Briarpatch Articles

Sheltered workshops for disabled people allow employers to evade labour standards and pay workers below minimum wage, all under the guise of never-ending “training programs.”

As the term “just transition” gains traction with policymakers and fossil fuel companies trying to paint themselves green, the articles in this issue remind us that a just transition means justice for workers, migrants, and Indigenous Peoples.

Five kids, from ages 6 to 13, review “We Move Together”, a children’s book about disabled people navigating their neighbourhoods and making friends along the way.

A short story about a mysterious ailment

Three people living with long COVID discuss government responses to the pandemic, what doctors need to know, and how people can support long haulers.

An interview with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha about “crip doulaing,” the future of the disability justice movement, and understanding access and care as joyful.

To understand what life is like along the “continuum of confinement,” three people living in prisons and long-term care homes share the food they have eaten and eat every day.

For more than a century, eugenicists have tried to eliminate disabled people through sexual sterilization. Today, disabled people’s sex lives are still surveilled, suppressed, and punished in institutions.

Four case studies of projects that are meeting disabled people’s needs through community care.

Both professional and popular psychology are focused on “curing” individuals of distress. But without looking at a person’s social and political context, the pursuit of a cure can do more harm than good.

An interview with Ameil Joseph about the history and present of Canada’s discriminatory treatment of disabled migrants

In 2017, my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The city she once navigated with ease became dangerous and confusing, and I learned that it was worsening her symptoms. As a daughter and an urban planner, I wondered: what would a city built for disabled people’s safety and ease look like?

There’s a big overlap between communities of disabled people and illicit drug users. A safe supply of drugs should be considered a fundamental part of disability justice.

Terry Fox is the most famous disabled person in Canadian history, a figure who “united the country” during his cross-country marathon. Now, Fox’s iconography is being used to support the Freedom Convoy’s anti-vaccine, anti-mask agenda. What kind of unity does Fox really represent?

Across the world, people are disabled in vast numbers by war, occupation, and imperial violence. How can disability justice confront the U.S. and Canadian war machines?

Members of the Disability Justice Network of Ontario’s Youth Action Council discuss the present and future of the disability justice movement.

When we say we want disability justice, we don’t just mean wheelchair-accessible buildings and sign-language interpretation. We mean an end to the systems and structures that disable and debilitate us and a future where there is enough care, community, and support for everyone to thrive. 

在过去的一年里，新市的低收入亚裔女性一直在与镇议会进行激烈的斗争。议会一直努力关闭她们的按摩业务，声称这些工人既是不光彩的罪犯，又是性交易人口贩卖的受害者。

Mobility is not just how we get from A to B; it is about social justice and health, housing and democracy, and the climate crisis.

Designing and building cohesive, disciplined, and transformative mass movements isn’t easy. This reading list is an offering to anyone committed to that effort.