Resurrecting Assassinated Characters And The Geometry of Inclusion:

If: you are  starting to recognize that ableism an actual real and essential component of white supremacy, capitalism, exploitation,  imperialism, colonization, patriarchy, racism, sexism, cissexism and heterosexism, and that we can’t fight injustice while insisting that access is a personal issue that is the responsibility of the “afflicted”, but is rather, a the collective responsibility of the community, the whole community, every community,

Then:

• You need to start doing more than simply adding “ableism” to your list of ism, and “DISability” to your list of marginalities.
• You need to stop bringing in out of town DIS-rights stars to do workshops, instead of local activists who you or the movement has pushed out for so long.
• You need to stop finding ways to appropriate the work of DISabled activists,
• And stop using the label “neurodivergent” to justify your abusiveness, (even if it is rooted in PTSD or any other real condition and experience).
• You need to stop excluding on the basis of who isn’t “cool” enough, or pretty enough for your revolution.
• You have to make way for wheelchairs and walkers, scooters and canes and give up scented products.
• You have to include DISfolx in all your planning, and incorporate us into your organization as central resources.
• You have to have workshops at your events, and you have to attend them!
• You have to read the work of DISrights activists.
• You have to give up your supremacist language and attitudes that allowed you to feel entitled toward exclusion in the first place.
• You need to stop seeing DISfolx as the location of your savior image, your charity case and as central comrades in the struggle.
• And you have to resurrect the characters you’ve assassinated instead of stepping over our bodies and claim DISability stardom for  your sad self, adding “DISability” and “ableism” to your rhetoric.
•  You need to publicly make amends to everyone you DISmissed, DISassociated, DIShonored, DISparaged and DIScouraged before YOU DIScovered DISability.
• You need to account for your tone policing, and your faux-pologies, and your identity baiting and every other sad excuse you had for why it was okay to tell someone their participation was derailing or decentering, or privileged or entitled.
• Not just sometime.
• Not just when it’s convenient.
• Not just until your other REAL IN THE STREETS REVOLUTIONARIES tell you to stop or make it inconvenient.
• You need to account for the lies, slander, misinformation and DIStortions you employed to silence, isolate and chastise anyone who dared attempt the dialogue, who even asked “Can I get my wheels in the door to this event?”, who commented “When you tell those who agree, to rise, you exclude us, and implicate us in the cohort of the oppressors”, who dared to suggest that strategies and protocols be developed and shared, who attempted to include you in that dialogue only to have you turn against them with your admonitions.
• You need to resurrect their reputation and bring them back, hold others who maintain this exclusion, accountable.
• You need to employ a methodology of inclusion and discard the tired old practice of self promotion and exclusion  and movement stars that insists that inclusion means less for those who already have voice, even if it is the seemingly small voice within movements of resistance, especially if it is the seemingly small voice within the struggle.

Because we can’t win against bigotry and hegemony and oppression,  if we are perpetuating it ourselves,we can’t be antifa without all the targets of fascism in the movement, and we can’t win this fight without everyone poised for battle.