Disability Project

The Disability Project magnifies the leadership, collective power, analysis, and visibility of trans and queer disabled, Deaf, ill and Mad communities.

The Disability Project is staffed by a multi-racial, cross-class, cross-disability and multi-generational disabled, trans & NBY team. Together we co-lead the project’s work and strategy.

We are informed by a Community Advisory Board of trans, NBY and queer disabled and Deaf people who bring additional BIPOC, cross-class and cross-disability leadership to the projects work.

The Disability Project

Believes that work about ableism is work about Eugenics, state control, and supremacy.

Understands that our work is inherently abolitionist.

Knows that ableism works as a mechanism and product of anti- Black racism, misogyny, and the hatred of the poor.

Recognizes that access is crucial to disabled people’s dignity and participation and is a vital part of anti-ableism; yet it alone is not an organising strategy.

Knows that Disabled and Deaf trans people, especially Black and brown people, navigate intense amounts of police violence, surveillance, and state control.

Recognizes that the experience of disability and illness are highest within marginalized trans communities and overlaps exactly with a heightened experience of violence.

Believes that to achieve meaningful trans justice, disability activism, analysis, lived experience and expertise need to be properly centered and disabled leadership followed.

Is clear that without Disability Justice none of us are free.

A group of Disabled people posing for a group photo, everyone has smiles on their faces.

The Disability Project breaks isolation, grows connection, builds leadership and infrastructure for trans and queer disability, Deaf, ill and Mad communities, while increasing Disability Justice capacity in the movements that seek to serve them.

The Disability Project Core Values

We work ways in to erode ableism and its systems not to enhance it or them. In ourselves, at TLC and our movements in.

We amplify and support each other’s leadership, expertise, lived experiences and growth.

We engage in collective decision making and are building our internal process to strengthen and externalise that.

We recognise that we do not experience ableism equally – its impact is individually felt through our different identities and experiences of white supremacy, misogyny, anti-Black racism, disability targeted violence, sex work, immigration, employment (in) stability, formal / higher education, transphobia, age, class, education, incarceration, and parenting.

We bring excitement!! to the truth and beauty that each us of brings greater skill, expertise and knowledge than the other in areas multiple; this we embrace as generative and precious!

We deal conflict and disagreement with as it surfaces. We talk and process things through. We recognise that no change happens without errors and as humans we will up screw. Our commitment is to accountability, tending to repair and then on with the work getting.

We value and commit to the pooling of our different areas of knowledge, expertise and lived experience in service of a balanced, seasoned, and accountable leadership of the DP and Disability justice movement, the communities and leadership we seek to serve and amplify.

We embrace as necessary the dynamic creative force our generational differences of, as part the potency our joint leadership of.

We resist the pull of and pressure to essentialize each other’s, or our various and overlapping people’s identities.

We engage in the use of effective political education as a tactic to shift narrative, center leadership, and increase broad baseline DJ political analysis, commitment and capacity within TLC and aligned impactful movement spaces.

We recognize that access is crucial for the participation and dignity of disabled folk and is a vital cornerstone of anti-ableism: yet know it alone is not an organising strategy.

We prioritise (marginalised) disability community gain over individual gains; our own included.

We work from a disability informed analysis of abolition and the clarity that work about ableism is work about Eugenics, state control, and supremacy.

We work to mobilise and organise with marginalised disabled queer and Trans folks and alongside our broader disabled communities.

We value participation over productivity and welcome the variety of ways disabled, mad, sick Deaf and ill folks engage in process.

We work at and in protection of “crip pace”.

We position our work and engagement in opposition the need or pressure to assimilate or pass to abled-bodied and sanist values or culture.

We tactically orient and are committed to developing programmatic work that builds and engages with leadership development mechanisms for our communities.

We utilize strategic collaborations across identities yet within shared values to embed DJ and anti-ableism into the heart of justice movements.

The Disability Project was launched at the Transgender Law Center through a 2019 Soros Justice Fellowship.

Disability Project

The Disability Project

The Disability Project Core Values

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