My body is radical

"As organizers, we need to think of access with an understanding of disability justice, moving away from an equality-based model of sameness and “we are just like you” to a model of disability that embraces difference, confronts privilege and challenges what is considered “normal” on every front. We don’t want to simply join the ranks of the privileged; we want to dismantle those ranks and the systems that maintain them." [Read the rest here]

You know when you find someone smarter than you who is articulating the stuff that is driving your day-to-day actions, but you don't quite have the words for? Mia Mingus and Stacey Milbern are blowing my mind. I've been reading back through the archives of their blogs.

(Do you guys ever do that? Find a new blog, go to the first post and just read through?)

A combination of all of this reading has my head circling and re-circling the same topic. My body is forcing me to live out my rejection of the values of a capitalist society. It's so hard to extracate oneself from the trap of the dominant social model. How often, when we volunteer within groups who are working to change this model, do we force ourself to work at an unsustainable pace, do we measure our success in terms of money or numbers, do we separate our day-to-day from our beliefs and campaigns?

It is hard for me to accept that I will earn less money when I start work. Hard for me to accept that my partner has to do more for me than I do for her. Hard for me to rest, when everyone else keeps going. I know in my head that reciprocity and community are deeper than a simple give and take, and I am learning to embody that.

My body will not allow me to work all of the hours there are to earn more and more money for my family, but never see them. My body will not let me skip lunch to get more done in a day, and therefore be (in terms of short-term focussed capitalism) a more valuable employee. My body will not let me run for the bus, or run each project into the next without stopping for rest and reflection.

My body is radical.