Season 1, Episode 14 — 10 November 2016 About this episode We talk with Alice Wong and Andrew Pulrang about their numerous projects, most importantly #CripTheVote and the Disability Visibility Project. We discuss the election, the affordances of online collaboration and activism, intersectionality and disability, and the importance of culture, not just politics. Be sure to check out their #WhatsNext post-election #CripTheVote twitter chat on 10 November 2016, starting at 7:00 PM Eastern. Visit the Disability Visibility Project page for the event or the twitter feed for the hashtag to find out more. About the presenters Alice Wong is a sociologist, research consultant, and disability activist based in San Francisco, California. Her areas of interest are accessible healthcare for people with disabilities, Medicaid policies and programs, advocacy-based storytelling, and social media. Currently, she is the Founder and Project Coordinator for the Disability Visibility Project (DVP), a community partnership with StoryCorps and an online community dedicated to recording, amplifying, and sharing disability stories and culture. Partnering with Andrew Pulrang and Gregg Beratan, Alice is a co-partner of an online campaign called #CripTheVote encouraging conversations about disability issues during the 2016 Presidential election. You can find her on Twitter at @SFdirewolf. Andrew Pulrang started working at the North Country Center for Independence, a Center for Independent Living in Plattsburgh, New York while in college, rising to serve as the Executive Director from 1998 until 2012. Seeking to explore disability issues in a different way, Andrew started Disability Thinking. You can find him on twitter at @AndrewPulrang. Donald Taylor is the Membership Manager at TASH and the producer of Amplified. Transcript Announcer: You’re listening to TASH Amplified a podcast that seeks to transform research and experience concerning inclusion and equity for people with disabilities into solutions people can use in their everyday lives. Today we are talking with Alice Wong and Andrew Pulrang about their numerous projects, most importantly #CripTheVote and the Disability Visibility Project. We discuss the election, the affordances of online collaboration and activism, intersectionality and disability, and the importance of culture, not just politics. Concerned about the implications of the election outcome for people with disabilities? Wondering where we go from here? #CripTheVote will be hosting an election discussion as one of their regular twitter chats on Thursday, November 10th 2016, starting at 7:00 PM Eastern. For more on how to participate, search for #CripTheVote on twitter or go to facebook.com/CripTheVote/. Donald Taylor: Alice Wong, tell us about the path that brought you to your current thinking and activism. Alice Wong: Well, I guess, uh, you know, I think it’s always been a gradual process. You know, I grew up, uh, disabled and really started becoming more politicized as a high school and a college student, and a lot of my activism was kind of just, you know, for my individual self, self-advocacy. And then, you know, as I kind of realized that, you know, what I’m doing for myself has an impact on others. So, you know, I got more involved on, uh, you know, campus activities and, you know, just really getting a sense that there’s, you know, broader issues and there’s a larger disability community outside of myself. And the most I connected with that as a young adult. You know, I really started feeling like, wow, you know, we all have power. We all have a voice. So it really kinda, uh, came as a combination, uh, these last two or three years when I started the Disability Visability Project. Donald Taylor: And what, what was your inspiration for the Disability Visibility Project? What, what goals did you set out for yourself and how did you get started in that? Alice Wong: Well, I started early on when, uh, you know, it was like a year before the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act. And as you, you know, very familiar with, uh, a lot of people with the disability community, people were, you know, gearing up, getting ready to, you know, celebrate, you know, really looking forward and looking back and, you know, doing a lot of commemoration of, you know, who we are as a people. And one thing that really bothered me was that there really wasn’t enough disability history out there. And I thought, you know, what are some ways that we could really highlight the full diversity of, you know, uh, our community? And then I went to a Story Corps event in, uh, San Francisco in about 2014. And, you know, story Corps is a national nonprofits that’s an oral history. And they basically did know, wanna celebrate all stories of, and they have, do they have community partnerships all over the country with diverse populations? And I asked them, you know, Hey, have you ever thought of forming a community partnership with people with disabilities? And they were very open to it. And I thought, Hey, I could do this one year project, you know, in the 2014, kind of in a one year campaign to collect stories, uh, and have them available at StoryCorps and have them archived at the Library of Congress, which is the other upside of StoryCorps is that to anybody who participates to has the option of archiving their story. And the idea of hard driving and having a record of our, of our, of our culture and our history at this particular time period was really exciting to me. So it should have been just a one year thing, and it really took off so that now it’s kind of indefinite and, uh, it’s gonna be a ongoing, uh, collection of, you know, oral histories and also that all the community that really celebrates and creates disability stories or culture. Donald Taylor: Andrew Pulrang, you’re embarking on a second phase in your career and in your thinking. Tell us about your first phase and what’s led you to upend everything and start something new. Andrew Pulrang: Well, um, I started out, I mean, I’ve had disabilities all my life. And when I was in high school and really almost all the way through college, um, I kind of had this, the idea that I wasn’t ever gonna do anything in the disability field. Um, I had no real idea of anything. The disability was anything but a sickness or a problem you had, uh, that you dealt with doctors and tried to ignore the rest of the time. Honestly, I really, that was the way I was. And, um, really it was only later in college, I started to get exposed to the idea that there was some kind of a matchup between disability as an experience and politics, which happened to also be a big interest of mine. Um, you know, I was a pretty liberal left wing kind of guy, not radical, but into politics. Um, and I found that fascinating, but it was, it wasn’t til Wai that I realized that the two could actually go together in, in a interesting way. And so, um, from there I kind of, I kept, I went to graduate school, but then when that was all done, I, I ended up going to, uh, working at an independent living center in my hometown that was just starting up. And I worked there a number of years and ended up becoming the executive director and continued on that for a bunch of years. And pretty soon there was, you know, like 20 or 20 plus years later was still doing it and enjoying it and, and, you know, having a good time with it and doing good work. But I kind of felt like I had done enough at, at one place for a while. Um, various other factors came in, into play that made it a good time to, to go. There was a some good people there that could take over, and I wanted to explore other aspects of disability work. And really just all I really had in mind was blogging and, uh, doing kind of website stuff, uh, for a time and then seeing what else transpired. And, I mean, and about a year or two after that is when I, well, early on I discovered the Disability Visibility Project. That was one of the first cool websites that I found when I started really digging in and then got to know, uh, Alice and Greg Baran from blogging and doing social media. Uh, and that led to #CripTheVote, which is, which is they say is not something I did not set out initially to say, oh, I want to do like, big time activism, uh, on any sort of scale. I was really, the first blogging stuff that I did was very introspective and on, on my site is called Disability Thinking. And that was literally what I was interested in, is digging into what does it all mean, um, and then getting a little bit social with other disabled writers about what they were thinking about. Um, but it was really great to get involved with #CripTheVote because it also got me back into the political part of things. Alice Wong: Yeah. And I also felt like to activist as well, mean, there are a lot of people who, uh, you know, I think in previous generations, you know, are just, you know, full time activist, you know, like, you know, doing the right actions, working at the non-profit world. That really wasn’t my, uh, upbringing either, basically, uh, researcher at a university did. I’ve always, uh, considered doing a lot of my research as part of like, you know, a compliment to the kinda activist I’m doing, getting, uh, uh, getting research to the, as of activists to, to use this information to forward their, their accuracy. But yeah, I kind of fell into it later in life as well. Donald Taylor: What led you, the two of you and your, I guess, third, um, partner Greg Baran to find some sort of, uh, commonality and to what led to your collaboration? Alice Wong: Well, I guess, uh, the three of us were all friends already on Twitter and Facebook, and I think that says a lot about social media. You know, we’re all kind of doing our own thing, and yet we found each other and we really, I really feel connected to this larger community