Police Violence Creates Disability; Photojournalist Creates Disability Culture

Wil Sands is a photojournalist, particularly interested in stories that add nuance and complexity to public discourse. He was reporting from a BLM protest in Washington D.C. on 30 May 2020 when a cop shot him in the eye.

( discussion of eye injury )

boost: Open Letter to Cons From the Indians No Longer in the Background of a John Wayne Movie

Just a few words from a GREAT article by Stephen Graham Jones, a writer in horror, fantasy and the really wobbly genre that is non fiction. He speaks from participating in one too many panels where the focus is on speakers' identity instead of their art.

Open Letter to Cons From the Indians No Longer in the Background of a John Wayne Movie

by Stephen Graham Jones

We’re Here to Talk Books and Writers, not representation and diversity. So, if you can resist that urge to put us all on the same panel to talk about “The West” (we’re not all from the West…) or “The American Myth” (myth being what the big religion calls the little religion), that doesn’t mean that the big change sorter has to deposit us on the representation and diversity panels. And, anyway? Listen to the Q&A of most of those panels. The subtext is always a request to validate parking, to give some sort of tacit permission for people to cosplay as us for a story or two. Never mind that none of us are authorized to give that particular permission. What to pay more attention to is that that’s asking us to cut out construction-paper feathers for people to wear home from school, because being Indian is fun, harmless dress-up—it’s a way of honoring us, really. Or, you know: “honoring” us.

https://www.tor.com/2021/05/19/open-letter-to-cons-from-the-indians-no-longer-in-the-background-of-a-john-wayne-movie