Jane Addams Hull-House Museum has partnered with the UIC Disability Cultural Center to continue celebrating activism. Join us for Dialogue: Disability and Access in Movement Building.
Dialogue: Disability and Access in Movement Building is a panel discussion facilitated by Queer and Trans activists and artists of color with disabilities. The panelists share honest takes on their real-life experiences in navigating organizing spaces in relation to disability and access, as well as the creative practices they have developed to address those issues.
Panelist Bios:
Michelle Zacarias
Michelle Zacarias is an award-winning queer, disabled, Latina writer. Born and raised in Chicago, Michelle currently resides in Berkeley, California. For nearly half a decade she has reported on social justice issues and spoken extensively on accessibility in movement spaces. She has previously been published by Teen Vogue, The Triibe, Latina Mag, People’s World, and others. In 2017 she was awarded the Saul Miller Excellence in Journalism Award for her coverage of national organizing movements. Most recently, she was recognized by Chicago's 2020 LGBT Hall of Fame for her work with Brave Space Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to servicing Chicago's south and west side LGBTQIA+ communities. Michelle holds a B.A. in Philosophy and English from the Univ. of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
Vita Eya Cleveland
Born and raised in Cleveland, OH, Vita E. Cleveland (they/she) has come to understand radical change as the difficult, yet important practice of learning, unlearning, and healing in order to grow. They carry this as a constant inside and outside effort, seeking to embody the mantras of Marsha P. Johnson and Nina Simone: living with soul, paying it no mind, and using art to reflect the times. All of these aspects are lived through her identities as a Black, Trans, Non-Binary, Disabled Femme. Vita now finds themself at home in Chicago, IL, and has added various organizing and educational experience to her passion of reflecting and challenging the times. This has included roles as a youth mentor, arts educator, activist, advocate, administrator, and performing artist. Her work in Chicago has led to time as a core member of the city’s BLM Chapter, a founding member of the BTGNC Collective, collaborations with For The People (FTP) Artist’s Collective, and a role as a Trans medical advocacy collaborator and educator with Upswing Advocates. As an artist, Vita E. has been adding new works of poetry, music, social analysis, and their own lived stories through social media, as her self titled YouTube and Facebook page, “Vita E.”
Noah Ohashi
Born and raised in Japan with developmental disability, Noah gained physical disabilities as a teenager. As a result, he lived in multiple residential settings. At 21, he escaped from the institution and moved to the south side of Japan where people with disabilities could live interdependently. Since then, he has worked for disability rights and social justice with multiple organizations. In 2018, he moved to Chicago to pursue an academic career and has been involved with multiple organizations in Chicagoland. Currently, Noah is serving as a president of Connecting Dots International and Co-coordinator of Chicago ADAPT.
Bria Royal
Bria Royal is a multidisciplinary artist who considers their animation, comics, paintings, and zines to be the result of a radical healing process that they hope others will benefit from seeing unfold, and an attempt to construct intersectionally black and indigenous mythologies for ourselves and our future liberated descendants. Much of their work centralizes black and brown imaginations of womxnhood, femininity, and gender fluidity through a lens of eco-feminism, Afro-futurism, and contemporary mythology.
Bria is a 2016 graduate of Northwestern University, where they studied Communications, Film, and Psychology. Alongside the arts, bria often facilitates workshops around themes of contemporary mythological storytelling, trauma-informed media journalism, transformative justice imagination, and issues related to mental health in activist spaces. Other special interests include skateboarding, wildlife refuge, and astrophysics.
Moderator
Terri Lynne Hudson
Terri Lynne Hudson is a queer black disabled actor and performance artist based in Chicago. She is a disability access advocate, particularly in the performing arts. She has most recently appeared playing multiple characters in the Exquisite Corpse Playwriting Project's Inward and Outward, Artist Development Workshop's Sketchtopia, and Hot Closet Studios' remotely filmed feature The Last Nice Day. She is also a featured reader for the nonprofit Fun 4 the Disabled's children's book read-along series. She is a graduate of the University of Chicago. Terri was also featured in OTV - Open Television’s “Symbiotic,” a web series that explores two disabled women as they try to navigate adult lives after impulsively moving in together. The full series can be found at: https://www.weareo.tv/originals/symbiotic
Facilitator
Euree Kim
Euree Kim (They/them) is a disability justice activist, abolitionist, and artist based in Chicago. They is a co-founder for project Alternatives to Calling the Police During Mental Health Crises, a grass root project to address state violence on people with disabilities and build community-based systems of support. Euree received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Master degree in Public Policy and Human Rights at Adler University. Euree is currently a fellow at Rad Lab + Outside the Walls program from the ThreeWalls Foundation.
Through their practice, Euree hopes to investigate by which systems disabilities are produced and how they further enforce the disenfranchisement of those who gained disablement. They has learned from working with various communities that collective access entails the process of recognizing the disparity in our differing experiences, language, and histories, and brainstorming the variant ways of imagining and exploring access to abolish the root causes that are disabling us as a whole.
ASL Interpretation and Captioning Provided. For other access requests, contact dcc@uic.edu or 312-355-7050.
Watch on Youtube: go.uic.edu/DialogueDAMB
Sponsored by UIC Disability Cultural Center with co-sponsorship from the Jane Addams Hull House and Gender and Sexuality Center
On October 28, Work-in-Progress: Disability and Access in Movement Building will continue as a companion workshop to this dialogue. For more information and RSVP information visit: https://dcc.uic.edu/events/work-in-progress-disability-and-access-in-movement-building/
Learn more about Chicago’s legacy of queer- and BIPOC-led activism in True Peace: the Presence of Justice.
