To Build for the Future

ABSTRACT

Rejecting the well-worn narratives of pity, scorn, othering, and medicalization that exist primarily for the benefit of the nondisabled, disabled people insist on better and richer stories about disability as a way of being and a way of knowing. Social scientists have explored the larger growth of systemic ableism and its specific manifestations in employment, health, housing, education, and beyond. [...]social media has become a particularly vibrant place for organizing, resource-sharing, community-building, laughing, loving, mourning, and world-building. In the COVID era, these virtual spaces have taken on a new level of importance in facilitating survival, resistance, and joy. [...]that requires a dual focus we have to face the violence of ableism, especially as it continues to reverberate throughout the lives of disabled people, and we also have to celebrate the ways that disabled people resist, reclaim, and recreate in spite of it.