This piece was featured first on Mar 26 for One Good Thing, a weekly newsletter brought to you by Alexis Madrigal about his take on Bay Area art, culture & nature. Subscribe today.
Many leaders of the disability justice community gathered yesterday to celebrate the life of Alice Wong, who passed away late last year. Wong founded the Disability Visibility Project and spearheaded many other efforts to make cultural change in the way that our world hears, sees, and engages with disabled people. She won a MacArthur, among other accolades.
One of the speakers explicitly called out the context of the moment, that in our area and our country, there is a renewed interest in eugenics, talk about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country,” Silicon Valley fascination with “good genes.” The disability justice community stands in opposition to all that talk about which humans are privileged by biology and which humans are not seen as humans at all.
The celebration took place in the Asian Art Museum in two large rooms. There were all kinds of bodies there, people moving in all kinds of ways: On wheels, with canes, with different cadences and rhythms. Some people suffered from long COVID, others from invisible disabilities, and still more were profoundly physically disabled. The speakers told stories about Alice, but they also spoke of what Alice allowed each of them to say about their own lives and experiences.
The reflections were honest and blunt, as Alice could be. But what struck me the most was how with each passing speech, my sense of the width and breadth and depth of the human experience was expanding. There are so many ways to human, if we can find the means to connect into others’ lifeworlds. Of course, we all know we are not alone in society, that we have rich and impossibly complex interdependencies with all the people around us… But the disability justice community has found the language and the practices to actually live into that reality.
The last time I got to speak in person with Alice, she was using a text-to-speech app. We sat in the shady spot at the park where our mutual friend, Yomi Young, was hosting a party. At first, while she typed and we waited for the app to process, I tried to fill the warm air hanging between us. But after a few minutes, I settled into the entirely new rhythm of conversation, something almost like a group chat, as I waited and then she spoke. I spoke, and then she typed. It was a kind of syncopation, and as we swung into it, I realized it was no better or worse, just different. There was more looking at each other, too, our faces opening up new frequencies for conveying information.
I don’t want to say the word soul. Alice Wong and the disability justice world have made their case firmly grounded in biological realities. But I do find there is some thing within me that swells when I hear the truth of someone’s radically different experience of being alive.
I’m so grateful to Alice and her conspirators for what they’ve done for themselves and for all of us. And especially to Yomi, who has become a close friend of our family. In her powerful, powerful speech yesterday, Yomi said that Alice always set the table for those around her. They were invited and they were connected and they were fed. Who, she asked, would set the table now?
Her answer: us, those gathered.
My addendum: Come to the table.
Alexis Madrigal, Co-Host, Forum
My Tipline
- If you want to learn more about Alice Wong, listen to this special Forum we did with her.
- Mary Oliver documentary!
- I just read Love’s Labor by Stephen Grosz. What a profound work.
- Come celebrate the latest issue of Illustoria, the amazing children’s magazine.
- Whoa, an experimental “scent lab” this weekend in Oakland.
My Picks
ARTS
In the 1970s, Bay Area Lesbians Created Their Own Economy
Fascinating writeup of a new exhibition, “Directory of Dreams: Bay Area Lesbian Economies and Radical Care, 1970–1995”
BAY CURIOUS
New Almaden: The Mercury Mine That Built a Boomtown South of San José
Did somebody say quicksilver?!
FORUM
What Can We Know of the War in Iran?
On the information environment of the current war in the Middle East