Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha Quotes (1975-)

“You wanna know how you'll know if you're doing disability justice? You'll know you're doing it because people will show up late, someone will vomit, someone will have a panic attack, and nothing will happen on time because the ramp is broken on the supposedly "accessible" building. You won't meet your benchmarks on time, or ever. We won't be grateful to be included; we will want to set the agenda. And what our leadership looks like may include long sick or crazy leaves, being nuts in public, or needing to empty an ostomy bag and being on Vicodin at work. It is slow. It's people even the most social justice-minded abled folks stare at or get freaked out by. It looks like what many mainstream abled people have been taught to think of as failure.”

“Writing from bed is a time-honored disabled way of being an activist and a cultural worker. It's one the mainstream doesn't often acknowledge but whose lineage stretches from Frida Kahlo painting in bed to Grace Lee Boggs writing in her wheelchair at age 98. (preface)”

“Writing from bed is a time-honored disabled way of being an activist and a cultural worker. It's one the mainstream doesn't often acknowledge but whose lineage stretches from Frida Kahlo painting in bed to Grace Lee Boggs writing in her wheelchair at age 98. (preface)”

“Biden saying offhandedly that “the pandemic is over” even as thousands of people die every week and groups like Long COVID Justice and #MEAction organize — from bed and in die ins in front of the White House — demanding that the U.S. declare long COVID a public health emergency.”

“Twenty years ago I first read Medicine Stories and had my mind blown by the elegant, virtuosic way Aurora Levins Morales imagined a theory interweaving childhood sexual abuse survival, Indigenous sovereignty, anticlassism, and deep Latinx queer anticolonial ecological justice. Twenty years later, her analysis is even more rich and full of fruit, revising and expanding her work to encompass Standing Rock and the global fight for water and land liberation, survivorhood, and disability justice.”

“Since Trump got elected, many people in my community have been talking about how Octavia Butler was a prophet and how her books Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents eerily predicted the climate change, wildfires, and fascism of our current world. Many people in movement spaces have taken Butler's words as prophecy and text...But what is often missing from these discussions is how Lauren Olamina, Butler's Black, genderqueer teenage hero who leads her community out of the ashes and founds a new spirituality that embraces change as god, is disabled. In the book, she is called a sharer: someone with hyperempathy syndrome from her mother's use of the Einstein drug, a popular drug that heightened intelligence. She feels everything everyone feels, and it's often overwhelming in a way that reminds me of some autistic and neurodivergent realities. It gives her impairments and also gifts. To me, Butler's Parable books are a Black disability justice narrative.”

“Greta has the sense of moral clarity and laser focus that is one of the things I love and value about myself and other autistic people. We’re different — I’m brown, she’s white, and I feel more political commonality with Black and Brown young climate activists like Isra Hirsi and Autumn Peltier who are making connections between colonialism, racism and climate justice. But when I look at Greta’s unsmiling, outraged face, I feel a sense of autistic intimacy. But women are supposed to smile and be polite, don’t you know? Women and non-cis guys are supposed to be gracious and gentle and apologize and make eye contact. Autistic women and non-cis guys are often under even more pressure to keep up with traditional, neurotypical gender standards. We are not supposed to just say what the fuck we believe, call people out, and not smile doing it. We are not supposed to be autistic in public, without apology, let alone have any kind of radical politics. But Greta is.”