Mia Mingus and Stacey Milbern are two queer disabled diasporic Korean women of color in the process moving from the South to the Bay to create home and community with each other.
This tumblr documents their journey. For more info about Mia, visit her blog at driving home from detroit
Dear Mia,
This post is not a letter, but I wanted to share it because it speaks to what I am dreaming that we can build together, with each other, and community:
Riding through West Virginia’s lavender mountains with Janelle Monae on the stereo, I am singing Tightrope at the top of my lungs. I do not usually let others see me sing or dance around in my wheelchair, but today there is no need to worry about looking dorky… everyone in the van has already spent the last eight days wiping smoothie off of each other, holding on through panic attacks, whispering the jokes missed because they relied on visual cues, and catching each other in our falls. There is nothing left to hide because we’ve already seen all the embarrassing crip parts of each other and at least for me, the solidarity and love we’ve extended to each other in our caretaking and access work creates a safety where I feel free. We crank up Monae and play tightrope like ten more times, dancing home all through the mountains.
Mia is driving the van. I am sitting next to her in the front seat with our two friends sitting in behind us and another friend driving the car in front of us. We are all leaving the Allied Media Conference and Social Forum after having spent the past week doing disability justice work with twenty or so other disabled folks and able-bodied allies. In the spirit of Detroit, we’ve infused caretaking and intentional collective access work into the week. This not only means doing things like reading a print document outloud or pushing a wheelchair but also means questions like:
- “how can I support you in navigating (and resisting - if that’s what you want) gender-restrictive bathrooms at the Social Forum?”,
- “how can we make this space kid-inclusive so the radical mamas crew can join us?”,
- “how can I support you in this moment of being triggered by violence?” or
- “who in the group has a credit card that they can front for the group to get food?”
I knew doing collective access work would be the most strategic way for us to navigate these conference spaces together, but I did not realize how much doing this work would cultivate community. It feels like I stumbled my way into beloved community, into this space where I can dance and sing off key. Collective access work translated into creating a space where no one got left behind, a space where if a person – including the group as a whole — did do wrong by someone, we’d be committed to addressing it and learning from it, instead of shrinking away.
I keep thinking back to the US Social Forum: what it meant when we all climbed out of this van in the rain — no one sure where Mia or I could find the wheelchair ramp – and no one scurrying away. We always move together.
Love,
Stacey
