It's not Rocket Science

We Need to Work Together

Image by NASA

Happy New Year! Out with the old and in with the…same old shit…

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Here are some of my thoughts;

These are really uncertain times – this is a massive understatement, given recent local and global events, but stick with me, stick with us, we have more power than we think we do.

We need to work together.

Collective Action is Everything

There are at least 16 million of us. By which I mean, folk with some manner of physical or mental something or other that society fails to accommodate, or reasonably adjust to, that makes these things disabling.

To put that into some kind of perspective, 9.7 million people voted labour in the last election to give them the, er, ‘landslide’ victory that gave them the democratic dictatorship we’re experiencing today.

Add to that the 6 million unpaid carers – yes, many of whom are actually us – then that makes…er, more…

Then add to that our allies within the 5 million or so folk working within health and social care…

Counting that all up on my fingers and toes, that comes to very close to a bazillion, which is enough to flex the power that many of us believe we don’t have.

To reiterate – Labour won a massive majority in parliament with 9.7 million votes. There are at least 25 million of us.

In addition to the ballot box, we need to be in positions where decisions are made – by ‘we’ I mean people like you and me – working as paid professionals, in jobs where everyone, well, at least the people doing them, knows what that role is, where we are paid consistently, where reasonable adjustments fit our needs.

Please note, work is not a health outcome. There is a win-win solution to be had here. The government are too intransigent to consider this in amongst all the ‘overdiagnosis’ accusations and other vote-courting, ableist shite. There are those of us who really want to work – where the challenges, usually structural prejudice and discrimination, are almost insurmountable.

There are those of us, given our disabilities, the prejudice and the never-ending fear inducing persecution and uncertainty, who may never work. Don’t tell people they can and must work when you’ve created an environment of fear and division that makes it too traumatising to even consider.

To get more bangs for everyone’s buck, the government, employers and the media must work with us by;

1) Supporting the people who want to and can work, but only with real reasonable adjustments, into real, meaningful, flexible employment, with a fluid safety net should things go belly up, where zero-hour contracts are a thing of the past, and;

2) Leaving the people who’ve been structurally traumatised alone. Let them live their lives without generating further hate, trauma and vilification.

With that in mind, let’s go…

We need to stop firefighting

So much of our energies as activists, campaigners and lived experience do-dads involve reacting to the latest piece of fuckwittery from government and/ or the media that will have a massively detrimental effect on our lives or of the people we love.

As we put one bushfire out, another shrub spontaneously combusts somewhere else for us to attend to – it’s a lot like guerrilla warfare, where there aren’t enough guerillas, and those we have are emotionally and psychologically fucked, punch-drunk from yet another right hook we didn’t see coming.

Ok, I was being a bit hyperbolic saying, ‘We need to stop firefighting’; if we hadn’t been firefighting, millions of people would be far worse off now than if we hadn’t taken up arms against the sea of troubles.

We must be proactive as well as reactive. We need to explore what’s important to people, and not just highlight and rage against the harms done and the things we neither want or need.

We Need to Stop Raising Awareness

People know what’s going on. Very often they just choose not to attend to it. Every day, sometimes several times a day, some manner of structural shit bubbles to the surface that will have a humungous effect on all our lives. We’ll all get enraged; we’ll share the story across a whole bunch of social media platforms, which will be heard and read by…well, it’ll be heard and read by us, in our great big echo-chamber. Whilst this action gives us a feeling of solidarity, community even, those emotions are often accompanied by fear, emptiness, desperation, isolation and hopelessness.

We need to step warily because many of those people who aren’t in our echo-chamber, or those who dance around the edges, are quick to accuse us of virtue-signalling or guilt-tripping, where they’ll attack the messenger, ignoring the message completely.

Of course, you’re right, this is bollocks – how will our allies know stuff if we don’t share our wisdoms? That said, we have to be mindful of our hopes and dreams for the stories we release into the wilds of social media – who here hasn’t felt the heart sink of sharing an objectively grotesque story in the hope that it will thrive, that it will grow virally across the interweb, to find out it’s only been viewed by 6 people when you check in on it a day later?

Grassroots or Astroturf?

There are a lot, and I mean loads of proper grassroots campaigns and organisations out there; to give you some hope, here are a notable few for you to wander through;

Online, we’ve got Disabled People Against Cuts, Recovery in The Bin, The National Survivor User Network, The Glasgow Disability Alliance, and Disability Arts Online…to name but a few; there’s more, loads more both local and national…

In the media, watch out for the fabulous John Pring and The Disability News Service, the excellent Asylum Magazine, anything written by @DrFrancesRyan, like this in the Guardian and, of course the Big Issue.

In the world of social media, as well as those already mentioned above, we’ve got some spectacular voices on ‘X’, including @BenClaimant, Jay Watts, our @Shrink_at_Large, and the relatively new folk at Disability Rebellion whose handle is @DRDisabilityReb

If seeing actual organisations built out of bricks and mortar is more your thing, then there are a few third sector crackers out there; here are some to get your teeth into; The fabulous Kingswood and Hazel Leys Workshop in my old home town of Corby, Tidy Butt in Wales, the Fred Winter Centre in Stratford Upon Avon, and The Ridge in Dunbar in Scotland.

If you’re looking for a podcast, then The Proper Mental Podcast with Tom Davies, is a great place to start.

I’ve named these people, groups and organisations to give you a flavour of the hope and energy out there – there’s more, much, much more – and I apologise to those I haven’t mentioned – I still love you all dearly.

Tread warily, though…there are many organisations who claim to be grass roots who, er, aren’t. I won’t mention these astroturf organisations here, because we at Square Pegs aren’t dripping in wealth, and any court action would be, er, problematic. Take a look at the lovely folk above and use them as a kind of template to keep you safe on this journey.

We don’t agree all of the time. Although we’re not quite like a sack full of ferrets, there are times where our opinions don’t perfectly align. Fear not, dear reader, listener person…that’s a good thing – although our echo-chambers aren’t always agreeable, our trajectories are nearly always somewhere in the same ballpark.

We Need to use our collective might for change

All of these people, organisations and groups want change. We occasionally differ in our approaches, but we all want a world that’s significantly better for people like us.

Although we’ve got a breadth of knowledge, experiences and values between the 11 or so of us here at Square Pegs Towers, we’re starting out by collecting the testimonies of people who are routinely marginalised from conversations like this – some folk find this challenging – they’re unaccustomed to having their voices and opinions heard and valued – where their, our, collective might cannot be ignored.

We’ll be reaching out to all of the above and thousands more, using facing to face conversations with individuals and groups, and a variety of online platforms where we’ll be talking with people using livestreams, podcasts, blogs and zines (zines, what are…? You’ll find out soon enough) to find out what really matters to them…to you.

Let’s speak soon.

Chris