INCITE! Color of Violence 4

This session is grounded in the emerging field of Disability Justice, a framework that understands disability as both a lived experience and as a politically constructed experience within a broader social context that includes race, class, gender and sexuality. The goal of this workshop is to support participants in their commitment to an intersectional political analysis, which centralizes people of color and integrates disability oppression as a component of a justice based analysis of current conditions. Our workshop will focus on the disability justice work of Bay Area-based Sins Invalid, a performance project that creates space for queer, gender nonconforming, disabled people of color. By focusing on the grassroots performance activism of Sins Invalid we hope to introduce participants to the principles of disability justice work. We will explore how Sins Invalid’s community organizing severs and challenges institutionalized violence against people in the disability community. In addition to understanding the roots of disability justice work, we will introduce participants to ableism, an often unspoken system of oppression similar to sexism and racism that permeates our social institutions in violent ways.