resistance

The People Have the Power to Redeem the Work of Fools: A Toolkit for Resistance
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The People Have the Power to Redeem the Work of Fools: A Toolkit for Resistance

ByBrenna Reading Time: 9 minutes

I promised a toolkit in this final post, and a sense of what resistance can look like. Sometimes I think the most helpful way to think about this work is to recognize that every choice we make every day is part of the larger constellation of resistance, which I get sort of sounds exhausting. I promise, I get that. And I don’t think we can possibly fight every fight or be ready for a fight every second of the day. But taking the “every day, every choice” approach also means that every day has myriad opportunities to challenge the status quo, to start a difficult conversation, to ask a question no one else is asking. I find that hopeful, because it means that when you do step back, or opt out, or take time to breathe, the next opportunity to make the small connection that sparks the change is just around the corner.

Here are the moves that I think should be in every post-secondary reformer’s toolkit.

Is Anyone as Cruel as a Normal Person?: Disability, Access, and Why I Refuse to Go “Back to Normal”
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Is Anyone as Cruel as a Normal Person?: Disability, Access, and Why I Refuse to Go “Back to Normal”

ByBrenna Reading Time: 9 minutes

And of course, Western chauvinism drips from the preceding paragraph: to be even at this stage of this unending trial is due to the accident of birth of vaccine privilege, which the richest countries in the world seem determined to horde like Gollum’s ring (and you know what happens to hobbitses who horde rings). But with the wealth of opportunity we have had to protect and care for ourselves and each other, it’s all the more disheartening to see how quickly the collective solidarity of the early pandemic days has fallen away. We’re heading “back to normal,” which I guess means “everyone for themselves” — because the normal we had before didn’t work for an awful lot of people. If there’s one thing this moment has made achingly clear, it’s that the ableism baked into how we do business in the post-secondary sector will take a lot more than a global pandemic to unseat. And that if we don’t use this moment to imagine something a damn sight better than normal, it’s hard to imagine that we ever will.

How depressing. Let’s dig in.