.
About the Presenters
Gabrielle Peters
Gabrielle Peters is a disabled writer and policy analyst and a commissioner on the Vancouver City Planning Commission. She is co-founder of Dignity Denied and the Disability Filibuster and has been a leading voice in applying a disability lens to local, provincial and national policy issues. Gabrielle's work often focuses on further developing the radical […]
Learn more about Gabrielle PetersSarah Jama
Sarah Jama is the Executive Director at the Disability Justice Network of Ontario (DJNO). She is a community organizer from Hamilton, ON with Cerebral Palsy who does work around combating anti black racism, policing, and housing insecurity. Through DJNO, she works to tackle systemic ableism by building up capacity in disabled organizers to challenge structures […]
Learn more about Sarah JamaSpring Hawes
Spring Hawes is a tetraplegic. She has been an entrepreneur, an elected official, and is currently an appointed board director for Interior Health. She was a candidate in the previous provincial election. She is co-founder of Dignity Denied, a board member for a large peer group of wheelchair users, and has chaired an accessibility advocacy […]
Learn more about Spring HawesQ
Q is a white queercrip artist, educator, and death doula primarily living and working on the unceded, stolen, never surrendered land of the Pilalt and Ts’elxwéyeqw tribes of the Stó:lō Nation. Its workshops and writing are grown from joy and spite found in queer Mad, disabled, and sick community, without whom it would likely not […]
Learn more about QRabbit Richards
Rabbit Richards was born on occupied Lenape territory in Brooklyn, NY. Their people have never rooted for more than one generation anywhere for as long as their history can trace. Their father's family claims Kyiv and Minsk; their mother's family remembers St Thomas and St Croix, islands of the Carib, Arawak, and Ciboney. Rabbit is […]
Learn more about Rabbit RichardsPamela Hope
Pamela Hope is 40 years old and was born with disfiguring congenital disabilities causing shortened neck and webbing, hard of hearing, unsymmetrical face and shoulders. She acquired partial paralysis and C-PTSD later. I don't tell ppl what my disability is called because I don't appreciate the misinformation about it online. Currently working in the broker […]
Learn more about Pamela HopeIva Cheung
Iva Cheung is a Certified Professional Editor, health communication researcher, and plain language trainer, and she works with underrepresented groups to co-create accessible health information. She teaches the Plain Language in Health Literacy course for SFU Continuing Studies' Plain Language Certificate program.
Learn more about Iva CheungCategories : Liberation, Location, Month, October, Professional Training, Social Innovation, Tuition fee, Virtual