Sunday 3 May 2015

Keep Doing That Thang DPAC

There have been complaints from a disability campaigner that DPAC devotes too much time speaking against certain political parties and is too involved in trade union politics. As for speaking against UKIP; I'm fully in favour and will always speak down this fascist bunch. On trade union politics...it's best I keep quiet on that one. 

DPAC is correct in lending support to progressive campaigns that aren't primarily disability based. We as disabled people are not one-dimensional beings. While disability informs our lives in many ways, it not alone our only identifying factor.

Our lives are also affected and shaped by a whole range of other concerns. Issues that impact on everyone. When I fight for equality it isn’t merely to break the chains of a disablism; no it is also to struggle against race, gender, sexual, age, and class inequality.

Inequality that hurts black people, gays and lesbians, elderly and young, women and poor people is a hurt we should all feel. Our strength is in the commonality of our cause.

It saddens me when allies decide to view things from a narrow perspective of the snapshot. The snapshot only serves to isolate our cause into single-issue politics. This ignores the larger canvass of the class struggle. More crucially it gives government free-rein to pick us off, one at a time.

We end up divided and fighting our battles alone; we scrabble around vying with our allies for such scarce resources as funding and most important the time activists lend to our struggle.


For these very reasons I salute DPAC’s class struggle approach to the cuts, austerity, corrupt government and the fight against inequality and injustice.

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