Inclusion

#TiredOfAbleism? Calling All Naptivists to Join the 1st Nap-a-thon for Disability Rights Advocacy March 13-15, 2020

/ Ingrid Tischer / 1 Comment

Photo of a pooch napping belly-up on a couch 1st Nap-a-thon for Disability Rights March 13-15 2020 #TiredOfAbleism

Disability rights advocacy is tough and tiring. Supporting disability rights advocates shouldn’t be. Napping as activism is an easy way to do it!

Here’s what you DO:

1. You, your kid, dog, cat, horse, or sloth companion nap anytime between 3/13-15/20 and snap of photo of you doing it. Post it on social media with #TiredOfAbleism. Include alt-text!
Here’s where you can follow the action:
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/196300241622595/
On Twitter: @IngridTischer, @DREDF
2. Post a message with your photo: “I’m napping for disability rights because I’m #TiredOfAbleism. We need to bring attention to ableism and support Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) in fighting discrimination. Will you give a donation in honor of my nap?”
B/W photo of a young white man sleeping peacefully with a calico kitty

Photo courtesy of a Naptivist team

3. Add a FB Donate button or a link to dredf.org/support-our-work/, and note “naptivism.” All donation amounts welcome!

→ Scroll down for The Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Support Naptivism for Disability Rights March 13-15, 2020

Top left-right: A basset hound sleeping; a golden retriever napping; a white woman napping on a couch in an office; middle row left-right: a white woman holding a small sleeping child; 2 cats curled in a basket; a little dog napping belly-up on an office floor; bottom row left-right: a woman napping with a cat; a white guy cuddling a blanket and stuffed frog; a lounging white woman

All images courtesy of Naptivists

Disability media peeps! Naptivism is an example of crip-led activism and philanthropy shifting the disability narrative from:

  • “awareness” to advocacy

  • charity to social justice

  • using less accessible fundraisers to more inclusive action

Young woman sleeping at her desk. Text: #TiredOfAbleism NAPTIVIST www.talesfromthecrip.org

This Hero Naptivist could be you on World Sleep Day, 3/13/20. Will you answer the call of naptivism for the cause of disability rights?

Long ago when I was a disabled fundraiser at Breast Cancer Action, I jokingly said sleeping was more my thing than some 3-day-schlepp for “awareness.” Yada yada, it’s the 1st annual nap-a-thon for disability rights advocacy!

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TryHarder™ Magazine: The Disability Etiquette Issue Featuring the Dowager Crippess From Downwith Ableism

/ Ingrid Tischer / 2 Comments

TryHarder™ Magazine: The Magazine for People Who Need to Try Harder, 2 cents

Issue No. 5: The Disability Etiquette Issue

In which Mx. Crip-Manners is most grateful for any etiquette-related #CripTips the Dowager Crippess of Downwith Ableism might care to offer

Gif from Downton Abbey of the Dowager Countess in full evening regalia, stamping her cane for emphasis.

“My dear, if punctuality is the courtesy of kings, then access is the etiquette of ableds.”

 What is a ‘forgetting of the access’?

2 cents symbolEtiquette is so inextricably bound to access that I cannot countenance this notion of ‘disability etiquette’. Disabled people do not require ‘special’ manners.
There is nothing remarkable about courtesy, except regarding the lack of it many disabled people encounter. I have never understood how any well-intentioned host could ‘forget’ to offer a navigable entrance to guests.  We do not ‘forget’ to offer our guests chairs, for example, do we? Why, imagine it – it would be like one of those exceedingly tedious ‘cocktail’ parties where one is forced to stand as if one is in the court of Louis XIV. 

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Subvert the Dominant Paradigm of Disability/Charity By Letting Me Match Your Monthly Gift for Those Meddling Advocates at DREDF!

/ Ingrid Tischer / Leave a comment

 

Image description: An old-timey drawing from a scene in A Christmas Carol where Bob Cratchit is holding Tiny Tim on his shoulder, who is cheerfully waving his crutch.
My, uh, non-Dickens text is Bob saying, “DREDF’s advocacy means you just might get a frakking wheelchair–maybe even an education!” Tiny Tim says, “I told Scrooge to become a DREDF monthly donor or I’d haunt his ass!”
At the bottom: Dog bless DREDF’s donors – everyone!
Image Credit: Illustration by Fred Barnard

How I love crafting heartwarming holiday cards. Like Tiny Tim subverting the dominant paradigm of disability/charity.

You may not know this, but fundraising is a hotbed of subversion if you’re disabled (like me) and raising money to fight ableism instead of being used as an ableist prop by someone else.

You know what goes great with a paradigm shift? A new narrative.

One where disabled people lead the philanthropic work that affects them. As in:

You let me, a disabled donor, match your monthly gift that will support cross-disability civil and human rights defense led by disabled advocates at DREDF. If you take this action, you’ll be making a gift and helping make philanthropy more inclusive. So it is with real glee that I throw down this match offer to help support DREDF’s 40th year as our country’s leading cross-disability legal and policy defense fund:

If you become a DREDF monthly donor by 1/31/19, I will match your first $40. Ex.: If you give $20 per month, I will match the total of your first 2 months, or $40. 

I’ll know it’s a match gift because you’ll include “Nothing about Tiny Tim, without Tiny Tim” in the note field of your online gift.

You may know me as the Queen of Sardonica or as A Crip in Philanthropy but my days are spent fundraising at DREDF where I’m often serious for up to entire minutes at a time.

Our education rights work alone tells you why: “Dickensian” describes schools that lock disabled students in closets, hold them face-down in  4-point restraints, and fail to teach them how to read. 

Individual contributions are critical because both impact litigation and policy require a big investment of time and resources, and foundation funding for disability advocacy is scarce. 

I’m a DREDF major donor now because I have complete trust in the integrity, independence, and brilliance that the staff (who are not me) bring to disability civil and human rights advocacy.

If you know, like I do, that DREDF has made the world better than it was 40 years ago, please join me in giving a year-end gift. Share DREDF with someone you know. 

If a monthly thing isn’t for you right now, no problem. We appreciate every single gift that will fuel our 2019 work to defend those gains and – let’s hope – advance them over the next decades. Together!

THANK YOU AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

TryHarder™ Magazine: The Ally Issue

/ Ingrid Tischer / 2 Comments

TryHarder™ Magazine: The Magazine for People Who Need to Try Harder, 2 cents

Issue No. 3: The Ally Issue

or You Can Lead a Nondisabled Ally to The Google But You Can’t Make Them Use a 100% Familiar Search Engine to Find Available Access Tools Themselves

In which Mx. Crip-Manners points out how good manners make good allies

“We’re super-excited you’ll connect us with disabled women for our project! We don’t know how to clean out a conference room though so can you take that on?” 

2 cents symbolYes, it really is that basic: Do you invite abled guests to muck out your space for your shared meeting or event? I’m guessing you don’t. You consider your space to be your responsibility.  Just as I, a wheelchair user, don’t expect my walking guests to bring their own chairs. But you expect your disabled invitees to either resolve your access barriers or teach you granular how-tos. I know this from decades in grassroots women’s organizations and philanthropy.
That’s not okay.
My considered position is the result of 20-plus years of waxy bummer build-up that comes from, first, being invited to be a partner or guest — and then being tasked with “the early shift of ableism” to clean up inaccessible messes.
Expecting this is just plain bad manners from you, otherwise decently-funded organizations, including foundations. Isolated requests for help, particularly under clearly difficult circumstances, are not the issue.

Did You Know?

Disabled people are not magical access specialists. We learned stuff. By learning. We are always learning new stuff. By learning. As Crip-Yoda says, “Learn you must.”  #CripTips

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An Open Letter to Advocacy Funders: #FundDisAdvocacy Because Disability + Ableism = Structural Discrimination

/ Ingrid Tischer / 5 Comments

 

Want in on the conversation about ableism? Check out what disabled advocates, civil and human rights activists, and philanthropic leaders had to say at the Twitter chat on 10/12/18 about philanthropy and inclusion. Then make your voice heard at #FundDisAdvocacy.

A Crip in PhilanthropyFoundation funding for disability advocacy dropped 23% between 2011-2015. Disabled people were the only group to see a decrease. Most funders are “aware” of disability but do they see ableism and structural discrimination? How do we make funders see disability civil and human rights as areas of actionable, urgent advocacy? A first step is recognizing disability as a constant but hidden set of variables in nearly all formulas for civil and human rights. 

I’m writing to you in my capacity as a community organizer – which is another name for a social justice fundraiser.
I believe you and I share common ground on the importance of advocacy:
We know that the great civil and human rights gains of the last century, envisioned and organized by the grassroots, were built to last through the courts and legislation, and they will continue to be the battlefields for preserving them.
I’m writing because disability civil and human rights advocacy is missing from your funding portfolios.
The first step in changing that is frank communication.

When you do not explicitly say “disability” in funding advocacy, you send a message to us: Deny, disown, and downplay your disability identity. That denies all marginalized communities access to our hard-won legal tools and, worse yet, our expertise in using them.

You may understand this letter, at first, as pertaining to a discrete group: disabled people. But it is a fundamental mistake to think that civil and human rights for any community can be fully achieved if we neglect, forget, or disregard such a basic human condition as disability and allow it to be the “natural” cause of poverty and abuse. If we are not safe or free to be vulnerable, then we cannot call ourselves safe or free. Our society is not safe or free.

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