IN CONVERSATION:
An Episode on Disability Justice
Access the Disability Justice episode transcription here.
Apple PodcastsOn this episode of In Conversation, we've brought together four leaders from the Disability Justice Movement, Patty Berne, Layel Camargo, Kera Sherwood-O'Regan, and Daphne Frias, we will dialogue about how our struggles for Disability Justice, connect with our fight for climate justice, and explore their knowledge and vision of how we can build a climate just future.
Meet the people in conversation
Patty Berne(they/them)
PATRICIA BERNE is a Co-Founder, Executive and Artistic Director of Sins Invalid (www.sinsinvalid), a disability justice based performance project centralizing disabled artists of color and queer and gender non-conforming / non-binary artists with disabilities. Berne’s training in clinical psychology focused on trauma and healing for survivors of interpersonal and state violence. Their professional background includes offering mental health support to survivors of violence and advocating for LGBTQI and disability perspectives within the field of reproductive genetic technologies. Berne's experiences as a Japanese-Haitian queer disabled woman provides grounding for their work creating “liberated zones” for marginalized voices. They are widely recognized for their work to establish the framework and practice of disability justice.
Kera Sherwood-O'Regan (Kāi Tahu, Te Waipounamu)
Kera Sherwood-O'Regan (Kāi Tahu, Te Waipounamu) is an indigenous and disabled multidisciplinary storyteller and rights advocate based in Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the Co-founder and Impact Director at Activate, an indigenous and disabled social impact agency specialising in campaigning and narratives for social change, with a particular emphasis on climate justice. Her work focuses on centering structurally oppressed communities in social change, exploring community-led collective storytelling, and seeks to raise the bar for free, prior, informed, and ongoing consent in the media.
Kera’s work is grounded in kaupapa Māori practices and approaches, and is informed by 15 years of activism within climate and social justice movements. In her spare time she runs support groups for people with Fibromyalgia, and advocates for indigenous and disability rights at the United Nations climate negotiations and within the wider climate movement through the SustainedAbility Disability Climate Network & the International Indigenous Peoples' Forum on Climate Change.
Her recent work includes contributing to Climate Aotearoa, ed. Helen Clark, on the intersections between climate change, health, and Indigenous & Disability rights.
How to support Kera’s work:
www.activate.film - Activate Agency, a disabled & Māori led social impact agency specialising in Indigenous & Disability Rights and Climate Change. I run this with my partner who is also disabled. My core work here is running workshops around decolonising climate change; Indigenous & Disability Rights; and storytelling for social impact with a focus on story sovereignty; and we also work directly with NGOs who want support on their campaigning providing campaign strategy; media production; and consulting on organising with a justice & disability/indigenous rights focus.
www.sustainedability.org - SustainedAbility: Disability Climate Network - we are an international network working both within the UNFCCC to establish a constituency for disabled people and promote disabled participation and rights, and also working within our own national and local communities to promote disability and climate justice.
Follow her on Twitter : @keraoregan @ActivateFilm
Follow her on Instagram : @keraoregan @Activate.Film
Consulting services & Workshops on climate justice: www.activateagency.co.nz (website refresh forthcoming!)
Opinion writing, media, & speaking engagements: www.keraoregan.co.nz
Layel Camargo(they/them)
Layel Camargo is a cultural strategist, land steward, filmmaker and artist, is a descendent of the Yaqui tribe and Mayo tribes of the Sonoran Desert. Layel is transgender and non binary person. They graduated from UC Santa Cruz with dual degrees in Feminist Studies and Legal Studies. Layel was the Impact Producer for “The North Pole Show” season two with Executive Producer Rosario Dawson. They currently produce and host ‘Did We Go Too Far’, a podcast with an ecological justice organization, Movement Generation. At The Center for Cultural Power as the Ecological Arts and Culture Manager they created alongside Favianna Rodriguez ‘Climate Woke’ a national campaign to center BIPOC voices in climate justice. Due to wanting to shape a new world they co-founded ‘Shelterwood Collective’ a land based organization that teaches land stewardship, creative envisioning and healing for long term survival. Layel was a Transformative Justice practitioner for 6 years and still finds ways to bring their lessons in alternatives to the carceral system to all their work. Most recently, Layel was named on the Grist 2020 Fixers List, as well as celebrated by Yerba Buena Center of the Arts list of people to watch out for in 2019.
How to Support Layel’s Work:
Follow them on Instagram: @TheChosenLyfe
Follow them on Twitter: @LayelCamargo
Follow them on Tik Tok: _layel_
Podcast ‘Did We Go Too Far’ can be found here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/did-we-go-too-far/id1555111345
Organizations they’re involved with:
Shelterwood Collective: https://www.shelterwoodcollective.org/
Movement Generation: https://movementgeneration.org/our-work/advancing-a-new-narrative/cultureshift/did-we-go-too-far-podcast/
The Center For Cultural Power: https://www.culturalpower.org/stories/get-climate-woke/
Resources:
Just Transition: https://climatejusticealliance.org/just-transition/
Alliance on Climate Education: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeMnlj63j7Y
To support their work:
Spread their videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV35apSsXyUeCINeQjyLgqhTtGAgRy7o3
Donate to their land Project: https://www.shelterwoodcollective.org/
Review and rate their podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/did-we-go-too-far/id1555111345
Daphne Frias
Daphne Frias is a 23-year-old youth activist. She is unapologetically Latina. Having Cerebral Palsy, and using a wheelchair she is fiercely proud to be a loud champion for the disabled community
She got her start shortly after the Parkland shooting by busing 100+ students from her college campus to the nearest March For Our Lives (MFOL) event. In August of 2019, she was appointed as the NY State Director for March For Our Lives.
How to support Daphne’s work:
The link to opendoorsnyc.com a disability nonprofit that supports residents who have spinal cord injuries to due gun violence. They do incredible disability justice work.
Now it’s your turn
In Conversation is an invitation. We invite you, your organizations, and your communities to have these conversations yourselves. Set aside a couple of hours to sit with and share answers to these questions:
How are struggles for disability justice and struggles for climate justice connected?
What do we envision when we think about the world that we’re striving towards and trying to create? What do climate justice and a liberated world look like?
Please share meaningful parts of these conversations with us on social media @ourclimatevoices.