I Still Havent Played BOTW Yet Let Me Live

Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

In this collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and longtime activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centers the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all. Care Work is a mapping of access as radical love, a celebration of the work that sick and disabled queer/people of color are doing to find each other and to build power and community, and a tool kit for everyone who wants to build radically resilient, sustainable communities of liberation where no one is left behind. Powerful and passionate, Care Work is a crucial and necessary call to arms.

Government legs? You better use them for at least X number of steps a day to prove they were needed.

An arm specialized for factory work that’s so heavy it causes spinal damage and chafing around the stump area(more so then even normal artificial limbs)

it's okay if your mobility aids click or squeak

it's okay if you need more space to pass because of your aids or the way you walk

it's okay if you need to ask more questions

it's okay if you need to ask for help with things, either for physical or mental limitations

it's okay if the way your body is means you need more room

it's okay to exist and to take up space

it's okay if your mobility aids click or squeak

it's okay if you need more space to pass because of your aids or the way you walk

it's okay if you need to ask more questions

it's okay if you need to ask for help with things, either for physical or mental limitations

it's okay if the way your body is means you need more room

it's okay to exist and to take up space

✨ Able bodied friends edition ✨

If you are in a group that includes anybody who is using a mobility aid, if you are out and about and a Stairs Situation arises, either ask them which they'd prefer, or opt for the elevator (given your group is small enough. If not, have a couple friends use the elevator with your disabled friend, after asking if this is what they prefer (they may enjoy a moment alone, everybody is an individual with their own preferences). This means they don't lose the emotional "high" of being part of a group, conversation can continue so they won't suddenly feel lonely and excluded on the solo elevator ride, which can creep in and ruin their mood especially if they're new to their disability, and there's less of a chance of confusion once you're at your destination. Nobody likes being lost, but the inherent exhaustion and physical exertion that comes with using and mobility aid is incredibly... Unfun. And distressing! This can be easily avoided and you have the chance to be an Excellent friend! We notice these things!

-single steps

-Tables with the leg thingy in the middle

-slanted sidewalks

-unessissary stairs for aesthetic reasons

-accessible bathrooms with doors that open inward

-shelves in stores above 1.5 from the ground

-heavy doors for zero reason

-narrow doors

-hand driers and paper towels being far away from sinks

-loitering on crub cuts

-curb cuts in parking spaces

-high mirrors

-high Tables

-low Tables

-portable ramps that are dangerously steep being called accessible

-"come inside to front desk to get ramp"

-huge door lips

-broken automatic doors without signs

-labeling as wheelchair accessible online when absolutely not

-people inventing new 30+ thousand $ stair climbing chairs that no one will ever be able to actually use instead of ramps or lifts