Retreat for Disability Activists and Allies!!

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Located at the Leaven Retreat Center in Lyons, MI (May 16-18):

Stories in Community: 8th Annual Retreat for Disability Activists and Allies

As disability activists and allies, which stories do we tell about our embodied experiences of disability, race, violence, class, gender identity, and sexuality? What words, ideas, and images emerge from our experiences of community and isolation, pride and shame, joy and activism? How do these stories shift, settle, or become tangled over time as our bodies change? Drawing upon disability culture, conversation, journal writing, music, and movement, we’ll spend the weekend telling stories and exploring these questions.

We will create space for telling stories of who we are, telling stories of oppression and privilege. We will examine the ways our stories not only repeat, but also contradict, each other. We will explore the power of story to reach across chasms of power, to struggle against willful ignorance, and to insist upon wholeness. In addition to storytelling, we’ll have time to rest, relax, and hang out.

Jo Kadi and Eli Clare are long-time friends and co-conspirators, committed to joy, social justice, and the importance of being allies to each other across multiple differences and identities, all the while telling stories and celebrating the many ways of finding voice in community.

Event is gender inclusive

Leaders: Eli Clare and Jo Kadi
Time: Friday, 7 pm – Sunday, 1 pm
Cost: $185 ($50 deposit + $135 balance due)

Poet, essayist, and rabble-rouser Eli Clare has long known the power of story. He is the author of two books: the newly released The Marrow’’s Telling: Word in Motion and Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation. Among other pursuits, he has walked across the United States for peace, coordinated a rape prevention program, and helped organize the first ever Queerness and Disability Conference. He has spoken across the country at conferences, community events, and colleges about disability, trans and queer identities, and social justice. Eli lives in Vermont.

Jo Kadi is a musician, writer, and teacher. Kadi, an able-bodied, Arab-Canadian, working-class queer, edited Food for Our Grandmothers: Writings by Arab-American and Arab-Canadian Feminists and Thinking Class: Sketches from a Cultural Worker, both from South End Press.

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