@ImaniBarbarin@disabled.social Profile picture
Dec 21, 2021 10 tweets 2 min read Read on X
So every time I mention the increase in disabled people due to COVID, someone inevitably says that it means that more people will be disability advocates.

I hate to burst your bubble, but I have a little wine in me so gird your loins, my friends.

TW: Eugenics, Suicide
So keep in mind that I was born with my disability, so most of what I’m about to say are observations from my advocacy work.

Not a lot of people consider themselves as disabled from the onset of their condition. Some never do. In fact, the onset of the pandemic may have been
The first time a lot of people told anyone about their conditions and that was because employers were playing with their lives in regards to lockdowns.

You have to keep in mind that much of our understanding of disability surrounds capitalism, so in becoming disabled, the
Vast majority will either have to or feel there is no choice but to work to “overcome” their disabilities. That will only worsen their health.

Many will even position themselves as examples as to why other disabled people with the same diagnoses are just lazy as to add value to
The ableist and white supremacist system.

What the most disturbing aspect to this has been/will be is that not a small amount of people dealing with their diagnoses will commit suicide. Media will begin heralding these people as “choosing dignity” or “being kind to family by
Not being a burden” more and more we will see a cascading effect. As with everything surrounding disability Nondisabled people (or those who think they are) will begin pressuring other disabled people to do the same as to not be a “drain on resources”—you can see an example of
This in the mentions of any parent of a child with a disability as commenters will tell those parents to kill their disabled children our of mercy.

The rest of the newly disabled people will be thrown for such a loop by the lack of support and safety net it’s unlikely
They will have the emotional bandwidth to even think of advocacy work.

History is likely going to repeat itself if we do not address these sentiments. After the 1918 pandemic, eugenic sentiment skyrocketed—and disability has always been the mechanism with which America has
Exterminated Black, indigenous and people of color. This will likely be the same surrounding COVID.

Also important to note that newly disabled white people will be particularly dangerous as they will parrot all of this rhetoric in an effort to remain value within these
White supremacist systems.

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More from @Imani_Barbarin

Jun 29
Private equity and hospital systems have been largely buying up disability, nursing home, and medial services in the U.S.. While hospitals and medical facilities aren’t supposed to shuffle around or evict patients that cannot pay, that is only due to regulations which may no
Longer be there since overturning chevron.

Even with regulations in place poor, disabled and homeless people have often been subject to hospital evictions with stories of some even being left in the street right outside.

These are people who, while our system wants
To jack up the cost of living, make people houseless and then arrest and imprison them for slave labor, would never be able to work in such a way that prison owners would never see returns from their imprisonment.

And thus, with like austerity measures devastating disabled
Read 4 tweets
Jan 18
TW: suicide

By the way, you all fundamentally do not understand the stakes: people are not afraid of your threats of fascism because they feel that their greatest relief would not be Biden, but death.

Have you been paying attention? Do you hear how people are talking about
Suicide? People lament waking up and not dying in the sleep in the form of jokes. They see no advancement in their lives, they see themselves being worked endlessly until death.

People are hanging on by a fucking thread and you’re chomping at the bit to punish them for not
Voting for Biden with fascism and concentration camps? They’ll kill themselves before that happens.

They see no hope in the future you’re advertising (assuming you have any plan for the future to communicate to begin with).

People can’t buy a home, they can’t afford it.
Read 6 tweets
Dec 30, 2023
I’m just posting this for posterity: but the thing that pisses me off with how disabled people are treated every single election cycle is when people offer or organize rides for disabled people to vote.

Most disabled people struggle with freedom of movement, it is extremely
Hard to get anywhere when you have a disability and that is even in cities with existing transit infrastructure. Even still it can be a demeaning process and there’s no assurances.

Never mind if you live in a rural or suburban area where transit options may be scarce or
Nonexistent.

So, whenever people, particularly liberals find themselves with all the organizing prowess in the world to make sure disabled people have rides to vote, I think about all the times they didn’t.

Did they have a ride to go hang out in town? To go to the doctors?
Read 4 tweets
Dec 29, 2023
The sad reality is that COVID is likely to be one of the greatest political blunders in the history of the U.S., let alone the globe.

And, for the “resistance” crowd, the fascinating part is how you all seemed to miss that the spread of Covid was literally a part of the plan.
Jared Kushner signaled in 2020 that they WANTED Covid to spread, specifically to “Blue” states so that Dems would shoulder the political brunt of the fallout—only for democrats to walk head first into that themselves when Biden took office.

We are only at the very beginning of
NBC article titled Did Trump and Kushner ignore blue state COVID-19 testing as deaths spiked? It's easy to get numbed by this presidency's cascade of awfulness, but, even by Trumpian standards, the amorality of such a suggestion is breathtaking.
Selection from NBC article that is highlighted and reads: Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner's team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. "The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy," said the expert
Seeing the impact of COVID on global politics. We are in its infancy.

And while Long Covid rates appear to be on the decline, the reality is still that millions of people are struggling/will likely struggle—and we haven’t even begun to fully unravel its impact on future gen’s.
Read 5 tweets
Dec 22, 2023
While I will never tell a person with a disability how they should describe themselves, I mostly hear the phrase “differently abled” from nondisabled people speaking about disabled people and the use does more harm than good.

Firstly, it releases society of any responsibility
In making an accessible society but rather puts the onus on the disabled person presenting societally disabling barriers as merely difficulties that do not need to be systematically addressed.

Also, people, while you can be gentle with introducing disability into their
Personal identity, need to be able to use the word, particularly when applying to services and supports that legally require use of the word for grant funding and service targets. As much as Nondisabled people may think “differently abled” helps, it can materially keep people
Read 4 tweets
Dec 22, 2023
Ableism is wild because it is quite literally the accelerator for almost all oppression.

Racism: look up the logic behind “bodies made for labor.

Sexism: see “hysteria”

Homophobia: the same architects of conversion therapy designed autism therapies.

Fatphobia: “why are you
Eating your way to a disability?”

Xenophobia: the western gaze presents nonwhite cultures as unintelligent at points implying they’re intellectually disabled.

Classism: poor people are presented as too lazy and not fit for society

Imperialism: mass disabling events that
Prohibit freedom of movement, filter people through inadequate medical systems and present any violence and disease that happens to victims as “just something that happens!”

So when Gavin Newsom and democrats reinvent the systems of institutionalization that has historically
Read 5 tweets

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