Dreaming New Worlds Are Possible in a Tree of Worth by Ella Quainton
- Ableism is when non-disabled people get to decide what quality of life looks like.
- Ableism works through a system that requires you to live in poverty in order to receive services while punishing us for being poor, for needing care, and for relying on that system and those with agency within that system in the first place.
- Ableism survives because it lives in our hearts, in our minds, in our bodies, and in our scars. Because it is leveraged in every single system of oppression. Because it was invented to make oppression justifiable.
When Technology Can Assist But Not Control Nature by Sishir Bommakanti
- Ableism asks why won’t you die and then has the audacity to be inspired when we live.
- Ableism is half of covid deaths being disabled people but those communities not being prioritized to receive a vaccine or be given care.
- Ableism is hidden in bold headlines that should read “another person in mental distress has been murdered at the hands of the police” and ableism is solidified when there is insufficient consequence for that murder.
Wounded Bird in the Sky Delivers a Message by Shaista Langaria
- Ableism feels like a knife cutting you open bit by bit while people stare and remind you that it only hurt because you haven’t overcome its wound.
- Ableism is thinking disability will never happen to you.
- Ableism is given through encouraging words from a society that tells parents and caregivers it’s okay that you killed them… they were a burden and of course you couldn’t take it anymore.
"Ableism Is..." Commandments turned into bullet points by Brittanie Hernandez Wilson from the poem "Naming Ableism" by Maria R. Palacios