Disability Justice Means A Free Palestine

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See our Palestine Solidarity Resource List: Link.

PDF Copy of the Statement:

DJNO Statement_ Disability Justice Means A Free Palestine

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We at the Disability Justice Network of Ontario are grieving the Palestinian lives that the Israeli government has and continues to destroy during its historic occupation of Palestinian land. This occupation is a mass disabling event at the hands of Israel—not only since October 2023, but since the founding of Israel in 1948.

Disability justice fundamentally and unequivocally opposes settler colonialism and imperialist powers which subject Indigenous, racialized, disabled and non-disabled bodyminds in the Global South to debilitation and death. From militarization to illegal occupation to dispossession—where the settler colonial state of Israel fails to take life, it leaves Palestinians in a perpetual state of injury, further inhibiting their capacity to find refuge.

The Israeli settler state has now bombed every hospital and healthcare facility in Gaza, killing countless civilians, including children, parents, siblings, elders, and community members. This bombing campaign is only the most recent incident in a settler colonial occupation which disproportionately targets racialized, sick, injured, and disabled people first. Imperialist states like Israel have historically weaponized disability and disablement to counter resistance efforts to maintain illegal occupation and displacement. An example of this genocidal tool occurred between 2018 and 2019 when the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces) intentionally shot Palestinians in areas that would permanently damage their nerves, joints and arteries, ultimately leading to bacterial bone infections. [1] 

In turn, we must denounce so-called disability organizations and movements in the West that operate at the expense or production of disabled people in the East. These organizations’ priorities cannot exist in the name of disability justice, as they are directly involved in the global military-industrial complex. The military-industrial complex in Canada has played a key role in the genocide of Palestinians, as we have historically and presently sustained these conditions of displacement and debilitation. [2] Further, the core ideas of the colonial project found in so-called Israel lie at the heart of Canadian colonialism across Turtle Island and have served as one of Israel’s inspirations. [3]

We denounce the active and passive role of Canadian governments and media outlets complicit in widespread Anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab racism, [4] Islamophobia and ongoing financial and general support of ethnic cleansing and genocide. 

We particularly encourage the broader disability movement to engage in solidarity with Palestinians and denounce the Israeli settler occupation. Particularly, we encourage organizations to critically evaluate their financial and institutional ties to Zionist organizations.

We express solidarity with protestors across the province, country and globe, and denounce all efforts to silence, censor, and criminalize demonstrators. We know, as well, that ever-present police brutality against those who take action to support Palestine has itself resulted in injury and disablement all over the world. This reality shows us once again that there can be no disability justice without opposition to state violence in all its forms. 

There is no disability justice without anti-Zionism. There is no disability justice without land reclamation. There is no disability justice without decolonization and liberation. Since our founding in 2018, Disability Justice Network of Ontario has always sought to create a world where people with disabilities are free to be. This vision has always and will always be for Disabled Palestinians and we know that no body or mind can be left behind—only moving together can we accomplish the revolution we require.

In solidarity,

The Board and Staff of Disability Justice Network of Ontario

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Endnotes:

[1] Jasbir Puar and Ghassan Abu-Sitta, “Israel is trying to maim Gaza Palestinians into silence”, Al Jazeera, 31 March, 2019, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/3/31/israel-is-trying-to-maim-gaza-palestinians-into-silence

[2] Ismail Shakil, “Pro-Palestinian group sues Canada over military exports to Israel”, Reuters, 4 March 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/pro-palestinian-group-sues-canada-over-military-exports-israel-2024-03-05/

[3] For more, see: Azeezah Kanji, “Canada and Israel: Partners in the “Settler Colonial Contract” Yellowhead Institute, 21 May 2021, https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2021/05/21/canada-and-israel-partners-in-the-settler-colonial-contract/

[4] For more resources on Anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab racism, please see: https://www.antipalestinianracism.com and https://www.canarablaw.org/ 

Leadership opportunity: DJNO seeking a board treasurer

The Disability Justice Network of Ontario (DJNO) is actively seeking persons with disabilities or allies to join its board of directors, and we are seeking a board treasurer

Published May 10, 2023

Please see details here:

DJNO Treasurer - Board of Directors Role - May 1 2023

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Download PDF • 633KB

Interested parties are encouraged to apply as soon as possible. The role will be open until filled. Applications will be reviewed as recieved. Please advise the DJNO of any accommodations that you require as part of the application process.

Megan Linton Testimony Against MAiD expansion, November 18 2022

On November 18, Megan Linton, PhD Student, researcher, and team member at the Disability Justice Network of Ontario testified at the MAiD Committee against the expansion of Medical Assistance in Dying, at Parliament Hill. To date, she is one of only a handful of young people who have been brought into committee as a witness to discuss MAiD and its continued expansions.

Listen to this clip to hear what she had to say:

MAiD Brief Submission:

In addition to the above testimony, Megan also submitted a brief to members of the AMAD committee, which can be viewed here

Testimony Script:

"I research institutions for disabled people. An ongoing phenomenon stretching back more than a century and a half in Canada. As a result, I have sifted through hours of class action settlements, years of inquests, archives, interviews with survivors. All filled with the stories of death. of friends, roommates, and fellow inmates and disabled people who died by suicide, who hung themselves by the rafters or who died by suicide years after escaping the institution, though still haunted by their experiences inside it. For many years, these suicides were a catalyst for great social change, resulting in government commissions and inquiries into these deaths. Last week, Minister Lammeti expressed the intention of track two of MAiD as necessary because disabled people are unable to complete suicide.

For the last century and a half, disabled people have been trapped in institutions, away from their communities, reduced to a point of efficiency and mere practicality here in these institutions which were used as tools for eugenics removed disabled people from society and access to reproduction. Today, the same logic is maintained in institutions, where access to pleasure, leisure or pain management are seemingly non existent. Instead, these institutions like prisons long term care homes and psych institutions maintain conditions of neglect, isolation, and such disregard for individual autonomy that it produces depression and suicidality in people both inside the institution and those who fear it in their future. People are very fear in their discussions with me: they would rather die than live in an institution.

The view into institutions, no matter how murky, is a view into austerity. Privatization yielding bed sores, neglect, and forced feeding. We've had a view into the institutions where people use MAiD, like Chris Gladders in his retirement home before you passed track two changes (to MAiD). There, where feces stained the floor, instead of cleaning it up you made changes to expand track two.

And now, the deaths have become so frequent that we are haunted by the possibility of loss at all times. Disabled people are dying en masse in institutions they had been fighting to leave because of track two MAiD. These were beautiful lives and lives that as a disabled person...we look into the windows of these institutions and we fight for a way out for all of us. Not just for an individual, through an individual death. You ask us for the protections of disabled people. It is clear: track two MAiD must be ended. You look into these windows, smashed opened by dead bodies, and you see people suffering in conditions that you created, and instead of offering a solution, a help out the door through provisions of accessible housing, home care and pain management...you offer people death. Do not be mistaken: this provision of death for disabled people under track two MAiD is eugenics and must be repealed as soon as possible

We must look at the political economy and the timing of these decisions. Why now, with the increase of pandemics and incurable illnesses like COVID and Long COVID? Why now, with pandemic healthcare rationing, and with healthcare under the budget axe? The expansion of MAiD must be viewed within the context of the economic order with which we live under which is eviscerating the social contract by encouraging government to retreat from its responsibility to the public welfare, and instead kill us. You feel generous to provide mercy from the austerity which you designed. To all of you: disabled people do not need your help to die. You have been killing us for years. We need your help to get out of the institution which you trapped us in. The only safeguard for MAiD is foreseeable death"