After many years of struggle, CLAGS, the largest academic center for
LGBT/Q studies in the US will be officially waking up to the existence
of the largest intersecting minority, PWDs --- in several events
starting with a milestone panel discussion and celebration gathering at
the City University of New York's Graduate Center on September tenth.
See http://web..gsuc.cuny.edu/clags/calendar/htm
For further info, call (sorry, my "one" key is jammed), 2l2--8l7--l965
These events will take place at Fifth Avenue northeast corner of 42
Street; of the three entrances on Fifth Avenue, the northernmost one is
electrically button-operated. The CUNY Grad Center is a post-ADA total
gut-renovation, so the bathrooms are accessible. They have promised to
be fully accessible, ASL, etc. In NYC public busses have wheelchair
lifts, while only a tiny percentage of subway stations are accessible at
this time The nearest accessible subway station is the 8th Avenue A/C/E
line stop at west 42nd Street (Port Authority Bus terminal), which is 3
"long blocks" away to the west. Grand Central Station with regional
trains from north and east of the city, is a couple "long blocks" to the
east. (There is a small cafe just off the lobby of the Grad Center and
food will be provided at the event.)
Having been the person who took the initiative to provide some active
leadership to push them towards first stopping discriminatory event
planning, and them integrating PWDs into the overall diversity of
subjects covered in the org's dozen or so public events each year -- I
have ended up being on the committee that planned this, though I take no
credit for the events' name, and do not neccessarily endorse all of the
decisions made on how these events have been designed. Win some, lose
some.
It should be a very interesting and surely historic evening, not only
for the speakers but in the audience too it may turn out to be a who's
who of people who have written and researched" and/or done activism "at
the intersection" where the two stigmatised classes overlap.
The local non-profit radio station WBAI will be doing a segment of maybe
ten minutes, and if I can get my hands on a second recorder I hope to do
some interviews with some of the interesting scholars / writers /
activists who will be in the audience, to be aired in later months, as
separate "features" independent of the coverage of this event.
The event is in part structured around the "GLQ" journal (from Johns
Hopkins University Press; can only be read on-line by paying) new
first-for-them theme issue on disability studies, which though a
decidedly mixed bag (an article ignorantly and insensitively trashing
the notion of invisible disability, for example), has some interesting
stuff in it.
The journal's introduction seems to take issue with a point I made about
areas of intersection which I had actually only listed as aosort of
"spoonful of sugar" type thing for teahers to use to get uninterested
LGBT studies students to take a look at the possibilities...(the intro
says that this co-editor is not sure if there are any areas of
'intersection"; at which point I wondered if I was reading a resignation
letter or what?) in an essay in the CLAGS News, in the Winter 2000 issue
(which is in the CLAGS.org on-line archive of newsletters, essay is
titled "Why Do You Care About This? Part One." I say the GLQ issue
introduction "seems" to take issue with part of ,y essay, because it
does not make any specific reference to it or to any source that it is
disagreeing with.
After my suggestions to integrate disability / DS into the otherwise
inclusive diversity of the populations considered in CLAGS events over
the years, which I made in the 90's, and would get yes-sed or staffers
would promise to relay my concerns to the leadership who then claimed to
have never received the messages.... after that suggesting going
nowhere...... in '98 I decided to think more like an activist bulldozer
and keep notes on "Who did you takl to?" and all that, and do persistant
follow up until I got some results. By mid-'98 I had then-Executive
Director Jill Dolan agreeing to get out of the blatant discrimination
business in sponsored and "co-sponsored" events (the latter was lke
pulling teeth), though they needed "reminding" and followup.
Then in September '99 there I initiated a historic first meeting between
me and Anthony Trocchia (a CUNY grad student in counselling who was soon
to become the first "out" gay President of Disabled In Action of
Metropolitan New York, the oldest currently existing disabled civil
rights org, in the country) and then CLAGS executive director Alisa
Solomon. We made some agreements in programming and integrating the
board of directors (which refused to let us speak to a meeting, and
refused to answer our letters), but to not spin this as better than it
realli is -- we failed to get agreements in other areas like equal
access to grants, fellowships, CLAGS anthologies (2 thick ones ignoring
PWDs published so far; even 3 essays on elderly LGBT people that
tip-toed around mentioning disability), other CLAGS single-author book
publishing, etc.
After these historic 9/'99 negotiated agreements, we heard nothing from
CLAGS for almost a year, then we initiated some correspondence in which
we tried to keep pushing them along and get some concrete action and
make it clear we weren't going away, and then slowly (it takes a long
time to turn a battleship around?) just as we were wondering if we had
made a mistake and should switch from the nice advocacy methods to more
serious activist tactics and picket this organisation (trouble is,
disabled rights orgs. have no shortage of things needing actions, and
have "bigger fish to fry" like our big demo for the long-stalled MICASSA
bill in Washington DC coming up Sept. seventeenth) -- we heard very late
last year that an advisory committee was being formed to plan some
DS-related events. And to their credit, they did not exclude the two
"outsider" people neither of whom is currently in the salaried teaching
business (and one of whom has merely a 5 year professional degree that
isn't even a grad degree, though is an independent scholar who has done
some pioneering work "at teh interserction"), who had provided the
initiative and leadership push to get them there, though as it turned
out Anthony had classes every night that a meeting was scheduled, so I
ended up alone "representing" DIA and the activist POV at these
meetings.
--
Re: THE SEPTEMBER TENTH EVENT
All are welcome, it is not open to just academics. Intelligent,
independent-minded, reality-based questions from PWDs in the audience,
needed. :o)
Please pass the word, and if you go, try to find me and say 'hello'. (I
have grey beard, wire rim glasses, 5'-8" tall; my mobility & other
developing disabilities are as of now, still usually invisible.)
Jim Davis
voice mail / cell (347) 528--6832
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