Thread by @MattMcGorry

Privilege is thinking something is not a big deal bc you are not the most impacted & you can therefore choose to ignore it.

Non-disabled ppl on the left are absolutely silent about the continuing erosion COVID protections.

Where is the allyship?

Many disabled & high risk people are literally risking their lives to even access healthcare bc no one is masking or testing.

People are losing their jobs and livelihoods either to avoid COVID or bc they’ve been further disabled by it.

The left seemingly does not give a fuck.

As with any system of oppression, even those who are not directly in the crosshairs are harmed.

They may be spared the worst of it, but the comfort and illusion of safety creates the perfect wedge of solidarity.

This allows the system to keep functioning as is.

BIPOC are most harmed by systems of white supremacy, but even white people are getting more police, prisons, & wars instead of healthcare, education, affordable housing, etc.

Likewise, men are traumatized & harmed under patriarchy.

Climate change is impacting the Global South (mostly Black and Brown people) first and hardest.

But it’s still coming for the Global North, and we would likely escalate more aggressively here if it was coming for “us” first.

Likewise, the govt got away with pretending COVID was “over” bc non-disabled people thought that *they* were ok.

But enough repeat SARS infections *will* impact your health & ability, whomever you are.

Again, resting on our privilege harms those most impacted.

But it still leaves in place the systems that cause material harm to nearly all of us.

Collective liberation is not just morally correct, it is actually practical.

Solidarity is the only way to get the world we all deserve.

To round it out, doing COVID mitigation *only* while in the presence of your disabled/high risk friend(s) is not allyship.

If we, as white people, are only anti-racist around BIPOC friends, and go with the status quo at all other times, this is not allyship.

Not *actively* doing harm to one person based on their marginalized identity is bare minimum human decency.

Being an ally (or even a friend) to someone who is marginalized where we hold privilege means working to dismantle the systems that oppress them.

There’s a reason why so many BIPOC folx don’t talk to their white friends about racism, why many women & other gender-marginalized people don’t talk to cis men about sexism.

It’s the same reason disabled folx don’t feel safe to talk to non-disabled people about ableism.

Conversations about COVID mitigations are conversations about ableism & access.

If you don’t see it that way, that’s bc you ate up the “you-do-you” ableist bullshit.

NGL, I did too for far too long.

But the least we can do is call it what it is.

This convo will likely be easy to ignore bc most non-disabled people don’t prioritize learning from disabled activists (by this point I hope you can guess why).

And bc disabled people are some of the most marginalized in class and cultural power (again, guess why).

Those of us who hold privilege too often wait for things to get horrifying before even *starting* to learn from marginalized communities.

See men ignoring sexism before #MeToo.

White people ignoring racism before 2020.

The U.S. ignoring P@lestin3 before 40,000 are killed.

But waiting to be *forced* to confront these issues is not the way.

That is leaving the burden on oppressed communities to do all of the work, while they also have to try and survive the systems.

As with any of these systems, if we can’t see how we’ve internalized them and how we perpetuate them, then the work has yet to begin.

Grateful to be learning from

@Imani_Barbarin

Alice Wong ( @SFdirewolf ) (whose new book “Disability Intimacy” is out now)

Leah Lakshmi-Piepzna Samarahina @thellpsx (“Care Work” & “The Future Is Disabled” are must reads)

@julia_doubleday ‘s articles on COVID

💜💜💜