Skip to Main Content

Disability Rights, Studies & Justice: Disability Justice

Provides a background in the frameworks of disability history, disability as a field of academic study, and disability work within justice movements.

Sins Invalid

What is Disability Justice?

Disability Justice was built because the Disability Rights Movement and Disability Studies do not inherantly centralize the needs and experiences of folks experiencing intersectional oppression, such as "disabled people of color, immigrants with disabilities, queers with disabilities, trans and gender non-conforming people with disabilities, people with disabilities who are houseless, people with disabilities who are incarcerated, people with disabilities who have had their ancestral lands stolen, amongst others."  

Initally a group of queer disabled women of color, Patty Berne, Mia Mingus, and Stacy Milbern, who eventually united with Leroy Moore, Eli Clare, and Sebastian Margaret, these activists formed the Disability Justice movement to strive for collective liberation. Visit the source of this summary, "Disability Justice, A Working Draft" by Patty Berne to read about the ten principles of the movement.

Recommendations