how do you do this again?

[randomling]

Making a rare public post. And a rare post, come tot hat.

Like most everyone I've seen post anything on the internet today, I am shocked, I am angry, I am horrified and terrified. I think we need community more than ever. I sure as hell do.

kaberett is holding a very timely love meme. My thread is here, or will be when it's unscreened. I'll try to keep up, but feel free to link me to yours in the comments.

Given that I'm not the only person who's wondering how the hell to make a difference on low-to-no-spoons in this increasingly shitty climate, I've been wondering how to organise that. Because of spoon and brain reasons (I'm not a very steady person, I tend to come and go with interests and I sort of need advance permission to burn out and disappear for large chunks of time) I'd need a co-mod or three and probably some discussion about how to set it up and what we might want to do. I'm thinking of a name like spoonless_activists or something?

The problem with being disabled is we often don't have the spare resources to spend on the stuff that might change the world. But maybe if we organise we could do... something? Even if it becomes a place to signal-boost petitions, fundraisers and community events and nothing more, that's a start. And maybe we can find something to do with it.

What do you think, people? Anyone want to join this effort or have any ideas?

Comments

[davidgillon]

The UK experience might offer some insights. Most of my disabled friends were fairly apolitical until near the end of the last Labour government, when we realised how bad the new Work Capability Assessment was. Then under the Tories things got rapidly worse, with a calculated plan to paint disabled people as lazy scroungers, and pretty much all of us radicalized.

The more active types formed Disabled People Against the Cuts and protested on the streets. The spoonies, my people, went the web route. There were a couple of blogs/news sites which formed, and which became fairly influential, in documenting what was going on, analysing the reality, and reporting lived experience of harassment and the like. We started to get journalists following what we did, and recycling our news into national media. In some cases we were invited onto national media, and we even had government ministers refusing to appear opposite some of our spokespeople. There were also a small group of journalists who were themselves disabled, and working on social stuff and who were very useful links.

A second prong was analysis of government data to show the reality. The 'Spartacus Report' showed that the government had lied in claiming that disabled people had backed their reforms in a consultation (it was actually c2000 against, 12 for). This forced the first defeat on the government in the Lords since it had taken power, though they reversed it in the Commons. They followed it with a bunch more of influential reports (it helped to have a statistician and a mathematician in the core group).

A third approach was using pro bono law firms to force Judicial Reviews on the government to rule on the legality of their policies (the sort of stuff SPLC does in the States). This has rarely stopped them dead, but has been very useful for publicity purposes, so people see what policy actually means, and very good at forcing them to produce Mark 2 versions of policy that are less offensive than the initial versions.

Another route was activism within political parties, proposing disabled friendly policies at their annual conferences, and forging links with politicians who would give us a hearing. We also had the support of several disabled members of the House of Lords who sit as independents and are acknowledged as disability experts.

It may also be necessary to target supposed ally groups. There has been a very successful campaign to shame charities involved in the government's workfare scheme. I also found it necessary to administer a public slapping to the crowdsourced campaigning group 38 Degrees, which was deliberately ignoring disability issues, even when its own processes said it should be campaigning on them as a priority.

A necessary caveat most of us have burned ourselves out, self-care is important, but burn-out is probably inevitable for a percentage of those involved, so take care of yourselves, and try to keep recruiting new blood.

Ultimately our protests haven't stopped the government, but they have ameliorated the effects, and we caused so much damage to the reputation of some of the firms involved in implementing policy at the point of delivery that one actually walked away from a contract worth hundreds of millions of pounds, because we were destroying the value of their brand.

[mathemagicalschema]

Thank you so much for sharing your experience. It's useful to be reminded that a coordinated attack from every possible angle is usually more effective than pursuing one approach in isolation.

[randomling]

Wow, this is a great perspective, and really impressive. I think I've even read a few of those sites! (I'm UK-based and disabled too, but only just got into the ESA support group this summer, so... there's been a fair bit of trying to survive my end. I guess I have some spare energy until they send me the next lot of forms or I get my arse in gear to apply for PIP.)

Not being based in the US, but being aware that Trump is going to affect the whole world, I'm not sure how useful I can be - but in terms of helping to mitigate the impact of Brexit and maybe helping to improve life for my fellow spoonies and my fellow queers, maybe I can do something. That's my hope.