Best Practices at Direct Actions #AMC2015 #ouridentitywork @mfgink This presentation was a way of beginning a conversation around how the terminology for access, accessibility, and disabled are lacking. While addressing folding stereotypical best practices and some additional ones into direct action planning and execution, we discussed how this could better conform to not only people marginalized by disability, but to broaden the impact to benefit all participants.

1. Accessibility at Direct
Actions
Enable Access in More Places
#ouridentitywork

2. About Me
Matthew Gilboy
Artist/Activist
Disability Justice
Chicago
@mfgink
About Talk
● #ouridentitywork
● how identity interferes
● impact through better positionality
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork

3. Vocabulary
Sure, we’re talking about the same things
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork

4. Examples of actions
● Non-violent: sit-ins, strikes, workplace
occupations, blockades, hacktivism
● Violent: political violence, sabotage, property
destruction, assaults
● Mediated action: electoral politics,
diplomacy, negotiation, and arbitration
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork

5. Models of Disability
● Social: centers the lived experience of
ableist resource allocation, construes
ableism as systems of oppression that
privilege the perceived lack of special needs
● Medical: centers the biological impairment
and its remedy, limits ableism to animus
toward that condition and special needs
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork

6. Identity Work
● Work done in service of compliance with
social control to avoid oppression
● Work done by people with marginalized
identity markers to mitigate risk
● Work done by people with marginalized
identity markers to comply with prevailing
expectations

7. Linguistic Minorities
Linguistic minorities: sub-cultures of
spoken/written expression within a dominant
culture where communication needs are
secondary to assimilation/conformance within
dominant paradigm (e.g. AAVE, ASL, ESL)
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork

8. Cognitive Minorities
Cognitive minorities: sub-cultures of thinking
and expression within a dominant culture where
conceptual/expressive needs are secondary to
assimilation/conformance with dominant
paradigm (e.g.
Neurodivergence/diversity/Queer, Mad Pride
communities)
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork

9. “Special Needs”
● Planning typically involves a degree of
anticipation of needs of participants (e.g.
food, restrooms, space/shelter, PR
documents, municipal negotiation)
● “Special Needs” are generally understood as
specific design requirements for planning
that broaden the ability of people to
participate

10. “Beyond Ramps”
● The reach of the Disability Justice movement
is popularly limited to cures and access
measures; ramps, braille, cochlear implants
● This severely limits its impact to rudimentary
resource allocation based on human needs
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork

11. “Nothing About Us Without Us”
Decision-makers are typically white, able-
bodied males who have a degree of
unexamined privilege, making decisions for
entities that report success metrics evaluated
by similar individuals, generally uninformed by
as much as survey, let alone oversight of
people with disabilities

12. Enabling Access
How we plan to have participants participate
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork

13. Logistic: helps people decide
● Where & When
o Access Points: address transportation and partial
participation
o Segmentation of Action: break action into different
parts
● Why
o Who/what is focus of action
o Impact of attendance
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork

14. Purpose: understanding participation
● Identify who is planning the action, and how
to be involved
● Informs participant of likely context and
tactics and conduct
● Identify a code of conduct participants
should conform behavior to
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork

15. Purpose: understanding participation
● Identify how to escalate breaches of conduct and
emergent problems
o When unwanted behavior arises, crowd control will
disrupt the crowd centering the focus of the action
o Organization needs to cull behaviors and enforce
advertised level of disruption
● Identify private/public elements of agenda
o Maximize public to minimize impact of exposure
o Agendas help crowd manage anxiety

16. Centered Groups
● Inform participant of who is focus, address who needs
space and who needs to restrain taking up space
● Identify primary language and cultural context being
supported and make action plan to facilitate that
o E.G. Have english chants during actions passing
through spanish speaking neighborhoods led by
spanish speakers in spanish; have english speakers
respond in spanish
o E.G. avoid white folk leading chants that are AAVE

17. Collaborating Communities
● Inform participant of people involved
● Understand the baggage that comes with certain
groups’ involvement
o Some groups are thoughtless and reckless
o Some groups are unaware of privilege differentials
o Some groups assume any actions’ participants are
willing to be arrested
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork

18. Enmeshed Communities
● Hosting communities
o Identify a need and reason to be in a
neighborhood/community
o Identify a way to engage the
neighborhood/community
o Support the community, or know if you are infiltrating
● Solidarity request and specific asks
o Identify & say how out-groups should behave
o Identify & say how out-groups can support action

19. Accessibility Best Practices
● There was a list here
● It was folded up into the above bullet points
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork

20. Risks - Typical Consideration
● Likelihood of arrest?
● Likelihood of battery?
● Likelihood of aggressive action, unlawful behavior, or
civil disobedience?
● Likelihood of police brutality irrespective of behavior?
● Likelihood of group’s antagonism of police?
● Participation of Action Medics and NLG Legal
Observers?
● Likelihood of spontaneous changes to route/conduct?

21. Risk Mitigation
● Designated arrestees
● Segmentation of action into low/high risk
portions
● Organization-designated police negotiator
● Agenda provided to help people understand
emotional/physical energy management and
biological needs

22. Following Up
What minimal access looks like
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork

23. Personal Impacts
● Plans action with no escalation management / Wonders why generalized
anxiety disorder is unmanageable #accessfail
● Attends action after action / Lack of energy fuels clinical depression
#accessfail
● Reads depressing article after article & agonizes over every controversy /
Drinks until the cluster seizures start again #accessfail
● Fixates on whether he’s a good ally or not and serving the needs of efforts
/ Ceaseless self-scrutiny undermines gains made in self-actualization
#accessfail
● Fails to identify focus of action and the objective / Complains about never
accomplishing anything #accessfail

24. Group Impact
● Plans action while planning to drive there / No public transportation folks
show up #accessfail
● Plans a march to demand affordable housing / No wheelchair users show
up #accessfail
● Plans a demonstration about medical access without agenda / No
#mentalhealth folks show up #accessfail
● Plans action without conduct guidelines and people instigate unplanned
CD / At-risk folk stop attending group actions #accessfail
● Plan action about Prison Industrial Complex / Ignores Medical Industrial
Complex activists #accessfail

25. Reflection
Opening up and Sharing #AccessFails
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork

26. Access
● How do these issues engage stereotypical “access
requirements”?
● How do these issues expand the scope of “access
requirements”?
● How do these issues identify unexamined access
barriers?
● How is organizer identity shaping expectations of
access?
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork

27. Underlying Issues
● How do these issues present themselves in your regular
lives?
● How do these issues get disregarded in your
organizing?
● How do you address these issues in your self-care
regimen?
● What expectations do you have about self-care by
others?
● How do your actions enable/disable others?

28. Critiquing Access
● How do your actions assume everyone has the same
access as you?
● How do your actions assume everyone can make the
same sacrifices?
● How do your actions inform participants’ self-care?
● How are your actions impacted by serial disablement of
participants?
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork

29. Structuring Access
● How do your actions disable participants?
● What disablements are acceptable or necessary?
● How can necessary disablements be segmented to
provide partial access to your action, if total access is
unfeasible?
● How do you facilitate community accountability to better
understand your actions’ disabling elements, and their
impact?
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork

30. Thanks
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/mfgink/amc-radical-
access
My Site:
http://www.mfgink.com
@mfgink / #ouridentitywork