Center for Racial and Disability Justice

Too often, disability is treated as an afterthought in conversations about climate resilience, environmental health, disaster recovery, infrastructure, and community planning. Climate Futures asks a different question: What becomes possible when disability is centered in the futures we imagine and the systems we build?

Today, CRDJ is excited to launch our Climate Futures Toolkit, a new resource exploring the intersection of disability justice, environmental justice, and climate justice.

As a new home for our Inclusive Disaster Relief Guide and Toolkit, and our Making Disability Visible exploration of disability models, we hope these resources advance more accessible, equitable, and sustainable futures.

Explore the toolkit: CRDJustice.org/climate-futures

Pride began as a protest, and for many LGBTQ+ people, that spirit remains as urgent as ever.

This year’s CRDJ Pride playlist, Be Gay. Do Crime., draws on a long-standing phrase associated with q***r resistance and refusal. At a time of escalating attacks on trans people, LGBTQ+ communities, immigrants, and others whose very existence is increasingly treated as suspect or unlawful, this playlist recognizes that simply being who you are has too often been treated as a crime. From q***r punk and trans anthems to Black liberation music and Latinx q***r artists, these songs are about survival, solidarity, joy, and pushing back against systems that criminalize difference. They remind us that Pride, more than a celebration, is about building power, caring for one another, and imagining unapologetic futures.

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ Happy Pride from CRDJ.

Listen here: tinyurl.com/Pride-CRDJams

Learn about “Be Gay. Do Crime.”: tinyurl.com/Gay-Do-Crime

AVAILABLE NOW: The recording from the Alternative Mental Health Crisis Response panel is here!

Co-hosted by the Center for Racial and Disability Justice, Human Rights Watch, and New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, the panel was grounded in the joint report, "'Self-Determination is the Pathway to Liberation': Alternative Mental Health Crisis Response in the United States."

Swipe through for some of the most powerful moments from the conversation!

The panel opened with remarks on the report and the urgency of this conversation from CRDJ's Jordyn Jensen and NYLPI's William Juhn. Moderated by Jennifer Mathis of The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, it featured Cat Brooks of Mental Health First Oakland & Anti Police-Terror Project, Travers Kurr of New Orleans Health Department's Mobile Crisis Intervention Unit (MCIU), and Christina Sparrock of NYLPI.

Together, they discussed the urgent need for non-police mental health crisis response, and what it takes to build responses grounded in consent, peer support, community, and self-determination.

Watch the full recording at CRDJustice.org/videos and read the report at CRDJustice.org/crisis-response-report.

Accessible Juneteenth 2026 is NEXT WEEK!! Join us for a celebration of the Black disability community at a fun and accessible, family friendly event!

📅 Tuesday, June 16, 4:00-7:30pm
📍 Access Living, 115 W Chicago Ave

This year, DJ Matt returns to bless us with music fit for our Accessible Juneteenth celebration. We will also have performances from Double AA, Cherlnell Lane, Jada Thompson, Victoria Djembe, and Miss Mamas.

We are excited to share food from Cook It Mama Café (sandwiches & salads with vegan & gluten-free options).

We'll have tables where you can meet people from Black-owned and disability-owned/friendly organizations and businesses. If you’re a Black and/or disability-owned/friendly business or organization and would like to be an exhibitor, sign up at: https://tinyurl.com/Juneteenth-Exhibitor-SignUp

We are also looking for volunteers to help run many aspects of Accessible Juneteenth; if you’re interested, sign up at: https://tinyurl.com/AccessibleJuneteenth-Volunteer

Schedule/What to Expect:
4:00 pm Doors Open
4:30 pm Welcome and Announcements
5:00 pm Showcase
Throughout: Food! Exhibitors! And more
7:30 pm Event ends/doors close

Access info: ASL and captioning will be provided for the showcase portion. A room will be available for a quiet, cool-off space! To protect immunocompromised people in our community, please wear a mask indoors. We’ll have extras on hand! Accessibility requests, questions, or event inquiries can be sent to [email protected]

For more full details and information, check out the Accessible Juneteenth event page: https://dcc.uic.edu/events/accessible-juneteenth-2026-6th-annual-celebration/

This event is brought to you by Chicagoland Disabled People of Color Coalition, Access Living, The Institute on Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois Chicago, UIC Disability Cultural Center, Center for Racial and Disability Justice (UCLA School of Law), UIC Black Studies, UIC Black Cultural Center, and UIC Chancellors Committee on the Status of Persons with Disabilities (CCSPD).

Voting rights are not only about access to the ballot. They are about access to power.

In "Political Disablement: The Modernization of Exclusion in American Democracy," Dr. Kate Caldwell examines how law, maps, paperwork, databases, access barriers, and constitutional doctrine are modernizing political disablement and weakening the collective political power of racialized disabled communities.

The brief argues that today’s attacks on voting rights do not simply create barriers. They preserve formal rights while stripping away the conditions that make political participation meaningful, making some communities harder to recognize, count, represent, and protect.

Access is not charity. Accommodation is not exception. Representation is not symbolism. Remedies are not threats. They are the infrastructure of democratic power.

Read the full brief at CRDJustice.org/resources.

SAVE THE DATE for the 6th annual Accessible Juneteenth! 🎉

Join us, the UIC Disability Cultural Center, and the Chicagoland Disabled People of Color Coalition (supported by the UIC Department of Disability and Human Development) to celebrate the Black disability community!

📅 Tuesday, June 16, 4-7:30pm
📍 Access Living, 115 W Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60654

We want to make Juneteenth a fun and accessible experience for everyone, including disabled, neurodivergent, and Deaf people in the African Diaspora. There will be food, performances, and exhibitors at this family-friendly, non-alcoholic event!

More info on performers, food, and access coming soon. Stay tuned for volunteering and exhibiting opportunities!

Today, we submitted a public comment letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in response to the proposed 2028 Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) Quality Measure Set.

Written by Dr. Kate Caldwell and Dr. Hope Sparks, this letter raises concerns that the proposed measure set lacks sufficient equity stratification, lived-experience measures, material-access measures, and accountability mechanisms needed to assess whether HCBS are equitably supporting community living, self-determination, safety, and access to needed services.

Our recommendations include:
• Equity stratification to establish a meaningful baseline
• Reporting beyond geographic stratification alone
• Program, plan, and population-level accountability
• Self-determination, safety, and community as core measures of quality
• Material-access measures
• Co-production in equity-centered measure development

You can read this letter, along with all of our public comment submissions, on our website at https://www.crdjustice.org/public-comment-letters

Introducing the AANHPI Disability Justice Syllabus. 🌺

This syllabus brings together scholarship, art, movement work, storytelling, and disability justice praxis centering Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander disabled experiences across race, colonialism, care, kinship, labor, access, and collective liberation.

We hope this resource supports learning, teaching, organizing, reflection, and deeper engagement with disability justice across AANHPI disabled experiences.

📚 Read the full syllabus at tinyurl.com/AANHPI-Syllabus

Have suggestions for future additions? Reach out to us or share them in the comments!

From protest to hope, from rage to unity, CRDJams is back with our newest playlist: Spring of Discontent. 🎧

Critical songs across genres, grounded in history, built to carry a movement forward.

Press play, sit with it, share it loud.

Listen now at https://www.youtube.com//playlists

⏰ ONE WEEK OUT: Alternative Mental Health Crisis Response Panel

Join us next Thursday, May 21 at 6 PM ET for a virtual panel on the new joint report by Human Rights Watch, Center for Racial and Disability Justice, and New York Lawyers for the Public Interest: ”‘Self-Determination is the Pathway to Liberation’: Alternative Mental Health Crisis Response in the United States.”

At a time when coercive approaches to mental health crisis response are expanding, this panel will discuss why rights-respecting, non-police alternatives are crucial, what they look like in practice, and what it will take to sustain and expand them.

Moderated by Jennifer Mathis (The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law), the panel features Cat Brooks (Anti Police-Terror Project, Mental Health First), Travers Kurr (New Orleans Health Department, MCIU), Christina Sparrock and William Juhn (NYLPI), and Jordyn Jensen (CRDJ at UCLA School of Law).

CART captioning and ASL interpretation will be provided.

Learn more and RSVP now at tinyurl.com/Crisis-Response-Panel-Info