No One Left Behind: Disability Justice Means Disaster Preparedness
UPRISE Collective is an Advancing Disability Justice grantee.
Everyone who works at the nonprofit UPRISE Collective is Black, Indigenous or a person of color, and most are queer and/or transgender and/or disabled too. Stephanie Roberson, MSW and Brianna C. Bragg, MSW founded Uprise Collective five years ago to open spaces and provide support for people with targeted identities to engage in social uplift within their own communities. They recognized the harm many nonprofits cause when they swoop into communities the staff and board members don’t belong to and impose their vision of “help” on community members.
Dr. S. Etawi O’Byrne, DAOM, LAc, a multiracial Indigenous womxn who is chronically ill, disabled and medically augmented, and has lived experience in the houseless community, joined UPRISE Collective as their Disability Justice Community Coordinator in 2021. Etawi knows firsthand how it feels to be disabled and houseless in the midst of a disaster. Despite doing everything she thought she was supposed to do to succeed, working hard, and getting a doctorate, ableist systems resulted in Etawi living out of her van during the Pacific Northwest’s horrific heat wave in June 2021. She knows what it is like to get sidelined, to fear for her life, and she knows that true disaster preparedness requires disability justice.
More information about this event below. (Postponed to June 20, 2023.)
UPRISE Collective is planning a disaster preparedness event for June 1. Titled “No One Left Behind: Disaster Preparedness Mean Disability Justice,” the event invites five disabled community members to share disaster preparedness skills. For example, one presenter plans to share how to do laundry when the power goes out. Another plans to demonstrate how to seal windows to protect indoor air quality. Ableist systems have forced disabled people, especially BIPOC queer and trans disabled people, to fend for themselves in disaster situations, and disabled community members have critical survival skills to share in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate catastrophe.
Etawi recognizes how overwhelming it is to live within racist, colonialist, ableist systems. Disability benefit programs are set up to keep disabled people poor, mandating that disabled people must have a maximum of $2000 in their bank account, or they no longer qualify for assistance. Heat waves, wildfire smoke, and other natural and manmade disasters threaten disabled people’s lives. And yet, she’s also excited about disability justice and the work of UPRISE Collective.
Etawi wants us all to know: Social justice in general, and disability justice in particular, need all of us to do our small part. It’s easy to get bogged down and discouraged, but we all need everyone doing what they can do, and it all adds up and it matters. That might mean working on disaster preparedness, or cooking meals and leaving them in free fridges, or clearing sidewalks to ensure they’re barrier free for people using mobility aids. It’s all important and necessary.
You can learn more about UPRISE Collective on their website. You can also follow them on Facebook and Instagram.
You’re invited! No One Left Behind: Disability Justice Means Disaster Preparedness virtual event
Disabled folks know how to survive when disaster strikes. Come learn from Disabled community members as they share their practical skills on emergency preparedness and planning.
When: June 20, 2023, 5:30-7:00pm PST
Where: Zoom, Meeting ID: 881 3232 2977
No registration required. Event will be recorded.
Funded by Northwest Health Foundation’s Advancing Disability Justice grant.
Questions? Email etawi@theuprisecollective.org.