Disability Liberation Quotes

“Denying someone [else] justice just because you do not yet have your own is never a good idea. I am also convinced we cannot have disability liberation without animal liberation--they are intimately tied together. What if, rather than dismissing or disassociating for the struggle of animals, we embraced what political theorist Claire Jean Kim calls an 'ethics of avowal,' a recognition that oppressions are linked, and that we can be 'open in meaningful and sustained way to the suffering and claims of other subordinated groups, even or perhaps especially in the course of political battle'? Compassion is not a limited resource.”
― Sunaura Taylor, Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation

“Unless disability and animal justice are incorporated into our other movements for liberation, ableism and anthropocentrism will be left unchallenged, available for use by systems of domination and oppression.”
― Sunaura Taylor, Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation

“If we continue to feed a society that doesn't value individuality and human beings as they are, we begin to destroy them.”
― Chloé Hayden, Different, Not Less: A Neurodivergent's Guide to Embracing Your True Self and Finding Your Happily Ever After

“As I've gotten older and realised that society's expectations are only as firm as we allow them to be, I've discovered that allowing myself to unmask and be my authentic autistic self--stims and all--has unleashed more ability than I ever had when I was locking myself away.”
― Chloé Hayden, Different, Not Less: A Neurodivergent's Guide to Embracing Your True Self and Finding Your Happily Ever After

“What if, in the near future, the majority of people will be disabled—and that’s not a bad thing? And what if disability justice and disabled wisdom are crucial to creating a future in which it’s possible to survive and bring about liberation?”
― Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs

“Crip doula, a term created by disability justice organizer Stacey Park Milbern to describe the ways disabled people support/mentor newly disabled people in learning disabled skills (how to live on very low spoons, drive a wheelchair, have sex/redefine sexuality, etc.). A doula supports someone doing the work of childbirth; a crip doula is a disabled person supporting another disabled person as they do the work of becoming disabled, or differently disabled, of dreaming a new disabled life/world into being.”
― Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs

“Part of our process of learning to love ourselves and each other means doing the incredibly risky work of tapping back into the disabled body/mind we have been taught to suppress and abandon, to learn what our boundaries are, what we want, need, and desire.”
― Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs

“A remembrance: nothing has to be the way it is. Access is created, it gets taken away/destroyed, but it can be created again.”
― Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs

“It’s never just Hard, Activist Work. It’s disabled pleasure. It’s wild disabled joy. It’s us on the dance floor, throwing our heads back laughing. It’s the permission, the utter permission to be as we are. It’s the ways we create pleasure to both make the work sweeter and more accessible—pleasure as a form of access. It’s a lot easier to get people to sign up for the long struggle of changing the world if we have fun and disabled joy while we do it.”
― Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs