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From Collapse, Trauma, Crisis, and Ruin, We Rise: Where the Neurodiversity Movement Meets Disability Justice
April 20, 2021 @ 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm
![[Photo: Black and white image of a young East Asian person with glasses smiling and laughing, looking slightly away from the camera. Photo by Colin Pieters.]](https://sites.fhi.duke.edu/healthhumanitieslab/files/2021/03/Lydia-X.-Z.-Brown-photo-by-Colin-Pieters.jpg)
A Zoom webinar featuring Lydia X. Z. Brown
Talk title: “From Collapse, Trauma, Crisis, and Ruin, We Rise: Where the Neurodiversity Movement Meets Disability Justice”
Description: Neurodivergent, crip, mad, and disabled people’s lives and communities are marked by constant trauma and the specter of violence. Our movements – the self-advocacy movement, neurodiversity movement, independent living movement, mad pride movement, and disability justice movement – have arisen from and in response to trauma and crisis ordinary. From electric shock torture to eugenic sterilization, from filicide to state violence, from abuses under law and in medicine, our communities have fought for decades for survival and recognition, against erasure and dehumanization, hoping and dreaming of a world past endemic ableism. Disability justice analysis enables us to understand the necessary role of ableism in shaping social thought and jurisprudence about race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation – and to challenge arbitrary notions of “normal” underlying whole systems and processes of violence.
After Lydia’s talk, there will be time for Q&A.
Accessibility: Live captioning and ASL interpretation will be provided.
Register here at the Zoom registration link
About the Speaker:
Lydia X. Z. Brown (they/them/theirs/themself or no pronouns) is an advocate, organizer, educator, attorney, strategist, and writer. Their work focuses on addressing state and interpersonal violence targeting disabled people living at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, faith, language, and nation. They are Policy Counsel for Disability Rights and Algorithmic Fairness for the Privacy and Data Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Director of Policy, Advocacy, and External Affairs for the Autistic Women and Nonbinary Network.
Lydia currently serves as a member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Disability Rights, chairperson of the ABA Civil Rights and Social Justice Section’s Disability Rights Committee, and representative of the Disability Justice Committee to the National Lawyers Guild’s National Executive Committee. They also serve on the board of directors of the Alliance for Citizen Directed Supports, and on advisory boards for organizations including the Transgender Law Center, The Kelsey, Borealis Philanthropy, the Lurie Institute for Disability Policy, the Nonbinary and Intersex Recognition Project, and the Vera Institute for Justice. They regularly provide consulting, training, and workshops to nonprofit organizations, services agencies, colleges and universities, and other programs and companies interested in radical access and inclusion.
Lydia founded the Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color’s Interdependence, Survival, and Empowerment. They are currently creating their own tarot deck, Disability Justice Wisdom Tarot. Lydia is Adjunct Lecturer in Disability Studies at Georgetown University and Adjunct Professorial Lecturer in American Studies at American University’s Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies. Previously, they taught at Tufts University as a Visiting Lecturer for the Experimental College. Often, their most important work has no title, job description, or funding, and probably never will.
[The featured image above is a picture of Lydia X.Z. Brown – a black and white image of a young East Asian person with glasses smiling and laughing, looking slightly away from the camera. Photo by Colin Pieters.]
Co-sponsors of this event: Health Humanities Lab at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke Institute for Brain Science ,and the Neurohumanities Research Group