April 14: Celebrating the ADA
Disability rights activist Lydia Brown to speak at Bayard Sharp Hall
8:40 a.m., April 4, 2016--The University of Delaware will host a presentation by Lydia Brown, a disability rights activist, in celebration of the Americans with Disabilities Act at 4 p.m., Thursday, April 14, in Bayard Sharp Hall.
Brown will speak on the topic “Tear Down These Walls: Demand Disability Justice as/in Liberation.”
Events Stories
June 5: Blue Hen 5K
June 6-9: Food and culture series
The event, which also will include the presentation of the Mary Custis Straughn Award and the Kevin Miner Scholarship Award, is free and open to the public. RSVP online or by writing to vpd@udel.edu.
Brown writes that, “From the cellblock to the psych ward, from the school seclusion room to the home, queer, trans, asexual, and disabled people have a shared history of reproductive surveillance and control as well as medical and psychiatric violence. Pathologization of queer, asexual, and trans identities, bodies, and experiences depends on ableism. Our bodies/ minds are constantly held to the arbitrary standards of the imagined normal. When disability is almost always considered pathology, everything that we who are disabled do is used as a weapon against us.
“The ways that we naturally move, communicate, think, and learn are treated as evidence that there is something wrong with us. By merely shifting (instead of upending) cultural values about what kinds of bodies and minds are valuable and desirable (or worthy of desire), queer, trans and asexual spaces are not exempt from ableism. In response to the political, legal, social, and cultural realities that cause or contribute to rampant violence in the lives of disabled queer, asexual, and trans folks, we have begun to create new ways of doing or being community. We strive toward a vision of queer and trans liberation deeply committed to disability justice through movements where radical access is the norm and disabled people are integral, valued parts of our movements, our communities, and our homes.”
For Brown's biography, click here.
Those who attend are asked to accommodate guests who are chemically sensitive to fragrances and other scented products by refraining from wearing perfume, after shave, scented hand lotion, fragranced hair products, and or similar products to this event.
ASL Interpreters will be present at the event. Those who require any additional disability-related accommodations should contact UD Disability Support Services at 302-831-4643 prior to the event.