In December 2021, the McMaster Disability Zine Team gave a virtual presentation at the Disability Intersectionality Summit 2021 about our zine project and process of working together. We invited attendees to create poetry with us by responding to three prompts – “Art is… Advocacy is… Advocating through art (craftivism) is…” – in the Zoom chat box. After a little bit of editing and reorganization by Emunah Woolf, these are the collective poems we created.

Art is…

Art is care,
a way of dealing with trauma,
a place to process grief/pain,
things the abled world doesn’t think of as art.

It’s expressing the intangible,
beyond words; fun; messy; incomplete –
liberating.

It’s love
for all of us.
A way of creating community,
intentional and accidental,
necessary.

It’s both a reflection and abstraction of experiences / culture / society,
a manifestation of the human experience.
It’s fun! much of the time : )

Art is our connection our activism our therapy our community
our disabled love and joy.
Art is.

Advocacy is…

Advocacy is ephemeral – not always obvious.
Not fixing each other, but witnessing each other and supporting each other.
It’s annoying to have to do, but it’s gotta be done.

It’s breaking people out of the psych ward,
fighting to ensure people get health care they need and want,
fighting to prevent your voice from being drowned out.

But it’s also sending many, many emails and
having to respond to all the email responses forever and
getting someone else to send my many, many emails with / for me
or to read and edit my emails before I send them.
It’s writing a list of all the emails I need to send and then not sending them and
finally setting the emails on fire and staring at the smoking ruins.

It’s asserting that we deserve to take up space,
wanting to be heard,
necessitating a recognition of interdependence.

It’s varied and beautiful and difficult and exhausting –
an uphill battle to get what we deserve.

Advocating through art (craftivism) is…

Craftivism is an unconventional approach to asking to be heard.
Loud and public or super quiet and personal in the margins of your notes.
Inherently challenging norms, how we are “supposed to” do things.

It can be an effective way to mitigate defensiveness of those who hold power,
strategic.
A way of building mutual aid and care networks through creativity,
and it’s sometimes dismissed as not “real” knowledge.

It’s creating spaces for each other,
not feeling so lonely and isolated,
a way to connect,
a way to disconnect.

It’s knowing that telling our stories is as important or more than petitions and policy.
Normalizing “everyday” activism,
elevating “quiet” forms of advocacy,
expressing our needs.

It’s the graffiti that says “crip solidarity and power” on the telephone pole
outside my library branch,
unapologetic.
Thinking about making art with dead friend’s used needles in his sharps container
but then just putting it in the dropbox by your house,
silenced.

Craftivism screams fuck it and makes art on and with your disabled body.
It’s crafty.
It’s for me.
It’s for us.