“Take it easy in this capitalist hellscape.” That’s the last line that Alice sent me. We had been exchanging emails, as I had quoted her in my new book and wanted to make sure she was OK with it. I asked how she was doing. “I’m hanging in there despite the fascist fuckery,” she told me. I made a mental note to reach out next time I was in the Bay Area. Though we had never met in person, I just knew we would be BFFs.
Alice died on November 14th this year at the age of 51, and our sector and world lost one of its brightest lights. Among her many accomplishments, she founded the Disability Visibility Project; advocated fiercely for disabled people; was a brilliant and prolific writer; spoke up for Palestine and raised millions to help Palestinians; received a “genius” fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation; and advised the Obama administration on disability policy.
Alice was a force whose work and existence made all our lives better. I learned so much from Alice and her writings and work and who she was as a person. Here are just a few lessons I’ll be carrying forward:
See and treat marginalized people as full and complex human beings: Alice was a fierce advocate for disabled people and disability rights. And she was also deeply human and hilarious. She loved food. She cussed a lot. Society often puts people who are most affected by injustice on pedestals, treat them like fragile baby birds, or define them only by the oppression they face. But we are more than that. We, like other human beings, deserve to be fully human, which means being allowed to be messy, to make mistakes, on occasion to be grumpy and annoyed, like everyone else. I always cracked up reading her email auto-response: “If you are pitching yourself or someone to be on my podcast, you failed. My podcast ended several years ago and if you actually listened to it or did some minimal research, you would know.”
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