My companion Stacey Park Milbern passed on today, May 19, 2020, on her birthday. I haven’t cried at this point and am overpowered with appreciation for knowing and adoring her. I feel pity and fury yet I won’t focus myself in grieving her. In sharing her work and words here, may we as a whole recall and observe Stacey.
Stacey Park Milbern,
A blended race Korean and white strange individual grins head on at the camera. She has enormous glasses and is wearing a crewneck. Her trach and wheelchair should be visible.
Development Producer and Crip Predecessor. Stacey’s composing was strong and delightful.
Her Facebook posts would reestablish my spirit and one of them moved me such a lot of I requested that Stacey compose a visitor paper in 2019 about crip ancestorship. What’s more, presently Stacey is one of our debilitated progenitors alongside Mel Baggs, Carrie Ann Lucas, Ing Wong-Ward, Ki’tay Davidson, Laura Hershey, thus numerous others.
I have barely any familiarity with otherworldliness or
what happens when we kick the bucket, yet my crip eccentric Korean life causes me to accept that our natural bodyminds is nevertheless a small portion, and not considering our precursors is choosing just for see a brief look at what our identity is. Individuals some of the time expect ancestorship is saved for those of natural connection, yet a queered or cripped comprehension of ancestorship holds that, for example, in tissue, our most profound connections are with individuals we decide to be associated with and honor a large number of days.
Ancestorship, similar to adore, is far reaching and breaks synthetic limits cast upon it, similar to the family unit model or counterfeit country state borders. My predecessors are crippled individuals who lived watching out of organization windows needing quite a lot more for themselves. This is a direct result of them that I realize that, in pondering what is a “great” life, a potential chance to contribute is essentially as significant as getting upholds one necessities.
My progenitors are individuals destroyed from loves by war and uprooting. This is a result of them I know the force of building home with anything you have, any place you are, whoever you are with. My predecessors are queers who lived in the American South. This is a result of them I grasp the significance of connections, spot and carrying on with life large, regardless of whether it is perilous. Each of my progenitors know yearning. Yearning is much of the time our interfacing place.
Speaking Truth to Power
In a joint effort with eccentric BIPOC debilitated individuals in the San Francisco Straight Region, Stacey made a home: the Handicap Equity Culture Club. Her fantasy to remodel her home and make a space for coordinating and assembling fixated on bliss turned into a reality a couple of years prior. Since the foundation of the DJCC, the gathering prepared making hand sanitizer and giving common guide during the current Covid pandemic. Last year in light of the deliberate power shut offs by the utility PG&E, Stacey and an aggregate of handicapped, fat, more seasoned, eccentric individuals grouped together in the Ability To Live battle.
At a vigil and local area meeting in Oakland on October 10, 2019, Stacey gave these comments:
This moment when there is an environment crisis, individuals who live in nursing homes and establishments get abandoned. As a rule staff, families and local area individuals need to protect them, even genuinely battling nursing home directors, however are banned in light of strategy. It is entirely expected for individuals in organizations to pass on in light of the fact that they were not saved. Many supporters are battling for what we call the option to be protected. The. Right. To. Be. Protected.
The whole way across the straight, crippled individuals are giving common guide to each other. We are calling our companions and local area routinely to check in. We are helping each other track down lodging and empty. Obtaining generators, ice, and prescription. We are ensuring individuals are getting refreshes in a configuration open to them. We are facilitating and moving individuals, outsider and companion the same. The world probably won’t mind in the event that we live or bite the dust however we do.
Impaired eccentric craftsman Alli Yates says handicapped intelligence saves lives.
Do you recollect last year when nobody could inhale and Cover Oakland scattered a huge number of veils? That was crafted by incapacitated individuals as well. We live and cherish reliantly. We realize no individual is an island, we want each other to live. Nobody goes about their own dental responsibilities or trims their own hair. We as a whole need support. Order of what backing is OK to need and what isn’t is simply ableism.
Return home and mind your neighbors. Rest. Ponder why we should battle free enterprise, bigotry, inequity and ableism that barely cares about humankind that certain individuals are decreased to anticipated misfortunes. There is a ton to do and taking us all is going. Much thanks to you.
Assuming that you have the means, you can uphold crafted by the Handicap Equity Culture Club and follow them for refreshes on the most proficient method to best respect and recall Stacey.
Revolutionary Love and Care Stacey Park Milbern
Stacey Park Milbern adored and really focused on individuals wildly and wholeheartedly. She took euphoria and joy with each discussion and relationship. Her thoughts were really progressive and zeroed in on what’s to come. In a 2017 episode of the Handicap Perceivability webcast on care work by impaired eccentric femmes with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Stacey shared a portion of her strange crippled femme shrewdness:
…I think a great deal of times, individuals with handicaps particularly femme individuals get expected to do a wide range of close to home work in return for access support. What’s more, not seen as related or even something we’re advertising…
It’s entertaining:
My companion, Maddy, posted a photograph of me in the ICU holding my cellphone, and I was planning access support for myself since I was in the ICU, however they weren’t giving me the help that I wanted, unexpectedly. Thus, I was planning individuals to come be with me at the emergency clinic to ensure I would be alright. What’s more, it was truly entertaining on the grounds that I would attempt to arrange their visits to be while I believed individuals should meet.
Thus, simply that I consider all that is care work, whether that is associating individuals to networks. Since a great deal of companions, individuals are really segregated or sharing assets or aiding somebody issue tackle or assisting someone with overcoming a set off encounter or reminding them when something resembles incorporated ableism or bigotry and assisting them with tracking down their power.
Along these lines,
I was simply seeing that individuals, crippled individuals, we go through so many, I feel like I’ve carried on with such countless lives. Some of them are by decision, and afterward different plans are not by decision. Like, last year, I procured another handicap, and it’s changing the experience of my body. What’s more, I think we expect individuals with handicaps just to unobtrusively deal with these advances.
That is the means by which you be a decent crippled individual, isn’t discussing your inability and not disturbing ableist, healthy, capable leaning society or not being a weight. Simply doing everything well and nimbly and all alone. What’s more, that is simply not the truth of the inability experience.
I think we need to recognize that there is some grieving and that there is a misfortune and that there likewise is truly can be a few wonderful encounters that emerge from it too, very much like anything in nature or life. Furthermore, I think simply naming it, naming becoming debilitated or more crippled as a progress that occurs throughout everyday life and
That it very well may be a groundbreaking change or experience is truly significant. Since the vast majority, or all individuals, go through that sooner or later, and in the event that we can sort out some way to truly appear for one another during these times, then, at that point, I figure we could change the social experience of being handicapped.
Source of inspiration Stacey Park Milbern
The following are a couple of things I gained from Stacey Park Milbern:
Stacey Park Milbern thought beyond practical boundaries and contended energetically to make them materialize. She envisioned the existence that she merited and got it going. May you additionally experience your most extravagant fantasies.
Stacey cherished her companions and friends and family. She made opportunity to battle for, check in, and hold space for her kin in all sorts of challenges. May you set aside the opportunity to offer love and thanks to individuals in your lives.
Stacey experienced her legislative issues and values. She let it all out and rehearsed her convictions regularly through her goals, activities, and words. She appeared and upheld various developments past the handicap local area. Her vision of incapacity equity and what was in store was endless. May you inspect how you might support and elevate others past your nearby circle.
Not the Stacey Park Milbern
Stacey’s inheritance is all over, her soul and presence will be felt long into the future. This year Stacey was the co-maker of the effect crusade for the narrative Crip Camp with Andraéa LaVant.
You can pursue Crip Camp: The Virtual Experience, a progression of online introductions. That Stacey coordinated with Andraéa, as a little example of her splendid work. You can likewise give to the Incapacitated Creatives and Activists Help Asset. An organization between the Crip Camp Effect Mission and Shade of Progress that will uphold activists. Narrators and social forces to be reckoned with representing things to come.
If you have any desire to share a tale about Stacey, you can record one for the. DVP and have it documented at the Library of Congress through a local area organization with StoryCorps.
