From the Archives (v.224)
Thanks for hanging with me, y'all.
a personal note today: phew, girl. life has been a firehose for me lately. grief and fresh starts and teaching and other kinds of grief and the nonbinary here/there of moving house before you’re really ready and a lot of staring into the middle distance realizing how much it takes to feel what cannot be bypassed.
it’s a crip cadence, a tough and perfect teacher, as i’m returning to myself. so this week, i’m pulling from the Crip News archives from around this calendar time over the last 4 years. back next week.
-kevin
March 31, 2025 (v.177)
ReelAbilities New York
The ReelAbilities New York Film Festival kicks off this week, running from April 3 through 9 in venues across NYC and via a selection of streamable films and livestreamed events. In addition to the film program, this year’s schedule features a comedy night, industry summit, and more.
It’s also the first year ReelAbilities is operating under its own independent nonprofit organization, having previously worked out out of the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan where it was founded in 2007. As it embarks on an ambitious 3-year strategic plan to “harness the transformative power of representation,” ReelAbilities’ increased capacity will hinge largely on partnerships and contributed income. (The festival’s ticket sales make up just 2.5% of the organization’s budget.)
Lawrence Carter-Long, longtime cultural disability activist and ReelAbilities Director of Engagement, tells Crip News that the move “allows for greater creative freedom.” As disability communities issue urgent calls against the consolidation of ableist power, Carter-Long says ReelAbilities strives “to enhance understanding, establish connections, and elevate voices that have historically and traditionally been under-resourced and undervalued.”
April 8, 2024 (v.127)
Labor Organizing Dispatch
The workers of Creative Growth Art Center, the 50 year-old Oakland-based disability arts organization, are unionizing. All eligible workers have signed union authorization cards as they seek standardized pay, more participation in decision-making, and a commitment to the cultural boycott of Israel.
The union at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is organizing a postcard campaign to protest a new policy that prevents Gallery Assistants from using stools. More here on how to send your own postcard.
April 3, 2023 (v.76)
Stella Young in Bronze
The Australian artist, organizer, and journalist who offered us language for resisting “inspiration” as a dominant mode of disability, died in 2014. Last week, a statue of Young funded by a Victoria women’s public art program was unveiled in Cato Park at Stawell in western Victoria.
April 4, 2022 (v.26)
504 Sit-In Anniversary
45 years ago tomorrow, on April 5th, 1977, a broad coalition of disability activists began a 26-day occupation of a federal building in San Francisco in a powerful interruption of bureaucratic ableism. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was passed into law 4 years earlier, barring any federally funded program from discriminating against disabled people. But the law could not take effect without [enforcement] from the Head of Health Education and Welfare. The protest catalyzed the Disability Rights movement in the U.S. and shows us the enduring love in crip civil disobedience.