Another parallel: park rangers play a role in the resistance.
19.03.2025 11:34
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Another parallel: park rangers play a role in the resistance.
Except in the show they were too incompetent to do any real damage. In the actual world, they’re incompetent and extremely effective.
“Oppressive social structures can have harmful effects just by being allowed to operate as usual, without any bad intentions from any individual actors, or indeed without there being individual actors at all.”
Emerick and Yap, Not Giving Up on People, 3.
“Every day offers every one of us little invitations for resistance…. So how can you—how will you—lessen suffering where you are?”
Hayes and Kaba, Let This Radicalize You, 228-229.
“We will wage acts of care, and that’s how we navigate loss and create hope… We will wage this act in care in defiance of the state.”
Juliana Pino, quoted in “Let This Radicalize You” 170.
“I am continually impressed by how we find ways to keep each other alive when the state is fucked, and community can be fucked and inadequate too.”
(Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, 63)
Help keep those around you alive; help them thrive.
"Maybe sometimes it's not just OK but /good/ to be sad. Because maybe what matters most isn't feeling a certain way but being rightly attuned to the world."
(Volf, Croasmun, and McAnnally-Linz; Life Worth Living, 59)
It should be clear that the Trump administration has no interest in protecting disabled people. (Granted, it should have been clear back in 2015!)
In addition to the ADA and IDEA, you know what else is federal DEIA legislation? The Civil Rights Act. And do folks remember one of the first steps Reagan took to trying to undermine the CRA? Going after section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, whose language was modeled on the CRA.
“We believe in caring for each other as a form of cultural rebellion.”
Hayes and Kaba, Let This Radicalize You 59.
All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.
One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion.
The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for, someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling shots.
At that point, something will crack.
Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
[M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported.
Rorty in 1998 (I know this went around in 2016/2017, but perhaps some folks that didn't receive it then will receive it now):
"A person can provide care for another's moral well-being by challenging them to be morally better through criticism. This is because being well is not just about feeling better. It is about being and doing better." (Myisha Cherry, "Solidarity Care" 9-10).
Posted a pre-print of my forthcoming article on religious freedom and disability discrimination on my website. If interested, there's a link below.
(I also added some other recent things, including my review of Bignon's book on disability justice.)
public-platform.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/u...
"For she too was a steward, she too was a bearer.... Writing is a powerful tool of politics."
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message
May we all be stewards and bearers in our communities.
My colleague Kevin Corcoran is hosting a conference on AI here at Calvin in April, including this panel which will be live-streamed.
My Cambridge Element is now available as a free pdf for the next few weeks.
www.cambridge.org/core/element...
My review of Jessica Begon’s Disability Through the Lens of Justice has just been published in Ethics.
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
One of the best parts of a conference, especially one in an adjacent field, is the opportunity to make others aware of great scholarly work that would help their projects (and just happens to be written by lovely people who are your friends).
Amplify people’s good work.