At the John Merlo Library, 644 W. Belmont Ave., there was a July 20 panel discussion on the intersection of race/ethnicity, disability, sexuality and the body.
The program was part of Chicago's year-long ADA25 Legacy Project, which celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Invisible to Invincible ( i2i ) hosted the event.
The moderator was i2i member Liz Thomson, and the four panelists were Gene Davis, Rahnee Patrick, Joy Messinger and I Li Hsiao from i2i. All four fell within the LGBTQ spectrum, were non-white, and had a mental or physical disability of some kind.
The panel operated as follows: Thomson introduced a question; the four panelists tackled it until they were done speaking, and then Thomson moved on to the next one. In total, three questions were discussed: ( 1 ) What does the term "Pride" mean to you, and can the word be associated with pain? ( 2 ) What do you make of all the different Pride events that go on during the summer, including the Pride Parade, the Dyke March, the Disability Pride Parade, etc.? and ( 3 ) What advice would you give folks about how to be better allies? Afterward, a Q&A session took place that allowed everyone in the room to participate and share their thoughts on the panel.
For the first question, the general consensus was that "Pride" is all about being proud of who you are, and how dealing with being a sexual minority, a racial minority, and mentally or physically disabled is something that can be difficult to come to terms with.
When it was his turn to speak, Davisa gay, Black man who has both a hearing and speech impedimentgrabbed the room's attention ( a common occurrence throughout the evening ) when he switched topics and said that he wished the LGBTQ community would show more support when it comes to issues of disability. He was upset that there weren't more people "like him" at the July 18 Disability Pride Parade that took place in the Loop.
While the second question wasn't directly answered, the replies still made for an interesting discussion. For example, Hsiao used this opportunity to address Davis' point about why it might be difficult for LGBTQ individuals to show their support for people with disabilities.
"Maybe people who identify as LGBT or Q might feel shameful about the fact that they are disabled, because for some it [being LGBTQ] means that you're not desirablethat you have a disability," he said. "You know what I say to that? I say, 'Fuck that.' If you can't be comfortable who you are, and you want other people to give you the OK to be who you are, then like, hello! Why do you need other people's consensus to be OK about your self-acceptance?"
Moreover, when it was her turn to speak, Patrick entered the topic of privilege, and how it's still a problem within LGBTQ and disability organizations.
"People who are in power, even in the oppressed community, have to give up power," she said, "and I think that it pisses them off [to do so]."
The third question was tackled head-on, though, and Messinger summed it up best about what it means to be a good ally with this quote: "Nothing about us without us."
"The basic premise of that is that any work that's being done around any form of oppression should be led by the people experiencing it," she said. "So within disability justice, people who are living with disabilities should be the leaders in that work. ... For me that's the most important way to practice any form of 'allyship' is to know when to step back."