Episode 29: Solidarity Chat 7: Jay Salazar

Jay Salazar in conversation with Dr Aimi Hamraie

00:00:11 INTRO: [Various overlapping voices] Contra* is friction. Contra* is nuanced. Contra* is transgressive—good trouble. Contra* is questions. Contra* is collaborative. Contra* is a podcast. It’s a space for thinking about design critically. Contra* is subversive. Contra* is texture.

00:00:32 Contra*: You are listening to Solidarity Chats: a special section of the Contra* podcast on disability, design justice, and the life world. These episodes, recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, focus on disability, eugenics, and mutual aid. We’re hoping to capture some of the conversations that disabled people, and our allies, are having about issues such as healthcare infrastructure, medical triage, eugenics, and technology as it is unevenly distributed across the population. These episodes are also going to come out at a different rate than the regular Contra* episodes, so please make sure to subscribe on Google, Apple, or Stitcher so that you don’t miss any.

00:01:27 Aimi: This is Aimi Hamraie, and I’m so excited to be here with Jay Salazar from the Disability Justice Culture Club, based in the Bay area. Welcome, Jay.

00:01:37 Jay: Hi Aimi.

0:01:39 Aimi: How’s it going?

0:01:42 Jay: As good as can be expected! [laughs].

00:01:45 Aimi: Yeah, hanging in there. Well, so, I am so thrilled to talk to you, because the Disability Justice Culture Club (DJCC) has really been modelling what mutual aid can be like from a disability justice perspective, and I’m hoping we can capture some of that here, and translate it for our audience. So, to start, can you just tell us about what DJCC is, and where it started?

00:02:14 Jay: DJCC started with the fires. We’ve had multiple years of fires here in California, and so, kind of, figuring out that we were going to have to take care of ourselves and our community, and that that was needed in a broader scale, was the way things got started with DJCC. DJCC is a disabled QTPOC-centered and led coalition, focusing on justice and freedom, community, and joyful resistance, and it’s a space for all of us.

00:03:09 Aimi: Wonderful. So, during the forest fires, what were some of the strategies that you all were using to organize, and what sorts of things were you doing?

00:03:25 Jay: We were—we were connecting people with resources, like we know some of the people in our community have a lot of resources that we do not tap into, due to financial burdens and difficulty with getting to places, and things like that. So, we were connecting volunteers, and getting them connected with people that needed resources. Like, I was doing a lot of, like, making sure that the windows were blocked off from the smoke coming in, and we were doing DIY air purifiers, because we didn’t have any air purifiers or fans or anything in the stores anymore. Even though they were so expensive, they were all gone. So that’s kind of how it all… got started.

00:04:40 Aimi: Yeah, and do I remember correctly that you all were also protesting against the electricity being shut off?

00:04:46 Jay: Yeah, yeah. We shut down PG&E, for one morning, and made—we did a rally and—this is something that is going to continue to happen, it’s kind of like, just—it was a way to bring attention to something that—to a bigger… bigger conversation that needs to happen about PG&E, and how much they are profiting, and how much… how much… people they’re endangering. And how people were saying, “ Oh, it’s just…it’s just a couple of days without power, it’s okay, it’s not a big deal.” And it’s true for a lot of the able-bodied and well-resourced people, but unfortunately that is not true for people with health conditions and chronic illnesses, and people that need to keep their meds refrigerated, people who need to sleep with ventilators, and things like that. You kind of realize, what’s the plan if we end up not having power, and… someone that we know, and love end up not having their ventilator working? And, it wasn’t enough to say, “ Well, I’ll lay here and die,” because unfortunately that’s how some of our community was seen, because there wasn’t anyone else responding to the need of, “This is how we can fix it,” or, “This is what the resource is in our community”, or “This what we need,” kind of thing. And hopefully we are getting ready—unfortunately. And hopefully, we are going to be more ready for the next years’ fire season, and having… battery packs, or power generators, so that we can have some back-up to the people that most need it to breathe. 00:07:31 Like, I don’t think that is too much to ask for PG&E, and when we asked for money to purchase those generators and stuff like that, they came back with—we asked for like ten thousand dollars, and they came back with a four thousand dollar offer, which did not help at all, to the big, broader perspective of how much they are profiting and how much they are affecting everyday customers.

00:08:12 Aimi: Yeah, I just want to highlight that, you know, you all have been working on this issue of access to ventilators and masks and breathing and survival for even longer than the coronavirus pandemic has been going on, and there are so many different parts to what DJCC is doing. Like there’s the direct action part, there’s the mutual aid part, there’s like designing your own DIY air purifiers part—like disability engineering kind of stuff—and all of these are working together. And I think a lot of non-disabled people don’t realize that disabled people are often doing all of those things together anyway, it’s like what we do, we like, hack our environments, we build community, we share resources, and we also make demands for this to change, and so this is—there’s really like a history of this, and you all are part of that history, and even within your collective, the transition that you all made for me was really interesting, from doing the PG&E work, to what you’re doing now with mutual aid around coronavirus. So, do you want to talk about that a little bit, like, what are you all doing now, how does it build on these previous networks and strategies that you’ve been using?

00:09:30 Jay: Indeed, it’s a learning process every time we do this, and every day that we start a new day, we’re learning something different, in how to connect people, and what questions to ask, and how—are we using our resources the best way possible? Unfortunately, we know that people with resources, are very well-resourced, and are first to ask for resources. And because of shame, because of ableism, and because of the lack of knowing what’s out there, because we’re so… busy surviving every day, we are not able to tap into those resources the way people that have them do. 00:10:31 And that’s one of the things that we were seeing being—during the fires… that people that had a lot of resources, and that were able to get the things in other ways, were asking for resources. So, that’s one of the things that we learned from there, then, that we’ve been really… intentional about doing this time and making sure that we reach our—the people that most need it. We’re working with unhoused people, and people with disabilities and elders—a lot of our elders hold so much and have so much knowledge, and are also just really isolated all of the time. 00:11:32 So, this is not something—socially isolating, it’s not something that they’re doing for the first time. So there’s a lot that we can learn from their wealth of knowledge that they carry. We have a three-hundred—and every day growing—pool of volunteers and donors, and donors of masks, and people that want to donate funds to help others, and things like that, and just people that just want to do something. People that are feeling like there is a lot of need, and there’s not enough of our government, and our emergency resources that we should be getting that are actually being brought to us, that are willing to help. So, we’re connecting people with people that can cook and people that can go shopping for elders, and people that can do laundry. There’s just like, a lot of need, and fortunately there is also just a lot of people wanting to help.

00:13:00 Aimi: Yeah, that’s great. I noticed—I was looking over your forums, like your intake forums for mutual aid, and there are two separate ones, there’s one for people who have resources to give, and one for people who need resources. And a thing I thought was really instructive, and would be a good model for other mutual aid organizers to check out especially, is the forum for people who are asking for resources, because it’s very different than a lot of the ones I’ve seen in other cities, in that—in the ways that it focuses on disability, and has so much nuance around disability. So, as—just as some examples, you know, it’s translated into multiple languages, it asks questions like, “Do you need someone who is fragrance-free to be the person who’s providing assistance?” You know, “If coronavirus continues for a few months, what kinds of emergency assistance may you need later?” which is a thing that disabled people think about all the time, but non-disabled people may not think about that sort of future planning. There’s stuff about, like, meal restrictions, allergies, you know, so—and then also asking about social location, like race and class and things like that. And, so to me, like, your forum really embodies disability justice, and all of the philosophies of disability justice so well. And it’s doing this very functional thing, which is connecting people to resources at the same time, but it seems that like a lot of what you were just saying about, like you know, how do you make sure that it’s not just the people with the most resources who get access to the resources. Like, you can—I can see how those concerns are really built into the questions that you’re asking, so I think that’s really amazing.

00:15:07 Jay: Yeah, thank you. Yeah I think that… we realized that there—even though there’s so much help out there for just able-bodied people, there isn’t a thought—there’s not a lot of intention, or thought, going into people that really need help, and that can be from, like you said, being fragrance-free. We try to keep these things in mind with everything we do. For example, the coronavirus kit-thing that we were making, and when we started looking for unscented hand sanitizer, there was none before there was a need. 00:16:06 Now there’s such a scarcity, that people that actually need scented-free hand sanitizer would not be able to get it, A, because there isn’t any, and B, because people aren’t making it. People aren’t thinking, “Oh, there needs to be scent-free,” most people are thinking, “ Oh, let me mask the smell of the alcohol, because that way it'll smell nicer,” but don’t think of the other people that have allergies and chemical sensitivity, like…. So that was one of the things that we were doing—that’s one of the first things that we started doing, was like creating our own scent-free hand sanitizer, and distributing it to people that need it the most. Our home-base, which is in Oakland, California, is completely scent-free. 00:17:07 That’s why we—we want to say that it’s a space for everyone, and it’s completely… disabled-orientated. There’s ramps, and there’s low counters and accessible bathrooms—not only accessible to wheelchairs, but just like unscented—how many times do we go into a restaurant, and the first thing that hits you is the really strong smell of fragranced something, and I’m not… I don’t have any chemical sensitivities, and when I go into a bathroom that is highly scented, my nose gets irritated, or it’s just bothersome. There’s for some people that it’s not just bothersome , it’s life-threatening, and we don’t have people thinking like that, we don’t have enough people thinking like that.

00:18:23 Aimi: Yeah, I completely agree with you. I—so I am a chemically injured person, and I remember a few weeks ago, before we all had to start staying at home, there was a period when people were still out and about, but they were using hand sanitizers all the time. And I made a simple request that people just buy unscented hand sanitizer, because the scent was so strong, and it was like knocking me out sometimes, and I was told that I should just stay home, and that I was putting other people in danger, because using hand sanitizer was necessary to battle coronavirus. And I was like, “ You know what else is necessary to battle coronavirus? Like, having lungs that are breathing and not having an asthma attack and stuff—"

00:19:09 Jay: Being able to walk outside. Being able to walk outside. I mean, a lot of times we think about physical, and injuries, or illnesses, or chronic illnesses, and we forget that part of the way that we keep ourselves sane is by having social contact in some way. And people with these chemical sensitivities have… have had to think about it every day of their lives for so many things, that—we’re not inventing any new system, we’re just taking the knowledge from the people that do it every day. And that’s why this is an organization that is led by queer and disabled people. I think the five of us that are core members of DJCC all identify as disabled or people of color, and I think that that is something that we as DJCC want to do, is continue to empower the people that already know how to do this, and teach us that have been completely clueless to what life really looks like for an individual with disabilities. And kind of like—well, we get to take care—we shouldn’t have to, but now we get to tell you how better to take care of yourself, instead of you telling us what to do with our bodies, and our illnesses, because we’re not—we shouldn’t be a burden to you—and because you need to breathe outside. Why would you have to need people using unscented hand sanitizer, that’s just such a burden for everybody! I am being completely sarcastic, and I know you know that, but… reaffirming it! [laughs]

00:21:40 Aimi: Yeah, totally. I’ve had a lot of sarcasm lately too. I just keep like looking around, and people are, you know, in many cases really struggling with how to do social isolation, how to talk to other people about risk and exposure, and how to take care of themselves and how to even, like, clean stuff, and I’m like, “Oh, if only there were groups of people who’ve had this experience before, that non-disabled people could, like, look to for answers!” And it’s like, there are so many disabled and ageing people, as you said before, who already live under these conditions, and it’s not new, and yet those are also the people right now who are the most at risk for not being prioritized for ventilators or for medical care in hospitals, and it’s like, what is even happening here? You know, and a lot of people have been talking about how forms of accessibility are being make available now for non-disabled people that have been denied to disabled people for so long. And so I am—it’s really great for me to have the example of DJCC, and all of the different kind of levels that you all are operating at, making hand sanitizer, designing air purifiers, but also doing advocacy, also coordinating resources, and this is really what everybody should be doing right now, I think.

00:23:17 Jay: Not just during corona, or during an emergency; that’s what everybody should be doing every day, and we should have to take good care of ourselves, and we shouldn’t have to think about these things every day, like if it was our survival. Like, if you think about it, we’re trying to survive every day in these conditions already. So like you said, these are people that are being left behind, because now the people that have it all every day are needing some of the things that we need every day and don’t have.

00:24:00 Aimi: Yeah, yeah, so many people are taking more than their fair share, and as you said before, it’s often people with the most resources who also, like, get access to what is needed, and also are able to, like, ask for that too. So, I read about how you all were, you know, prioritizing distributing the hand sanitizers that you made with, like, unhoused folks who may not have access to like, the spreadsheets and like the Google forms and things like that, to ask for resources, so that’s also a really important part of what you’re doing that I think should be highlighted.

00:24:45 Jay: I mean, even people that are unhoused, just right now, what we’re having people do, is if we have not—they don’t have access to the internet or a computer where they can fill it out, or just are not able to access it in the other languages that we have them in, or the print is too small, or they’re just not tech-savvy—if you think about it, those people right now are getting no help, other than if they have family members, and their family members are well-resourced, and they have family members in town that can actually get them to these resources. So we’re having people call, and we’re pairing them with volunteers to fill out these… Google forms, so that we can get these resources to people, and not just people that have access to a computer and the internet.

00:26:02 Aimi: Yeah, that’s so important right now. I’ve been talking to a lot of abolitionists also about how incarcerated folks are, you know, put at a lot of risk right now, but also it’s really hard to build mutual aid networks. And so, you know, the sort of thing that you’re describing too is a potential way for like, if the system that is set up to distribute mutual aid is not available to someone, then like, having direct people that you’re in contact with, so that you can ask for what you need, or say what you’re able to give, is an important part of it. So, my last question for you is, what do you imagine is going to happen in the future, and what are some of the challenges and opportunities that you feel like are coming around all of this, for organizing solidarity and mutual aid for disabled people, and what are some of the things that you want people to be careful about and be thinking about as they’re doing this?

00:27:11 Jay: That’s a good question. I think that I would ask people to think about before asking someone for help whether they can access help from others, and to think about their community, their immediate community, so that the resources out there are going to the people that most need it. And that is not in any way, shape or form saying, “If you need it, don’t come and ask for it.“ Please, I invite you to come and ask for it. This is why we exist, and—I’m just reiterating again that the people who have resources. And…and once you are tapped into those resources, tell a friend, you know? Tell a neighbor, check in with your neighbors, see how they’re doing. Utilize your resources to lend someone some help too. And if you have resources, we need them. How does this—what does this look like for the future—how does this look like in the future? It can—it looks like, in many ways, very differently, but I think that one thing that I would like to invite people to do is just to think about how we can…continue to bring up these topics and continue to push for resources that should be given to us, and not just because there’s a pandemic. 00:29:45 Because there’s people that need them every day. We have an unhoused community that is struggling every day, way before any of this started happening, and I can’t imagine how many people are going to be left with so many needs after not being able to work. 00:30:10 Because our government is still getting paid. Our health officials are still getting paid. People with… medical degrees, and—which I feel like they should be getting paid—but now the people that had to go to work sick every day for the past years, that can’t even set a foot outside their house, are not getting any resources met, because unemployment is so great right now, and all these needs are not being met in their everyday lives already. So, ways that we can continue talking about this, and continue pushing for things to happen, and bringing awareness to the things that happen every day to our communities. 00:31:23 I think it’s important for us not to think about it as an emergency situation, but what happens after this. I don’t that think any of us will be the same after this, but that’s not saying much either. So I just want to keep in mind that this is—there’s going to be… more that has to come from just this pandemic, and this emergency, because… if we don’t, then just having to do it all over again in the next emergency. 00:32:14 What’s it going to be for us to like, start actually creating things in place that are not just a response, or for an emergency? And like I said, a lot of us live like this every day, and already think about it. But I just also feel like we shouldn’t be the only ones that do—that have to think about it, and have to feel so under-resourced every day, in order to survive. And what that looks like, it—just start this conversation with your family members, create check-in protocols, and check in on your elders, and check in on your neighbors. Let’s not leave anybody behind.

00:33:14 Aimi: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a perfect place for us to wrap up, on that note about solidarity, and not leaving anyone behind. Thank you so much Jay for all of the insights that you provided here, and could you say just briefly a little bit about how people can support the Disability Justice Culture Club if they’re listening to this?

00:33:39 Jay: Well, we are accepting financial donations through PayPal or Venmo at DJCC and we’re also accepting any donations of—we have people reaching out to us that need masks, and just any kind of resource that you may have the ability to… pay forward to somebody. We will definitely find a new home for it. And yeah, please volunteer, offer your resources, fill out that form, and if you can go out for somebody, or even if you’re going out for yourself and you can pick up a few—stuff for your neighbor, please do so, and…yeah.

00:34:48 Aimi: Yeah, perfect, I’ll make sure to include links to all of that in the show notes for this episode.

00:34:56 OUTRO: You’ve been listening to Contra*, a podcast about disability, design justice and the life world. Contra* is a production of the Critical Design Lab, learn more about our projects at mapping-access.com, and be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please head over to Apple podcasts to subscribe, rate and leave a review. The Contra* podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike-International 3.0 license. That means you can remix, repost or recycle any of the content, as long as you cite the original source, aren’t making money, you don’t change the credits, and you share it under the same license.

[End of recording]