Disability Disruptors: We must disrupt the discrimination!

When we recently began using the hashtag #DisabilityDisruptors for our social media engagements, it drew a lot of interest and curiosity, from those we engage with in the disability community, but also wider, within other social justice movements. What does it mean? And for us, guided by the fiery Pan African feminist #MildredNgesa, this is all we do, disrupting disability discrimination every day, because we face it every day! Sometimes in very direct ways, and a lot of time, it comes, hidden, in ‘good intention’, but with harm that exclude us further and further.

There are many instances, and it is important that each of us starts noticing them; that each of us in our activism for social justice, does not miss the subtle discrimination that is directed at women and girls with disabilities and broadly to persons with disabilities. And because it happens on a regular basis, we shall explore it on a regular basis, as we invite all of you to join us in fighting this disability discrimination that drives us to the margins, day in day out.

I sat on the Minister’s seat!

I was invited into this huge meeting, and on entering the meeting room, I noticed that the Sign Language Interpreters were sitted too far at the podium. There were no immediate available seats near the podium, all having been occupied, with the only available table and seats reserved for the Minister and their team. I alerted the organisers and told them that any Deaf participant would surely not see the interpreter and hence would not follow the meeting proceedings; and no one seemed either to understand, or they ignored my call.

I had no option but to sit on the table reserved for the Minister and their team! Of course this caught everyone’s attention and no amount of coercion got me off the seat. Narrating this now, sounds quite amusing, but when you look at it, it is a type of ableism that actually stings. Isn’t it unnerving that I have to fight for my space to be included? Does it make you angry, to know that there are some people who have to fight for such spaces? Spaces to know what is going on, what is being discussed, isn't this an act of discrimination that should bother everyone?

And I think my take away from this experience, is that when organizing for meetings, more so meetings that do not have a specific disability angle, but are meant for the public; please make sure that the views of marginalized groups are taken into consideration. Do not just invite women with disabilities to an inaccessible venue yet you have not considered to have them within your planning. Because, even as we talk about development, we could never fully achieve this when we are intentionally, (or unintentionally) leaving out a huge population, not only of persons with disabilities, but other marginalized groups as well, who have little access to some spaces that are influential. 

So indeed, I disrupted discrimination that day. Will you join me in doing the same? I am a #DisabilityDisruptor

#DisabilityDisruptors