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Stop Asian Hate

1/1/2022

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This post is a growing collection of resources that you can use to fight for racial justice for APIDA (Asian, Pacific Islander, and Desi-American) communities. As always, feel free to email info@linghacks.tech with suggestions, concerns, or questions.

Organizations to Support

Credit to Anti-Racism Daily for many of these suggestions.
  • Philly Asians 4 Liberation & Mutual Solidarity (Instagram: @pa4lms)
  • AYPAL (Instagram: @aypalpower)
  • Chinese Progressive Association (San Francisco Chapter, Boston Chapter)
  • Foundation for Asian-American Independent Media
  • Asian-American Justice + Innovation Lab
  • Asian American and Pacific Islander Athletics Alliance
  • Asian-American Feminist Collective
  • National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum
  • Red Canary Song
  • CAAAV
  • Butterfly
  • Advancing Justice Atlanta

Educational Resources

Credit to Anti-Racism Daily for many of these resources.
  • NCAA Office of Inclusion's Anti-Racism Resources
  • Black and Asian Feminist Solidarity Letter
  • Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities Resources

Other Ways to Take Action

Credit, again, to Anti-Racism Daily for most of these.
  • Report a hate crime through Stop AAPI Hate website
  • Use the resources on this Carrd page
  • Use the resources on this giant document
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Black History Month

2/6/2021

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February is Black History Month in the United States. In addition to listening and learning about Black history, fellow non-Black people should also take proactive steps to address racial inequity. Below is a non-exhaustive list of educational resources, action items, and reminders for non-Black allies (as always, we are open to corrections, additions, and deletions at info@linghacks.tech).

General Action Items

  • Make use of and share the resources at https://pb-resources.com. In particular, visit https://pb-resources.com/bhm to both learn more about Black history and get daily graphics you can share on your personal and organizational Instagram stories. Credit to Alexis Williams for creating this resource - follow her here!
  • Subscribe to Anti-Racism Daily and their 28 Days of Black History initiative for daily action items and educational posts. If able, please support their work by donating here as well!
  • Pay reparations to Black people and Black-led organizations. This includes your Black friends, any Black educators you have been learning from on social media, and organizations fighting for Black liberation. Learn more about reparations through the Movement for Black Lives.
  • Use your platform to amplify Black voices, not just when they educate you on anti-racism but also when they make art, do science, or live life. See our Instagram story highlight for some starter posts.
  • Avoid performative activism - make sure your content contains concrete educational information or action items and that you follow through with those action items yourself to the full extent that you are able.
  • Remember that Black people do not owe you their labor (credit to Devon Blow for the important message). There are so many resources that you can make use of without extracting labor or education from Black people - respect their rights to joy and rest. If you engage with a Black person who educates you, pay them. To support Black mental health, donate to the Loveland Foundation Therapy Fund.
  • Volunteer for organizations that are working to dismantle the prison-industrial complex. The Equal Justice Initiative has compiled a list of organizations here.
  • Review and revise your organization's diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, recognizing that diversity alone does not fix racism. As an example, if you run a hackathon or a tech-related educational organization, center tech ethics in your educational content (example framework here). We at LingHacks acknowledge and apologize that we have failed to include ethics education in our workshops, and we will be making changes to our curriculum going forward. Learn more about institutional diversity, equity, and inclusion here.
  • Tech folks (applicable to everyone, but especially tech folks): read Race After Technology, watch Coded Bias, read Algorithms of Oppression, and read about the appalling firing of Dr. Timnit Gebru to learn about racism in the tech sector and begin to actively fight it.
  • Support educational justice, which is integral in dismantling the carceral state, through organizations such as the NAACP, ACLU, and NEA. Relatedly, here is a list of books, compiled by Anti-Racism Daily, that may be helpful for teaching kids about race. Additionally, here is a four-part email course by the American Civil Liberties Union about police brutality and race. Also, check out the Zinn Education Project for collections of lessons about anti-racism.
  • Remember that justice must be intersectional. If your version of "Black Lives Matter" only includes cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied Black men who live up to your standards of respectability, that needs to change. Some intersectional advocacy organizations (credit mostly to Anti-Racism Daily) you can support include:
    • National Black Trans Advocacy Coalition
    • National Black Disability Coalition
    • Black and Pink
    • SisterSong
    • Afiya Center
    • Endo Black
    • SisterLove

People and Organizations to Support

Below are some Black creators, anti-racist educators, and Black-led organizations that you should support. Don't stop at simply following them - make sure to make meaningful contributions to their growth by financially contributing to their work if able and by engaging actively with their content (e.g. not just consuming it but also sharing it with credit, liking and commenting on it, and turning on post notifications).
  • Alexis Williams (@alexisdenisew on Instagram)
  • ​Devon Blow (@devthepineapple on Instagram)​
  • Feminista Jones (@feministajones on Instagram)
  • ​Angel Arutura (@angelarutura on Instagram)
  • ​Mars (@tendermarz on Instagram)
  • ​Uzo Ngwu (@uzotheartist on Instagram)
  • Sam Wade (@bysamwade on Instagram)
  • ​Moe (@aproseeds on Instagram)
  • Anaïs (@anaiis_art on Instagram)
  • ​Tosin (@artbytosin on Instagram)
  • ​Allegra Jones (@all3gruh on Instagram)
  • ​Jazmin Anita (@jvzmina on Instagram)
  • ​Tobi Uzumaki (@tobi.the.kid on Instagram)
  • ​George Lee (@theconsciouslee on Instagram)
  • ​Ayumi Patterson (@ayumipat on Instagram)
  • Ryan Alexander Holmes (@ryanalexh on Instagram)
  • ​@theproblackblasian on Instagram
  • ​Yitz Jordan (@ylove613 on Instagram)
  • ​Aviva Davis (@viva_lasdavis on Instagram)
  • King Yaa (@queerbirthworker on Instagram)
  • Imani Barbarin (@crutches_and_spice on Instagram)
  • ​Clara Holmes (@rollinfunky on Instagram)
  • Blair Imani (@blairimani on Instagram)
  • Nicholas Rose (@nicholasrose_ on Instagram)
  • Chyrstyn Mariah Fentroy (@chyrstynmariah on Instagram)
  • ​Tina Pereira (@ballerinacouture on Instagram)
That's all we have for this week. Remember that Black history is not and was never just a month - these resources are only a starting point for anti-racist work.
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Confront White Supremacy

1/9/2021

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(The title of this post is heavily inspired by/taken from Anti-Racism Daily's 1/7 newsletter.)

This past week, we saw white supremacy on display once again, namely through an attempted coup in the US Capitol on January 6th. As has been made abundantly obvious, this is who America is and has always been - a country founded upon racism, slavery, and colonization. Just saying that is less than the bare minimum though: we need to take both immediate and sustained action to dismantle this system. Below are some action items that you, your friends/family/acquaintances, and your organizations can take, broken down roughly by category:

DC Mutual Aid

In terms of immediate action, the most pressing thing to do is to help the residents of Washington DC (mostly Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) harmed by Wednesday's coup. The following are some organizations and groups to donate to as soon as possible:
  • Kyanite Kitchen: @kyanite.kitchen on Instagram, @/Kya-Parker on Venmo, $Kyism on Cash App
  • DC Fridge Collective: @dcfridgecollective on Instagram, $DCFRIDGECOLLECTIVE on Cash App
  • FFDC Mutual Aid: @ffdcmutualaid on Instagram
  • Until Freedom DC: @untilfreedomorganizing on Instagram, @UntilFreedomUnited on Venmo
  • Fuel the People: @fueltheppl on Instagram
  • Theythem Collective: @theythemcollective on Instagram
  • Occupy DC: @occupydc202 on Instagram
  • Piscataway Conoy Tribe (the coup took place on land stolen from the Piscataway and Anacostan tribes)
If you're in DC and need help, 202-399-7093 is the Shelter Hotline, and 202-596-4122 is Casa Ruby (additional shelter).
Some other notes:
  • In addition to donating if able, share these links on your social media and within your circles. Go beyond sharing the same three quotes stating that storming the capitol is not ok - at this point, that's saying 1 + 1 = 2.
  • Avoid comparing this white rage to legitimate social movements such as Black Lives Matter - even if it's to highlight the disparities in how police treat people along racialized lines. Compare white rage to white rage. See this post for an in-depth explanation and historical examples of white rage that you can compare to.
  • If you are white and non-Jewish, tread carefully with jokes and memes about the coup. Many of the jokes that have been posted on social media about the coup may seem funny, but they are often antiSemitic, ableist, and simply traumatizing to BIPOC directly affected by the event and making light of a situation that is very much not light. Though the "don't be antiSemitic or ableist" part of that sentence applies to everyone, we'd like to emphasize that the general point about making jokes about the incident applies particularly to white and non-Jewish people - humor can absolutely be a wonderful mechanism of coping with trauma, and it is not our place to police that in this case, as this was a traumatic event for BIPOC and Jewish people.
  • Take care to use the right terminology surrounding this event. It was not a "protest" but rather a coup and a riot. It was not anti-American or traitorous but rather the epitome of America's founding principles.
  • Acknowledge the blatant antiSemitism of this coup. Do not compare antiSemitism to anti-Blackness or anti-Indigeneity or pit these three forms of white supremacy against each other, but do acknowledge all three in their own right - white supremacy works in large part by dividing and conquering oppressed groups. See this post for photographic evidence of outright antiSemitism at the coup, and work to dismantle antiSemitism in your everyday life - this is a good place to start.
  • Call for Donald Tru*p to be impeached (action items here). Even though he only has less than two weeks left in office, it is still important to hold him accountable for his racist, antiSemitic, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, anti-environmental, ableist, and just plain dangerous actions.
  • If you run an organization (e.g. a hackathon, a nonprofit, a media outlet, a campaign, etc. - especially if you run a US-based organization and are not Black, Jewish, or Indigenous), make a statement calling out the white supremacy of the coup and share action items. Your work was not finished in June of 2020. It is not just irresponsible, but outright violent, for you pretend you exist outside of the national political reality and carry on with your everyday programming as if the United States isn't collapsing in on itself while killing BIPOC. By staying silent under a system in which oppression is the default, you are complicit in state-sanctioned racism.

Abolish the Death Penalty

There are people in federal prison right now who do not deserve to die. You can make a difference, both by trying to save them and by working to abolish the cruel and unjust death penalty for good:
  • This spreadsheet has a list of immediate action items.
  • Save Dustin Higgs.
  • Save Billie Allen.
  • Save Kenneth Reams.
  • ​Save Lisa Montgomery.
  • Learn about alternatives to prisons and capital punishment at this link and this link. 

Long-Term Activism

Racism is a national and international problem that will not be solved overnight. Below are some organizations you can get involved with to make long-term sustainable contributions towards dismantling white supremacy:
  • Native Land (learn whose land you're on, volunteer, and research the history of the tribes whose land you're on)
  • Anti-Racism Daily (subscribe to and read their daily emails, follow them @antiracismdaily on Instagram, and take the action items that they suggest)
  • Elizabeth's Books & Writing Center (buy books from there and read them)

Other Important Notes

Lastly, we have some updates about our donation match campaigns and about one of our previous posts.
  • We have just over $250 left in match dollars for donations to Indigenous organizations and mutual aid funds. See this post for a list of organizations to donate to, and email us receipts at info@linghacks.tech.
  • In one of our earlier posts, we wrote about the Chinese government's treatment of Uyghur Muslims and listed some action items without full information on the situation. Based on recent research, we realize that there has been a lot of misinformation surrounding this issue. We apologize for spreading misinformation with our earlier post and have corrected the post.
That's all for this post - as always, we are open to feedback at info@linghacks.tech.
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Indigenous Solidarity

11/24/2020

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This Native American Heritage Month, it's time to destroy the harmful Thanksgiving myth. The common story that our white supremacist education system (at least in the US) teaches us is that the Pilgrims who came to Plymouth hosted a celebratory dinner alongside the Indigenous Mashpee Wampanoag peoples on Thanksgiving in 1621. However, the truth is that Thanksgiving marked a massacre of Indigenous people (specifically the Pequot community) and part of the beginning of the violent settler colonialism that is the foundation of today's United States (source: @dineaesthetics on Instagram).

​To properly honor this National Day of Mourning, there are some important things that non-Native people (everywhere, but especially in the US) should do. Below is a non-exhaustive list of resources and action items.

We Are Matching Donations!

One of the most substantial and concrete things that you should do if you have the means is to financially repay the Indigenous peoples whose land you stand on. This falls under the broader concept of land acknowledgement, a process in which you identify and acknowledge the tribes whose land you reside on and build authentically supportive relationships with those communities.

To that end, LingHacks has held physical events on Chochenyo, Ohlone, Ramaytush, and Tamyen land, and we are committing to match up to $1500 in donations to these communities as well as other Indigenous mutual aid funds. This amount is approximately equal to the venue fees we have paid to hold our events on these lands. To get your donation matched, make a donation to one of the organizations/funds below, and send your receipt to info@linghacks.tech. Make sure the receipt clearly indicates the name of the organization that you donated to. Below are the organizations that we will match donations for (thanks in part to Harvard's Institute of Politics, the American Library Association, and Anti-Racism Daily for some of these links):
  • Indigenous Mutual Aid
  • Any organization or fund in the Indigenous Mutual Aid directory
  • First Nations Development Institute COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund
  • NDN Collective COVID-19 Response Project
  • Flicker Fund
  • Seeding Sovereignty
  • Sogorea Te' Land Trust
  • Navajo & Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund
  • Native American Rights Fund
  • National Indian Child Welfare Association
  • California Indian Legal Services
  • National Indigenous Women's Resource Center
  • Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance
  • Meskwaki Food Sovereignty Initiative
  • Navajo Water Project
  • Sovereign Bodies Institute
  • Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness
  • Piscataway Conoy Tribe
  • Karuk Tribe - Slater Fire Relief Fund
  • Not Our Native Daughters
  • Intertribal Buffalo Council
  • Natwani Coalition
  • Olohana Foundation
  • CIELO
  • A mutual aid fund serving the tribes in your local community, subject to our discretion. Send us the name of the city/state/country you live in, the website of the tribe(s) whose land you live on, and the link to the mutual aid fund supporting the tribe(s) along with your receipt. Make sure the organization/fund is Native-led (i.e. no white-led "philanthropic" nonprofits) and explicitly supports Indigenous communities (we do encourage you to practice mutual aid in your general community, but we will be focusing on matching donations to Indigenous peoples at this time).
Though we will keep this match open until we reach the cap, we encourage you to make your donations within the next ~20 days, as many of these funds are emergency COVID-19 relief funds that Indigenous communities need quite urgently. With that being said, we do still encourage you to make these donations a recurring habit if able, as decolonization is a long-term effort, and these communities need long-term support.

If you run an organization (e.g. a hackathon, nonprofit, conference, club, etc), especially one that has held physical events, we encourage you to (1) run a similar donation match, (2) factor compensation for Indigenous lands into your venue fees going forward, and (3) use your social media platforms to amplify Indigenous creators, organizers, and mutual aid funds.

Other Ways to Help

We recognize that not everyone has the means to donate at this time. If you are not able to financially contribute right now (or even if you are), here are some other ways you can help Indigenous communities:
  • Amplify. Share this blog post and use your social media accounts to boost Native creators, organizers, and advocates. For example, follow @dineaesthetics, @ndncollective, @seedingsovereignty, and @indigenousaction on Instagram. To truly engage and support these creators, make sure to like, comment on, and reshare their posts as well.
  • Stay put for Thanksgiving. There is still a deadly pandemic raging through the US right now, and staying home saves lives.
  • Educate (yourself and others). Advocate for anti-racist education and Indigenous studies at your school, read from Native-owned news sources like the Navajo Times, research Native history (an example: the DC Native History Project), and read books/watch movies that center Native people (an example, suggested by Anti-Racism Daily: "Inhabitants: An Indigenous Perspective"). Check out our "Indigenous" story highlight for some starter educational resources.
That's all for this post. As always, please email us at info@linghacks.tech with questions, concerns, comments, suggestions, and/or corrections.
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Transgender Awareness

11/22/2020

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This past week was Transgender Awareness Week, and November 20th was Transgender Day of Remembrance. Transgender people have been systemically oppressed in the United States and abroad - from being killed by police at higher rates than cisgender people to being misgendered to not being legally protected (among many other forms of transphobia). Below are some resources that you can utilize to take action to fight for trans rights. Once again, we are posting this after the formal day and week for recognition have passed because trans rights cannot be reduced to a week per year. This year (and going forward), we are also paying particular attention to the intersections of marginalized identities by highlighting Black trans creators and resources serving Black trans people.

Everyday Actions to Be a Better Ally

  • Put your pronouns in your bio on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, GitHub, personal website, Canvas, Zoom, and any other online platform you use! Misgendering is violent to trans people, and as cis allies, we should display our gender pronouns in our bios so that trans people are not targeted for being the odd ones out. For example, the author of this post uses she/her/hers pronouns. In addition, be sure to spell out she/her/hers, he/him/his, they/them/theirs, etc instead of just saying "she series" or "he series." See this article for more on why you should do this. Note: this bullet point speaks specifically to cisgender people.
  • Ask for people's pronouns by offering yours first, and correct yourself and others quickly if you or someone else misgender another person. If someone corrects you, just say "thank you" - an apology centers yourself and puts the burden on the misgendered person to console you.
  • If you are an educator, ask for students' pronouns privately, and ask if you have consent to use these pronouns in front of the class, in front of the student's parents, and in front of other teachers/administrators.
  • Update your vocabulary. A non-exhaustive list (source: @pinkmantaray on Instagram): say transgender, not transgendered. Say trans man/trans woman with a space, not transman/transwoman. Say cis man/cis woman, not biological man/woman. Say nonbinary and use the singular they. Say transitioned, not "changed genders" or "became a _." Say assigned male/female at birth, not "born a girl/boy" or "used to be a girl/boy."
  • What not to do: make jokes about trans people or have (academic or other) debates about trans rights. Both of these are forms of transphobia because they legitimize the harmful notion that trans people do not deserve to live their full truths without being questioned or dehumanized.
  • What not to do: out a trans person to anyone without their permission. Transphobia is alive and well, and the last thing you want to do is to inadvertently tell someone's transphobic friends/family that they are trans.
  • What not to do: confuse gender with sexual orientation. Trans people can have the same sexual orientations as cis people - these two are not linked.
  • What not to do: ask a trans person about their body (e.g. how they use the bathroom, what genitals they have) if you are not their romantic or sexual partner. This is invasive - as a rule of thumb, think about whether you would ask a cis person such a question before you ask it to a trans person.

Books by Trans Authors

Instead of supporting the transphobic J.K. R*wling, reflect on how you probably didn't read many books that represented or centered trans people in school, and begin to change that with these books! Source: @theconsciouskid on Instagram.
  • When Aidan Became a Brother by Kyle Lukoff
  • Pet by Akwaeke Emezi
  • Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
  • Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

Trans Creators to Support

Follow these awesome people on social media and support their work monetarily if you're able! As a standard disclaimer, this list is not exhaustive.
  • Li Benedetti (@libenedetti on Instagram)
  • Shay's Corner (@notsosecretlyshay on Instagram)
  • Munroe Bergdorf (@munroebergdorf on Instagram)
  • Cole J Daniel (@ltscole on Instagram)
  • Ashton Attzs (@attzs on Instagram)
  • Azekel (@queeraxtivist on Instagram)
  • Kenny Ethan Jones (@kennyethanjones on Instagram)
  • Indya Moore (@indyamoore on Instagram)
  • Alok Menon (@alokvmenon on Instagram)
  • Qween Andy Jean (@qween_jean on Instagram)
  • Charlie / Amayá (@dineaesthetics on Instagram)
  • ​Schuyler Bailar (@pinkmantaray on Instagram)
  • ​Chella Man (@chellaman on Instagram)

Trans Rights Organizations to Support

These organizations are doing critical work - from fighting for legal protection for trans people to providing mental health support to freeing trans people from prison to creating safe spaces in schools. Make recurring donations if able, and follow them on social media!
  • GLSEN: a nonprofit working to create safe and inclusive K-12 schools for LGBTQ youth (@glsen on Instagram)
  • Transgender Law Center: trans-led civil rights organization (@translawcenter on Instagram)
  • National Center for Transgender Equality: social justice advocacy organization for trans people (@transequalitynow on Instagram)
  • Trevor Project: crisis intervention and suicide prevention for LGBTQ youth (@trevorproject on Instagram)
  • Human Rights Campaign: LGBTQ advocacy group (@humanrightscampaign on Instagram)
  • Black Trans Foundation: nonprofit organization working for the well-being of Black trans and gender-nonconforming people in the UK, currently gathering a therapy fund (@blacktransfoundation on Instagram)
  • Marsha P. Johnson Institute: defending Black trans people's lives and providing COVID-relief for Black trans people (@mpjinstitute on Instagram)
  • The Okra Project: home cooked, healthy, and culturally specific meals and resources for Black trans people (@theokraproject on Instagram)
That's all for this week. As always, please reach out at info@linghacks.tech with any corrections or additions to this post or others. Thanks for reading, and keep fighting!
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Indigenous People's Day

10/17/2020

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Monday, October 12 was Indigenous People's Day, a celebration of Indigenous peoples, their histories, and their cultures. We in the United States are on stolen land - as such, Indigenous People's Day is really every day. Here are some educational resources and action items surrounding Indigenous rights and lives:
  • Create a petition for your school to rename Columbus Day to Indigenous People's Day. Christopher Columbus was a murderer, rapist, and racist and doesn't deserve to be celebrated. An example of a petition from Harvard students is here (and if your school already has a petition circulating, be sure to sign it).
  • Take Indigenous Studies and Indigenous history courses at your school.
  • Petition for Ethnic Studies at your school (or take Ethnic Studies courses if they are already offered). See this podcast for information about how Ethnic Studies was established as a requirement in the Cal State system.
  • This Halloween (and every future Halloween), do not dress as an Indigenous person if you are not Indigenous. Their culture is not your costume, and this is racist cultural appropriation.
  • Learn about the tribe(s) whose land you live on. For example, LingHacks has held events in Los Altos and Fremont, California, which are Ohlone, Ramaytush, and Tamyen land. Text your city and state to (907)-312-5085 to find out whose land you are standing on.
  • Invest Indigenous: support Indigenous-owned businesses and donate to mutual aid funds.
  • Read Indigenous news media, such as the Navajo Times and High Country News (thanks to Anti-Racism Daily for the pointer).
  • This story highlight contains further infographics, including accounts to follow to diversify your social media feed.
  • If able, vote (for progressive/Democratic candidates, obviously). Register/check your registration ASAP at vote.org, and vote all the way down the ballot, from the presidential ticket (Biden/Harris) to legislative races to state propositions to city councils to school boards to county/city-wide measures. For Californian voters, here's a handy guide to the state props on the ballot this year. If voting by mail, send your ballot in by 10/20. In any case, make sure to write the MM/DD/YYYY date, write the address at which you are registered to vote, and sign your envelope with the signature on your driver's license. Also, check both sides of each of your ballot cards, don't take pictures of your ballot, read your ballot card instructions carefully, beware of fake ballot drop boxes, and remember that there is no one-size-fits-all way to vote - check your state and county guidelines. We also reiterate that voting is not the end-all-be-all and is not nearly enough - it's just essential to keep people from being literally murdered by this completely preventable pandemic.
  • Speaking of the pandemic, wear a mask, wash your hands, and keep your distance from other humans. COVID-19 disproportionally affects Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, so do your part to keep everyone else safe.
That's all for this week! As always, we are reachable at info@linghacks.tech for questions, corrections, and other concerns.
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Black Languages Matter

10/4/2020

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As we've said before, language reflects culture and history. So, in our effort to decolonize all facets of life, we need to also decolonize our minds* by learning about and appreciating African and African American languages and language variations. The title of this post was taken from Dr. Anne Charity Hudley's recent talk at Duolingo's Duocon, and this post was largely inspired by her talk as well. Dr. Hudley put things in words better than we ever could, so we'll offer a brief summary followed by lists of resources and action items.
*While we need to decolonize our minds through education, we also need to actually tear down systems of oppression and be careful not to metaphorize decolonization, thereby settling for symbolic justice. Language and education are just one small step in decolonizing our world - see this paper for more on the harms of metaphorizing decolonization.

Decolonizing The Mind via Language

Some key points from Dr. Hudley's talk:
  • All languages are equal. Neither you nor your language is "broken" or inferior to any other language. This point is easy to comprehend at face value, but it's critical to also examine our daily behaviors to see if we really internalize it. Do we instinctively think that someone is "unprofessional" when we hear them speak in African American Vernacular English? Do we try to d*mb things down in speaking to someone when we hear a non-SAE accent in their voice? Do we think of Standard American English as "normal" English and reject other forms of the language in both academic and professional spheres? These are all manifestations of the racist and xenophobic misconception that there is some sort of linguistic hierarchy, and we need to actively notice and correct these behaviors as part of an ongoing process.
  • There are many diverse languages across many different countries in Africa. Some of them are related to each other, and others are not. Africa is not a monolith.
  • Language reflects history, culture, and power. This is seen not only through the creation of creoles and pidgins (through contact via colonization), but also through examining how words were integrated into languages (for example, the word for "prison" in Swahili comes from the word for "church" in Portuguese - prisons did not exist in pre-colonial African countries such as Kenya) and how people from various cultural background pronounce words differently.

Resources

These resources have been provided by Dr. Hudley and by Harvard's Introduction to African Languages and Cultures course.
  • African American English: A Linguistic Introduction by Lisa J. Green
  • Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English by John Russell Rickford
  • Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America by Professor Geneva Smitherman
  • Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular by William Labov
  • Black Linguistics: Language, Society, and Politics in Africa and the Americas by Professor Arnetha Ball, Professor Sinfree Makoni, and Professor Geneva Smitherman
  • The Language You Cry In (a film, directed by Alvaro Toepke and Angel Serrano)
  • The Story of Swahili by Professor John Mugane
  • ​Harvard's African Language Program homepage
  • Settler Colonialism: The Root of Kenya's Brutal Penal System by Patrick Gathara

Action Items

Besides taking advantage of the resources above, here are some more actions you can take to de-center whiteness via language. These action items are provided by us but inspired by Dr. Hudley and Professor John Mugane.
  • Learn about your linguistic background, behavior, and history, and document it. It's critical to understand and examine the context in which our minds are conditioned in order to change that conditioning.
  • Participate in African language documentation, revitalization, and education (both research and practice), and share this research widely (the African Studies department at your university or your local university is usually a good place to start).
  • Be mindful of how your linguistic conditioning informs your view of linguistic dialects that are not yours, and actively work to adjust any SAE-centric views.
  • Take courses in African languages and cultures - this is especially important for those studying linguistics and computational linguistics, as many linguistics and computer science departments tend to approach linguistics as a pure science rooted in European languages and in doing so, fail to expose students to the culture, history, and power reflected in language (particularly African languages).
That's all for this week. As usual, please refer to our previous posts for general Black Lives Matter and human rights-related action items, and feel free to email us at info@linghacks.tech if any of this information is incorrect or misleading.
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Take Action

9/20/2020

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Racism, sexism, ableism, and almost all other forms of oppression have not gone anywhere since June. Here's a list of immediate action items that you can take to do your part in fighting for social justice, broken down by issue. As always, feel free to let us know via email if any of this information is incorrect.

Fire Relief

Click here to donate in support of people impacted by the Bronx fire, and click here to donate in support of people impacted by the Philadelphia fire. Credit to Anti-Racism Daily for these links.

US General Election

This election is quite possibly the most important one in our lives thus far. Matters of literal life and death are on the line - from bodily autonomy to LGBTQ+ equality to racial justice to climate change to public health. The election is so important that Scientific American, which has never endorsed a presidential candidate in 175 years, has endorsed Joe Biden because we simply cannot survive four more years of science denial and fascism. Here's what you can do to salvage what's left of our semblance of a democracy:
  • If you are a US Citizen who is 18+ years old: vote. Visit this website for specific information on how to vote, and make a plan early - the general election has already started, and you should vote by mail by October 20th at the absolute latest. Make sure to vote all the way down the ballot - this means not only Biden/Harris but also your state's senators, your congressional district's representatives, your state legislators, your county and municipal board members, and anyone else on your ballot.
  • If you are voting by mail, check your mail carefully. There have been reports of people in several states receiving paperwork such as absentee ballot request forms cloaked in pro-Tr*mp propaganda (source: Sonya Renee Taylor), so it's especially critical that you check every piece of mail and don't throw it away, as it could be an important document.
  • If able, sign up to be a poll worker. There is a critical shortage of poll workers at the moment, and with a combination the fate of the United States Postal Service being uncertain and the COVID-19 pandemic still raging, it's especially critical to make sure we have as many polling locations open as possible so that everyone can vote.
  • Save the United States Postal Service. States such as Oregon vote entirely by mail, and the current administration is literally ripping mailboxes off of streets. This will not only hurt the voting process but also delay (or completely stop) deliveries of life-saving medicines and other essentials. Some concrete action steps: sign a petition, contact your legislators, and buy stamps.

Uyghur Muslims

Update as of 5/28/2021: we previously posted an incomplete and possibly incorrect account of the Chinese government's treatment of Uyghur Muslims, along with some action items related to the situation. We then realized that there had been a lot of misinformation about this issue, some of which harmed other marginalized groups in the process due to systems of governance and marginalization in foreign countries not translating perfectly to corresponding systems in the US. We then posted a document and an account that we thought had a breakdown of the facts of the situation, but we realized that that account may not have the full picture either. We apologize for spreading misinformation that was harmful to AAPI and brown Americans, and going forward, we will take greater care in fact-checking our posts and paying attention to whether it is our place to comment on every social issue that is brought to our attention.

US Supreme Court

On September 18, 2020, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away. Though would be lovely if we could collectively take a few days to just mourn her death, President Tr*mp and Senate Republicans are already rushing to confirm her replacement. With this 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, our lives are on the line - women's rights to bodily autonomy, LGBTQ+ people's rights to exist, the fates of millions of immigrants, and the fate of our environment are all at risk. While RBG fundamentally served a racist, anti-Indigenous, and capitalist ruling class, replacing her with a Tr*mp nominee will only mean more people dying. Hence, we are not going to idolize her, but we will encourage you to take action within the scope of our current system. Some resources:
  • Read about the issues that the Supreme Court could decide on.
  • Register to vote. We've said this already, but it's so important that it bears repeating.
  • Email your senators to demand that they uphold Senator McC*nnell's precedent that a new justice not be confirmed in an election year. See this post.
  • Text "SIGN NTFIEZ" to 50409 (credit to Harvard Disorientation on Instagram).
  • If you have a uterus, visit your local Planned Parenthood as soon as possible and before November - Plan B is free with an ID, and be sure to also look into long-term birth control options such as IUDs. If you have the means, consider donating to Planned Parenthood as well.
  • Text "RBG" to 50409 (credit to Resist Bot).

Environmental Emergencies

Many of you who are based on the west coast of the United States probably woke up to orange skies sometime in the past few weeks. Needless to say, this is not normal or good. While the air quality may be improving slightly now, people are still struggling to recover from the wildfires, and the policies (or rather, lack of policies) being implemented by our governments are only going to make this situation worse, ultimately leading to the destruction of our environment. California just passed legislation to allow former prisoners who served on firefighting crews to become paid firefighters, but this is barely the bare minimum. What to do:
  • If you are a resident of California, email Governor Newsom, saying something to the effect of "I demand that you immediately ban hydraulic fracturing and revoke existing fracking permits you have given to corporations." Just this year, Governor Newsom has quietly issued 360 fracking permits to corporations, which have no doubt destroyed California's land and exacerbated the wildfire situation. Click this link to access Governor Newsom's email form.
  • If you are a resident of California, email your state legislator and assembly member about banning fracking as well. Find your reps here.
  • If you are in an affected region, keep track of your air quality (on iPhones, Siri should be able to tell you the current air quality if you ask it "air quality"). Keep windows closed, and invest in an air purifier if able.
  • If you are not in an affected region and do not urgently need to travel to an affected region, please don't travel to an affected region - these places are currently trying to mobilize their resources to fight fires, and tourism is unhelpful (and in fact, violent) at this time.
  • Check out this post for places to donate to help survivors of the wildfires.
  • Join the long-term fight for environmental justice by supporting organizations such as Hawai'i Peace and Justice, Kanaeokana, and Hawai'i Alliance for Progressive Action.

Children in Cages

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) is detaining children in cages at the US/Mexico border, forcefully removing the uteruses of people who have been detained, and letting COVID-19 spread unchecked through detention centers. What to do:
  • Follow @unitedwedream on Instagram to learn about what's happening and what actions to take.
  • If there is a chance you or someone close to you may be affected by an ICE raid, know what to do in that case. Among other things, (1) don't open your door, (2) remain silent by pleading the fifth amendment, (3) don't sign anything, (4) report and record the incident if able, and (5) fight your case. Source: Sarah Epperson on Instagram & unitedwedream.org/end.
  • If you are not an undocumented immigrant, take some steps to help those in your community. Among other things, interrogate ICE agents if you see them posted outside of homes, ask for warrants, remind people of their rights, ask why someone is being detained, record badge numbers/license plates of ICE agents, and know your rights to be present and bear witness to such incidents. Source: Sarah Epperson on Instagram & unitedwedream.org/end.
  • Visit this link by Voto Latino to email your legislators, demanding that they close concentration camps. A sample template email (written by Voto Latino and transcribed by us) can be found here.
  • ​Text "SIGN AHZJLZ" to 50409 (credit to @anguscloud on Instagram).

Black Lives Matter

As always, the movement for racial justice is not over. Please continue to check this site for resources. Some concrete things to do:
  • Take "BLM" (and any variations of it, especially hashtags) out of your social media biographies. Doing so only centers yourself and your brand, and not the voices of Black people. Instead, link to a resource site such as this one.
  • Support BIPOC mental health, especially in honor of this September being Suicide Awareness Month. Donate to organizations such as the Loveland Foundation.
  • Don't stop sharing stories on your social media accounts and using your platforms to uplift BIPOC voices.
  • If you are a student, demand ethnic studies at your school and take any ethnic studies courses that are already available to you. An example of an ethnic studies campaign at the secondary school level can be found here, and an example of a university-level campaign is here.
  • Follow Color of Change (@colorofchange on Twitter and Instagram) for petitions and campaigns to get justice for victims of policing and defund the police.
  • Wear a mask. COVID-19 disproportionately affects BIPOC, so you are being violent and racist by going outside with no protective equipment.
​

This Post Is Not Exhaustive

There are obviously many more injustices occurring in the world than were covered in this post. We will continue publishing more action items on this blog, and be sure to also check out this site for resources.
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Racism in NLP

8/22/2020

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We can't be out here virtue-signaling about racism and human rights if we don't have a reckoning with the field our organization was founded upon: computational linguistics (known in the engineering world as natural language processing). Several (though not nearly enough) papers have been written about the racism that is both inherent and actively perpetuated in NLP. In this post, we'll summarize the key points of those papers and offer some action and accountability items of our own. Of course, one blog post in a corner of the internet is barely a start for accountability and anti-racism in an entire field, so this post is merely an infinitesimal subset of information and action items needed to combat injustice in NLP. Again, in observance of the Bender rule, we acknowledge that while these trends of racism apply across all languages, the research and action items that we summarize are primarily based on findings from English language models and data.

Some of the Literature

In this section, we'll link and summarize some articles and papers that have been written about ethics and bias in NLP.
​
Oxford Insights: Racial Bias in Natural Language Processing
​Link to paper: here.
Key points:
  • Introducing NLP for government applications leads to exclusion of the needs and perspectives of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (henceforth BIPOC).
  • Racism is prevalent in the language used as training data for machine learning models.
  • Weaknesses are present in text filters designed to catch racist language.
  • NLP algorithms are woefully awful at handling linguistic variation (e.g. dialects of English that differ from Standard American English [SAE], low-resource languages, etc). Dialects such as African American Vernacular English (AAVE) have historically been degraded as "bad" and "incorrect," and NLP systems are consequently unable to handle text and speech from people who speak AAVE.
  • With such racist technology used on a federal scale, the idea of the US (or any country using such technology) being a representative democracy is a myth.
  • Language may seem like a non-central issue in the fight for racial justice, but technology that keeps BIPOC from expressing themselves is inherently a threat to civil rights.
  • Word embeddings (algorithms mapping words to numerical vectors that can be fed into machine learning models) learn from context. Context is given by training data, which is riddled with racist stereotypes and prejudices. When these word embeddings are ubiquitously used in downstream NLP tasks, they perpetuate this racism against BIPOC. 

Vox: Hate Speech Detection Algorithms are Biased Against Black People
​Link to article: here.

Key points:
  • Machine learning-based online hate speech detection models are 1.5 times more likely to flag tweets written by Black people as "offensive" compared to other racial groups (this is an example of a downstream consequence of word embeddings being unable to handle non-SAE dialects of English). This study was conducted by researchers from the University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
  • These models are also 2.2 times more likely to flag tweets written in AAVE as "offensive" compared to tweets written in SAE (this statistic comes from the same study).
  • According to another study by researchers from Cornell and the Qatar Computer Research Institute, this anti-AAVE racism is present in some of the most widely used academic datasets created for the task of hate speech detection.
  • Since industry practitioners rely heavily on academic researchers for their hate speech detection algorithms, the problem spills over into big tech, causing racism in the filters on large social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
  • The racism is also a result of flawed human decisions, as human data labelers were 1.5 times more likely to label a tweet by a Black person as "offensive."
  • One example of a widely used data and model platform that contains such widespread racism is Perspective API. Their underlying technology is also used by Google.
​
Summary
To summarize the key findings from these two pieces: racism is found at every level in the natural language processing pipeline - from the data to the brains of the humans who label the data to the word embedding algorithms to the downstream tasks. The racism is particularly amplified against Black people and speakers of AAVE. Given that these systems are used widely across both academia and industry, it is an understatement to say that NLP is racist, and we have a lot of work to do.

Action Items

This section describes some action and accountability items for anyone remotely involved in the NLP (or even general AI/machine learning) space. This is by no means a comprehensive or authoritative list - these items were gathered from some academic and news sources as well as the personal experiences of the authors of this post in doing NLP research.

Check Your Data
As incredulous as it may sound, loads of NLP datasets are floating freely about the internet with egregious errors. As the Vox article mentioned, a lot of these errors are due to human bias in labeling text in a linguistic variation unfamiliar to them as more negative or offensive than SAE language. Another lot of these errors are due to the unchecked use of automatic data annotation tools (or models that are works in progress that are inappropriately used as authoritative annotation generators, such as SpaCy and SciSpacy), which are racist due to the racist context that they've been trained on.
In a particular auto-annotated dataset for named entity recognition in the COVID-19 domain that one of the authors of this post had some experience working with, the word "Asia" was consistently labeled as a "Disease or Syndrome" when it was clearly a "Location" - a clear reflection of both the highly politicized nature of the novel coronavirus and the racist ways in which medical researchers name non-European diseases after the locations in which they originated (we hear "China virus," "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome," and the "Asia 1" flu serotype, but we never hear "European smallpox"!). The absolute bare minimum that researchers and practitioners must do with every dataset they use is to check the labels for egregious errors.

Deliberately Diversify Your Data
An overwhelming majority of training data (and an even more overwhelming majority of "positive" training data) is written by White people and/or published by White-owned sources. These White-authored sources obviously underrepresent (or in a lot of cases, completely do not represent) terms and syntax used in non-SAE dialects of English and in everyday discourse among BIPOC. At the very least, dataset creators and users must make a deliberate effort to seek out and incorporate text from BlPOC-authored sources into their data.
As a concrete example, for people working in or near the domain of news, Blavity and Essence are some great Black-owned media outlets to draw from, and the Navajo Times is a wonderful Indigenous-owned source. Data from sources like these not only increases the general linguistic style variation in training datasets but also gives representation to terms like "rez" (word for Native American reservation), names of Black and Indigenous doctors/scientists/journalists/celebrities, names of Indigenous tribes, and various African and Indigenous cultural terms that are just not found in White-owned media.

Add More Diverse Data to the World Wide Web
Wikipedia is a heavily utilized source of natural language data. Right now, it has a shameful amount of underrepresentation bias for BIPOC. Luckily, Wikipedia is maintained by the public, so you can directly edit it! To decrease racism on Wikipedia, you can add and/or expand on biographies of famous BIPOC, de-center Europeans and White people from history pages, and add/amend entries on research/innovation by BIPOC, among many other things. Don't know where to start? Way ahead of you. Some wonderful organizations combatting racism on Wikipedia already exist! Two of them are AfroCROWD and Women in Red. They both have great guides, resource collections, and edit-a-thons from which you can learn about Wikipedia and contribute to BIPOC representation on it - we highly recommend that you get involved with them!

Hire and Retain (Emphasis on Retain) BIPOC Employees, Especially For Leadership Roles
It unfortunately goes without saying that there is still massive inequity in employment, compensation, representation, and treatment of BIPOC in tech (and by extension, in natural language processing). When BIPOC are not present or heard in decision-making processes or algorithm development processes, the algorithms and technologies suited for White men are falsely generalized to be suited for everyone else. This leads to massive barriers in utility, accessibility, and effects of technology for BIPOC, which is unacceptable. Don't just invite BIPOC to the table (implying that White people still have power) - give them ownership of the table. Also (this one is for corporations and the humans behind them), pay your BIPOC employees equally! Do not use diversity for profit by exploiting BIPOC as cheap labor. Put your money, culture, and executive board where your #inspirational LinkedIn bro-posts are. Check out this guide by B Lab and this article by The Network for concrete action items your organization can take towards racial justice (source: Anti-Racism Daily).

Develop an Ethics Code and Form an Ethics Review Board for NLP
Medicine and psychology have institutional review boards. Why doesn't NLP? Natural language processing technologies have increasingly profound effects on people's lives, and that cannot go unchecked. A paper detailing ethics best practices for NLP can be found here - it explains this much better than we can.

Educators and Educational Institutions: Teach Tech Ethics and Promote the Liberal Arts
The buzzword "interdisciplinary" has been floating around for quite some time now. Despite the fact that it has been co-opted as a meme, the fundamental idea behind the word is still crucially important. Especially with the rise of coding bootcamps and computer science programs that teach tech in a vacuum as if it doesn't exist in a society, engineers are entering the workforce dangerously uninformed about the consequences of the technologies they develop. Because we exist in a society in which oppression is the default, lack of awareness of tech's social implications directly perpetuates continued danger and injustice.
To combat this at the educational level, we must normalize, encourage, and require that students in computer science and related fields take liberal arts courses that contextualize the impacts of their careers on society at large. A tiny subset of example courses to take: Introductory Linguistics (emphasis on African and Indigenous languages and cultures), Introduction to Philosophy/Morality/Ethics, proof-based math (not for worldly context, but for equipping students with the tools and the mindset to rigorously explain the "why" behind their decisions and their technologies), World History (particularly non-Eurocentric world history), Comparative Government, History of Racism, Tech Ethics, Science, Technology, and Society (STS).

That's all we have for this post. As always, this is barely the beginning of the work we need to do to delete racism, and we'll keep on publishing content and using our platform to fight for justice. Also as always, please reach out to info@linghacks.tech if any of this information is incorrect or misleading. Go forth and process natural language, ethically!
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Black Disabled Lives Matter

7/26/2020

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July is Disability Pride Month. Though the month is ending, anti-ableist and anti-racist activism shouldn't. Once again, so many people have created resources that put things into words better than we can, so we've compiled a non-exhaustive list of some of these resources. As usual, please feel free to email us at info@linghacks.tech if any of the information below is incorrect.

Educational Media

Readings
  • ​Racism and Ableism
  • Ableism in Natural Language Processing
  • Disability, Bias, and AI
  • All of the articles linked and summarized on Black, Disabled, and Proud
  • A Brief History of the Disability Rights Movement
  • Workplace Ableism
  • How Academic Jobs Screen Out Disabled People
  • The Harriet Tubman Collective
  • The stories under the #MyDisabledLifeIsWorthy and #NoBodyIsDisposable hashtags on Twitter (credit to Anti-Racism Daily for the links and to Imani Barbarin for creating the tags)
Motion Pictures
  • Crip Camp (available on Netflix)
  • All the documentaries listed on the Disability Visibility Project
  • Lives Worth Living
Podcasts
  • Black Disabled Women in the Media
  • Black Mental Health
  • This list of disability podcasts​


Action Items

Where to Donate (Credit to NY Mag, Nylon, and getinformed.carrd.co)
  • Autistic People of Color Fund
  • Disability Justice Culture Club
  • Sins Invalid
  • Ramp Your Voice
  • This thread of GoFundMe's
  • National Black Disability Coalition
  • NAMD Advocates
  • Follow and turn on post notifications for Asiatu Lawoyin's Instagram account - they frequently post information about Black autistic people in need of mutual aid
Black Disabled People to Follow and Support (Partial Credit to Disability Horizons)
  • ​Fats Timbo
  • Devin Manning
  • Lauren "Lolo" Spencer
  • Garrison Redd
  • Haben Girma
  • Stephanie Thomas
  • Keah Brown
  • Andrea Dalzell
  • Tatiana A. Lee
  • Clara Holmes
  • Imani Barbarin
  • Sandra: ND Coach & Consultant
How to Combat Ableism in Everyday Life
  • If you create any sort of visual media (e.g. a graphical plot, a table, a web application), whether it's an educational tool for a course or part of a paper/presentation, and need to distinguish some visual elements, try to distinguish them in at least two ways if you have any color-coded components of your visual. For example, if you have a series of red, green, and blue lines representing different things, consider making them red solid, green dashed, and blue dotted lines to make your content more accessible to colorblind people. As another example, if you shade certain regions of a graph with different colors, try also shading them with different fill patterns (e.g. gradient vs. solid vs. lines). The R programming language and Google Drawings both have different line types, fill types, and shapes, so this is both a feasible and accessible step to take whenever you create visuals.
  • If you make graphical posts on social media, make sure to also include image descriptions in plain text in the captions. This is because screen readers can't interpret images, but they can process text and speak it to a user who otherwise who otherwise wouldn't be able to enjoy the content (great explanation here). If you make videos, be sure to also include captions (read more here). Additionally, use #ThisFormat of capitalizing the first letter of every word when you create hashtags - screen readers can then pronounce the hashtags properly (read more here).
  • If you are a recruiter and/or job description writer, please don't put any weight lifting requirements (or any physical requirements) in a job description unless those requirements are critical for the job. This is just blatantly ableist. An example is "must be able to lift 20 lbs"--it's unnecessary and discriminatory towards disabled people.
  • Read and follow this thread on wheelchair etiquette.
  • Use direct language to describe disabilities. Words like "disabled," "autistic," "chronically ill," "neurodivergent," "deaf," and "blind" aren't bad words (used in the proper context, of course), so don't use euphemisms to get around using these words - just be sure to include the word "person" (or equivalent humanizing term) afterwards if you're using them as adjectives. In addition, respect disabled people's choices of whether they use identity-first (e.g. "disabled people") or person-first (e.g. "people with disabilities") language.
  • Avoid using common expressions that actually perpetuate ableism. Examples include the words "st*pid," "cr*zy," "d*mb," "ins*ne," and "l*me," as well as expressions such as "tone-deaf," "blind" (to something), and "did they stutter."
  • Do not use disability as an insult or as a cover for other forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, or queerphobia. First, people exist at the intersection of these marginalized identities. Second, there is no disability that causes bigotry, and using disability as an excuse or explanation for bigotry only further stigmatizes disability. Credit to Asiatu Lawoyin and Imani Barbarin for these points.
  • If you hold in-person events, make every effort to ensure that the venue is wheelchair-accessible. Disabled people should not be an afterthought.
  • If you are creating a new product and conducting any sort of market research or user testing, include disabled people in that research and testing. See this thread for an example of a gross failure to do so.
  • If you are able to get your COVID-19 vaccine (including booster!) and have not yet done so, please do. Here is a website to help you find vaccine locations in the United States, and here is an accessible vaccine scheduling tool from Neighborhood Access. Additionally, keep wearing masks in public spaces. Not only are there cases of breakthrough COVID infections and rapidly mutating variants of the virus, but there are also many disabled people who are unable to get vaccinated or are immunocompromised - wearing a mask is a basic form of respect for their lives. If you're traveling and/or interacting with people, get tested for COVID if able - here is an accessible tool by Neighborhood Access that can help you find a PCR test.
  • If you are an educator and are able to do so, record all lectures, write extensive lecture notes that cover everything said in those lectures, and stop grading students on attendance/limited forms of participation.
That's all for this post. Remember to keep being intersectional into your activism, and check this site frequently for action items!
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