Activist Eli Clare to Lecture at UA about Disability As a ‘Social Justice Issue’

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — When the Crimson Access Alliance formed last fall at The University of Alabama, one of its goals was to change language associated with disabled people.

“Accommodation,” a right in which many Americans have lobbied for decades, has helped ensure disabled people had the same access to education and healthcare as able-bodied people.

And while “accommodation” and “access” can be considered synonymous to some, the Crimson Access Alliance, a UA student organization focusing on disability advocacy and run by students with disabilities and their allies, believes using the latter can help bust the stigmas that still exist for people with disabilities.

Wednesday, the group will host its first major speaker when author, poet and activist, Eli Clare, holds a workshop at Graves Hall. Clare, author of “Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation,” has addressed the topic of disability, gender, race, class and sexuality in his work.

He’ll deliver “Moving Beyond Pity & Inspiration: Disability as a Social Justice Issue,” a workshop aimed at arming people with tools to create more disability access in their workplaces and communities, at 11:30 a.m. April 16 in room 313 of Graves Hall. The workshop will be open to the public.

Clare, who is disabled and identifies as genderqueer, said “accommodation” strongly suggests creating individualized solutions for a disabled person as he or she encounters barriers. The individualized accommodations may or may not be of use or even available for the next disabled person. “Access,” on the other hand, strives to remove barriers in ways that will create inclusive environments that will benefit many people.

“Think about a class in which there is one student who has made it known that she needs the instructor’s lecture notes because of her learning disability,” Clare explained. “If the instructor makes their notes available only to that student and no one else, they’ve created an accommodation. But if they post their notes to Blackboard every semester for all students, they’ve created access.

“Accommodation is important but locates the problem between individual people and the barriers they face; access locates the problem squarely in environments that are exclusive in any of a million ways.”

Clare said campus climate for disabled students has improved over the last 30 years, but it’s been a gradual process.

One of the ways to accelerate the process is education, said Dr. Nirmala Erevelles, Crimson Access Alliance faculty adviser and professor of educational leadership and foundations of education.

“We thought having public events is one of the ways to do it,” Erevelles said. “And Eli Clare can speak on a number of topics. This was going to be the big activity for this student group to highlight the fact disability is not just a medical issue, but issues of access and rights should be in conversation.”

Clare will cap his day at UA at 4 p.m. when he delivers the lecture “Yearning for Carrie Buck” in which he’ll explore the 1927 Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell, which declared involuntary sterilization laws unconstitutional in 1927.