018: Tiffany & Alex
In this episode, we’re joined by Alex Locust, a disability justice champion and member of Diversability’s D-30 Selection Committee, to chat about Disability Pride Month and the behind the scenes leading up to the announcement of Diversability’s D-30 Disability Impact List.
We discussed:
Alex’s disability origin story
His current projects
How Alex joined Diversability’s D-30 Selection Committee
His reflections on ADA30 and reviewing the D-30 nominations
Messages for D-30 nominees and future honorees
Show notes:
Spill the Disabili-Tea: https://www.glamputee.com/workshops/2018/6/16/spill-the-disabili-tea
Sippin’ Saturdays: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CAi-PWNBZ7u/
Diversability’s D-30 Disability Impact List: http://mydiversability.com/d30
Americans with Disabilities Act: https://www.adaanniversary.org/
Disability Pride Month proclamation: https://sfgov.org/mod/node/964
About Alex Locust
Alex is a counselor-coordinator, providing substance use counseling rooted in harm reduction at the Stonewall Project within the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. In addition, Alex is a community organizer and travels the country facilitating workshops in a broad spectrum of environments. Armed with bombastic charm, whimsical humor, and a sharp wit, Alex synthesizes professional insight with lived experience to create engaging workshops grounded in cultural humility, intersectionality, and fostering empathetic, holistic views of marginalized communities. Alex is passionately committed to educating others on how to adopt a disability justice framework for community building and strives to empower other disabled folx to feel included in the movement.
Follow Alex Locust
Website: https://www.glamputee.com/
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/glamputee
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/glamputee
Twitter: http://twitter.com/glamputee
Transcript
Tiffany Yu: You’re listening to Tiffany & Yu, the podcast. This is your host Tiffany Yu. On this episode, I’m joined by Alex Locust, who is a disability justice champion and serves on the Selection Committee for Diversability’s inaugural D-30 Disability Impact List, a list that will be honoring 30 disability leaders globally who are making a difference in their communities. July 26th marks the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). It is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life. It is modeled after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it is one of the most comprehensive pieces of civil rights legislation. Before the ADA, there was Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the first disability civil rights law to be enacted in the United States. I highly recommend watching the documentary Crip Camp on Netflix to July has been officially designated as Disability Pride Month in San Francisco in honor this anniversary. We chatted about that, and ahead of announcing the D-30 honorees, we are giving you a behind the scenes look at how this process came about. Hope you enjoy this special episode and our conversation.
Tiffany Yu: Hi, everyone. You're listening to this episode of Tiffany & Yu. This is your host, Tiffany Yu. This is a special D-30 Disability Impact List edition. And I have with me, one of our selection committee members, Alex Locust. Hey Alex.
Alex Locust: Hey Tiffany. How are you?
Tiffany Yu: I'm doing pretty well. Alex's a counselor/coordinator currently working at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. In addition to that, Alex is a community organizer, workshop facilitator, who has organized a lot of workshops around disability justice around the country. So I always like starting with origin stories. Have you met Rosemarie Garland-Thomson?
Alex Locust: I have a few times, but don't know her super personally.
Tiffany Yu: So I have also met her a couple of times and she said, Tiffany, it is so important for us to share these origin stories because it really highlights the diversity within the disability community. So I wanted to start by asking you about your disability origin story, however you interpret that.
Alex Locust: Yeah, I agree. I think there's so much power in our stories. I mean, you know, me, I kinda like to add a little humor, a little zing for everything. And so I've been joking lately that just my left leg never clocked in. I was born this way. There's not a lot of shock or excitement to how kind of normal it felt as a child ,because that's how my body is and was. I haven't really invested a lot in the science of it, understanding what medical terms would describe it appropriately, just that's how it was. And I, later in life, at 13, went through amputation in order to pursue more streamlined prosthetics . So I can formally call myself an amputee. I thought it was pretty funny. I encountered someone once who corrected me. I said, I was born this way. And they were like, well, can you really be called an amputee? But, really, I think it's just, it's something where this is my body and I've just been learning to love it and adapt with it since then.
Tiffany Yu: Thank you for sharing. We had Dr. Victor Pineda, another Bay Area based d i sability advocate who told me that he had two origin stories. The one was his first understanding of disability. So I'm curious if, along your own journey, was there another turning point to where you really saw and took ownership of a disability identity?
Alex Locust: Yeah, I love that idea because for me, my disability identity is so intertwined with my queerness. There are queer disabled elders who I've really learned to view disability as a queering of the body. Queerness also involves many coming outs. There's kind of not one. You don't just get to come out one time and be done. And so I think that along that idea of multiple origin stories, to what I mentioned earlier around being born this way, I think as a child, I feel like I was more comfortable with my disability than other people were. I was really happy hopping everywhere. I really didn't take to wearing my prosthetic very often. I was just a little, little Pogo stick. And enduring the trauma of an amputation at 13, really in a way, looking back, I'm troubled by how that process went about . I really want to trust the best intentions of the doctors and professionals, and of course my parents who've been unconditional support all my life. I also think to undergo such a traumatic surgery, even if it's something that someone wants to go through for the surgical reasons, it's still a lot for a 13 year old. And I think at that time, I didn't have the consciousness around disability, ableism, justice to really make a sound decision there. And so what I believe happened was I kind of almost regressed in terms of disability pride. I became really shameful and insecure about my body. It was as if the medical profession had said, something's wrong with your body and we have to fix it. And prior to that moment, I hadn't felt like anything was wrong. And so I would say that the second coming out or another wave of that was really the liberation of getting crutches and moving away from feeling like I needed a prosthetic to be whole. If I never had that leg, having that added to my body, it always felt othered, it always felt foreign. And so I kind of was always itching to get it off at the end of the day. And I think that it wasn't just about the physical sensation, but the emotional experience. So, this new era that I'm in now, thanks to the Bay Area, thanks to learning about disability civil rights, learning about disability justice. It's really not just an ease of moving away from agendas other people have set for my body, but now I have the language and the framework to hang my experiences onto and a pride outside of my individual self, but really like a lineage to move into. There are movements, there's history. It's not just me grappling with these things. I can aspire and set my intentions to be in alignment with people who have really paved the way for the life that I'm living now and the life I want to create for disabled people that come after me.
Tiffany Yu: That's beautiful. Someone asked me the other day, they said, what advice would you give to younger people with disabilities who may be lacking self confidence or self esteem. And for me, it was rooting yourself in community. And I think for you being at the intersection of disability and queerness and being able to have elders that you could turn to sounds like it was really powerful. So I said community and role models and being able to have both of those and see yourself reflected back, for me as well, allowed me to take ownership and pride within my own identities. I know we are living in a COVID era, but are there any projects that you're working on now that you're particularly excited about?
Alex Locust: Oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, I think in the spirit of disability justice and speaking to sustainability, I would say I'm the biggest project that I'm most excited about. Disability justice is so much about anti-capitalism and identifying our worth outside of who we are as working beings and what we contribute. And I think this pandemic, this sheltering in place, this physical distancing, and isolation has been a screeching halt to the really unsustainable pace that I was going. I work a full time job as a counselor. I was doing facilitations once, twice, sometimes three times a week, traveling, really enjoying and relishing the opportunity to flip the script and be in the driver's seat of conversations around disability and ableism, rather than always being expected to do unpaid emotional labor, and being really excited to see people excited about these conversations and elevating their access and inclusion and being a megaphone for disabled voices that I'm really excited and inspired by and building that sense of being a public figure that I can eventually create more opportunities for disabled people, and use that money to donate and pay back. But with all of that, I wasn't resting. I wasn't cooking for myself. I haven't made space for counseling and healing and taking care of the everyday things, taking care of my space. The project I'm most excited about is my own care, my own wellness, and really prioritizing those things so that I can be intentional about what I say yes to so that I don't just do everything in the hopes that it's like a critical mass kind of situation. That's really about working smarter, not harder. So I think the only tangible thing outside of my own self reflection and journey is, I've been doing my workshop that I'm really proud of I call "Spill the Disabili-Tea." So I mentioned my corny humor earlier and I at the beginning started a Sip and Saturdays. So like a taste of what Disabili-Tea looks like, and I'm doing Instagram live conversations with people in other movements and finding ways that we can explore cross movement solidarity as a disability justice principle. I got to do one with a dear friend and peer kali and we talked about sex, kink, and disability. I have some other ones that I've lined up that I'm excited about. I put a pause on that. We just moved, right. So I really want to focus on those kinds of things so that when I do come to the conversation, I'm bringing my whole self, I'm ready to do that, and I'm modeling what I say. So, those might happen on my Instagram again soon, and I'm looking forward to having more of those conversations.
Tiffany Yu: For sure. I love what you said about leading by example and this real focus on care. That's a big part of being able to show up in this work is all of the internal work that we need to do before we can even show up to serve our community as well.
Alex Locust: Yeah.
Tiffany Yu: So we're going to take a quick break here, but when we were going to chat all about Diversability's D-30 Disability Impact List.
[break]
Tiffany Yu: And we're back from the break here. I have with me, Alex Locust, also known as Glamputee across social media and on his website. Hey Alex.
Alex Locust: Hey!
Tiffany Yu: So before the break, we were chatting about origin stories. And then we were chatting about some of the things that Alex had been with working on and is now shifting into what it looks like in a COVID era. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Alex's Spill the Disabili-Tea workshop was one of the recipients of our Awesome Foundation grants back in the day. And I also want to acknowledge, I've just learned so much from him around disability justice, around internalized ableism, around microaggressions in the disability space. So a lot of gratitude for Alex is all I have to say. But that's said, this is a special edition. Diversability decided that amidst this pandemic and recession, and as all of us know, the disability community has really been disproportionately impacted by everything that's happening right now. And our team was really thinking through, this year is the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, huge milestone. We'd love to commemorate it. We also want to balance acknowledging all of the hard things that all of us are going through, but can we do something to celebrate? And so we came up with this idea for a D-30 Disability Impact List, recognizing disability leaders. And so I ended up just texting Alex. I think it was probably like 10:00 PM on a Wednesday or Thursday. And I said, Hey, would you be interested in being on the selection committee for this disability list that we're putting together? And he was like, Yeah, sure. So at that point, we hadn't put together any wording or any idea of what it was going to be like. I'd love to know , what made you say yes.
Alex Locust: I'm looking back at our texts and I'm just like, you know, it's not just a yeah, sure. I know for sure with me to reciprocate that gratitude, Tiffany. I think you demonstrate the power and vulnerability. And I think your story is just so out there as a part of everything that you do. And, I think that that kind of leadership is so refreshing to see you to lead and with wholeness. You're not shying away from the messy parts, the imperfect parts, the painful parts, as equally as important as your triumphs and your successes. When Tiffany Yu says hop, I say how high? And so I think that's why I said yes, because not just that you were the one asking me and that I trust your vision and your principles and what you bring together, especially around intersectionality, around celebrating disabled people of color, disabled women of color, queerness, all of these different margins within that. But, the fun part about the ADA is that it was signed days after I was born. So I have this funny relationship with this piece of paper in that I'm days older than it. It's kind of almost a way of saying, I have been alive for the amount of time that this has been in practice and what's been accomplished since then, of course, I didn't know what disability rights look like when I was just born. I can also relate to how difficult and slow progress can be when we lead with just relying on legislation to do cultural work and seeing how, in those 30 years, for as much as there's been instrumental change and for as much as disability justice leadership has helped to challenge and elevate what the ADA started, there's still so much to do. And so I'm deeply grateful for the celebratory stance that you're taking, where you're saying, like, rather than wait for us to be celebrated, let's celebrate each other. I love the centering of disability as in that you selected such a diverse panel of disabled people to be doing the selection process. So that way it's for and by which is part of why I love events like Superfest from the Longmore Institute so much. You brought up role models earlier. And I just, I really love Laverne Cox has talked about the idea of possibility models, kind of revolutionizing that concept and saying like, I'm not aspiring to be this person exactly, like have their life and they're on a pedestal. It's more that that person represents a possibility of people like myself and where we can go in life. And I think this D-30 offers an opportunity to really elevate the stories of more disabled possibility models for everyone to see how people can create cultural change in their lives and their communities using disability as a generative force in that process.
Tiffany Yu: Hm. Beautiful possibility models. So I am looking back at our text exchange. The original text said "Diversability project: would you be interested in joining the selection committee for a disability list of impact leaders and we will announce honorees for ADA30." And then you actually responded with a "Yes please. I'd love to be a part of that." So fast forward a couple of weeks, we ended up getting almost 400 nominations.
Alex Locust: Tiffany, that was one of my favorite parts about this process is just learning about so many different efforts and programs and initiatives and communities that are actively working to, or have been working to just lift up disabled voices. That's one of the beauties, I think, of social media, of this digital age, it's really easy for people to slam Millennials and to trash social media. It's the downfall of us all. And I think there's space to have conversation around that, but one of the joys that I find that sometimes I'm like, I can't keep up. That's like kind of a nice problem to be developing is that there's not just one thing. If you ask somebody like that, that's the only platform, I think that usually is a sign that we don't have enough is that it's really easy to name the one thing. I think this effort that you've organized is certainly one of the most robust explorations of a global celebration of disability and disability leadership. I think in my experience doing organizing or facilitating workshops, I'm usually very intentional to name that I'm presenting from a U.S. based perspective, because that's what I know. And I want to model that cultural humility of like there's so much out there and when you get to global conversations around disability, things start to become really complex. When you think about how the moral model can come in sometimes. And I have not seen something of this scale before, so this was really exciting to be a part of.
Tiffany Yu: I love what you said about like, I can't keep up and I feel grateful that I had such an incredible selection committee that I didn't need to be involved with it. And I do have to give a shout out to Katy Brennan from the Diversability team for really leading the charge and being really organized. There is a lot that happened in the background that the Selection Committee didn't see in order to get everything prepared for all of you. And then I have to give everyone on the Selection Committee a shout out because we received way more nominations than I was ready for. And I was nervous. I was nervous that we wouldn't be able to get it done, but we did. Full disclosure, we're in the process where we are finalizing our list so we don't actually know what it's going to look like yet. Alex, I'm curious, were there any surprises as you went through the D-30 nominations or the whole process in general?
Alex Locust: Yeah. Before I get to that, I also want to give a shout out to Katy. Such appreciation and gratitude for that amount of organization and I think there's a real beauty in the finesse of a warm reminder and some healthy followups. But, you know, I know I was, I was a little behind. Thanks to Katy for making all this happen. In terms of surprises or the process itself, I also just on the tip of shout outs been in conversation with a really good friend and Nakia who we were talking about celebrating excellence in the black community recently and how it's really important to not fall into the trap of capitalist or ageist or ablest notions within celebrating that blackness. It's really easy to just focus on people getting certain white standards of success. So just focusing on black people getting higher education degrees, or really big scholarships, or making it into the business realm in certain ways. And so, at that really provided a healthy adjustment to my lens when reviewing these things of like, it's so easy to think of success as like the biggest, what has the most impact, what earned the most money, who has the most followers? So reviewing these, some of the surprises were some of the grassroots efforts that disabled people are accomplishing all across the world and thinking it's very hard to compare people with these different lived experiences and contexts on a equal playing field. I think you really set up the process well to have some specific questions around not just , is their nomination representing disability success period, but with the added context of where they're at and what privileges or barriers that they're experiencing. How does that impact their efforts and what they're putting forward? So I think it was just really nice to look at that and say, well grassroots efforts may be impacting a few people might not be the biggest global effort, but at the same time, given what their community might be facing, given that country's history with disability, given the physical access that those people might have to accomplish their goals , I think those were things that were really important for me to remember as a disabled person trying to model again what I'm saying and celebrate success of all different kinds.
Tiffany Yu: Hm. I love that. One thing that resonated with me is really changing definitions around success. Now I just look at myself and I'm like, I like myself. And that's actually the biggest, that's the biggest success of all.
Alex Locust: What a radical, you know.
Tiffany Yu: Exactly. And then the other thing you said, I'm very passionate about disability employment. Unemployment numbers have been hovering around 70% still, even with the passage of the ADA. And I often tell people, if one disabled person gets a job who historically has been unemployed or underemployed, that's a success for our community. I love that framing as well. So all of that said, our plan is to announce a couple of days. As a member of the selection committee, having seen a lot of the nominations, is there a message that you would like D-30 nominees to hear, the ones who aren't ultimately selected. And then is there a message that you want the honorees, the ones who get selected as the final 30 to hear as well?
Alex Locust: Yeah. You've mentioned the importance of communities several times and that really resonates with me. And so I would say to anyone who is nominated that this is a community that you're a part of now, you know? And, I think that that alone speaks to the success that those people have had in impacting people in their lives to be nominated. They've obviously touched someone, they've impacted someone or someones right, people , to earn that effort, to have their experience lifted up. And I think that that that unequivocally is something to hold with pride. And so if in the way that things are selected, that a nominee is not chosen as one of the final honorees, I think just remembering that that impact is unconditional that you've already made. And, I know for me, just reading all of these stories, seeing all of these different things that you mentioned, Tiffany, right? Like all around the globe, so many different disabilities, so many intersections of identities, like my heart swelled reading news and realizing how much people are just triumphant and how much disability creates so much beauty in the human spirit and so much resilience and strength and power. And, I think that they are already possibility models for people in their lives and people like myself witnessing that. And so to the people who do get selected, I'd just say like own that . Really take that fire and burn brightly, share your message even louder, with more people. The authenticity that you're demonstrating has shown through the internet, has made people who haven't had the pleasure and privilege of meeting you yet excited about what you're doing and excited to really name that for other people to be connected with. And so, connect with each other, create community with each other, really like share those ideas. Tiffany, I love our friendship because I think it's a model of disabled people coming together and making each other's ideas better. I think that there's a lot of pride to be had all around and I'm really grateful to have been a part of this process.
Tiffany Yu: I guess my message would be, you don't need a list to tell you that you matter. And if you are on the list, I just have to echo what Alex said to shine brighter. And I'm watching a show on Netflix right now . And there is a scene in there where the main character named Payton and his mom are both running for office in different cities. And he goes to his mom and he says, mom I need you to stop running. And she goes, don't ask me to dim my light. You need to shine yours brighter. I love that scene because we all have light. So many of us within the disability community have either grown up with a scarcity mindset or a feeling of lack and the transition to sitting in a place of abundance is really around knowing that all of us have lights that we can shine brighter.
Alex Locust: I love that you're bringing in abundance. It's been such a pivotal shift for me. You know, you bring in shine, like I love Call Your Girlfriend, the podcast, and the way that they've really articulated what shine theory means of by helping others shine , it doesn't take away from yours. It really just refines how you see it success in other people and can teach you things about yourself. And I think, like you said, with disability, not just scarcity in resources in the world, but also like, because we don't have many possibility models or haven't in the past, I think it can be easy to get in a competition of like, well, I have to be the person or I have to be the resource and creating infighting among each other. And so having that cross disability solidarity again, pulling from disability justice, it's about lifting while you climb, which I guess this isn't always isn't necessarily the most disability friendly metaphor, which I should look up looking at myself about that. But, we have opportunities all the time to help support each other and that doesn't take away from us. So I really appreciate you bringing that in.
Tiffany Yu: Of course. Speaking about disability pride, so I'm not sure if you saw the news, but on July 14, I want to see if I have the date right, San Francisco Mayor London Breed signed a proclamation designating July 2020 as Disability Pride Month in honor of the 30th anniversary of the ADA. It's nothing super groundbreaking. I just felt like it was a huge win for our community and a huge win for our city. And so I wanted to close by asking you what makes you disabled and proud.
Alex Locust: Yeah, well, I mean, let's just take a second to just celebrate you, Tiffany. I'm so proud of you that I saw that news and I just was beaming to have the pleasure of knowing you. And I think that is an example of what we're talking about in the context of this whole process. It's not about minimizing success or having disabled success conditional upon fixing entire systemic issues by yourself. The success that you you achieved in getting that proclamation is inherently really amazing. And the beauty of that is that we don't know what change that will cause. Having that Disability Pride Month explicitly named could touch someone a month from now, a year from now who could be the person who, because you were demonstrating that pride and that authenticity, and your disabled identity might have them be in a place where they can work on the housing issue or financial inequities for disabled people. So I think for me, that leads to my pride in disability in that, disability, as I already mentioned is a generative force. It's magic. It really teaches me to be more thoughtful and aware of myself and my body, my body mind in community. And, as Alice Wong has put so beautifully , disabled people are oracles. And I think in a time where , especially during a pandemic that a lot of people are facing really intense and painful reflections of their body minds, disabled people have really laid groundwork for entering into the space and understanding that our lives aren't over, that having challenges around access and ability don't mean that our lives are inherently lower quality, right. It's just means an opportunity to revolutionize and to radicalize and I'm just so proud to be a queer disabled person of color as a part of the disability justice movement because of that.
Tiffany Yu: Mm, beautiful. We just bring such immense expertise into all of these things. If people want to find you online or hire you for a workshop, or continue making disability justice magic, how do they find you?
Alex Locust: Yes. Yes. I would love for people to be in touch. Thank you for this opportunity to promo, Tiffany. I'm @glamputee on all things, probably. So G-L-A-M-P-U-T-E-E. Let's make some magic. I've been saying, I like to bring my fives Cs, right? Crutches, claws, curls, compassion, and courage. So let's see what we can make happen together with disability at the forefront. I can't wait.
Tiffany Yu: Oh, my gosh, I love those five Cs. So I do want to give a quick shout out to the other D-30 Selection Committee members who couldn't join the podcast. So we have Amornthep Sachamuneewongse, also known as Sanju, in Thailand. Then we had Emon Shakoor, who is based in Saudi Arabia. Erin Brown from The Bahamas. Joe Vasquez, also from San Francisco. Lani Dickinson, also in the Bay Area, and Tatiana Lee from Los Angeles. So our dream team of seven D-30 Selection Committee members along with Alex Locust are what made all of this happen. So thank you Alex, for being on the show and I'm excited to see this list go live.
Alex Locust: Yeah, I can't wait to see the final list. I feel like this is like the hum of the anticipation. It's it's very exciting.
Tiffany Yu: Thanks Alex, for being on the show.
Alex Locust: Thank you, Tiffany.