May 20th, 2012

2 – 4:30pm

518 Valencia

San Francisco, CA

Cost:  Free

Registration required

(Please email your name, phone number, whether or not you identify as having a disability and any access needs to: info@sinsinvalid.org)

How do you express love and solidarity to the crips in your world?  To the other bodies in your world – human, plant, and otherwise?  What does your body want the world to understand about it?

This workshop will explore the wisdom of our bodies moving alone and moving together.  This class is for all levels and abilities.  If you are shy, this is the class for you.  If you are a professional, this class is for you.  If you think you can’t move gracefully, this class is for you.  Why?  Because we know your movement is beautiful and that we can experience connection with others across body type and ability.  We look forward to it!

Facilitator Bios:

Originally from Roanoke, VA, Laura Malpass‘ dance training began leaping down local grocery store aisles and with an antique music box on her living room floor. She studied more formally at Southwest Virginia Ballet, School of the Grand Rapids Ballet, le Centre de Danse du Marais, and Hope College. While at Hope, she enjoyed choreographing and performing with StrikeTime Dance Company, promoting the arts in Michigan and Indiana public schools. Upon graduation, she moved to the Bay Area to explore work deeply rooted in emotional reality with Moving Arts Dance, under the direction of Anandha Ray. She currently thrives on creating collaborative works with Catharsis Dance Duo and teaching ballet, modern dance, and creative movement to all ages in the East Bay. She believes that dance can transcend all boundaries we perceive or feebly construct, empowering individuals and transforming communities for the better. In each class, she desires to foster growth and holistic health through creative self-expression.

Patty Berne is a Co-Founder and Director of Sins Invalid.  Her passion for this work stems from living in a complex body which whispers while others bellow; her framing for this work derives from her work for disability justice and its intersections with gender based justice, queer communities, racial justice and her training in working with survivors of trauma of interpersonal and state-sponsored violence.

The Development Coordinator will work with the Executive Director to make the organization more sustainable by increasing stakeholders, including foundations and major individual donors, and creating compelling new fundraising materials that communicate the mission, vision and work of the organization. The position is responsible to partner in planning and implementing a strategy to raise $200,000 in operating funds.

Position Responsibilities:
• Coordinate grants including the production and submittal of up-to-date and compelling proposals, LOIs, reports, and other collateral as needed
• Regularly research foundations landscape to identify future opportunities
• Solicit in-kind and cash donations from local businesses and community organizations
• Engage in/manage major donor approaches
• Engage on-line giving strategies including leveraging online social networking for fundraising purposes
• Interface with funders’ community and stakeholders on behalf of Sins Invalid
• Devise/implement year end major ask fundraising event and/or mailing
• Document organizational development processes & strategies

Necessary Experience and Skills:
• Minimum two years non-profit fund development experience
• A successful record of attracting and sustaining public and foundation and funding
• Proven familiarity with social justice work in a non-profit work environment
• Experience and competencies in working in a diverse work environment
• Prior experience working in teams and in collective settings
• Ability to work independently
• Experience and familiarity with non-profit finances
• Experience with grants management and reporting, including experience working with multiple public and private funders
• Understanding and commitment to anti-racist and anti-ableist principles
• Extremely strong organizational skills, excellent time management skills and proven ability to work well independently
• Strong ability to set own goals/timelines and meet deadlines independently
• Excellent written skills and proficiency writing and editing letters of intent, foundation proposals, donor letters and donor materials
• Accuracy, attention to detail, and the ability to proof own work
• Excellent oral and interpersonal communication skills
• Demonstrated experience and proficiency with Mac systems and the internet
• Experience and proficiency with Word, Excel and the internet required
• Experience using “Web 2.0″ social networking tools (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.) for fundraising purposes

Preferred Experience and Skills:
• Experience and competencies in working in a mixed ability, multiracial, multi-gendered environment
• Familiarity with performance related work in a non-profit work environment
• Prior experience mentoring
• Familiarity with the California Cultural Data Project
• Familiarity with Sins Invalid’s mission and programs

Compensation and Benefits:
Sins Invalid offers a competitive salary that is commensurate with experience. This position will be located at the organization’s headquarters in Berkeley, CA.

To Apply:
To apply, please send an email to info@sinsinvalid.org. Please write “Development Coordinator” and your name in the subject line, and include three attachments as pdfs:
(1) Cover letter including your (a) full contact information (b) the reason you are interested in this position (c) your familiarity with Sins Invalid (d) the unique experience, skills and qualifications you offer to this position and to the organization.
(2) Resume with three professional references.
(3) A relevant writing sample.

We will contact you if we wish to invite you for an interview.

Sins Invalid is an equal opportunity employer. Applications are strongly encouraged from people with disabilities; people who identify as LGBTQI; people of color; women; immigrants; people living with HIV/AIDS.

Do you want to be a part of a team that creates GROUND BREAKING WORK?

Then apply for an internship with Sins Invalid!

Cultural and Political Programs Internships for Summer 2012

Sins Invalid is a San Francisco/Bay Area based performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and queer and gender-variant artists as members of communities who have been historically marginalized.  Our performance work explores the themes of sexuality, embodiment and the disabled body.  Conceived and led by disabled people of color, we develop and present cutting-edge work where normative paradigms of “normal” and “sexy” are challenged, offering instead a vision of beauty and sexuality inclusive of all individuals and communities.

We are seeking interns who know they have skills to contribute, are passionate about social justice, understand the importance of cultural work as a means of making change, and are excited about putting their beliefs into practice!

The Cultural and Political Programs Internship will give you hands-on experience with community relations and outreach, organizational development and fundraising.

Requirements:

• A minimum commitment of 3 days per week, from 1 – 6pm; shift days/times are negotiable for a minimum of 3 months.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office programs; our hope is that everyone has their own laptop/computer to work on.
• A strong attention to detail and ability to work independently.
• An interest in disability justice, racial justice and disrupting heteronormativity.
• If you are in school, either at a junior or senior level in college or the equivalent in life experience.
• Professional behavior at the worksite.

Benefits:

• Opportunities to build relationships with people from a wide variety of justice and performance related fields.
• Opportunities to learn deeply about the intersections of disability, race, gender and sexuality.
• Experience in non-profit administration.
• Opportunities to engage with Disability justice praxis.

To apply, please send an email to info@sinsinvalid.org.  We will send you an intern application to be returned to us along with a current resume.

Our Summer 2012 projects open for intern involvement include:

Film Distribution Planning: We are completing a 41-minute film that reflects our one-of-a-kind performance work, weaving interviews of artists and co-founders alongside unreleased performance footage to serve as an entryway into the absurdly taboo topic of sexuality and disability.  We will be premiering the film in Fall 2012 and are currently developing a distribution strategy that includes self-distribution, partnering with a non-exclusive distributor and screening at film festivals.

Webstreaming a Sins Invalid Performance: Many Sins Invalid community members who have connected with us through our web presence or our education work around the country are unable to attend a live Sins Invalid event.  Additionally, due to the isolation of ableism, even local community members may face difficulties attending a live performance.  In response to these challenges, we will offer our 2009 performance to be viewed on-line 24 hours/day during an allotted time.

Community Workshops: We organize performance workshops for community members with and without disabilities.  In the past, these workshops have included poetry, dance, storytelling, erotic writing, dance, and vocalization workshops.

Movement Building: Through our invite-only series of “MAKING CONNECTIONS: Conversations Within and Between Communities,” we bring together political artists, cultural activists, and movement-building allies involved with radical social justice projects to cross-pollinate our politically and creatively informed works.

What a past intern had to say about their experience at Sins Invalid:

“Nothing short of fabulous… Sins pulls the pain and traumas from ableist oppression and turns it inside out into a complex celebration of beauty and sexiness.  This doesn’t just happen on the Sins stage, but also in our program work: I’ve had exciting opportunities to interview on behalf of Sins live on the radio, learned invaluable lessons about what it takes to make base building happen, helped plan and launch a successful fundraising campaign to finish Sins – The Film (we surpassed our $15k goal!), I’ve developed my networking skills, I’ve participated in political dialogues I wouldn’t otherwise have been exposed to (like developing best practices for being a politically radical mixed ability organization, or how we negotiate the legacy of the freak show in disability performance)… Interning is nothing short of fabulous, sure, but don’t get me wrong—it’s also hard work.  But that’s what Sins is about as a performance project and a disability justice movement-building organization: collaboratively building an approach towards increasing accessibility, towards making a space where we can co-exist as uniquely embodied subjects as we work to maximize our own skills—as they are—and develop them as such in a way that is sustainable, accountable, responsible, and interconnected.  Whew.  Might sound ambitious, and it certainly is but that’s the kind of hard work of historical pains and revolutionary pleasures.”

—Brooke, Intern @ Sins from June 2011 – June 2012.

Above: Sins Summer Interns 2011, with co/founders Leroy Moore and Patty Berne.

]]> http://sinsinvalid.org/blog/internships/feed 0 http://sinsinvalid.org/blog/qwocmap http://sinsinvalid.org/blog/qwocmap#comments Thu, 12 Apr 2012 20:11:22 +0000 patty http://sinsinvalid.org/blog/?p=694 Sins Invalid stands/sits/lies in solidarity with this year’s 8th Annual Queer Women of Color Film Festival as co-presenters!

http://www.qwocmap.org/festival.html

Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (QWOCMAP) promotes the creation, exhibition and distribution of new films and videos that increase the visibility of queer women of color, authentically reflect QWOCMAP’s life stories, and address the vital social justice issues that concern QWOCMAP communities. QWOCMAP’s vision nurtures queer women of color filmmakers as artist-activist leaders to create systemic change through art, activism and community building.

Mid-month this March in Toronto, at the invitation of the University of Toronto, Sins Invalid performed live at The Art Gallery of Ontario and led a disability justice workshop as part of New College Disability Studies Week, sponsored by New College, University of Toronto and Ryerson University’s School of Disability Studies.

Event coordinators and audience members alike agreed that having Sins in Toronto was a “long time coming.” This transnational collaboration took lots of labor on and off stage. Local SF Bay Area Sins performers got to know the real community and krip culture of Toronto thanks to Loree Erickson and roommates opening their accessible home to us. Although Patty Berne, the Sins Artistic Director, could not travel with us, her awesome vision down to the details of prop setup was with us the whole way. We were ready to make her proud by delivering a kick ass performance.

And we did: our Toronto tour was out of this world!

In the classroom: the disability justice workshop brought in over 60 participants with a diverse mix of disability studies students, professors, and community organizers. Co-facilitated by Patty Berne via video and Sins performer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha in the flesh, the workshop lead into some mind-opening concepts linking disability justice, praxis, movement building, race, class, and queerness.

On stage for a sold-out show: Sins’s first performance outside the country attracted 300 attendees (sadly, with 100 turned away at the door). In the words of one audience member:

“Sins presented a reclaiming, revaluing and liberation of our whole selves that went beyond anything I have seen before. The performance welcomed, loved and complicated that which is considered taboo, monstrous, the unspeakable, part of ourselves that we may have hardly even known about. Thank you for brilliance and thank you for sharing it with us.”

All of the above could not have happened without this multifaceted collaboration:
University of Toronto Planning Committee members: Anne Mcguire, Izzy Mackenzie, Ella Chandler, Loree Erickson and Lenny O.
Sins Invalid Director: Patty Berne
Tour and Stage Manager: Ralph Dickinson
Performers: Alex Cafarelli, Maria Palacios, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and myself
Additional Artists: Aurora Levins Morales, Todd Herman
Local Participants: Performance Artists Masti Khor and the Compass youth group
Organizations and Universities: Equity Studies Program (New College); Ryerson School of Disability Studies; Griffin Center; Art Gallery of Ontario; Students for Barrier-Free Access (UT); RyeAccess; Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies (UT); Department of Sociology and Equity Studies (OISE); Ontario Rainbow Alliance for the Deaf (ORAD); Equity Studies Student Union (UT); Mark S. Bonham Center for Sexual Diversity Studies & R3 collective.

Our deepest gratitude, crip love and solidarity to our Kickstarter campaign backers: because of you all, with this film we can magnify our message that ALL people and communities are beautiful and valuable. Together we raised beyond our $15,000 goal, transforming our dream into reality that this film will be viewed as widely as possible—sharing the truth that beauty always recognizes itself.

LEAD DONORS — THE VISIONARIES WHO LED THE WAY:
Anonymous
The Brown Boi Project
The Fairy Godfathers Fund of the Horizons Foundation
Abby Lubowe
Alana Theriault
Charis Thompson
Cory Silverberg
Elaine Beale
Janelle White
Julie Prough
Katharine Mechem
Louise Monsour
Manish Vaidya
Max Airborne
William Espey
Alexis Shotwell
Holly Hessinger
Lawrence Carter-Long
Virginia Barnhart

Stacey Milbern
Brooke Willock
Wendi Willock
Zoe
Mariah MacCarthy
Erica Chu
Akemi Nishida
sue katz
Emily Perhamus
Amita Swadhin
Katelyn Angell
Alisa Bierria
Erika Johnson
kathryn matzen
mik
Jamie Burford
KittyKoponya
Rachel Small
jacory gums
Zoe Whittall
Carrie Kaufman
Rachel Schapira
Kate Darling
Ruth Madison
StormMiguel Florez
Lisa Mahaffey
Emily Ronan
dawnmarissa
Beliza Torres Narvaez
Leah Lakshmi
Glenn Marla
Yona Flemming
Avi Chandiramani
Fayza Bundalli
Liz Marie Hernandez
Florencia Marchetti
Paraskevi Theocharis
Grace Gamez
Jeff Hoffman & Shoshana Fershtman
Devon Lang
adelaide windsome
Jade
ruthann friedman carlisle
Greg Josselyn
Sunshine Willow
Riva Lehrer
Mo Coombs
Dolores Chandler
Ana
Enajite Pela
jordan flaherty
Elizabeth Purcell
Celeste Chan
amber
froobeek
micah t.
chiataur
Anna Reid
Tierney Gleason
Valentine Freeman
Emmet Phipps
Ari Pomerantz
Julie Perez
Mark Romoser
Leroy Moore
Cynthia Wu
Michael MacLafferty
Ayden Oliver Alberry
amiee ross
Jaclyn Friedman
Steve Gere
Terri Ellen Pease
Katherine Scott Nelson
Creatrix Tiara
Sonya
The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network
Beth Girshman
lilacsigil
Jennifer Teich
Erin Donovan
Julia Eden Ris
Ryn Hodez
Holly Richardson
Petra Kuppers
Alexander Freeman
Julianna Bradley
Austin J. Austin
Sista Cyn
Max Ferman
Sex Worker Fest
SaraKay Gross
Melinda Haus-Johnson
Christoph Hanssmann
Stacy Bias
Laura Rifkin
Wyatt Riot
Namita Chad
Gabriel Arkles
maddy
Ian Smith
Tri Minikhiem
Erinn C. C. Webb
Kathy Coleman
Lenna Ojure
Rebecca Garden
Glori R Zeltzer
Erin Markman
Sandie Yi
Karen Frost-Arnold
leonardo menegola
Brianna Gribben
Sean Dorsey
Luke Hirst
Lucy Harris
Avory Faucette
Jamila
The Bergman/Wallaces
Ari Clemenzi
Rory Blank
Minal Hajratwala
Viraj Patel
Bilen Berhanu
vanessa pineda
Arden H
Andrea Arango
aelster
Cynthia Anderson
Marcy Epstein
Jessica Emilie Wolf
Stephanie
Bridgit Antoinette Evans
Maud Steyaert
Jennifer
jennifer Gardner
Christian Bayerlein
World Enabled/Pineda Foundation for Youth
Anon person
Robin Mandell
Moya Bailey
Barbara Morris
diana campbell
Koomah
Nina Rawkstah
Amy Fowler
Lauren
Shari Brenner
Alex Barksdale
Deborah Kaplan
Michaela Goldhaber
Sam Wright
Laurie Little
Jackie Wykes
Jennifer Hukee
Carrie Colpitts
Alexandria Martinez
Kate Drabinski
Joan Ostrove
Sue Hobart
Bones Kendall
chilan
Courtney Cezair-Mayers
Jennifer Cole
Jennifer Niles
Rosie Reid-Correa
jerry lee abram
Josephine Hoy
Tracy T
Sade Huron
Karin Swinney
Tallie Ben Daniel
Sarah Dopp
Alexander Lee
Elliot Kukla
Erica Woodland
Jenn Paterson
Wendy Somerson
Chad S.
voula
Virginia W.
Andrea Gruebele
Marsha Katz
Judith Treesberg
Zev Lowe
Sandra Gail Lambert
Amber Sheridan
Sally K Lehman
Jacks Ashley McNamara
Dennis Lang
etta
jordan
Christine Kelly
Nancy Groth
mary mclaughlin
RC Gallant
Jake Pyne
Linnea Franits
Pamela Peniston
Adena Rottenstein
Subtle Tea
Joanne
Nadia Khastagir
David G Roche
Leslie Anne Mcilroy
Valerie Wetlaufer
Naima Lowe
Jenny Lee
Michelle Zuccarini
Leslie Yoder
Anonymous donor
Karen Thompson
sarolta cump
Leah Strock
Lisa Vincenti
Robin Bernstein
Rafe Eric Biggs
Elizabeth Warren
jil girvin
Rori
Max Airborne
Audacia Ray
Carla A. Pfeffer
Aorta Mag
Mike Gill
Carrie Sandahl
Daniel Werges
Barbara Kessel
Steve Brown
Colleen Nagle
Stef
abigail vines
Alina Browne
Arwen Bird
Nina Simons
Tc Tolbert
Dee Morgan
Jessica Storm
Sammi-Jo Lee
Paige Kruza
Tovah Leibowitz
Janalynn Bliss
Scott Benton
purcellwh
megday
Joseph Greene
Hilary
Cody Nelson
kanako
Deb Malkin
Robin Stephens
Ryan
Naomi Pomerantz
Polyamorous People of Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Friends of CUNY GC SP
Dacia Holliday
Shannon Nelson
Lynn Vidal
Sam Jacob
Evelyn Israel
Lauren Parsons Muller
Kim Nielsen
Morgan Berg
Beth Lamont
Lou Vaile
Bethany Stevens
Denise Nepveux
Mordecai Ettinger
Regan Brashear
Zaylia
Maayan
Beth Haller
Whitney Moses
Stefanie Snider
Mary Szecsey
ArisTGD
Jason Wallach
Carol Tyson
Lizzie Busch
micah
Lateef McLeod
David Steinberg
DavEnd
Cynthia Degnan
Sasha
Daniel Garcia
odinson989
Jax
Corbett O’Toole
Redwolf Painter
Allegra Stout
AmyHosa
Dylan Geil
Prudence Genlot
Steven Simon
Vic
Jorg Fockele
aneeman
Leslie Daniel
Meghan Kirksey
Lilp
Jesse Ehrensaft-Hawley
Sarah Genlot
Tanya Titchkosky
Paula Jellis
Katrina Greschner

“A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives—our skin color, the land or concrete we grew up on, our sexual longings—all fuse to create a politic born out of necessity.” – This Bridge Called My Back

By Brooke Willock

Just a few weeks ago at Sins Invalid we had our second mixed-ability conversation. Our first mixed-ability dialogue was about five to six months ago in the fall. These conversations are internal to the organization, and are co-facilitated by two incredible organizers in the Bay Area: Malachi and Stacey. Malachi is down for fun shit like justice and ‘is active in organizations serving low-income queer and transgender formally or currently incarcerated people, sits on a few boards, does free consulting for community organizations who are broke but are changing the world and believe that no one should be tossed away’ (from the Burns Institute site). Stacey aka cripchick is a disability justice activist and organizer for the National Youth Leadership Network, an organization that builds power among people with disabilities between the ages of 16-28 years old in order to support young people in their role as the next generation of leadership in the Disability Rights Movement. Last fall I collaborated with Stacey in developing a Sins workshop about new media, disability justice organizing, and accessibility. She facilitated the workshop and I planned and promoted it.

It might be an obvious claim to say that Sins Invalid, as an organization, takes disability justice seriously. What may not be so obvious is the deliberate labor that must be built in to the praxis of such theoretical frameworks. This is what our mixed-ability conversations are for: collaboratively building an approach towards increasing accessibility, towards making a space where we can co-exist as uniquely embodied subjects as we work to maximize our own skills—as they are—and develop them as such. Developing our skillsets as they are in relation to our embodied selves: in a way that is sustainable, accountable, responsible, and interconnected. This is enormously challenging and ambitious. I think our intentional inclusion of the co-facilitators shows the ways in which Sins takes seriously that which is otherwise too often irritably dismissed by the larger social justice culture of the Bay Area, and the U.S. more broadly: what it means to do mixed/cross-ability organizing, how, and why. That said, this is what I have been thinking about: what does it mean to develop our skillsets as they are in relation to our complexly embodied selves—in a way that is sustainable, accountable, responsible, and interconnected—in the context of access needs and internalized ableism?

Four-hour time blocks have been scheduled for each facilitated conversation. Six people total are involved in this collective dialogue: Patty and Leroy—the fabulous co/founders of Sins, Nomy Lamm, the facilitators, and myself. Nomy is a queercrip fat Jewish cultural activist. S/he’s a Sins Invalid performer, and a Creative Writing MFA student at SFSU. Her fantastical queercrip world-making creativity permeates all that she does as a cultural activist: s/he writes, performs, sings, is a musician, and directs Sins’ Artist in Residence program. We meet at ‘Sins Central,’ with homemade goodies in tow. Patty makes the best chili for us with diced onion and bell pepper, chopped chard stems and carrots, mustard and maple marinated tempeh, pinto beans, tomatoes, oregano from her yard, cumin and a ton of garlic served with sauerkraut, chives, and homemade cornbread. Theory in the flesh requires that we nourish our flesh, indeed.

I juxtapose access needs with internalized ableism because in the context of disability justice praxis, the two are so bound up with each other in complicated, nuanced ways that to think we can talk about one without the other is simply a mistake—an oversight. From the disability rights movement of the 70s and 80s, access needs typically fall into a liberal reformist framework, delimiting the radical potential of such a concept. Of course this is not to dismiss the hard work, lessons learned, and legislative milestones such as the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). However what I’m interested in thinking about are the ways in which the state works to keep the idea of ‘access needs’ in a single-issue political framework, whereby our imaginations become restricted to thinking about access solely in terms of curb-cuts, ramps and handicap parking. Clustered together in our meeting space at Sins, Patty makes this crucial point:

“In capitalism, the fact that you have a ‘need’ is like an overall net drain, as though we’re somehow not going to be worthwhile.”

Patty’s analysis politicizes the idea of ‘access needs’ by calling into question the very systems that produce ‘needs’ as net-drain in the first place: capitalist political economy and its construction of disability. In other words, the normalization of society’s inaccessibility posits ‘access needs’ as an individual problem to be overcome. Generally speaking, the disability rights movement prides itself on this overcoming through its precarious integration into an ADA-compliant ableist society.

Allies Not Excuses

Policymaking and development around societal issues of accessibility and universal design only go so far if we do not ask at least two things: why are people with disabilities systematically marginalized to begin with, and secondly what effects has systematic marginalization had on the subject formations of such a heterogeneous constituency? Patty’s politicization shows how capitalism not only stigmatizes accessibility in terms of cost benefit analysis but also how through such stigmatization, the bodies associated with access needs become devalued in terms of capitalist ideas of production and worthwhile-ness. Meaning, neoliberal capitalism renders disabled people second-class citizens, essentially sub-human status. It is this connection to internalized ableism that I have been thinking about: what does it mean to articulate ‘access needs’ from the standpoint/sitpoint of people with disabilities who have otherwise been subjected to ableist violences that demean the notion of access, and how does this impact mixed-ability organizing? From here, Patty makes another critical point:

“Internalized ableism is a way to police bodies through shaming. And then, intersections of race, gender, and class might exacerbate the shaming of internalized ableism.”

This particular moment in the discussion is where my own thoughts are still wading—or, more like treading—in deep ocean water far from the shore with strong currents pushing salt water into my mouth and up my nose as I struggle to keep my head above the tide.

In her recent blogpost “More on radical love- the gift of interdependency,” Wheelie Catholic (Ruth) beautifully illustrates what it means to do mixed-ability praxis. She writes, “I recall years ago when a friend sent her teenage son over to volunteer to help me with some physical tasks. He lacked confidence because he was dealing with a learning disability in school.” Ruth situates her story in the context of access and internalized ableism. Disability shame is at work here: this young man lacks confidence—feels badly about himself—as though there’s something about him that’s not good enough (according to dominant, colonialist pedagogies). There’s nothing inherently not good enough about him, he’s only not good enough according to capitalist standards: in order for capitalism to continuously reproduce itself, it needs docile bodies and minds to fill the cogs in its machine. This shame works to stigmatize his disability so that the violences of ableist subjection and rehabilitative discourses seem justified in the name of for-profit productivity and so-called ‘freedom.’ Ruth explains, “I told him to concentrate on what he could do well rather than dwelling on what he could not. Although it’s fine to encourage someone to work on skills, it’s really important to emphasize what they are good at.” Ruth speaks to the importance of meeting folks where they’re at in terms of maximizing our own skills as they are. This is a politic born out of necessity. Feels-like-drowning but then we nourish the pained flesh and catch our collective breath.

Brooke is a borderdwelling blogger and the cultural and political programs intern at Sins since summer 2011. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from The University of Arizona in Tucson and is currently an MA candidate at San Francisco State University in the Department of Women and Gender Studies with emphases on queer/crip theory and feminist disability studies.

Video transcription:

Leroy: Thank you everybody for the support of our Kickstarter campaign!!! Woohoo!!!!! Yeah…And we are still fundraising because there are so many film costs, the total budget is actually $20,000 and we want to reach as close to that as possible in our last hours. Yes, our last hours.

And, this is your last opportunity to pre-order a copy of the DVD for the Sins Invalid documentary — after this, you may have to wait a bit, but if you donate to Kickstarter now you’ll be among the first to receive the film.

We’ve gotten support from around the world — yeah around the world — and we are so so grateful. From Seattle to NY to Chicago to Texas to London to Canada — so thank you and have a loving Valentine’s Day — we love you!!!!!!!!

[Smiling: How do you stop it?]

Video transcription:
P: Hello everybody, my name is Patty Berne.
B: And I am Brooke Willock, and I want you guys to know that we are making strong headway on our Sins Kickstarter campaign.
P: Awesome headway! Thank you so much.
B: Thank you so very much. But we are still asking you to donate and to share, tell your friends about our campaign. 15,000 dollars is our absolute minimum that we are asking for, and it’s all or nothing, but really – we want to reach above that so we can get the monies that we actually need to push through post-production and launch our distribution campaign.
P: When we put together the budget for the finishing funds it was actually closer to 25,000. However, sage counsel suggested that we be a little bit modest in what we were requesting through Kickstarter, so we put it at 15,000. But the actual budget is significantly larger. And so even if we make 5 dollars past 15,000, we’re grateful for that. But more, honestly, toward finishing the film, the stronger the film is going to be.
B: Yes, and, we have some good news. We have a matching grant. [Cheers in the background.]
P: Awesome, awesome, awesome news! So, the Brown Boi Project is a great allied organization. They work to build leadership, economic self-sufficiency and health, amongst young masculine of center womyn, trans men, and queer and straight men of color pipelining folks into the social justice movement. And they do phenomenal work in leadership development. They pledged to match all donations up to $1,000! So that means that your contribution counts twice from now moving forward. The deadline, as you know, for the Kickstarter campaign is Valentine’s Day, and there are some logistics to actually being a part of a matching pledge.
B: Yes, so – when you go to Kickstarter and you pledge a donation, all you have to do is one more quick step after that. Go to Facebook, to the Brown Boi Project page, and let them know that you want your donation to be matched – you want it to be doubled. If you don’t have a Facebook or you’d rather email us that you want your donation to be matched, please just go ahead and email the Brown Boi Project: info [at symbol] brownboiproject [dot] org. It’s b-o-i, not b-o-y. And you could also email us: info [at symbol] sinsinvalid [dot] org. All you have to say is you want your donation to be matched.
P: And if that’s too complicated, just go to our Kickstarter page directly, and it will be part of the independent move toward finishing the film. And regardless thank you so so much for the love and support for Sins Invalid.
B: Thank you.