Stronger together: The power in community

Hīkoi mō te Tiriti, the March for the Treaty against the Treaty Principles Bill in November was an exciting example of the power of diverse people committed to a greater purpose. 

Joining together in our richly diverse disability community is also a powerful and affirming way of being together, learning and asserting our rights.

The hīkoi reminded me how finding my disability community enabled me to become proudly disabled instead of always being the uncomfortable lesser “other”. The late legendary disabled poet Laura Hershey wrote You get proud by practicing. How wonderful to practice together, supporting, caring for, enriching and challenging, changing ourselves and the world. Finding disability community was a homecoming for me.

In the 1970s many disabled people were still siloed into “conditions”, lives constrained by paternalistic service providers, which, for example, would not allow alcohol at adult social gatherings. Successive governments used divide-and-rule tactics to manipulate funding.

Some of the oldest, most cohesive disability communities focus on specific diagnoses or types of disability. Decades ago, these communities were the only place where disabled people could interact. Now we have a broadly-defined and diverse community. While condition-specific networks still are important for people who more readily identify with their own conditions, they are now able to be outward looking, part of the DPO, (Disabled People’s Organisations) coalition working on the implementation and monitoring of the CRPD, among other things.

DPA began in 1983 as a pan-disability umbrella organisation for service providers and DPOs. It took blood, sweat and tears for disabled members to make it ours in the 1990s. Ironically, some disabled people were more against it than the original partners. Colonisation is insidious. 

Active branches and annual conferences brought together increasingly diverse members. We learned how to listen, to be with each other’s differences, how to support and be present for each other and make change together. We argued and celebrated, plotted and agitated, shared joyful crip humour and made lifelong friends. One advantage was we were no longer constrained by all facing the same limitations. Together we can do everything.

With gay and lesbian allies, we celebrated the 1993 Human Rights Act. 

The first Sign Language interpreter formal qualification came in 1992. NZ Sign Language became an official language in 2006. People First was just a dream for Sir Robert Martin, until their first ever conference in 1993. 

Equal Employment Opportunity grew the community with the 1988 State Sector Act. We formed Public Service disability networks, held a Disability Pride Festival, with a movie, a Great Debate and Theatre of the Oppressed, and produced a report describing the social model of disability. Although most of those networks didn’t survive the nineties, they enabled people to gather and grow.

Email and the Internet expanded the community, spreading information and ideas nationally and internationally, forging links, but there is no substitute for “sharing the air” as Rodney Bell once said, for being together. Platforms such as Zoom are useful, especially for those with compromised immunity and health issues, for whom literally sharing the air might be problematic, but only as a part, not the whole of community. 

Online meeting interactions work well to get stuff done when people know each other well, and regularly work together. But building relationships without interpersonal social cues and deep engagement is difficult. Online meetings are inflexible and inaccessible for some.  Not everyone can afford the technology or use it easily to participate. In person we can support and include each other. It's impossible to share a cuppa, kai and a hug online, too.

Individualism from the past has not gone. Some local celebrity memoirs read as if they are the only disabled person. 

There is a worrying trend for diagnostic exceptionalism and division, adding to the great divide between ACC and everyone else. Resistance to divisive and damaging disability hierarchies is needed. Our own human rights charter, the CRPD, takes an essentially broad view of disability, asserting commonality. So should we. 

There is a lot written about “disability” and “community”, but the most authentic is by disabled people. Fronting up might be daunting at first, especially if you are new to disability, or can choose whether to disclose. 

Selective social media is a useful starting point to find kindred spirits, with disabled people and communities active on various platforms. Tangata whaikaha, turi and Pasifika toa networks are there too.

Henrietta Bollinger’s groundbreaking essay collection Articulations has been described as “a love letter” to the community.  In it, they celebrate disability joy and friendship, and protests ableism.

Like Henrietta, I celebrate disability, and feel the same love for and joy in our community where we celebrate this bedrock of human experience, and challenge ableism together in strength.

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The D*List Delivered!