Guest host Renaldo Fowler joins us this episode, as we talk with Keri Gray, founder of National Alliance of Melanin Disabled Advocates, about her activism and Black Disabled Lives Matter. Then, we turn the focus to Renaldo to talk about the African American Conference on Disabilities.

Links:

Learn more about Keri and her advocacy – https://withkeri.com

African American Conference on Disabilities – https://www.azdisabilitylaw.org/african-american-conference-on-disabilities/

Center for American Progress report on race, disability and policing – https://www.americanprogress.org/article/understanding-policing-black-disabled-bodies/ 

We Can’t Breathe: The Deaf & Disabled Margin of Police Brutality Project – https://ncil.org/resources/we-cant-breathe-the-deaf-disabled-margin-of-police-brutality-project/

Transcript:

Michelle Bishop:

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the PandA Pod. Thank you for joining us today. We’re so excited that all of our listeners are here with us today. I am one of your hosts, Michelle Bishop, the Voter Access and Engagement Manager at the National Disability Rights Network.

Stephanie Flynt:

And I’m Stephanie Flynt, one of your hosts also, Public Policy Analyst with the National Disability Rights Network, and I just want to thank Jack for continuing the PandA Pod despite the last episode that we had.

Michelle Bishop:

And we also have with us, of course, our dedicated producer, Jack Rosen, and again, a special guest host this month. Renaldo, please introduce yourself to the people.

Renaldo Fowler:

Hi. Thank you for inviting me. Hi, my name is Renaldo Fowler. I’m a Senior Staff Advocate with the Arizona Center for Disability Law, which is Arizona’s Protection and Advocacy.

Michelle Bishop:

Thanks, Renaldo. We’re so excited to have you with us. Before we jump into today’s episode, Jack, talk to us. Do we have anything exciting going on in the news, anything from the network?

Jack Rosen:

Yes, Michelle. From the Daily Herald in Utah, their voice, Disability Advocacy Day helps people speak for themselves. Each year a group of disability organizations that include the Utah P&A, the Disability Law Center, the Utah Developmental Disabilities Council, the Utah Parent Center, and Utah Statewide Independent Living Council and USU Institute for Disability Research Policy and Practice sponsor Disability Advocacy Day. This is a day where individuals with disabilities, caregivers, families and providers can go to the Capitol Rotunda and network with agencies to learn about disability topics that will be addressed in the upcoming legislative session.

Stephanie Flynt:

And this is so important not just on the federal level, but like this article demonstrates, it’s so important on the state level. Considering that one in four Americans have disabilities. Of course, different policies do affect us, but also two, it helps us grow as disabled people. It helps us learn self-advocacy skills. It helps us learn how to advocate for ourselves and advocate for others alongside us. So there are so many positives that I cannot express. I’m clearly a huge proponent of advocacy being one of public policy analysts here at NDRN, but I’m of course a huge proponent of self-advocacy. I really do think that that self advocacy really and truly is where it starts, and it really is the heart of advocacy.

Michelle Bishop:

Stephanie, I mean, you do a lot of our public policy work and you do our public policy around voting. I get a little bit of a chance to do some of my own Hill work with Congress, chopping it up about voter access, and I always feel like there’s a big difference between talking to one of us as one of the talking heads for NDRN about an issue versus hearing from actual just regular people with disabilities telling you about how policies impact their lives. I feel like that’s something really different for legislators. I feel like days like this are really important.

Stephanie Flynt:

Yes, absolutely. And thank you so much for bringing that up. So one thing that I tell people a lot of the times when I’ve gone to The Hill with folks, they don’t want to hear us talk. They get to hear us talk all the time. They want to hear from constituents, they want to hear from people that are affected by this, that they represent. I don’t care what level this is. On the federal level, they want to hear from people that they represent. On the state level, they want to hear from people that they represent. On the local level, they want to hear from people that they represent about what’s going on in their communities, and quite frankly, a lot of people have this misconception that legislative officials are more likely to listen to us, and that could not be farther from the truth. They’re going to listen to the people who are actually affected by this. Of course, they may listen to us regarding some of the technical pieces, but really and truly your advocacy matters more than ours in some ways.

Renaldo Fowler:

When I read this article, for years and years working at the P&A I’ve worked a lot around special education, and it’s really interesting when I read this article about self-advocacy skills, that’s one of the issues that I brought up doing my IEP meetings. Often when I would work with students in high school, they would talk about transition planning, employment opportunities, and I was like, “Hey, there’s a piece missing. What about working on advocacy skills? I mean, you got to have advocacy skills if you’re going to go to a job, if you’re going to work on independent living skills.”

So one of the areas that I think is so important that we don’t think about is we think those skills are automatic. A lot of those advocacy skills need to be taught by parents, one of the things that article talked about working with parents and caregivers, but I think one of the crucial parts of this whole self-advocacy thing is working with them when they’re young students in special education because so much of special education parents are making decisions and sometimes I think often there we’re not listening to the actual student and the student wishes, even though they talk about it. So I think that’s one of the areas that really taking a look at building self-advocacy skills need to start really around schools and teaching those skills. Just like you teach math, you teach reading, I think advocacy skills we can really need to be worked on in the school setting. So that’s kind of my take in terms of self-advocacy skills, of building those skills.

Michelle Bishop:

Yes, so important. I agree completely. So, so important. So Jack, what else do we have going on in the network these days?

Jack Rosen:

From E&E News, majority of disabled people never go home after disasters. According to data of released by the Census Bureau recently, people with disabilities are far more likely than anyone else to face major hardship, including displacement from their homes due to a major disaster. For example, 70% of deaf people who were evacuated reported living in unsanitary conditions a month after a disaster. More than 74% of evacuees who were unable to walk reported experiencing a lack of food one month after a disaster. Only 7% of evacuees who were not deaf or hard of hearing were in unsanitary conditions. Our former colleague, Justice Shorter, who was the disaster advisor for the National Disability Rights Network, said, “This is completely in alignment with things we’ve noted over several years now regarding individuals with disabilities and disasters. This should encourage folks to understand that all of the stories, testimony, commentary, that people with disabilities have been giving for years are credible, believable, and it shouldn’t take this to make those stories valid.”

Michelle Bishop:

So not to take away from our amazing colleague, Justice Shorter, who knows more about this than I ever will, but I have done some work that touches on emergency preparedness, and I have to say this is both true and terrifying. I think we take for granted that non-disabled people when they’re evacuated during emergencies, go to stay in shelters temporarily and then eventually get to go home.

People with disabilities are often actually put into settings like nursing homes, which on the surface I think people think make sense because they’re set up to accommodate their care needs in a way that a temporary shelter probably isn’t, but I think a lot of people listening to this podcast know that once you go into a nursing home system, it’s incredibly difficult to get out. And a lot of people are put into long-term care facilities during a disaster who have a home in the community and they never get out, and they never go back to their homes. I just can’t imagine that just one natural disaster happens and your home still exists and it’s there in your life and all your stuff are there, and you just somehow never get to go home, and the fact that this happens to so many people with disabilities and we just don’t ever talk about it, to me, is truly terrifying.

Renaldo Fowler:

One of the things with this article is that when you’re removed from your community, there’s a natural support system that’s there, including their church, their family members, and so when those folks don’t have an opportunity to go back home, a lot of those family members, those communities that they are familiar with, they feel strong with, and also when you’re in that different setting, your dietary needs may not be met at the nursing home. So there’s so many impact that not having someone go back home after a disaster. I mean, just the stress itself from the disaster, now your disassociation from your community and your family and maybe some of your religious practice. So it’s why it’s really important that people go back to their communities with the supports that they need.

Stephanie Flynt:

Yeah, and just to kind of piggyback a little bit off of that, I know at least for me as a disabled person, and obviously this isn’t like an emergency disaster situation or a situation where I’ve been in a nursing home, but I think that for a lot of individuals who aren’t disabled, their first assumption when it comes to disabled people is, “Oh, don’t you have a little friend who can come get you? Oh, don’t you have family members who can come and get you?”

And I think a lot of people think that disabled people just constantly have all of these family supports and friends supports around them, and while some of us do… I mean, for starters, that’s not always the case for everyone, but also too is that those people may not be able to afford to come and get those individuals. So really and truly more needs to be done rather than just assuming that somebody has somebody to bring them home or get them home, like something needs to be done on a state level, or who knows, maybe even a federal level if possible, especially when it comes to these types of disasters in order to get these folks home so that they’re not stranded, for lack of a better word.

Michelle Bishop:

Yeah, I think that it’s one thing if a natural disaster that’s beyond our control is the reason that you lose everything, but if we just don’t bother to set up the system for people with disabilities shouldn’t be the reason that you lose everything, and that’s what really strikes me about this issue. Jack, give us one more story. Please do we have some good news?

Jack Rosen:

We do have some good news. Advocates cheer as Ohio erases the R word in state law. After two years of advocacy from Ohioans with disabilities and dozens of disability aging and victim advocacy organizations, including our friends at the Ohio P&A, Governor DeWine has signed the Mental Health and Disability Terminology Act. The Act changes harmful and derogatory language about people with disabilities that has been written into the Ohio Revised Code. The effort to make these important changes began in January 2021 when 26 organizations sent a letter to all members of the Ohio legislature asking them to take action.

Stephanie Flynt:

Okay, this makes my heart so freaking happy, y’all don’t even know. I’m one of those people, and I know I’m not alone in this, but when I hear somebody say the actual R word, I physically cringe. It literally makes me nauseous, and there’s just a lot of really bad stigma behind that word and a lot of low expectations that are associated with that word. So I applaud Disability Rights Ohio for their work, I applaud the state of Ohio for enacting this legislation and that it is the law of the land over there, and I, for one, encourage other states to follow suit. That’s just amazing.

Michelle Bishop:

Yes. If you saw some of the language that traditionally is in Ohio law, it’s got the R word, but also has idiot, deaf and dumb, lunatics, mental defective, crippled, derangement, and handicapped. Just truly horrifically. I can’t even get on Ohio’s case for this because there are a lot of states that have equally horrific language in their state laws. A lot of which I get are old, but it’s never too late, as we see from Ohio, to change it and to put better language into our laws. Language and naming and labels are really powerful and they send a message to, and then they impact the people that they’re about. So props to Ohio and Disability Rights Ohio for their work on this. What an important change.

Renaldo Fowler:

I agree with you very strongly, Michelle. This is very important. Names do have an impact, and names do have a meaning.

Michelle Bishop:

Well, I think that’s a perfect transition into our topic today. Speaking of names and labels, so many that we use, like criminal and thug, are used to divide, to blame and to justify harm done to people of color, and in recognition of the fact that this is Black History Month, we wanted to confront that and center today’s episode on racial justice, particularly in the disabled community. So we’ll be talking about the intersection of race, disability, policing in America and the Black Disabled Lives Matter movement, a sister movement to Black Lives Matter.

So with that, we’re pleased to introduce you to Keri Gray. Keri is a cancer survivor, entrepreneur, speaker and facilitator. She is the CEO of the Keri Gray Consulting Group where they strive to create professional communities of understanding through disability and racial justice education. She’s also founder of the National Alliance of Melanin Disabled Advocates, which creates space for disabled leaders of color and BIPOC allies to gather, learn, and connect and grow around racial and disability justice. Through her various roles, Keri has recruited approximately 4,000 professionals for over 100 organizations and Fortune 500 companies. She has also designed and managed programs for over 1000 professionals that has helped participants secure competitive employment, identifying transferable skills, build an influential network, and gain notable opportunities. Keri’s work has been featured in Teen Vogue, the New York Times, People Magazine, Time Magazine, PBS News Hour, a personal favorite of mine, and the Diet Coke Campaign hashtag Unlabeled, but we want to talk with Keri today about her work with Black Disabled Lives Matter.

Stephanie Flynt:

Yes, and Keri, thank you so much for taking the time to join us to talk about this very, very important work that you do with Black Disabled Lives Matter. I would love for you to share with our listeners a little bit more about what Black Disabled Lives Matter is and also how it relates to the larger Black Lives Matter movement. I know a lot of us are familiar with the Black Lives Matter movement, but a lot of us might not be as familiar with Black Disabled Lives Matter. So I’d love for you to give us a little bit of background to start.

Keri Gray:

Absolutely. Well, good afternoon to everybody. I’m excited to be here and chat with you today. Thanks for having me. Black Disabled Lives Matter. What I love about it is that the Black Lives Matter movement was founded on an intersectional philosophy, so that means that essentially the folks who came together and said, “We are going to be a part of a larger effort to advocate for Black people,” they made an intentional decision to recognize the diversity of Blackness. And so from the very beginning of the movement, it started as a way where we said, “We are going to talk about, advocate and organize around a wide variety of issues.” So Black Disabled Lives Matter is a part of the entire body, the ecosystem of the Black Lives Matter movement.

One of the biggest ways that I would like to describe the movement is to just share briefly about our experiences together in 2020. I know it’s a rough time to reflect on, just so much, and we went over it, but it’s important. It’s important that we never forget the name George Floyd, the names Breonna Taylor, the countless people who have been murdered by our policing system and just treated in incredibly violent ways. And so in the year of 2020, there was just a historic uprising that occurred where Black people and allies across the country were organizing protests, were getting movements together, were claiming power essentially. And so on June 6th 2020, myself and a incredible, amazing woman named Justice Shorter, two Black disabled women based in the DC area said, “We want to organize our people. We see Black folks, we see everybody coming together to talk about the issues, to push for legislative change, all of these different things. We want to create a space where disabled folks can be a part of this.”

And if you remember, that was incredibly important because in 2020 we were dealing with the aftermaths of George Floyd, all of the things that were occurring, but we were also in the midst of a pandemic, a space in a time where disabled people… It could be nerve-racking to go outside and just… It was a scary time, if you remember. Us thinking about, “Are we going to catch COVID? Are we going to be left vulnerable to the things that are going around?” And so even in the midst of that, the movement of Black Lives Matter was so strong that our community said, “There are some things that you got to be willing to get involved in to make sure progression happens.” So how do we do that in a safe and accessible way? So we organized close to 100 people, Washington, D.C., Black disabled folks, allies, all sorts of people came together, and we marched to the White House and participated in all of the organizing that was going on that day.

And that is an example of what Black Disabled Lives looked like because we wanted to ensure that we had medics out there, we had interpreters out there, we had lawyers, journalists, a comms crew, we had waters, snacks. We had so many people who came together that said, “What do we need to do to ensure that we’re talking about Black people, we’re talking about Black trans life, we’re talking about disabled lives, we’re using ASL, we’re using English?” All of these different things to ensure that our movement is intersectional. So when you talk about the Black Disabled Lives Matter movement, it is part of the body of the Black Lives Matter movement and an opportunity for us to raise awareness and participate in the overall picture of advancing Black people.

Renaldo Fowler:

Can we talk for a moment about the intersection of race and disability, and how policing has habitually harmed and impacted people of color with disabilities?

Keri Gray:

Absolutely. There was a study done by the Center for American Progress, and in that study it found a, quote, 50% of people killed by law enforcement are disabled, and more than half of disabled African Americans have been arrested by the time they turn 28, double the risk in comparison to their white disabled counterparts. So there’s a lot of discussion. If you’re interested in the movement and you’re interested in Black Disabled Lives matter, policing has always been a core component to that, and recognizing a system around our policing in the United States that has been incredibly ineffective, and so when I mentioned this study that was put together by the Center for American Progress, I highly encourage folks to look up the reports that have been written about this.

This was written by a woman named Vilissa Thompson, just incredible research, and it’s showing the deaths of what our community is experiencing it. It’s showing the amount of violence. It’s showing something that should not in any case be considered the norm, but we’re looking at violence, we’re looking at circumstances and situations where a particular group is being treated and overpoliced, Black disabled people. So when we think about what’s happening at the intersection of race and disabilities, a resource that I want to encourage folks to look at is a project that I was able to create in collaboration with a guy named Dustin Gibson, and it’s a project called the We Can’t Breathe Project. You can look it up online. It is called the We Can’t Breathe: Deaf & Disabled Margin of Police Brutality, and essentially what you will find is a toolkit that yourself or yourself and some of your colleagues, your comrades, whoever you get down with in this movement, and you’re able to check out this toolkit and it walks you through understanding what police brutality is.

You end up watching an educational video. And I will give a couple trigger. Again, we’re talking about police brutality, we’re talking about the violence that people are quite literally experiencing on their bodies and the aftermath of what can happen in terms of ending up with PTSD from these types of situations. So it’s a little heavy, so prepare your heart, prepare your spirit for it, but at the same time, it is a useful tool that I encourage to walk through and be able to really understand what’s happening and how you can articulate this experience to others. So when you check out this toolkit, there’s a video that you can watch that takes you through the narrative of five disabled people who also have other intersectional identities. So naming the fact that a part of the reason that our community is experiencing police brutality is because they are disabled and Black, is because they’re disabled and queer, because they’re disabled and a woman, and these things, our identities, come together and for whatever reason invoke a reason for folks to think that they can take advantage of you.

Now, I don’t want to get too deep into that. I ain’t trying to preach nothing, but what I am saying is that you watch this video and it helps you understand what’s happening within the community, helps you understand how it happens because of the intersection of disability and other identities that are going along, and it gives you language, it gives you tools, and it helps you start to be able to see what is our community response to this. How do we be a part of the solution rather just saying, “Oh, that sucks.” We don’t want that type of response. That’s not the movement. The movement calls for us to come together and organize and advocate and be a part of the process. So I want to encourage people to check out that resource, the We Can’t Breath Project: Deaf & Disabled Margin of Police Brutality, and to really get a further way of navigating this conversation.

Renaldo Fowler:

Thank you. Thank you, Keri. One of the things I think is really interesting, Keri, I look at the definition. One of the things I wanted to do was look at the definition of policing, and that was just an interesting concept that I’ve never looked at. What does a word policing mean? So I looked up a definition and it says, “An activity carried out by police officers in order to preserve law and order,” and there’s also a subsection that says, “An action of a person or group in authority in order to ensure fairness and legality in an area of public life.” I think that’s real interesting as you gave that discussion about law enforcement. So we’ll talk a bit more later on about law enforcement today. So I want to move to another topic, is to talk about the disability community is a large and diverse community. How does privilege play a role in the community and in terms of disability and policing?

Keri Gray:

Yes. So privilege. Privilege is important to wrestle with, to acknowledge. Privilege being a thing that if you ignore it, it perpetuates cycles. So a quote that I want to give about privilege theory argues that each individual is embedded in a matrix of categories and context and will be in some ways privileged and in other ways disadvantaged. What I like about this definition is it recognizes that the human experience is complex and it recognizes that in some ways where having privilege means that you have an advantage, and because of our complexity, you can probably also understand what it means to be disadvantaged. People, I think, wrestle with it a bit, but understand that concept. In some ways, I’m good, I’m okay, and in some ways I have a disadvantage. I think there are things that able-bodied folks, in particular, able-bodied people don’t have to think about, i.e. privilege. And so when we’re having this conversation, does privilege play a role in all of this? Definitely.

There’s a couple of areas that stand out. The first one being accessibility. So privilege means that when you go out and about and just enjoy your day, you don’t typically have to think about the infrastructure of places, the tools and the resources of showing up to work every day or whatever the case may be, and will it be accessible to you, and so that has largely been an issue within our community of still having to fight, advocate, navigate is accessibility even a part of the equation? Will I have access to a sign language interpreter to be able to talk to the police? Will I have access to even be able to get into this police car that you’re trying to do? These are literally intangibly still issues that are creating a barrier and conflicts between our communities. Pain management is a privilege. Having to appear able-bodied.

One of the things about the disability community is that our bodies can just start to react beyond our control things. We will start moving, we will start twitching. It is the disabled experience. And what I love about being a part of the disabled community and the movement is that we understand those kind of complexities and know how to just go with the flow because people are people, but when you have a militarized police force, they start to immediately put expectations on how your body should behave, and so if a police officer tells you, “Stop moving,” but you have the type of body that will switch whatever the case may be after he has given you an order, there’s going to be a problem that escalates.

And I’m not mentioning these hypothetically, but again, when you document the history and you see what’s happening, you’re seeing that privilege plays a part in the relationships, the communication, the arrest process, all of these different things. I think of a particular name, Natasha McKenna, a Black woman with mental health disabilities who was institutionalized in Fairfax, Virginia, not too far outside of the DC area, and she just an amazing… If you love Black people, I tell you, she’s beautiful. She’s amazing. And we watch her be institutionalized in a video, and she’s naked and she’s handcuffed by the police and they are, quote, unquote, attempting to transfer for her from this institution to another one. And we watch over the course of not long in this video that she dies in the process naked and handcuffed, and they still can’t do what they supposedly need to do. They still end up killing her.

And I named this, I named this because I believe in Black rage. I believe in the power of being able to say, “That ain’t right and I’m going to do what needs to be done so that there’s real change in our communities and in our systems that are failing us and our people.” So privilege is powerful. I don’t want to make people feel bad for being who they are. You can’t always help it. That’s not the point of, I think, this discussion that we’re having today. I think the point is being able to identify the disparities that are happening, the issues that are occurring and being a part of the solution, and so part of that is definitely identifying and changing our circumstances around privilege.

Michelle Bishop:

Keri, I’m glad Renaldo brought up policing and that you talked a little bit about systems. I was wondering if you could discuss the importance of ensuring that people with disabilities are consistently and appropriately accommodated when interacting with policing systems, and how can we collectively and systemically protect people of color with disabilities from police violence?

Keri Gray:

It is tough. That’s a tough question. I want to look at it two ways. The first way I want to look at it is I want to encourage everyone who’s listening to the podcast and things of that nature to ask a real question around is our policing system working? Ask it and wrestle with it, bang on tables around it, debate with your peers, your comrades. Have the discussion because on one hand, there’s the option of we can make some changes, we can adapt our system to make it better, but on another hand, there are those of you who are in the space who may be more abolitionists and who may just answer that question and say, “Our policing system isn’t working and the solution is something so different than what we currently have. We got to get moving on this alternative practices and processes to policing.” And I don’t want for folks to make it seem like that is leaps and bounds from where we could potentially go because we’ve seen communities and cities practice this.

One of the amazing things that came out of 2020 is that we saw a series of different schools and campuses who started to say, “We are not going to allow policing in our schools anymore.” That’s powerful. I don’t know where people went to school at, but it’s very common to have officers at school for a variety of different reasons, all sorts of things can happen, but that’s another area where people are experiencing disparities in the sense of who gets in handcuffs, who gets suspended, who gets sent to the alternative school, who ends up in juvie, all of these different things, and the disparity is that it’s definitely happening to our students of color and it is happening to our students of color with disabilities for sure.

And so for schools to turn around and say, “You know what? We might need some help. Our schools, our educational system, they need good people to ensure that things go smoothly.” I didn’t go to a soft school, I’ll just say it like that. Where I went, I’m from Longview, Texas, I’m from the South, and I’m not saying we didn’t need some sort of authority, folks who could really get us together, but to say that it’s policing is another answer to that. I’m trying not to go in circles with you here.

Well, all of the that to say, one, I want folks to really consider alternatives, and then two, I think that acknowledging the fact that we are in reality, that policing is a big part of our systems and things thus far, we definitely need to make some philosophical changes on what’s happening. Just the treatment, the lack of people understanding, to your point in terms of accessibility, not even thinking that someone might need an ASL interpreter, American Sign Language, not even thinking that it’s essential that you’re asking about medication needs. All of these things are part of it, and all of them lack a philosophy of disability justice. So I think there’s a couple of routes that folks should take and we need your advocacy, I would say be an active part of the solution.

Renaldo Fowler:

Okay. Thank you, Keri. Now, I’d like to move a little bit in a different direction. Can you share inclusive community-based strategies that does not involve policing as the sole means of safety?

Keri Gray:

Yes. So again, sometimes I wish this was live. I kind of want to ask a question and see what folks are a part of, but a big response to have to that is all about local organizing. We tend to see the big moments in life. So 2020 was such a viral moment, if I could put it like that. All eyes were looking at Louisville, Kentucky, were looking at different places across the country and seeing how united folks were around Black Lives Matter. We saw corporations, we saw representatives, we saw community members. It was a big year. However, we know that what really keeps our community thriving is the continuous engagement investment that we give in our neighbors day after day, and that type of love, that type of protection, advocacy happens when you are involved on a local level and when you are a part of that solution.

So I’m based in the Washington D.C. area, and we have an incredible organization all out here called Harriet’s Dreams, and they have a fellowship where they bring in organizers every year and teach you the fundamentals of how it works, how you can be a part of it. Organizing isn’t easy, y’all. It is profound. It is one of the most powerful, magical experiences that you can be a part of to be united with your fellow comrades, but it ain’t easy. It is about being able to strategically understand what is our goal or objective and how do we get there, and so they’re an example of an organization where they make sure that you have those type of knowledge, that you’re meeting people across the community, that you’re understanding different ways that you can support those, that can be an alternative to efforts such as what happens in our policing. So that’s just one example, but there are so many. So I want to encourage folks when you’re thinking about what is the alternative, it is definitely about getting involved in what’s happening in your community.

It’s about having the relationship with the schools, it’s about having a relationship with the disability programs within your community, and there are even national organizations that have chapters all across the country. If you think of the National Urban League, and you can likely find your local Urban League, you can likely find your local NNACP. So there are options of ways to get into this work, and I think when we’re thinking about community-based strategies, these are the groups that are understanding who their community are and what sort of solutions do you need. Are the solutions about needing more economic empowerment in your community, about needing more food sourcing, about needing more spaces for childcare, mentorship? What does your community need and how can you be a supplier? We have this statement in organizing spaces that says, “We keep us safe,” and so it is a call to action for us to get involved, if you’re not already, but to find a place where you can really be a support to those around you.

Stephanie Flynt:

Yeah, and I love that you brought up getting involved and establishing those partnerships within the community, within the schools, with different organizations, and so I’d love for you to expand a little bit on that. What advice do you have for members of the disability community specifically or for our network of organizations who work in the disability community in terms of getting involved and working towards this justice nationwide?

Keri Gray:

I think I’m thinking of two pieces of advice. The first one, I want to encourage you to find your political home. Where’s the space that loves on you and challenges you? Where’s the space that teaches you about Black queer politics, about Black disability, Black Disabled Lives Matter, about disability justice? Where are the spaces that keep you in the know about what’s happening in your community, that asks you, “What is your perspective on this?” That provides an opportunity for you to get involved, find your political home.

From one recommendation I have, so at the top of this podcast was mentioned that I’m a founder of an educational platform called the NAMD Advocates, the National Alliance of Melanin Disabled Advocates, and we were founded for a reason of really spreading awareness around disability justice from the perspective of people of color. And that’s necessary. It is necessary for us to find each other, people of color with disabilities and to create spaces for each other, to recognize the things that we experience and that we go through. It’s also important for us to recognize the disparities, the lack of leadership opportunities, the lack of executive positions, the amount of violence and discord and all of the things that we experience across industries within the movement, within policing, within the workplace.

All of these things happen. And so by us getting together… So the NAMD Advocates was created for disabled people of color and BIPOC allies to learn, grow, and gather around racial and disability justice. So I want to encourage you to check out our website, see some of the things that we’ve been a part of. I named earlier us convening folks in 2020 around the Black Lives Matter movement. We also host the Annual Leadership Summit. We find different ways for us to educate, inform and equip people with skills and necessary skills and resources to help you be successful in this work. So the NAMD Advocates can be a space for you. You can go to my website, which is withkeri.com. That’s W-I-T-H-K-E-R-I.com, and you’ll see our information across the website.

But the overall piece to this, as I mentioned, is find the space that fits for you, right? NDRN is an incredible network to be a part of. There are so many spaces that are doing incredible work. The first organization where I learned about my politics in terms of Black liberation was an organization called BYP100, Black Youth Project, and it’s there that I really saw the in depth of policing and all of these different things. So the biggest piece that I want to encourage you is to stay involved, to find a way, and to find your political home.

Michelle Bishop:

Keri, this was incredible. Thank you so much just for all of your insights and for those ways for people to plug into the movement and get involved. Everything you’ve shared with us, we will put in the show notes. The folks know where to find that information if they want to learn more, and more importantly, if they want to do more. But thank you so much for joining us today.

Keri Gray:

Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Michelle Bishop:

And for our spotlight story today, we’re shaking it up a little bit. I know you’re used to people with disabilities talking about some of their individual lived experiences, but we couldn’t resist the opportunity since we have Renaldo here with us today from Arizona to give him a chance to do the spotlight story and talk a little bit about the African American Conference on Disability. If you’re not familiar with it, it is such a unique conference that happens annual in Arizona that we think is just amazing and also really shines a spotlight on the intersection of race and disability. So Renaldo, if you can just take it away and tell us a little bit about what this conference is, how it came about, how it’s grown, and what it’s meant to the community.

Renaldo Fowler:

Thank you, Michelle. Yeah, the African American Conference on Disability, it was co-founded almost 12 years ago by myself and David Carey, who works for the Arizona Independent Living Council. And so to make it really a story short, about 12 years ago David and I were sitting down having a lunch, and we just struck up a conversation. I’ve been in the disability field for almost four decades now, and David’s the person with the disability. I think he’s been injured for about almost 30 years, and one of the things, the common thread, that we saw in Arizona, Arizona African American population is around 5%, 6%, but we’re a growing state. But one of the things that we noticed, there was a common thread. We would be at different events, statewide, city, municipal, it didn’t matter. We would not see African American families there. We rarely saw persons with disabilities, African Americans with disabilities at these events.

And so we had this conversation, “Well, let’s do something about it,” and David said, “I have some monies. Maybe we can get some lunches together.” I said, “David, let’s get some speakers together.” And we put the first conference together in three weeks. And so we had about 100 people attend the one-day session, and we got one of our legislators to come in and talk about some things. And so based on that 15-minute conversation, the African American Conference on Disability was born some almost 12 years ago, and so for the last 12 years, we’ve met in person. And so we’ve grown for about 100 people to about between 400 people prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. And so we’ve had speakers who attend the conference throughout the United States. We cover race and disability, we cover many different topics. Much of our work is in line with our priorities with the P&A. We partner with community-based organizations.

We do a lot of partnerships out in the community, and so when people talk about the African American Conference, I talk about the African American Conference for the African American community and for those folks who serve the community. So that’s really a big focus that we have of the conference, and one of the unique things that we pride ourselves doing is we create a safe environment for African American families and persons with disabilities to come in and talk about their needs. So the format of the conference for the last several years is we’ve had a one-day conference, and in that one day, we have three sessions opening lunch session, closing sessions, and we’ve had 24 workshops. So we run a lot of workshops at a time. We try to keep those spaces small and we try to keep them personal and unique where the audience and the speaker have an opportunity to bond. We talk about networking in the community.

So we do these things at the African American Conference. We’ve had commissioner Thomas Hicks there, we’ve had previous administration of community living speakers there, we’ve had our former county reporter who’s now our Arizona Secretary of State, he’s been at the conference. With a state with such a small population, a lot of people reach out to me from different states with larger African American communities, and just talk about how we’re able to do this in Arizona, and I’m just going to say this, we have a great developmental disability network in Arizona. I just want to kind of put a shout-out to that. Our university USEP program in Arizona, our DD Planning Council and our Protection and Advocacy, this is a really great DD Network project.

And so as I mentioned, prior to the pandemic, when the pandemic came on board, we had a lot of discussion, “Do we cancel it? What do we do? We felt it’s very important to look at these topics,” and so we decided to go virtual. For the last two years, we’ve been virtual, and I’m just going to say this to you, that one of the things that the COVID-19 pandemic allowed us to do when we went virtual is to reach a greater audience. The last African American conference, the last two conferences we had virtually, we had 11,000 people attend those two conferences over the last two years, and last year we had over almost 7,000 people attend last year’s conference. We had 11 countries, 32 universities.

So when you look at the impact of the conference at the state level, at the national level, and we even laugh about it even at the international level, I think we’ve made some significant impacts, especially in Arizona with the African American community. We’ve created a safe place, we have good support from the African American community in Arizona, and also we are partnering with some historical Black colleges and universities with the African American Conference, and I’m really proud to say that I’ve been working with several African countries who have attended in-person and who’ve attended virtually, and also we have someone I believe from Malawi, Africa who’ve emailed me back and forth, and they’re looking to try to duplicate some things like this in Malawi, Africa, and they’re going to be attending the conference in person.

So this year, what we decided to do for 2023, we’re going to be meeting in person on June 16th in Phoenix, but we decided to go ahead and continue with a virtual component of the conference in honor of Black History Month. So on February the 8th and 9th, we’re going to have four presentations, two a day, and we have some great speakers for the conference in February. So that information will be available this week and we’ll get that information about the virtual conference, and we’re looking to open up the in-person conference sometime in March. So any more stories you would like to hear about the conference, Michelle or Stephanie?

Michelle Bishop:

I think this is such an amazing conference. It’s, in my experience, truly unique. I can’t think of anything else like this that’s happening. Is there something similar out there, Renaldo?

Renaldo Fowler:

We have been around for 12 years, and one of the things that we talk about, Michelle, is this is to my understanding… Now, there are some other organizations in the last few years, but for the last 12 years, we’ve pretty much been the only comprehensive conference that addresses the intersection between race and disability in the US, and I think that’s what some of the things are really surprised. So I’ve been working with folks out of Philadelphia, talked to them. One of our speakers this year is out of Atlanta. She’s going to be opening it up, and we’re really excited about that. We’re going to be bringing in some families from Wisconsin to talk about their services and how they built a project in Wisconsin for African American families.

I’m not really familiar with the different ones. I know the disability rights, and one of the Carolinas has one. I think California had a conference, or had one or having one, but really, one of the things that we want to do is have a comprehensive conference. We talk about mental health. We actually have a legal track as a part of the Protection and Advocacy. We’re working with the Arizona Center for African American Resources, which is a community-based organization. Now, one of the things, Michelle, I’m going to really say this to everyone out there. We are a discipline-based organization. So when you go out and you work with other grassroots organizations, oftentimes there’s a building of partnerships and understanding, and designing the terminology. The terminology that we use in the Protection and Advocacy is slightly different than they use in independent living circles.

And also, if there’s a community-based organization that may not be disability-based organization, it may require you to work with them in learning people-first language. They may use disabled or handicapped people. That’s because they’re not familiar with… So there’s a learning process. So I want to let everyone know when you reach out to organizations and they may not necessarily use a correct terminology, don’t take offense to it, use it as a teaching moment because they’re not in your world, and so that’s one of the things that we’ve done so much with the conference is reaching out to non-organization within the disability community, to supporters to get speakers. We work with mental health, we do healthcare, we’ve had law enforcement participation in the conference.

So I would really encourage everyone, if you’re interested in really learning how we do the African American Conference on Disability, as I mentioned to you earlier, February the 8th and 9th, we’re going to have a virtual component of the conference that’s going to be available coming up within this week. And then June 16th, which is the weekend of Juneteenth, that was interesting how that played out. So it’s the Friday before Juneteenth, which is going to be over a three-day weekend. So if you want to travel to beautiful Arizona in June, we would love to have you. It’s going to be at the Hyatt Regency in Phoenix. So we’ve grown from 100 people to over 400 people attending the African American Conference in person, and last year, as I mentioned, we had over almost 8,000 people attend the conference worldwide.

Michelle Bishop:

That is truly incredible, Renaldo. Congratulations just seeing all of your hard work really come into fruition with this conference. And to all of our listeners, I really encourage you to participate in this conference in any way you can. I have, and I’m a big fan.

Renaldo Fowler:

And Michelle, you know what? We are always looking for speakers as we prepare for 2024. So if anyone’s interested, please reach out to me and we would love to have you to see what you have to bring to the community. It’s just been such a great joy to see how the conference has grown and really the need for the conference, and as I mentioned to you, we provide a great safe space for people to come talk about some concerns that they may have, that they may feel a little uncomfortable in different settings.

Michelle Bishop:

That is a great idea. We’ll include some details about the conference and the show notes for today’s episode. So folks who want to participate or may be interested in even speaking in a future conference, they know how to reach out and how to get involved. Thank you, everyone. I think that’s our episode for today. I hesitate to ask because it almost destroyed the PandA Pod last episode, but Stephanie, do you have a joke today?

Stephanie Flynt:

I do. See, see. Okay, I think that Michelle secretly likes my jokes. I personally think she does. Look, if you think the alternative or whatever, feel free to reach out to us. But anyway, here’s the joke for today in honor of winter. How do you follow Will Smith in the snow?

Jack Rosen:

Oh, God.

Stephanie Flynt:

Any guesses?

Michelle Bishop:

Where is this going?

Stephanie Flynt:

You follow the Fresh Prince.

Renaldo Fowler:

Okay. All right.

Stephanie Flynt:

Okay. All right. People from 2000s and up, you may not get it, but just use Google. It’s your friend sometimes. Jack’s like, “I can’t decide if I want to edit this out or not.”

Michelle Bishop:

So if you have any good jokes for us, or even better topics for future episodes, you can always hit us up at podcast@ndrn.org. I promise I won’t resign over the jokes. So we will all see you next month. Thanks, everybody.

Stephanie Flynt:

Oh, we have to shout out our social media. People need to know what we’re up to. So feel free to search us up on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. We are @NDRNAdvocates. I think we’re also at the same tag on LinkedIn, but Jack, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. But yeah, follow us for all the things.

Jack Rosen:

Technically, we’re just NDRN on LinkedIn, but whatever.