Connecting CCC and Disability Justice

• Comfy Cozy Community (CCC) was coined by Dr. Pau Abustan. CCC teaching and learning supports collective access teaching and learning cultures in K-12, higher education, and more learning spaces such as informal learning spaces of youth popular culture reflecting and teaching youth to elders life lessons. CCC teaching and learning creates teaching and learning cultures where all bodyminds thrive in their fullness, interconnectedness, and interdependence. CCC teaching and learning values, respects, and honors multiply marginalized bodyminds past, present, and future through affirming curriculums and pedagogies validating all learners.

• Cultivating Comfy, Cozy, Community (CCC) teaching and learning spaces is directly connected to disability justice since multiply marginalized communities are less likely to access and fully experience CCC teaching and learning spaces due to historical and ongoing structures and systems of oppression. Comfy, Cozy, Community (CCC) teaching and learning should be automatic and accessible to all.

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Centering Disability Justice Principles by Sins Invalid

1. INTERSECTIONALITY: “We do not live single issue lives” –Audre Lorde. Ableism, coupled with white supremacy, supported by capitalism, underscored by heteropatriarchy, has rendered the vast majority of the world “invalid.”

2. LEADERSHIP OF THOSE MOST IMPACTED: “We are led by those who most know these systems.” –Aurora Levins Morales

3. ANTI-CAPITALIST POLITIC: In an economy that sees land and humans as components of profit, we are anti-capitalist by the nature of having non-conforming body/minds.

4. COMMITMENT TO CROSS-MOVEMENT ORGANIZING: Shifting how social justice movements understand disability and contextualize ableism, disability justice lends itself to politics of alliance.

5. RECOGNIZING WHOLENESS: People have inherent worth outside of commodity relations and capitalist notions of productivity. Each person is full of history and life experience.

6. SUSTAINABILITY: We pace ourselves, individually and collectively, to be sustained long term. Our embodied experiences guide us toward ongoing justice and liberation.

7. COMMITMENT TO CROSS-DISABILITY SOLIDARITY: We honor the insights and participation of all of our community members, knowing that isolation undermines collective liberation.

8. INTERDEPENDENCE: We meet each others’ needs as we build toward liberation, knowing that state solutions inevitably extend into further control over lives.

9. COLLECTIVE ACCESS: As brown, black and queer-bodied disabled people we bring flexibility and creative nuance that go beyond able-bodied/minded normativity, to be in community with each other.

10. COLLECTIVE LIBERATION: No body or mind can be left behind – only moving together can we accomplish the revolution we require.

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References

• Berne, Patty; Morales, Aurora Levins; Sins Invalid. “Ten Principals of Disability Justice.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 46(1), (2018): pp. 227-230, https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2018.0003.