DJATD-Collective Access
“As brown, black and queer-bodied disabled people we bring flexibility and creative nuance that go beyond able-bodied/minded normativity, to be in community with each other.”
Reading Aloud A Principle That Does Not Reflect My Intersections
Collective Access, more than any other principle, explicitly claims the authors’ intersectional and marginalized identities. Because I do not share all the author’s intersections, because I do not identify as being racialized as “black” or “brown,” for instance, is it comfortable, or it even right, for me or for the listener, for me to read this principle aloud?
Bodies of color and queer bodies have been marginalized and relegated to categories and situations of disablement by contemporary culture; to fully claim the contribution all the principles of disability justice make to disabled folks and all people of the world, the authors should openly acknowledge and celebrate their marginalized identities. Collective Access illuminates how living on the margins requires creativity, adaptability, skill, and flexibility that those in the center do not need to possess in order to survive. At least in part, it is that creativity, adaptability, skill, and flexibility that led to the insights that ultimately became the 10 Principles of Disability Justice. None of Sins Invalids’ work is exclusionary. As the authors wrote this principle, they were aware that folks who do not share their intersections would read it. My choice to read the Collective Access principle aloud in public spaces is an offering of gratitude and humility to these wise teachers. It is also a consciously inclusionary act by which I practice Collective Access, I Recognize Wholeness, and I declare my Commitment to Cross-Movement Organizing. Those living on the margins can always be each other’s strongest allies, regardless of what their personal intersections are.
Gratitude
This month, in gratitude and humility, I offer thanks to Mia Mingus and also to the people who work and care for the processes and equipment that allow the Sangha Is All family to connect virtually, including those who developed and maintain Zoom, our connection devices, the internet, and the many different applications that allow Sangha Is All to exist as a virtual space. I offer deep gratitude for the structures and lands that shelter and sustain each of us; the people who built our living spaces, dispose of our trash, and clean the floors and toilets of the many spaces we utilize in our daily lives. The lands on which I dwell were cared for by the Potawatomi, Winnebago, and many other native peoples, by many beings, and by creatures of all kinds, before they were colonized in the way that now supports me and I offer thanks to those deep ancestors who, through their labor, support my existence today.
Words
“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”~ Rumi
This month, we worked with both of the principle’s title, “collective” and “access,” and with the meanings of Samma Kammanta and Samma Vayama. We first looked at the word “collective” when we examined Commitment to Cross-Disability Solidarity. Holding the literal meaning of “access” as “a coming to, an approach; way of approach, entrance," in relation to “collective,” holding awareness that we value plurality, expands our view to see that there are as many ways of approach as there are individuals; we see that access is best practiced in balance with and with respect for the true nature of reality that creates the infinite diversity of our world. Disabled individuals can have many and competing access needs; a deaf person may need sign language interpretation while a blind person may need spoken language. Competing needs do not indicate that all access needs cannot be met. No matter how any individual might choose or need to navigate access, the deep truth of valuing plurality calls upon us to use flexibility and creative nuance to find ways to meet the access needs of all.
This month, I chose to reconsider Samma Kammanta, or Right Action, and Samma Vayama, or Right Effort, to illuminate Collective Access as balancing with and providing respect for the reality of infinite diversity. In Dhammadinna’s grouping of Eight-Fold Noble Path elements, Right Action is considered a moral discipline element, asking us to connect a morality in balance with the true nature of reality to our actions. When considering Collective Access, we are called to measure our actions with an understanding of our membership in a collective consisting of plurality of individuals with all the complexity that brings and creatively that requires. In Dhammadinna’s grouping, Right Effort is considered a concentration element. I understand this to point to how all of the discreet actions that we take over our lifetime, right or otherwise, concentrate into an overall direction, movement, and effort. When unexamined, our effort might best be described as chaotic or directionless. But when our actions are practiced with awareness and intention consistent with the Eight-Fold Noble Path and the 10 Principles of Disability Justice, they concentrate into an overall effort that moves us toward a valuing of the true nature of reality, of a valuing of ourselves as the ocean in a drop, off valuing others as the same.
Access versus Access Intimacy
“I am done with disability simply being “included” in able bodied people’s agendas and lives only when it’s convenient”. ~ Mia Mingus, Access intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice (4/12/17)
Over the last nine months as we’ve examined the principles of disability justice together, we’ve been talking about how to build a different container for our awareness and practice. Taking a deep dive into the teachings of Mia Mingus this month, we begin to explore how to bring the principles into everyday awareness in a way that supports us as disabled people in a normatively structured world.
One of Mia Mingus’ foundational teachings is access intimacy, which she describes as “that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else ‘gets’ your access needs.” In this world, disabled folks have to work to get access. Sometimes this appears as extra effort to get through a doorway, to safely enter and exit a public handicapped accessible bathroom stall, to enter a public restaurant, or to visit a friend’s home. Sometimes this appears as additional emotional and intellectual complexity in navigating the entrance requirements for an educational program, requesting a reasonable work accommodation, or simply figuring out how it’s going to be possible to obtain groceries and prepare and consume meals. In the US, despite notable civil rights progress in recent decades, an entrenched culture of ableism continues to exist in the minds of average citizens and the unconsciously ableist perspectives of those responsible for creating and maintaining accessible buildings and facilities and administering accessibility programs, for instance, can create significant barriers to meaningful access. All of us disabled folks still experience, more or less frequently, a sense of “othering” when met with barriers to access. We experience it as actual practical challenges and the real toll those challenges take on us, but also as the emotional challenge of not being perceived as whole and sometimes even less than normatively abled folks. That’s where access intimacy, having our access needs understood and accepted, arrives as a support. One place we might experience access intimacy is among other disabled folks who, by virtue of their own experiences, are more likely to appreciate that access needs are real and nuanced for each individual. While we might have to articulate our particular access needs to another person, with access intimacy we don’t need to explain that access needs are valid and exist in every person. It’s the existence of a normatively accessible world that makes access needs invisible to normatively abled folks. As we become aware of what access intimacy is, we begin to know we can seek it out, that we need it, that we deserve it, that we can center relationships that provide it and decenter relationships that have no promise to provide it.
Another way to look at this is that access can be very practical, even straight forward, but access intimacy is experiential, felt in the body. Sometimes we experience access intimacy with people we never expected to. Mia writes that access intimacy is elusive and unpredictable. As human beings, regardless our capacities, we absolutely need other people, the collective. We are pack animals, communal creatures. Within the infinite diversity of the ocean, we need intimacy with other drops, especially those drops that have similar experiences to our own. It's a natural requirement of embodiment, and we can feel when it’s present.
In another blog post, Mia explains that access intimacy works “to reorient our approach from one where disabled people are expected to squeeze into able bodied people’s world, and instead calls upon able bodied people to inhabit our world….[It] moves the work of access out of the realm of only logistics and into the realm of relationships and understanding disabled people as humans, not burdens.” I do not believe she is offering a binary, an either-or. She's not saying that either we inhabit their world or they inhabit ours. She's calling in the necessity of an evolution in consciousness, for a time when all humans recognize that, as drops, we each and all are the ocean. She is pointing to the need to evolve from discrete, disconnected right actions, to persistent and concentrated right effort. Changing human consciousness is not easy and quick. Persistent and repeated right actions taken to include disabled people who are otherwise excluded by ableist environments can lead to growth in insight and awareness multidimensionally, in normatively abled and disabled people, in those taking the actions as well as in those observing and benefiting from them. Positive impacts from all of this encourage discreet right actions to evolve into concentrated right effort, to dedication and persistence in including all bodies in the world where we can all normatively co-exist.
Descriptively Disabled vs Politically Disabled
When I say “politically disabled,” I mean someone who is descriptively disabled and has a political understanding about that lived experience. ~ . Moving Toward The Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability, 8/22/11 Femmes of Color Symposium
Another of Mia Mingus’ deep insights is an understanding of being descriptively disabled versus politically disabled. While a person may understand themselves to be non-normatively enabled and thus may describe themselves as disabled, there are many possible relationships to that understanding, including resistance, masking, acceptance, and despair. Regardless of how they experience their disability, a person who understands themselves as politically disabled embraces a political understanding of “disability” as a category created for purposes of marginalization and disconnection. This understanding views the context in which our bodies are required to function as part of an intentionally created system. The human relative world is not a direct expression of ultimate reality; it includes all kinds of intentionally created systems based on the wrong and limited views of human beings. Just about anywhere in the world these days, the word “politics” can be a fraught and polarizing word, but when we look at the roots of the word “politics,” we see it simply points to an urban area, to a place where people concentrate in larger numbers than in rural areas, and thus to a collection of individuals, to drops in the ocean coming together. “Politics,” or the affairs/matters/business of cities or collections of individuals, could also be considered the art of citizenry. The art of citizenry in the US has evolved in such a way that it is now used by a few individuals to consolidate power into political systems designed to enrich themselves by many means, including marginalization.
Reflecting on access and access intimacy inevitably leads to consideration of the political nature of disability. As disabled people, if we allow ourselves to settle for logistical right actions, we are settling for being invited to inhabit the normatively abled world when and if it suits the normatively abled, we’re practicing acceptance of politics as the practice of marginalizing us, of causing our existence to rely on a conditional string of right actions. This is why the Americans with Disabilities Act was written as a civil rights (right effort) law and not as a benefits (right action) law. Enacting the ADA, almost entirely written and significantly shepherded through the US political system by disabled people, has not in itself changed the consciousness of the nation. I believe that to understand myself as politically disabled means I must also accept my role, whatever that might be in accordance with my resources and capacities, in helping human consciousness evolve from right actions to right effort regarding “disability.”
Liberatory Access
What is the point of connection, if you still feel isolated and alienated from your self. ~ Mia Mingus, Wherever You Are Is Where I Want To Be: Crip Solidarity
I believe we can do access in liberatory ways that aren’t just about inclusion, diversity and equality; but are rather, in service of justice, liberation and interdependence. I have been calling this concept ‘Liberatory Access’~ Mia Mingus, Access intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice (4/12/17)
As we move toward the final disability justice principle, we move toward deep inquiry into liberatory access. Next month, we will practice with Sins Invalid’s 10th principle, Collective Liberation. As disabled people in world designed for the normatively abled, we constantly experience barriers to access. This friction invites us to consider the flip side of that coin, not just ease but liberatory access.
Mia Mingus observes, “It can be especially hard to build interdependence with people you need in order to survive, but who don’t need you in order to survive. In an ableist context, interdependence will always get framed as “burden,” and disability will always get framed as “inferior.” To actively work to build something that is thought of as undeniably undesirable and to try and reframe it to others as liberatory, is no small task.” In our final month of this Disability Justice and the Dharma series, we’ll consider what liberation and freedom are for all beings, not just those of us labeled “disabled,” but also for normatively able people, the land, and all its creatures.
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Thank you for gathering with me to examine Collective Access and being a valuable part of Sangha Is All. I’m looking forward to being with you again in June for sharing and discussion on Collective Liberation.
I send gathering reminders including the Zoom link, to everyone on the Disability Justice and the Dharma mailing list each month. Register for monthly emails from Sangha Is All by emailing me at laura@SanghaIsAll.org. Until our next Disability Justice and the Dharma gathering, utilize the resources linked below, revisit any of our recordings, and, if convenient, join our weekly Embodied Awareness practice month meeting on Fridays at 10:30am US central time. The link for Embodied Awareness practice can also be requested by emailing me.
Sangha Is All Word Bank:
Access - a coming to, an approach; way of approach; entrance, best practiced in balance with and with respect for true nature of reality that creates the infinite diversity of our world.
Access Intimacy – that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else “gets” your access needs. ~ Mia Mingus
Collective – (a) a singular form a whole consisting of a plurality of individuals
(b) anytime what we're fighting for brings us into conflict with the legitimate needs of another group of people, it's a sure sign that the picture is too small. ~ Aurora Levins Morales
Commitment – with others, sending forward dedication to a future promise that governs and imposes healthful restriction on present action.
Descriptively Disabled - having lived experience of being disabled. ~ Mia Mingus
Dharma – essentially truth, or the true nature of reality.
Disability - (a) having a natural body that performs natural functions in accordance with its unique capabilities;
(b) a label applied in ableist culture to create an artificial division between people into prescribed “normative” and “non-normative” categories for purposes of exclusion.
Free – nobly, joyfully, lovingly not being in bondage and having the capacity to act according to one’s own will.
Intention - a stretching out, straining, exertion, effort, aspiration, thought and purpose of awareness.
Interbeing – Our deep interconnection with everything else in existence. ~ Thich Nhat Hahn
Interdependence - reciprocally given reliance upon and confidence that the conditions necessary to perform basic daily activities (like rising, dressing, and interacting with others), and satisfy basic daily requirements (like sheltering, toileting, eating, healthcare, and resting) will be created and maintained by our community.
Intersection - the existence of multiple identities within single individuals. ~ Kimberle Crenshaw
Intersectionality - (a) the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect, especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.
(b) living with the identities I have in the midst of the complex social and political traffic of today’s world.~ Kimberle Crenshaw
Liberation – setting free, the action or process of becoming free.
Mana – in Buddhism, a “conceit,” or fanciful idea, representing one of the seven anusayas (‘latent tendencies’) of greed, attachment to existence, hatred, conceit, wrong view, uncertainty, bewilderment.
Multi-Cultural Wisdom on Wholeness and Belonging(Indigenous language)
Need - The conditions required by my humanity to perform basic daily activities (like rising, dressing, and interacting with others), and satisfy basic daily requirements (like sheltering, toileting, eating, healthcare, and resting).
Noble Disciple - a person who practices for awareness is one who seeks the true nature of reality, tires to look straight into the true nature of reality, has perfect confidence in the true nature of reality, and is always seeking to arrive at the true nature of reality.
Political – from a Greek word meaning “city,” and simply referring to the matters of collectives of persons living in the same place.
Politically Disabled - someone who is descriptively disabled and has a political understanding about that lived experience.~ Mia Mingus
Recognizing – to again get to know, become acquainted with, learn, inquire/examine something.
Samma – (a) thoroughly, properly, rightly; in the right way, best, perfectly.
(b) in alignment with the true nature of reality.
Samma Dhitti (Right View) - A perspective reflecting a balanced and intentional gaze toward a profound understanding of the true nature of reality.
Samma Sankappa (Right Intention) – Actively cultivating thoughts, intentions, purposes, plans, and resolve in balance with the true nature of ultimate reality and the blueprint of our bodies ,hearts, existence.
Samma Vacca (Right Speech) - Consciously using speech, whether through our voice, actions or some other means, including the words and actions we choose to withhold, to aim toward creating balance with and support of the true nature of reality.
Samma Kammanta (Right Action) - In all aspects of life, consciously engaging in activities that seek to create balance with the true nature of reality.
Samma Ajiva (Right Livelihood) – Engaging in means to earn one’s living, regardless of the economic system utilized, in equanimity and balance with the true nature of reality.
Samma Vayama (Right Effort) - Cultivating and nurturing our full, complete, very best, vigorous effort infused with focused and concentrated will so that energy can be brought into our Right Actions with dedication and persistence.
Samma Sati (Right Remembering / Mindfulness) - Vigorously and persistently cultivating and nurturing a dedicated practice of re-knowing and re-constructing the Wisdom and Moral Discipline to be with ourselves, others, and the world in a way that is both authentic to us and supports and is in harmony with.the true nature of reality.
Samma Samadhi (Right Togetherness / Interbeing / Distillation) - the practice and experience, arising from concentrated intention and clear focus, of being put together or in union with the true nature of reality.
Sociopathy – severely anti-social or anti-communal. An ethic that accumulation of the utmost possible by individuals, whatever the consequences for other living beings anywhere in the world, is inherently sociopathic.
Solidarity – the whole, well-kept, uninjured awareness of shared interests that recognizes common interests and produces common goals.
Sustain – to hold or root ourselves up from below, to stretch up in order to provide for ourselves the necessities of life.
Suffering -
(a) First Arrows – objectively painful experiences.
(b) Second Arrows – a person’s way of responding to First Arrows that causes additional mental, physical or emotional discomfort in themselves.
(c) Third Arrows – additional mental, physical or emotional discomfort caused in persons living with First Arrows by the inability or refusal of “normative” persons and processes to recognize and appropriately respond to the needs in valid intersections. The experience of Third Arrows can cause Tangles within individuals.
Systemic Mana – the cultural and collective expression of comparison and competition that is expressed through societal norms (at its most benign) or hierarchy and oppression (at its most violent). ~ Sebene Selasi
Tangle - an intertwined and knotted collection of inner experiences, in this case caused by Third Arrows, that can result when the overlapping and compounding nature of obstacles acts to conceal and enhance the challenge of arriving at ways forward.
Wholeness - the inherent quality of our own healthy, sound, genuineness.
Sangha Is All Playlists:
September 7 – Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate Debe and Kala
October 5 - Robert Macht Vishnu and Pelawak
November 2 - Average White Band – Pick Up The Pieces and Sly & The Family Stone – I Want to Take You Higher
December 7 - Community - Christmas Infiltration, Adam Sandler - The Chanukah Song, and Gayla Peevey - I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas
January 4 – Chantress Seba, Rising Into the Light
February 1 – Deva Premal, Gayatri Mantra (a 28:27minute looping version can be found here)
March 2 - Bill Withers, Lean on Me, Stevie Wonder, Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing
April 7 - Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden: Where Can I Go Without You, Spotify or YouTube
May 3 - Chantress Seba, Om Gam Mantra
May 3 Links:
Aurora Levins Morales, blog post 10/30/2013, Bigger IS Better
Mia Mingus, Access intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice (4/12/17)
Mia Mingus, Access Intimacy: The Missing Link (5/11/11)
Mia Mingus, Moving Toward The Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability (8/22/11)
Mia Mingus, Wherever You Are Is Where I Want To Be: Crip Solidarity (5/3/10)
May 3 Quotes:
“Anytime what we're fighting for brings us into conflict with the legitimate needs of another group of people, it's a sure sign that the picture is too small. ~ Aurora Levins Morales, blog post 10/30/2013, Bigger IS Better
“I am done with disability simply being “included” in able bodied people’s agendas and lives only when it’s convenient”. ~ Mia Mingus, Access intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice, 4/12/17
“Access intimacy is that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else “gets” your access needs.” ~ Mia Mingus, atAccess Intimacy: The Missing Link, 5/11/11
“For years, I would feel it or crave it, but not know how to describe it. It has always been just out of reach; just beyond my grasp. I have mistaken it for emotional or political intimacy, sexual attraction or romantic desire. I have mistakenly assumed that it would be there based on one’s identity or experience I have grappled with how to describe the closeness I would feel with people who my disabled body just felt a little bit safer and at ease with. There have been relationships that carried emotional, physical and political intimacy, but sorely lacked access intimacy. And there have been relationships where access intimacy has helped to create the conditions out of which emotional, familial and political intimacy could grow.” ~ Mia Mingus, Access Intimacy: The Missing Link, 5/11/11
“The power of access intimacy is that it reorients our approach from one where disabled people are expected to squeeze into able bodied people’s world, and instead calls upon able bodied people to inhabit our world.” ~ Mia Mingus, Access intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice, 4/12/17
“…moves the work of access out of the realm of only logistics and into the realm of relationships and understanding disabled people as humans, not burdens. Disabled people’s liberation cannot be boiled down to logistics.” ~ Mia Mingus, Access intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice (4/12/17)
“When I say ‘politically disabled,’ I mean someone who is descriptively disabled and has a political understanding about that lived experience.~. Moving Toward The Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability 8/22/11 Femmes of Color Symposium
“It can be especially hard to build interdependence with people you need in order to survive, but who don’t need you in order to survive. In an ableist context, interdependence will always get framed as “burden,” and disability will always get framed as “inferior.” To actively work to build something that is thought of as undeniably undesirable and to try and reframe it to others as liberatory, is no small task.” ~ Mia Mingus, Access intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice, 4/12/17
“Access intimacy is critical to disability justice because there will never be any work with disabled people that does not include accessibility work….So, if we are working to transform the world for all of us, and not just some of us, access will be a huge part of this work. There is no liberation without disabled people.” ~ Mia Mingus, Access intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice, 4/12/17
“The myth of independence is the idea that we can and should be able to do everything on our own and, of course, we know that that’s not true. Someone made the clothes you’re wearing now, your shoes, your car or the mass transit system you use; we don’t grow all our own food and spices. We can’t pretend that what happens in this country doesn’t affect others, or that things like clean air and water don’t bound us all together. We are dependent on each other, period. The myth of independence reflects such a deep level of privilege, especially in this rugged individualistic capitalist society and produced the very idea that we could even mildly conceive of our lives or our accomplishments as solely our own. And of course, the other side of this is not just that it’s not true—not just that the emperor has no clothes, but that everyone else should pretend he’s fully clothed too. So, the Myth of Independence is not just about the truth of being connected and interdependent on one another; it is also about the high value that gets placed on buying into the myth and believing that you are independent; and the high value placed on striving to be independent, another corner stone of the ableist culture we live in.
“Interdependence moves us away from the myth of independence, and towards relationships where we are all valued and have things to offer. It moves us away from knowing disability only through “dependence…”~ Mia Mingus, Access intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice, 4/12/17
“Access can be a tool to challenge ableism, ablebodied supremacy, independence and exclusion. I believe we can do access in liberatory ways that aren’t just about inclusion, diversity and equality; but are rather, in service of justice, liberation and interdependence. I have been calling this concept ‘Liberatory Access’….There is no liberatory access without access intimacy, and in fact, access intimacy is one of the main criteria for liberatory access. Liberatory access understands addressing inaccessibility and ableism as an opportunity for building deeper relationships with each other, realigning our selves with our values and what matters most to us, and challenging oppression….Liberatory access calls upon us to create different values for accessibility than we have historically had. It demands that the responsibility for access shifts from being an individual responsibility to a collective responsibility….Liberatory access requires a political container to live in and orient from and I believe that disability justice is that political container.” ~Mia Mingus, Access intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice, 4/12/17
“[Liberatory access] reframes both how and where solidarity can be practiced.” ~Mia Mingus, Access intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice, 4/12/17
“…ableism and white supremacy work together so successfully to isolate disabled people of color…”~Mia Mingus, Access intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice, 4/12/17
Ways to Practice Together Until Collective Liberation on June 7:
Sangha Is All Embodied Awareness Practice, Thursdays at 1pm central time through April.
Starting May 8, Fridays at 10:30am central time.
Southsea Sangha’s Earthworm Sangha, a monthly meditation group run by and for disabled, neurodivergent, and chronically ill people. Scroll to the bottom of this page to find more information and to register.
Every Body, Every Mind Sangha, a weekly practice group for people living with disabilities, limitations, differences and chronic illnesses offered by East Bay Meditation Center. Visit the every body every mind website for more information; email ebem@eastbaymeditation.org” to request a Zoom link.
Bodhi Bodies, a monthly practice group run by and for disabled people as part of the World Interbeing Sangha (Thich Nhat Hahn’s Plum Village tradition). Click here for more information and to register.
Living Mindfully With Illness Together, a weekly mindfulness practice group for folks living with illness or disability and their caregivers. Click here to sign up.
Mindbody Solutions, yoga and community offerings for disabled folks of all kinds.
