This event will be live streamed on the Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1017503768700117/
The roundtable discussion convenes various practitioners, scholars, and organizers from different backgrounds who have dedicated to disability and transformative justice movements for many years. The panelists will have critical conversations around abolition and disability justice – the connectedness, practices, and solidarity strategies. Q&A session will be followed after the discussion. The livestream link will be posted on the day of the event.
Accessibility
Captioning and ASL interpretation provided. The conversation will be accessible for later view and converted into other digital media format for broader sharing.
Panelists
Andrea Ritchie
Andrea J. Ritchie is the author of Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, and co-author of Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women and of Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States. She is a Black lesbian immigrant who has been documenting, organizing, litigating, advocating and agitating around policing and criminalization of women and LGBTQ people of color for over two decades. Ritchie is currently appointed as a Researcher-in-Residence in Barnard Center for Research on Women’s Social Justice Institute. To learn more about Ritchie’s work, visit her website here: https://www.andreajritchie.com/
Elliott Fukui
Elliott Fukui He/Him, has been an organizer, trainer and facilitator for almost 20 years. He has had the privilege of living and organizing across the country and is currently based in Ohlone Territory/The Bay Area. He comes to this work as a Mad Queer and Trans Nikkei Hafu Psych Survivor. He has primarily worked in Queer and Trans Black, Indigenous and People of Color communities, working to support folks in community security strategies, emotional wellness and safety planning, and inclusive campaign and solidarity work. He loves building curricula, radical cartographies, and movement history. To learn more about his work, visit his website here: madqueer.org.
Yolo Akili Robinson
Yolo Akili Robinson is a writer, yoga teacher and the Executive Director and founder of BEAM. For over 15 years, Yolo has been on the forefront of progressive wellness work. At the core of Yolo’s work is a commitment to wellness informed by social justice. His interests are the practical embodiment of theory into systems and practices that help heal, transform and support Black communities. He makes his home in Los Angeles, California. Yolo’s full bio is accessible here: https://www.beam.community/yoloakili
Moderator
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer disabled nonbinary femme writer, freedom dreamer and disability and transformative justice movement worker of Burgher/Tamil Sri Lankan, Irish and Roma ascent. She is the Lambda Award winning author or co-editor of (with Ejeris Dixon) Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement, Tonguebreaker, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, Bridge of Flowers, Bodymap, Dirty River, The Revolution Starts At Home (coedited with Ching-In Chen and Jai Dulani),and more. A lead artist with Sins Invalid since 2009, they are on the organizing team for the Disability and Intersectionality Summit and the 2020 winner of the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Jean Cordova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction.
Co-host/sponsors
Abolition Disability Justice Collective
Alternatives to Calling the Police During Mental Health Crises
Cat-911
Cripjustice
The Fireweed Collective
NYC Transformative Justice Hub
Project LETS
The Abolition and Disability Justice Coalition 