resting up collective for a FREE PALESTINE
Disabled-friendly resources and introducing resting up reads
It’s been almost 8 months since the genocide escalated in Palestine, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians and seen a further 12,000 people lost and presumed dead. We’ve been thinking about disability solidarity and actions we can take. The bulk of this newsletter is a signpost to resources we’ve found useful and a place to express our solidarity with and dream of a free Palestine. Then we’ll move on to updates and resting up reads.
![[#ImageDescription: A Black woman in an orange jumpsuit in a wheelchair holding hands with a Palestinian woman in a pale jilbāb. There are two grey walls, one has a window showing flames. The text above and between them reads: DISABILITY JUSTICE means resisting together from solitary cells to open-air prisons TO EXIST IS TO RESIST.]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9284523e-7e41-4db2-ac30-7113dd03a34f_494x369.png "[#ImageDescription: A Black woman in an orange jumpsuit in a wheelchair holding hands with a Palestinian woman in a pale jilbāb. There are two grey walls, one has a window showing flames. The text above and between them reads: DISABILITY JUSTICE means resisting together from solitary cells to open-air prisons TO EXIST IS TO RESIST.]")
[Image description: A cartoon of a Black woman in an orange jumpsuit in a wheelchair holding hands with a Palestinian woman in a pale jilbāb. There are two grey walls, one has a window showing flames. The text above and between them reads: disability justice means resisting together from solitary cells to open-air prisons. To exist is to resist.]
With Palestine, Sudan, DR Congo, Yemen, and other global conflicts held in our minds, we’re standing with disabled comrades across the world who are compiling resources and guides to protesting while disabled. While crips can’t always make it to the streets, sharing and engaging online is just one way to engage from your resting place. You can also follow Disabled People for a Free Palestine on Instagram and check out their list of resources, which includes actions to take from home.
UK disability charity Scope found disabled households, on average, need at least £975 a month to have the same quality of living as non-disabled households, with that figure rising under current inflation to £1,122. We raise this because we know disabled comrades can’t always make financial contributions, but reading, learning, and having conversations, are all active forms of solidarity.
As the below resources state, disability justice and global liberation have always been inherently linked. Here are some (mostly crip) resources we’ve read recently:
“I’m going to say it again for the people in the back: Disability justice has always been about Palestinian liberation. Period.”
— Palestine is Disabled by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samaransinha (text) and video made by @streetsoundsystem.
“In the spirit of many disability justice crowdfunds, like Stacey Park Milbern’s collective fundraiser to buy the Disability Justice Culture Club in 2019, we are organizing this disabled (and ally) crowdfund to buy a shit ton of eSims.” — Crips for eSims for Gaza and a donation link here.
We’d also encourage you to sign the open letter to the international disability rights community as an expression of solidarity.
The Revolution Will be From Bed — A great graphic from @cripthegig, who has also compiled a Linktree on solidarity actions, including free Palestinian films, petitions for a ceasefire for people in the US/UK/and internationally, and information about BDS. (We also have some overlapping Practical Tips for Disabled Protestors with a lot of communal knowledge in the comments.)
“Of the thousands wounded from this current assault, many will be permanently disabled in a place where the basic necessities of daily life are stopped at the border, and basic medicine – much less adequate medical care, physical therapy, and adaptive technology – is beyond reach.” — A 2014 statement from SINS Invalid.
“Disability is spatially concentrated in the refugee camps and in Gaza because of the violence of the occupation, and there is a “layering” of disablement, especially in Gaza, as the numbers of disabled people increase with every act of warfare on an already overburdened infrastructure.” — A 2021 statement from Abolition and Disability Justice.
“The poem not only operates to embody public revelation, it can reorient us towards the reality of this moment, fizzing our consciousnesses into what we have been refusing to see.” — Allowing Our Hearts To Break: Poetry, Our Embodied Method of Resistance by Sanah Ahsan
resting up reads
The second part of this newsletter is a general update. Working at our custom gentle pace, resting up has a few exciting projects in the works and we’re busy organising from our resting places. We’ve recently launched 2024’s Postcards from Flaresville. Sign up for the project and join our slow mail chain of care!
![[Image description: a white double bed with the duvet crumpled in the right-hand corner on a blue sky background. The RUC pillow logo is overlaid over two pillows. Below READ is capitalised in red. Beneath that is a pale green outline of an open book.]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3cfb2e14-2752-4b22-8bfb-3ee8b79107e3_1080x1080.jpeg "[Image description: a white double bed with the duvet crumpled in the right-hand corner on a blue sky background. The RUC pillow logo is overlaid over two pillows. Below READ is capitalised in red. Beneath that is a pale green outline of an open book.]")
[Image description: a white double bed with the duvet crumpled in the right-hand corner on a blue sky background. The RUC pillow logo is overlaid over two pillows. Below, read is capitalised in red. Beneath that is a pale green outline of an open book.]
Outside of taking action from home, we’re reading. Living at the whims of our bodyminds makes doing any one thing consistently a challenge. While our to-be-read stack continually increases, we relish books that find us at the right moment. Between updates and opportunities to get involved, we’ll be sending snippets of resting up collective reads. These short reviews are from our reading pile of works that explore issues central to disability, crip time, and the body – often with accompanying intersectional perspectives.
Our first two books for resting up collective reads are Through an Addict’s Looking-Glass by Waithera Sebatindira and Lean on Me: A Politics of Radical Care by Lynne Segal. With thanks to Hajar Press and Verso for sending us review copies.
Through an Addict’s Looking-Glass by Waithera Sebatindira
Sebatindira’s thinking-out-loud fragments ask what it means to live in a disabled body under capitalism. They use addiction as an embodied standpoint to reconceive crip time, or ‘it’s-not-time’, to show the slipperiness of memory and recovery, but also to challenge and expand leftist thinking from a collective addict epistemology.
Deeply personal and generous in its offerings, Through an Addict’s Looking-Glass is honest about the struggle of sobriety. It portrays recovery as a return, the ebb and flow of the tide, and a distinctly non-linear experience. The text highlights a welcome shift in seeing addicts as patients, deserving of holistic healthcare. Sebatindira highlights the failures of the medical model of healthcare, drawing lines of solidarity between its treatment of women, refugees, and asylum seekers, with the latter two groups being ‘more likely to be portrayed as drains on the healthcare system than as patients and who face the risk of meeting a border instead of a carer when they seek medical attention’. There’s much we could say about the expansive thinking behind this title, but we’ll leave you with this quote:
The possibility that we have yet to formulate the most ground-breaking ideas for how to organise society so that disabled people have the greatest access to love and autonomy is one I find deeply exciting.
(Hajar Press is an independent political publishing house run by and for people of colour. You can support them by visiting their website and browsing their transformative titles.)
Lean on Me: A Politics of Radical Care by Lynne Segal
In this hybrid memoir and political commentary, Australian feminist thinker Lynne Segal reflects on major social issues facing her audience today, including women’s rights, disability, ageing, and climate change. The throughline in each section makes a convincing case for upending care structures as we know them, in favour of interdependent webs of dependency.
Segal touches upon Western society’s treatment of the chronically ill, disabled, and elderly, particularly in the wake of Covid-19, which underpins a lot of the early commentary. She continues that political movements and interpersonal relationships should be powered by ‘good caring practices’ — which extend beyond our immediate contexts to citizens worldwide.
Her memories of communal living whilst raising a child and the realities facing certain women in the 1970s are interesting to read. While these reflections are interspersed with critique, the analysis can feel light at times — omitting a detailed commentary on Black women’s contributions to and experiences of feminist praxis. The analysis does acknowledge more intersectional thinkers as the book continues, albeit not consistently. Lean on Me is a scattered read, with the last two chapters (Repairing the Planet and Caring Futures) offering more useful food for thought.
UK followers — we have a free copy of Lean on Me. First come, first served! Just drop us an email at restingupcollective@gmail.com to claim it.
These reviews is part of resting up collective reads, in which we share old and new texts that centre disability, crip time, and the body. If there’s a crip text you’d recommend, comment below or message us on Instagram.