Em-URGE-ing Voices

Posts Tagged: inclusivity

7 Ways to Make Your Activism More Inclusive of Activists with Disabilities

In April, I broke my ankle which severely limited my normal activity and opened my eyes to how ableist the world is. That includes activist spaces. Yes—even yours. It was a temporary disability, but I also was diagnosed with a long term (invisible) disability two years ago. I’ve also had a chronic disease since childhood that sometimes makes activists and social spaces inaccessible to me.  I am a chapter leader for URGE ATL, the Atlanta City Activist Network for URGE and participate in reproductive justice work with other organizations in Atlanta. This means I have experienced what people have done right by disabled people and what they can improve on. So, here is a list of ways folks can make their activist spaces more inclusive of disabled activists. 1. Recognize that… Read more »

Creating Change: Affirming, Empowering, Inspiring

This weekend, I attended the Creating Change conference in Denver, hosted by the National LGBTQ Task Force. There, along with 4,000 other individuals, I spent four days discussing the issues that face queer people in our everyday lives. Prior to this weekend, I had never attended such a large conference, much less one on LGBTQ+ issues. I was constantly surprised, and overjoyed, to see how many people attended the events and how diverse these people were. To me, this was the best part of Creating Change. As a young person, I often feel like I, and my effort in the fight for LGBTQ+ equality, don’t matter. As a queer person, I feel like my identity is not real and recognized by the majority of people. All of that was different… Read more »