A new disabled-led project, the Disability Action Research Kollective, is working on “reclaiming disabled history” to help centre ableism across the breadth of today’s “liberatory political movements”.
Through a series of novel zines, it uplifts the hidden disabled identities “struck from the record” of prominent civil rights activists. It offers a powerful new testimony to disabled people’s central role in social justice successes of the past century.
Most importantly, by putting disabled people back into the narrative, it shows how the fight against threats marginalised communities face today are intrinsically tied to disability justice and liberation.
In a little less than a year, the project has already put out ten publications, online and in print across four countries.
The ‘Disability Action Research Kollective (DARK)’
The Disability Action Research Kollective (DARK) is a new research community. In particular, the group is dedicated to distributing material that equips people with vital knowledge on disabled people’s suppressed history. It describes itself as:
a disabled-led group working to make disability perspectives, history, and research more accessible to a general audience.
Ostensibly then, DARK is distilling a broad catalogue of disability stories that are vital for understanding the appalling situation for disabled rights today. Primarily, the group’s work centres round producing free zines to help disseminate this information to a wider audience.
The Canary spoke to founder Richard about the project. He explained that DARK is about:
gathering together disabled and non-disabled activists, writers, researchers, and academics to publish things for free on various topics. We organise online, are flexible in when and where people write their contributions and we work with people from all over the world.
While anyone can get involved, importantly, the project is “disabled-led”. It’s a volunteer-run initiative, and makes its zines free to be an accessible resource for as many people as possible.
To maximise their reach, Richard expressed that a crucial component to the project is that DARK produces these in print. Specifically, the project hopes to circumvent the way in which social media is stifling the voices of disabled communities. He said that:
Social media algorithms actively suppress and limit content mentioning disability so our output had to include something physical and offline. We also have distributors in the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia, but anyone can access, print, or distribute our zines.
Centring disabled histories via the Disability Action Research Kollective
Over the course of 2024, Disability Action Research Kollective has put out ten zines on a diverse range of topics. In each, there’s a powerful centring of disabled people’s lives and broader disability histories.
What’s clear from many, is how the sidelining of disabled people’s identities, and past forms of social marginalisation have contributed to ongoing forms of oppression today.
In ‘Why the gap?’ for instance, DARK explores the history of rail systems. It looks at how past decision-making contexts still have ramifications for disabled rail access now. Specifically, it delves into the lack of level boarding across the railway network for wheelchair-users and other disabled passengers.
It starts by introducing readers to the socio-political deprioritisation and discrimination against disabled people when the rail systems were initially built. From there, it shows how this ableist origin has set up for the non-standardised, disjointed services that still persists in the modern rail network.
In doing so, it also draws attention to the disgraceful failure of successive governments to address this glaring transport access inequality. It’s a perturbing reminder that equity and inclusivity for disabled people in many aspects of social life has little changed in decades, if not in some cases, hundreds of years.
And this is a big part of what DARK wants to demonstrate through its zines too.
Ableism ‘overlooked’ in ‘radical and inclusive spaces’
There’s a concerted focus in DARK’s work on how liberatory movements intersect, now and in the past. Richard told the Canary that:
The goal of DARK is to help people understand disability as a fluid political category, not a concrete medical one. While sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia are generally discussed within liberatory political movements, ableism is often widely overlooked even in supposedly radical and inclusive spaces. But there are valuable perspectives here, and understanding how it is intertwined and underlies many of the others is fundamental to addressing any of them, you can’t understand oppression in isolation.
In short, the story of disabled people’s oppression is inextricably linked to the stories of other marginalised groups’ oppressions. He listed a few pertinent examples of this:
Ableism was used against women trying to get the vote, by imputations of mental inferiority, similarly, it was used as an excuse to perpetuate slavery, homosexuality was officially categorised as a mental illness till recently and that imputation is currently being fought by trans people.
‘Systems that incentivise’ eugenics still here
One particularly poignant example Richard raised revolved around continued racism and xenophobia against migrants. Richard said that:
The very foundation of immigration controls was initially justified on the grounds of eugenics, to prevent potentially mentally or physically inferior immigrants, which at the time included broader categories like Jews and Eastern Europeans. This can all be read about in more detail in the essay ‘Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History’ by Douglas Baynton.
Notably, Richard drove home the connection between the history of disabled people’s oppression and anti-immigrant bigotry through one dangerous social ideology:
Eugenics was not something that ended with the fall of the Nazis. All of the systems that incentivise it are still with us today. The state of disability rights is much further behind than most people realise. In the USA and EU and many other countries, it is still legal to sterilise disabled people without their consent.
During the lockdowns, the UK government knowingly sent infected people into care homes, didn’t provide them with PPE and then added do-not-resuscitate orders to disabled people’s medical files without their knowledge or consent.
People with learning disabilities died at incredibly high rates despite not having any form of underlying medical condition that would have made them physically vulnerable to the virus. The British Medical Journal, an organisation not particularly known for its radical views, called it “social murder”. But even before the pandemic, the UN found that the UK was involved in “grave and systemic” abuses of disabled people’s human rights.
This is not a left or right-wing issue as even the incoming Labour government has dropped its pledge of integrating UN human rights protections for disabled people into UK law. More detail on these can be found in the books Crippled and The Department, which I highly recommend.
The Canary has also consistently highlighted how all these contemporary events have their roots in eugenicist thinking. Essentially, modern governments have continue to operate on the basis that disabled people’s lives are inherently of less value. Effectively, it’s the ongoing tale of how the capitalist bent for perpetual productivity and profit has rendered disabled people expendable.
Now, the Disability Action Research Kollective project is shedding much-needed light on the background history to all this.
‘Reclaiming disabled history’
Richard was inspired to start the project because his experience as both an academic and activist had:
starkly highlighted how little disability was understood as a political category in either world.
Therefore, he had felt compelled to address this. He told the Canary that:
This project started when I decided to try to reach more people by simplifying my own academic work to make it easier to read and understand. I started collaborating with others and as more people joined, the project soon took on a life of its own. Our early work was about reclaiming disabled history. There are also a lot of famous historical figures who have had disabilities struck from the record to avoid tarnishing their reputations. This strips away the full humanity of these figures and reinforces disability as a stigmatising characteristic.
Disability was a lot more widespread in the past but was likely significantly less stigmatising than it is under modern capitalism, where productive capacity is directly linked to individual personhood, belonging, inclusion, respect and value. People have a general idea that because of technology disabled people have never had it so good, but there have been many societies that were significantly more accepting of disabled people and fully integrated them into society, like in ancient Egypt, a civilisation which lasted for 5000 years.
So far, Richard and fellow volunteers have put out zines on disabled anarchists and communists, feminists, and other left-wing radicals. They’re a whistlestop tour through the disabled lives of the likes of Che Guevera, Frida Kahlo, Fannie Lou Hammer, Audre Lorde, and many more.
Helping disabled people find ‘pride, joy, community, and hope’
Richard explained that he feels that:
There has never been a more important time for a disability-focused political education
In particular, he referenced the increasing rates of long Covid as a crucial reason for this. As the Canary previously reported, official long Covid rates passed two million. However, we underscored how this is likely a significant underestimate anyway.
For one, as Richard highlighted, as Covid continues to reinfect people uncurbed:
a lot of people are likely to become disabled.
So, the Disability Action Research Kollective is also about bringing disabled history to newly disabled individuals too. Richard told the Canary that:
While we write for everyone, even non-disabled people. I hope some of it reaches people who have recently become disabled, to help shape their sense of self and find pride, joy, community and hope.
And part of achieving this, is welcoming people into DARK to have fun uncovering and celebrating disabled history. For that reason, Richard told the Canary that he was particularly proud of one project that brought DARK members and others together for the group’s first cultural critique. This was the zine ‘Star Trek and Disability‘ which he said:
spawned an online watch and discussion group which has been great fun.
He expressed to the Canary that:
Most science fiction futures erase disabled people entirely, but in the Trek universe the eugenicists lost the war and so there is a degree of representation. Interestingly the frequency and the quality of the representations broadly got worse over time, while representation for all other groups has improved.
More to come from the Disability Action Research Kollective
Naturally, there’s also plenty more to come as well. Richard teased the group’s upcoming work:
Currently, the cultural critique group is working on part two and expanding to how the disability representations of Batman villains have changed over time. I think a lot of people not specifically interested in disability might be more open to enjoying things they already like from a new perspective.
Needless to say, the Disability Action Research Kollective will undoubtedly prove an invaluable community and educational resource for disabled people, and fellow oppressed communities alike taking action against the latest tide of dehumanisation and discrimination.
And of course, the project is always looking for new volunteers to bring their important skills and insights into the fold.
You can find a catalogue of DARK’s online zines and links to its social media accounts here. If you’d like to contact DARK to get involved, you can reach out to the group via email to: [email protected]
Featured image supplied
