One of the hidden aspects of the Black Panther Party in the California Bay Area was its contributions to the nascent disability rights movement in the 1970s. In 1977, the Party famously supported a 26-day occupation of a federal building in San Francisco during the nationwide “504 Movement” demanding the passage of legislation to outlaw ability-based discrimination in federally-financed programs. This Wednesday, November 29 in-person conversation at UC Berkeley around the intersectionalities of Disability and Blackness included former Panthers and disability rights activists who provided background on the roots of the Party and Black activism in the disability rights movement.
Speakers:
- Dennis Billups, blind disability rights activist; 504 Movement participant
- Leroy Moore, writer, poet, activist; founder of Krip Hop
- john a. powell, Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute
- Karen Nakamura, Disability Studies Chair & Professor of Anthropology, UC Berkeley
This event was part of UC Berkeley's yearlong On The Same Page Initiative. It was supported by the College of Letters and Science and the Othering & Belonging Institute.
Transcript
Karen Nakamura:
Okay, I'm just going to get started. I start with the introduction, and as I say the introduction, people can still be filing in. We want to welcome all of you to this what I think is going to be amazing conversation. I'm Karen Nakamura. I'm a professor of Anthropology and the Haas distinguished chair in Disability Studies. Welcome to this space. We're grateful to the Alumni House for providing us with this space. We recognize that Berkeley sits on the territory of the Huichin, the ancestral and unseeded land of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people, the successors of the historic and sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. We also want to just really welcome you in the best practices of Critical Disability Studies to make the space your own. If you need to lie down, lie down. If you need to stand, stand. There are cushions in the back if you need to lie down. If the environmental controls aren't working for you, let us know. There's some water and some snacks, but really we want you to be the most comfortable and authentic person that you can be.
Again, welcome everyone. Many of us weren't aware of the contributions of the Black Panther Party to the disability rights movement until the film Crip Camp mentioned their pivotal role in supporting the 504 movement's occupation of the federal building in San Francisco in April of 1977. This was the longest occupation of a federal site, a record which still stands, mostly because the federal government just smashes things to bits now. We're here today to talk about that legacy and the continuing intersectionality of Blackness and disability in the United States with really three amazing panelists. We'd like to thank the support of the Othering & Belonging Institute and the On the Same Page committee. Charlotte O'Keefe Stralka and Marc Abizeid, who are in the back, did all the amazing legwork that made this event possible.
The Bancroft Library, in addition, they're hosting this really incredible exhibit in the library that celebrates the 504 movement. They have also, part of that talks about the contributions the Panthers made. They have a lot of the objects that people have lent to the library for that. I'm sure they might be already closed, but if you have a chance to go to the Bancroft soon, check that out, and they will have an online exhibit up I think next semester.
I'm doing introductions. The problem is that I wanted to do short introductions, but each of these people I'm going to introduce, I could have five of these pages for each person and it still wouldn't be enough to talk about their lives, so I apologize for these brief ones. The first person I'm going to introduce is to my right. Dennis Billups has had a remarkable career of activism and leadership. He participated in the 1977 occupation of the federal building, made famous by Crip Camp. He then became a tech worker and he's lived through two tech booms and busts. He's also an activist for housing rights, fighting gentrification and displacement, amongst other things.
Then on the big screen we have Leroy Moore, Jr., who's an activist, poet, writer, feminist and academic. He's been writing the Illin-N-Chillin column for POOR Magazine since the 1990s. He's the founder of both Krip-Hop Nation as well as Sins Invalid, two really pivotal organizations talking about intersexual disability justice issues. He's helped co-write the tenets of disability justice, and right now he's a doctoral student in Anthropology and Black Disability Studies at UCLA, or like I like to call it, our southern campus.
john powell to my left here, he needs no introduction in this crowd, and it's just as well because his list of accomplishments and titles would take up almost all of our time. He's a renowned civil rights activist, internationally recognized legal scholar on civil rights and structural racism. His day job is as the director of the Othering & Belonging Institute here at UC Berkeley, the Robert D. Haas Chancellor's Chair in Equity and Inclusion, and a professor of Law, African-American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Berkeley. And that was just his day job. His night job is as superhero and a professional barrier-breaker.
So we're going to start off our conversation. john's going to lead us. I think the order is roughly that we're going to start with Dennis, and then pull in Leroy and then engage in a bigger conversation pulling questions for you. As I mentioned, there are snacks at the back, and we're going to bring out more snacks when we finish the event, so stick around for the food and for the camaraderie. I'm going to pass the mic now over to john.
john a. powell:
Well, thank you, Karen, and thank all of you for being here. It's my pleasure to be here and special pleasure to have a chance to have a conversation with Dennis and Leroy. I have a number of questions, and probably won't get to all of them because we want to also make sure we pull you into the conversation, but Dennis, you were there literally from the very beginning when it all went down in 1977, occupying the federal building. Can you talk a little bit about how that was and what happened?
Dennis Billups:
Thank you for letting me be here today and taking up space and listening to everybody involved. It was certainly a pleasure to come today and I want to thank Karen and all of her crew and people, and thank UC Berkeley for having us.
It was one of those times when you grow up and you're, what, 23, 24 years old and you would like to know what you want to do with your life and figure out, you've been to school, you've been to college, and you really haven't seen anything effective on the ground. I went to City College of San Francisco where we had to help build a library, things for the disabled and things of that nature, and then my twin sister, who's also passed, Deborah Billups, who and other people asked me to join this rally of the 504 demonstration. I had actually told them no because I couldn't see where it was going to do any good, and that's how impacted I was about that because I believe that even if we did anything, that nothing was going to become a result of it, but she asked me again and I says, "All right, I will try." She goes, "You're probably one of the only persons I know that could probably make a difference, and it wasn't because of your loud voice or anything. That was part of it, but I think because of the fact that you speak very clear and you have good intentions and you reach the hearts and minds of a lot of people when you speak."
That's when it really started to begin, meeting people in the disability building, more than 240 disabled persons there. I had never seen that many disabled persons in one building, although I've seen a lot of people working with the Recreation Center for the Handicapped and of course the LightHouse for the Blind and other organizations, going to camp at Enchanted Hills and that nature, but this was completely different. This was an area where disability, people who were in control walking in to a federal building to take it over and to figure out what they can do to make sure that their rights were heard, break down barriers and just make sure that the community, the government and the federal government heard them.
john a. powell:
Thank you. As a follow-up question, Bradley Lomax, a wheelchair user and Black Panther member, was critical in bringing you into the movement and helping connect 504 movement with the Panthers. What was your conversations like with him? What did he say to get you involved?
Dennis Billups:
He said, "We really have to start changing the government to our distraction. We know it's not even there, close. They're not even looking, they're not even talking." He just said that, "We're going to have to figure out a way to get them to start listening." I'm saying, "Well, okay, then one of the ways is, right, be right here, be a demonstrator. Stay here. Be positive and see what we could do ourselves."
He was a man of completely incredible energy and lots of lots of just strength behind what he was saying, and even though he couldn't always tell you, just the thought of his mind and body could express to you the kind of enthusiasm and kind of thing that he would like to see done or, "Let's just get started. Let's just get it done. It needs to be done. I can't go up the stairs. I don't have a way to do this and I don't have a way to do that. Let's just do this." He called upon his Black Panther audience and family, which I'm now a part of, and they came. They came with food, they came with clothes, they came with medical. They had churches, they had other organizations and community, and they came and opened the doors and made it happen. The machinist unions as well was also a part of that as well.
john a. powell:
I know you may be modest, but I want you to respond to the assertion that you're sometimes considered the spiritual leader of the 504 movement. Why do you think people see you as a spiritual leader?
Dennis Billups:
I don't know if you've seen some of the physical stuff that when we first came in the building, everybody was standing around and didn't know what to do and I sat on the floor and started hitting my cane against the floor and started shouting different kinds of protest songs. I thought that was important so that we could start in one note, one unity and get everybody involved. Judy Heumann and Kitty Cone were already talking about it outside the building and inside the building. I didn't really find my place in the building and still I started to just figure it out. Well, what do you do best? Sing. What do you do best? Chant. What do you do best? Talk to people real loud and make sure let's let this happen. Judy had brought it to my attention that we really had to stay here, we really had to make a difference. And so when I got a chance to listen to her and Kitty Cone and people like Brad Lomax and other people, I decided, we're not going anywhere.
john a. powell:
Thank you. I have one more question for you and then we're going to turn to Leroy for a little bit. You sort of cross different boundaries, sort of knit groups together. The disability movement is not always seen as welcoming and dealing with Black issues, and you've helped with that, but also you're in the dot-com world, and the dot-com world, through booms and busts, is a very strange world. Even though it's supposed to be connecting people, it's oftentimes disconnecting people. How have you brought these different movements together? How have you navigated traveling across these different boundaries?
Dennis Billups:
Thank you for that question. It's a real good one. If I started explaining it to you in another manner, it would really get interesting, but I think when I went back to state college to do some studying, I thought that things were going to start breaking down and that disability rights were really going to start coming on, and it really didn't at that particular point. We had to do some stuff to make sure things happened, of course, but we didn't have a lot of access to computers. That time, it was a big thing. We didn't know how we were going to learn codes and do all that kind of stuff.
I worked for a company, a great company called Faraday Electronics at that time. I worked for Faraday Electronics through two beautiful people, Rashnee Southern and Ms. Palmer, Jeannie Palmer, and others. They brought me in, wanted to make sure that I could be okay with working with techses and working with computers, listening to codes. I had a great teacher, Peter Comisoni, who used to work with tech stuff. One of the great things that I'd learned during that time is just to be positive. My job was to be on the telephone and talk from anybody from Germany, China, Africa, all over the world, and to make sure that they got to the right places and I learned to memorize that. At one time, I got a chance to open the building because I used to come in so early from San Francisco and it was just a great time meeting all of the great people there.
Going through the two bubbles is you just have to be positive. Things come and go. Things happen. Money runs out, so you have to find new founders. Things happen, and so you have to figure out what else you have to do. You have to go to places where you can make better chips. You have to go places where you can make things run faster. You have to find out who your competition is and you have to work with the people you have who are bright and intelligent but going through a lot of stress making this stuff happen. My thing is to become extremely positive. It doesn't matter what you're doing; I'm supposed to just make you happy and have a higher vibration no matter what. I went blindly doing that kind of stuff, that kind of issue where you just have to keep your people happy, and they were my people all over the building. Even if things didn't go right, when they came to the front desk, they knew they had a smile.
john a. powell:
Thank you. Leroy, we want to bring you into the conversation. You're about a generation's younger than Dennis. In fact, you were 10 years old when Dennis was occupying the federal building in 1977 and 23 years old when the ADA was finally signed. The focus on intersectionality of poetry, race, disability led you to write for POOR magazine. Can you talk about what drew you to this activism and research?
Leroy Moore, Jr.:
Well, I've been an activist all my life. Way before we had an academic [inaudible 00:15:39], I saw it with my father, Black Panther meetings, I saw it with my mom advocating for me. When I moved to California, I was young and I was an activist and I was a writer. I wrote my first article in the '80s before I got to San Francisco for Amsterdam News, one of the oldest Black newspapers in the world there in New York. When I moved to San Francisco, I used to love to go to the bookstores. I went to this bookstore one time, bookstore, I saw a magazine, POOR Magazine. I was like, "Oh, what's this?" I opened it and read it and really, really liked their politics. They were really radical politics. Somehow, oh, how I got in touch with them, I was doing poetry at Berkeley and I got up the stage and they say, "Oh, my God, you have to write for POOR Magazine."
That's how I got a column. It was one of the first columns of race and disability back in '92, '93. My first article was the police killing of Margaret L. Mitchell, which is strange because it's like a full circle now. Now I'm in LA, but my first article was the policing of Margaret Mitchell in LA, also a disabled Black woman in LA. That was my first article under POOR Magazine and got involved, and I realized [inaudible 00:18:05] realized is that being poor and disabled is a hush-hush issue, so we started to go inward and started to really see that we have the tools, the writing, the arts and everything. After going inward, we came out with a bunch of activists. We started what's called the Poets, and it's still going on. We started teaching, it's called Never Call the Police, because we used to be, I'm still [inaudible 00:18:54] POOR magazine, so I was dealing with police brutality and people with disabilities, and so we started this thinking of never calling the police.
Under POOR magazine, I started my own organization for people of color with disabilities. Because it's interesting, after I graduated from undergrad, my sister's like, "Take time off," because I was always in school, and that's when I went to London and I saw a whole Black disabled movement. I came back home, quit my job and I started my own organization for people of color with disabilities. So I've been there and I do the same thing, doing Krip-Hop and other stuff.
My father was a Black Panther, so got that. When I was working at CIL, I think I looked at all of the CILs in the Bay Area starting in San Francisco, Berkeley, Hayward. My last CIL was in Berkeley and they used to tell me about the 504 sit-ins and Brad Lomax and everybody. I think that's how I got in touch with Dennis. I was involved with Lisa's son with mental health disability that was shot in the Sony Metreon. At that time, I had my own organization and POOR magazine and we did campaigns and workshops. I think we did the first workshop on police brutality and people with disabilities in San Francisco back in the early '90s, so, yeah.
john a. powell:
Thank you. Thank you for your work, too. It's interesting because I think still people are having trouble understanding how frequently police killings is a combination of disability and race and just violence. You also helped found Krip-Hop, and not being satisfied to just work in the United States or California, that was always an international movement. Could you say something about that and why you started working internationally as well?
Leroy Moore, Jr.:
Yeah. I was on the search for Black disabled movements. I'm just going to be honest, and you got to be honest, is that in this white community, I've never dealt with race and a lot of racism, and so because of that, I always looked for Black disabled, people-of-color disabled organizations and I found a couple of them, one in London, England, the other one in Toronto, other one in South Africa, and a little movement in the Bay Area with my organization and the Asian, Pacific Islanders disabled group, and then you had a lot of familiar Latino disabled group.
What's interesting is every place I went to, I missed the movement by like a year. I went to London and it's like, "Oh, it's over." It's like, "What?" In Toronto, it was like, "Oh, you missed it like a year." So I realized, and I think about it more and more now, we had these movements internationally, but they just disappear. Why is that? I had a chance to interview a couple of activists in London that was involved in the Black disabled movement and they said there was no support. There was no support from the Black community, and at that time in London, the white community saw them as competition, so of course they didn't want to support that. It can't last so long in this capitalist world we live in. You got to pay your bills and stuff.
So unfortunately it lasted for a couple years and stuff, but these extraordinary people. Margaret Hill, one of the leaders and the thinkers around that movement, put out one of the first books that I ever saw dealing with Black disabled people. It was really radical, it had poetry in it. In London, Black means all people of color, so it was a collaboration between African UK people and Asian group and they all came together and wrote this book. Seeing that, and looking for that and how Krip-Hop was born, I've always loved music and always questioned authority like, where is disabled people in music? When I was younger, I saw Porgy and Bess, and Porgy, I was like, "Mom, I'm Porgy." That was the first time I saw a Black disabled man on TV and that just flipped my mind. After that, I saw my father's record collection that had a lot of rhyme blues artists just like, "Wow, this is me." But of course I didn't know back then I would be doing Krip-Hop 30 years later. It comes full circle, comes full circle.
john a. powell:
Thank you. One question, and I want to come back to Dennis just for a minute and then open it up to the audience, you mentioned that you were oftentimes a year late, and partially because there was not adequate support either from the white disability community or from the Black civil rights community. Has that changed? Do you feel like now there's more support from those two communities?
Leroy Moore, Jr.:
Although I'm 56 years old, I see it online. I don't see it in offline. That's one big goal of mine with my PhD studies is to open up what's called a Krip-Hop Institute physical building where, we're in this year where hip-hop just turned 50, and of course once again no one is talking about just, say, oh, hip-hop artist. I want to open up an institute that people can come, little Leroy can come and really see himself. When I was young walking in New York, I used to walk past the Schomburg Center. People know about the Schomburg Center, it's one of the oldest Black museums and research center. I used to tell my mom, I was like, "One day I'm going to get in there and do black disabled stuff." I was young. I see the Krip-Hop Institute being like a cultural place, a cultural or education place and also a place where other cultural places can come and learn.
A couple of years ago, I went to the new African American museum in DC and I was shocked. I loved it, but they had nothing in braille. It was like, one day if Stevie wanted to come, he can't enjoy your museum. I look at that and I think Krip-Hop can be an educational place not only for the public, but for these cultural places. The Hip Hop Museum is going to open. I think they need to know about Krip-Hop and hip-hop disabled people. There's really no place to go. I know there's a museum upstate New York, a disabled museum in upstate New York, but I think that's it. My goal is to have that place so little Leroy or little Lisa can say, "I want to go to Krip-Hop Institute to learn about Black blues artists," Black rhyme disabled blues artists, Black activists like Brad Lomax. All that will be there.
john a. powell:
I just have one more question, sorry, this is too interesting. You mentioned you went to South Africa, or he was mentioning that they go to South Africa, and the constitutional court there has part of their inscription in braille. I don't know if you experienced that, but also, you're a doctorate student at UCLA, so if you could just talk about your experience in South Africa and what you're working on in your doctorate.
Leroy Moore, Jr.:
Yeah. South Africa was really cool. It was one of my dreams when I was a little boy because I did this whole paper before computers about apartheid and people with disabilities in South Africa. Don't tell me how I did it because it was hard. No computers. I've always had interest to go to South Africa, and because hip-hop has chapters, I've been talking to artists with disabilities from around the world. I got a chance when I got to know Simon Mandela from South Africa. He does one of the oldest disabled newspapers in South Africa. I told him my vision and he's like, "All right, let's do it." We raised the money and we did it. We went into 13 cities in one week. It was off the wall. We interviewed people, and it was good.
Then after that, Krip-Hop invited African disabled musicians from around the world to come to the Bay Area. Believe me, we did it on an SSI budget. People came and slept on my floor. They just parked anywhere. That was amazing, too. With the PhD, with the Krip-Hop Institute, we are looking to have Krip-Hop Institute in Africa. Matter of fact, the Krip-Hop chapter in Tanzania, we just bought a piece of land in Tanzania last year. We're trying to build a school because I see that the chapter in Tanzania, they live in a village, not the city. Because you're in a village, there's no school for people with disabilities, so youth with disabilities. [inaudible 00:32:31] Krip-Hop wants to build that school, and in the school we're going to build a small Krip-Hop Institute.
john a. powell:
Thank you, thank you. Dennis, before we open it up to the audience, you mentioned, which I'm not surprised, how you made people smile and happy in the tech world, which is no small task, but not everyone's going to be able to do that. I guess I want to find out, has that openness to people with disabilities, and particularly Blacks with disabilities, been institutionalized in the tech world? Do you feel like it's more open now? Are they doing their job? We know you did yours, but are they doing their job as well?
Dennis Billups:
First... Am I on? I'm not on. Am I on? There we go. First of all, I wanted to give a thanks out to Leroy and Abdul Kenyatta, who he introduced me to, and I know why he bought that land in Tanzania because I know that's where Abdul goes, but I want to help you in that regard as well, my brother, so thank you for that.
Yes, it has opened up. It has opened up quite slowly, but it is opening up. There's a lot of people with disabilities getting their training, getting their doctorate degree, going to other universities and things of that nature. I can't say that it's fast enough growing, but I do see a window opening very much. I believe during the next three years, you're going to see an acceleration of an opening, I'd like to say because of the disparity, but I do believe because of AI is going to just push things just that much faster. Yes, I do see an opening, but I've been doing this for almost 50 years and this hasn't been as fast as I'd like to, but I cannot complain because the door has been opened.
john a. powell:
Thank you. Thank you for your part and, Leroy, for your part in terms of opening those doors. We want to open up to-
Leroy Moore, Jr.:
Can I just share something really quick?
john a. powell:
Sure.
Leroy Moore, Jr.:
Yeah, I just want to be honest, and I know it's going to be hard to hear, but talking about Brad Lomax, I was in connection with his brother years, years ago and I was wanting to interview him about his brother and Black Panther Party and everything, and he said, "Leroy, it's so painful. I can't do it. It's so painful."
Unfortunately, I didn't have the chance, but now after, what, three or four years not reaching out, I reached out to him again, was it last year, and finally got that interview. Me and Susan Schweik, Susan Schweik is a friend and was retired at UC Berkeley, really, really she's really been in the corner for the community in really telling the truth. It's funny because Susan, one time when we were on this mission to get to Glenn, his name's Glenn, Glenn Lomax, since they went out to Sacramento to see if they can get records, and come to find out that Brad's records were sealed. You couldn't get to them and it's like, wow.
So just to say that now we're working on translating the interview and we're working on the article, but there's these stories that, it's just so sad. I mean, from both communities, it's so sad that what Brad Lomax had to go through and people don't know the story, and it's finally going to come out. It's not all cherry. There's some ableism and some racism together. It's going to come out soon. Me and Susan are still in the beginning of transcribing those records.
And I want to say that there's a lot of stories, Crip Camp and a lot of writings only talk about the Panthers serving food, but Panthers did a lot more and Panthers saw what, through my research and my interviews, the Panthers saw that 504 is more as a human rights thing and a civil rights thing. Brad Lomax really [inaudible 00:38:21] to be a part of. Well, Brad Lomax's full vision was to open up the Black CIL in East Oakland, which I think it [inaudible 00:38:41] from his brother. It didn't really last. Anyway, this story going to come out, but I just want to be honest because I see a lot of writings, I see a lot of stuff only saying one side of the story, and because Glenn, I think because he trusted me, I've stayed in contact with so many years, he finally opened up and told me that story, so that's coming out soon.
john a. powell:
Thank you, thank you.
Dennis Billups:
Can I speak to that for one second?
john a. powell:
Sure.
Dennis Billups:
Because I was in contact with Brad Lomax and the thing he did talk about was pain and racism a lot in this government and how disabled persons have to fight for their intentions to move ahead. I know I was questioned about this one from a New York paper one time and they were giving me different stories about it and I was telling them that Brad Lomax was my teacher. He told me to go out there and make sure that we are successful in this event and to do whatever I could to push it through. I want to make sure that's on the record because I heard that his brother didn't hear that I was talking about him in a high manner or I talked about him in a more positive manner, and I can't give a man any higher credence than him being my teacher telling me exactly what to do and how to do it and being successful at it.
john a. powell:
Thank both of you. What we want to do now is give the audience a chance to ask any questions. Is there mic circulating?
Karen Nakamura:
Yeah. Go ahead and raise your hand.
john a. powell:
If you raise your hand and really ask the question, identify who you are, and if you can keep it relatively short, we can try to get as many people in as possible.
Bruce Curtis:
Is this working? Yeah. My name is Bruce Curtis. I was also involved in the 1977 takeover of the federal buildings across the United States. I was involved in the one in Los Angeles and also came up to San Francisco during the congressional hearings and went on to Washington, DC. I've got some history in this, too, which is why I came tonight to listen to the panel and respect for their support and participation in that historical movement. There are many things I could say, but I would like to address one of the concerns that has been raised. Because I am a white male, I have grown up with white privilege in the United States and I participated in the disability movements in the early years with that experience, but there is so much racism in this country that has affected our life, and as disabled people, disabled people have their own oppression and discrimination, but it is not equal across all racial groups.
I have been working internationally with disability movements in other countries, but I am currently focused in Berkeley now. I've lived here for a lot of years. I'm now the executive director of a disability support organization here called Easy Does It Emergency Services. I wanted to also give a shout-out to UC Berkeley as an organization. While it has done many things I dislike and do not support, it has provided support in its own way for disability students. The disability students program here is an excellent example historically of that support. One of the things that the disability rights movement needs today after a lifetime of work by many of us is we need to work across the racial or ethnic divides, and on our board of directors, we have a need for representation from the Black community, we have a need for representation from the Asian community. I would like to put that out to the people here listening, we would love to see people say that they'd like to be on our board and participate in making better services that support disabled people in our communities to stay and live in our own homes.
Dennis Billups:
Oh, I agree with that. Thumbs up. Thumbs up.
john a. powell:
Thank you. Other questions or comments?
Leroy Moore, Jr.:
Can I just say one more comment? Once again, a lot of people talk about the 504 sit-in [inaudible 00:44:06] through history, but there was a protest out in New York before the 504 sit-in. Willie Mae Goodman, I interviewed her a couple years ago, she and a bunch of parents before the 504 sit-in in New York protested against the Willowbrook Institute and took over Harlem streets and had once again the Black Panthers and the Brown Berets to close that institute down. That happened before the 504 sit-in in New York. Willie Mae Goodman, she's a kickass activist, so...
john a. powell:
Thank you. Dennis, do you or Karen want to add anything?
Dennis Billups:
Well, I just wanted to say I agree with you on that, Leroy. The Brooklyn Institute is a huge institute that's a think tank, I believe it is, and if we could shut it down and make sure that we can put disabled rights and disability problems and things for them to solve or become part of that in which we could do that or do it in a different way, I'm all for it. I'm all for it. And again, for the gentleman who talked about the emergency service for the disabled, I'm for that as well.
Karen Nakamura:
I think my ending comment is, how do we make sure, everyone on stage today is over 50 years old, how do we bring this to the next generation? How do we continue these conversations? How do we make sure pass down the good things, pass down the energy, pass down the notion that, I think for a lot of us, I didn't think I'd make it to 50. I mean, disabled folks, we don't live very long, and so to be able to pass that down to the younger folks and get them energized and wanting to change the world and... We've all encountered a lot of in our lives and make sure that we see that, but you can do stuff.
Dennis and Leroy have done incredible work and made the place better, and john, your legacy is astounding. So how can you empower the younger folks that, yeah, racism is super real and ableism is super real and sexism... I talked to Dennis earlier. He was talking about the optimism, and it was great. I can see why he was called the spiritual leader because we need those moments of light to be like, it's worth fighting for, so I'm really appreciative. This conversation reminds me of the things that are worth fighting for.
john a. powell:
Well, thank you. I just want to add one more thing and then see if there are any closing thoughts. Leroy, I love that you talk about your work in Africa. I did my postgraduate work in Tanzania and I got to know Julius Nayrees. I used to go to his house and drink wine out of jelly jars. It tastes better that way. But what a lot of people don't realize, that the world by and large is aging. Europe is getting old, Japan is getting old, China's getting old, India's getting old. Where are the young people? They're in Africa. They are in Africa, and so it's really important and these issues to be brought together because Europe and most of the world is struggling.
I was just in Europe. Italy is actually desperate for young people and they said they're advertising for young people to move to Italy, but they said, "We only want people from the EU." They don't want people from Africa. This is going to be a huge problem. Then as you suggested, the disability services in Africa oftentimes are lacking. I was just thinking, bringing all these things together and the work that you and Dennis are doing, and as Karen said, those of us who have hair, this is gray, some of us don't have hair anymore, we need to actually reach back to the younger generation and make sure they're part of this effort as well. With that, I'm going to give Dennis and Leroy a chance to make any final statements and then we'll break and you can congregate and have things to eat and munch on. I think you're saying there's a question here? All right, I missed somebody. Sorry, I missed you.
Carmen:
Yes, right here. Can you hear me? Hi. My name's Carmen and I'm the new executive director for the Disabled Students' Program here at Cal. I've been here just a couple of days under a month, so I want to thank all our panelists for being here and for this session, for doing this session. It's been amazing listening to you. A couple of comments and some questions. Having been in other movements, intersectional movements such as immigration and queer rights, as a person with a disability as well as disability movements, I want to hear from our panelists about what opportunities there are for young people without disabilities to be allies in the movement and what that looks like, and how you think that could work or would work best. What do they need to do? How can they support? What do you suggest?
john a. powell:
Great question. Dennis, Leroy, Karen? Want to take a run at that question?
Dennis Billups:
Ask Leroy because I know he's got some thoughts. I'll follow in what he says. It's all good. Talking about young people getting involved for me for the last seven years I've known him for.
john a. powell:
And of course the cultural stuff you do, Leroy, I think that's a really beautiful bridge.
Leroy Moore, Jr.:
Yeah, yeah. When I do workshop on Krip-Hop, the students go out of the wall. I think this really to me really needs to really take a look at the culture, just really culture, the arts are just amazing in different countries, using that as a teaching tool. I got a couple books here, Black Disabled Art History 101, a Krip-Hop graphic novel. What hip-hop always does, hip-hop takes something negative from the main theme and flip it on its head and make it positive. That's what Krip-Hop has done. We flipped it and you think, oh, no, Krip-Hop is a part of our culture, part of our history. We talk about blues artists that's been in the music industry. Last year, Lizzo and Beyonce got into a big hoopla about ableist lyrics. There's things that the movement can do to get to you. Of course, everybody's online now, but there's a youth culture that we need to really, if we're going to be relevant for disabled youth, and sometimes we need to listen to them and just shut up, you know?
john a. powell:
Dennis?
Dennis Billups:
Okay, I'm coming from a different angle. I know there's a lot of pain, there's always been a lot of racism. My thing has always been meditation, how to reach people with consciousness, how to draw them towards the consciousness and the light that's now coming in. I know you may not understand this, but the Aquarian Age is going to be here. The Aquarian Age is for mankind to raise themselves beyond the top-down government through an upwards government from the people first and profit last. It used to be from the profit first and people last, and that's going to start changing. The main thing you have to understand here is how to keep your own ethnic and your power, your power of authenticity, your power of being strong, your power of finding out where your gifts lie and who you are and how you can be a stronger person, not just by yourself but with other people.
So I encourage any kind of thing that would make sure, to make sure that we've raised our consciousness because when we start raising it together and we start joining more communities, more communities are being formed more faster than ever than I've seen in my of 50 or 70 years of life. The most important thing is to become authentic. Find out who you are. Number two, find the vision that unites people. Number three, see the light and extend it as far as you can to each and every person that you're going to bring. You never know who will open the door for you, who will help you. To destroy racism is to destroy the departmental conditions of, I'm one and you're not one. We are all one. We came from love, let's go with love.
Leroy Moore, Jr.:
Can I say one more quick thing? One more quick thing. It's totally radical because Leroy's radical, but I think we have to sue the government. We have to sue the government. I think our laws are not fully funded. IDEA has never been fully funded since the '70s. The ADA keep on getting watered down every year by every administration. People say education is the key. I've been in school, I'm almost 56 years old and still on SSI, you know?
School, especially colleges, not UC Berkeley, but colleges, they don't follow the 504. One of our protests, when UC went on strike a couple years ago for the teacher's aid and all kinds of stuff, disabled students went on strike, too, and said, "We need disabled services to really do their work, to really follow the laws." I know it's radical, but when I saw Joe Biden on the campaign saying, "I'm going to fully fund IDEA," I was like, "Dude, you've been at all of this how long? What, you just woke up now?" I don't know, I think there needs to be a lawsuit because, without enforcing our laws, what do we have?
john a. powell:
Thank you, Leroy. Thank you, Dennis. Karen, you get the last word.
Karen Nakamura:
Oh, boy. Yeah, no, these guys are impossible to follow. I mean, fear is what the state uses to drive us apart, fear of the other. It wants us isolated and alone, and as Dennis says, we got to start with love. We got to start with love yourself, and it's hard to love your body and love your mind when we've been told all these things about ourselves. Once we can fully love ourselves, we can start loving other people, and so I think that's what we got to go with.
john a. powell:
Thank you. With that... Dennis, Dennis, go ahead.
Dennis Billups:
I've always said that genius is in the disapability in which they came in. There are our teachers, there are people who decided to use their bodies, the difficulties that they come through so they could bring a higher range and love to people. As you can see Leroy, you can see all the other people, including yourself and people that are here, are willing to kick open that window and understand where the genius lies. It's not in your body; it's in your spirit, it's in your heart, it's in your mind. I'm not talking about racism, I'm talking about kicking racism out of here, really out of here. I wish Joe Biden would fund more disabled institutions and I wish they'd get rid of the Republicans who are in Congress right now who tried to destroy our government. I will tell you that, so people don't... They say I don't talk about hard enough, but my thing is mostly consciousness. That's about right.
Karen Nakamura:
Amen.
john a. powell:
Well, with that, I'm going to invite you to first of all thank the panel, and yourselves, and then join us at the back if you can for drinks and conversation.
