#disabled activism

You may or may not be aware that certain U.S. government entities have free publications to send out on topics of public concern! For obvious reasons, a lot of them are going away soon.

There's no point letting this stuff get thrown away. If the resources might be useful in your community, order some. If you like collecting historical ephemera, order some.

CDC Publications on Demand

FEMA-ICPD Preparedness Resources

OSHA Publications*

USDA APHIS Publication Ordering System**

*OSHA has a lot of bilingual and multilingual worker's-rights information. Also fact sheets for mutual aid activities like floodwater cleanup, sandbagging, etc.

**This one's a little tricky to operate. Put in your desired quantity and click the blue plus sign for each item in turn. Then click the "Go to Cart" button at the bottom right. Enter your address into the form, then click "submit order," the middle blue button at the bottom.

CDC Pub shuts down August 15. EPA and FEMA have "we're changing things around to comply with executive orders" messages but no firm date. I'm getting a suspicious number of 404 pages on a lot of these sites, too.

Want to do something potentially meaningful from your chair? Pick one manageable topic that matters to you and start grabbing PDFs.

For instance, I'm currently downloading everything I can scrounge up that's useful for running post-disaster shelters, which I'll keep on an external hard drive and upload to Google Docs for public access. I'm collecting mostly English resources, with copies in Spanish, Arabic, and Vietnamese where available. I'll reblog with links when that's organized and uploaded.

Meanwhile, countless smart people have pointed out that a tiny tax increase—we're literally talking 3%—on the ULTRA-WEALTHY (not you on £100k; plot twist, you're Oliver Twist in their eyes too) would raise huge amounts from people who got rich off the labour and assets of this country.

I’m fucking tired of seeing "journalists" clutch their pearls when interviewing MPs like Nadia Whittome just for daring to suggest a wealth tax. It's not your money, bitch. Billionaires making millions in passive income aren't "working hard"; most come from wealth to begin with.

It's mind-blowing how normal people defend billionaires' wallets like they're their own—wallets fattened by a system designed so that those same defenders will likely NEVER climb out of their socioeconomic bracket. The sheer lack of education people have about capitalism, despite literally living under it, astounds me.

The GLEE British people have watching Starmer go after disabled folks, compared to their panicked outrage when a wealth tax is mentioned, is honestly the perfect example of how this country's "education" system has melted people's brains.

The truth is you can’t tell if someone’s faking needing a mobility aid or tool by looking at them, how can you when you don’t know what they use it for?

With my cane some days I rely on it heavily, I use it for every step and cannot walk without it. Some days my body is fully paralysed, numb, weak, fatigued and in pain. However some days I can run and jump and walk just fine. Whenever I’m in public I bring my cane with me for safety, in case I have a sudden issue. If you see me carrying my cane and not using it, that doesn’t mean that I’m faking. If I’m walking through a narrow space and I pick up my cane, that doesn’t mean that I don’t actually need it.

Same goes for any other disability. Tics manifest in different ways, not seeing me tic for a while doesn’t mean I’m faking it. I have tics and not even I could tell if someone’s tics are fake. If I can’t tell then you, a person who knows very little about tics most definitely cannot.

Perhaps you meet autistic person who enjoys social settings or makes eye contact, a person with adhd that seems like they have everything under control, someone with depression who looks “fine”, a person with any neurodivergence who doesn’t act like your mums friends sisters brothers sons hamsters beauticians gynaecologists nephew who also has said diagnosis.

Disabilities affect people in unique ways, you cannot know someone’s experiences and medical history just by looking at them.

For example, I have chronic fatigue. Often times, going to a physical protest is likely to trigger a PEMs episode which can take up to a week or more to fully recover from and usually triggers a migraine at the same time. This increases my support needs and zeros out the activism work that I can do during the recovery time. That one protest appearance may only take a few hours of my time that day, but will actually take up many full days of my time in the recovery process.

On the other hand, calling my representatives, spreading the word, emailing representatives, sitting in on virtual trainings or meetings are much lower energy activies that I can do more regularly without as much recovery time.

There are ways to mitigate the recovery time from going to a protest, but I think it is important to consider how best to use your time and energy to make the most impact on the movement. Therefore, going to a protest isn't always the best or even an available option for disabled people.

I visited a free produce market hosted by one the local harm reduction groups last week and got some lovely free produce and volunteer information.